Exploring Bogotá and Art with Linda Moore, Author of Five Days in Bogotá

Join me as I chat with Linda Moore, author of Attribution and Five Days in Bogotá, both listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X33FE57ZDk4 

• How Linda's background as the owner of an art gallery and her experience at an art fair in Colombia in the 1990s helped inspire her to write Five Days in Bogotá
• The political situation in Colombia and how it's changed over the decades
• Colombia as a significant economic force in South America
• The role Nobel laureate and author of 100 Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez plays in the novel
• A short reading from Five Days in Bogotá featuring a scene with Gabriel García Márquez that actually happened.
• The role auctions and inflating art prices plays in the art world and the novel
• Why Linda starting writing novels later in life
• Five Days in Bogotá - a thriller or a thriller light?
• Genesis of Attribution, which is set in Spain and revolves around Baroque art
• Fascinating world of authenticating old paintings
• One thing Linda Moore learned from writing novels that she didn't know before.

Press Play now & be sure to check out Attribution and Five Days in Bogotá on Art In Fiction: https://www.artinfiction.com/novels?q=linda+moore

Linda Moore's website: https://lindamooreauthor.com/

Music Credit
Paganology, performed by The Paul Plimley Trio; composed by Gregg Simpson

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Transcript

Carol Cram
Hello and welcome. I'm Carol Cram, host of The Art In Fiction Podcast. This episode features Linda Moore, author of Attribution and Five Days in Bogotá. 

Linda Moore is an author, traveler and a recovering gallery owner. She studied art history at the Prado as a student at the Complutense University of Madrid, and received degrees from the University of California and Stanford University. 

Welcome to The Art In Fiction Podcast, Linda. 

Linda Moore
Thank you, Carol. Thank you for inviting me.

Carol Cram
I've read your new novel, Five Days in Bogotá, and your debut novel, Attribution. Both are focused on art, but in two very different ways. So let's start with Five Days in Bogotá., which is your new one. What a ride. Tell us why you chose to set this novel at an art fair in Colombia in the 1990s, I believe it is.

Linda Moore
Right, early 90s. I used to own an art gallery for many years, and we specialized in art from South America, but almost all Hispanic, Latino, and Latin American regions, including California. So, I did art fairs in a variety of places, and I did actually go to an art fair in 1991 in Bogotá, and I was surprised when I got there about how tense and dangerous the environment, the atmosphere, was, and it stuck in my memory.

So, as I thought about writing the next book—Attribution was very much about the academic world of attributing paintings, and in particular, that book focused on a Baroque painting from about 400 years ago. And fast forward to contemporary artists making art now and galleries and dealers and auction houses trying to work in that world, sell art and market their artists’ careers.

Carol Cram
So, tell us about your experience as an art collector and a gallery owner and how that informed how you wrote this novel.

Linda Moore
Well, there were a lot of parts of it which were very easy for me to draw from memory because I had done many art fairs all over the world. Buenos Aires, Madrid, Bogotà, Chicago, and Los Angeles closer to home in California where I live, and where the gallery was, but I also had to do a lot of research.

I pride myself on it in my novels that I think the readers expect it to be correct. So something as small as what color were taxis in 1990 in Bogotá is something I work hard at and making certain that the streets are correct. I study Google Maps, all kinds of things. So it takes a lot of work, even though the milieu of an art fair was very familiar to me, and I was also familiar with selling art at auctions and how collectors view those things, and how dealers interact with artists and with collectors. So those parts came fairly easy for me, but the political scene and a lot of the other details were farther afield from my world, although not completely, because my first career was in Latin American politics.

I have a master's degree in that from Stanford. And while I was writing my master's thesis on Chile was very close to the time when Allende was, depending on who you ask, assassinated or he committed suicide. So those parts were easy to revisit for me, but I also did a lot of fact checking to make sure I got things right.

Carol Cram
Yes, you talk quite a lot in the novel—I don't want to spoil anything—about the U. S. government's involvement in Colombia. Now that was in the early 1990s. Have things changed in Colombia? I know nothing about Colombia. 

Linda Moore
Well, and most people don't. I think that was one of my motives for writing the book.

Not only are people not familiar with the fantastic art that is being created in Latin America, they also are not that familiar with Latin America. They're much more familiar with Europe, which is funny because personally, I think we have a lot more in common as a nation with those countries in Latin America.

We all had native populations, went through the Colonial periods where there was basically an occupation of the countries by a European power, and then a struggle to find independence and so on. So there is a lot that we have in common. I am not the best person to ask about the current situation in Colombia.

I will tell you this. There were so many groups that were involved in the difficulties and the violence of the 1990s that I'm really clear about one thing and that is there were no good guys. 

Carol Cram
I kind of got that impression.

Linda Moore
It's not black and white. Nobody could stand back and say that their hands were completely clean of some of the difficulties that were created. One of the groups that existed during that time was called the FARC. It was a group of rebels, communist rebels, who wanted to seize power and take over the government.  Of course, our government has always gotten involved to oppose those type of groups, whether you talk about Cuba or Chile or wherever, and so one of the things that happened was very similar to what happened in Ireland, for example, where people are trying to figure out in many other places in the world where a country is trying to get beyond the terrible and deep resentments and hatred for one group over another because so many people were killed and lost. 

And Colombia had a commission which got together and met and tried to forgive the other side and move on and move forward with their country. And it was somewhat successful.

I think they've slid back a little bit. That was around 2015 or so, and I'm not sure where it stands exactly now, but I do admire the effort to try to move forward, and I have heard from a lot of people in Colombia about the desire to be seen as something more balanced than just the narco state that we constantly get a heavy diet of.

So for me, it was a joy to write about artists trying to make their art, different families struggling with all the same struggles that we have here, and how much we really have in common with people. And also little things like most people don't know Bogotá is bigger than New York City.

Carol Cram
I did not know that. 

Linda Moore
And almost, almost as large as Los Angeles. Colombia has 51 million people. At least that was the last number I saw. And California has 40 some million. 

Carol Cram 
Well, so does Canada, about 35 million. So, yeah, it's bigger than us. 

Linda Moore
So, imagine, Colombia is a force. It's an important country with a huge economic base of oil deposits and of course, coffee. We all know about that. And a lot of other mineral resources that make it actually a wealthy country in terms of a lot of other places in the world. 

Carol Cram
Interesting. I enjoyed a lot reading about Colombia. I've never read a novel set in Colombia. So this was a first for me. 

Linda Moore
I'm going to disagree. I bet you've read 100 Years of Solitude. 

Carol Cram
Actually, I was just going to mention Gabriel García Márquez and I will admit that no, I have not read it. I think I might own it somewhere, but I never did read it. And now I'm inspired. 

Linda Moore
Yeah. You have a joy waiting for you. And you've no doubt seen the movie Love in the Time of Cholera that was all set in Colombia as well. And I think you probably know more about Colombia than you realize.  

Carol Cram
I'm not sure about that. But anyway, you certainly inspired me. So tell me about Gabriel García Márquez, why you included him. He has a role in the novel, which was, that was a wonderful scene, by the way. 

Linda Moore
Thank you. When I was planning to go to this, our fair in Bogotá, I had never been to Bogotá either. The first time I went there in 1991, I wrote a letter to the American Consul Cultural Attaché in Bogotá, and I asked them to invite García Márquez because I was bringing the artworks by an artist Delos McGraw, who does all his works inspired and informed by literature. I mean, everyone from Milos to some poet laureates and Alice in Wonderland, and he did a series on 100 Years of Solitude.

So I always tried when I brought art to an art fair in a different country to bring something that the country would connect with. So it was obvious to choose that. And I wrote this letter and asked them to invite García Márquez and the reply came back. I mean, it's sort of a bizarre thing to do that.

I was just throwing putting to the wind and saying, Oh, why not? Invite him. And of course, he already had a huge international reputation as a Nobel Prize winner, and his books were well known throughout the world. So, I got a letter back that said Mr. García Márquez apologizes. He is unable to attend the art fair. He will be entertaining 11 presidents from Latin America, along with Colombian president. And I thought, oh, well, I guess that does sound more important than coming to see my booth at the art fair. So I'm at the art fair and I get this notice to go to the office and get a message.

This is before cell phones or computers or anything. And so the message was from the Cultural Attaché saying Mr. García Márquez wants you to know he is coming to the art fair with President Gaviria to see this first ever art fair in Bogotá. So I, now I'm in a panic. I call the artist. He told me, 'oh, you have to give him one of the paintings'.

I go, which painting? And he said, Oh, you'll know, you'll know. Oh my goodness. Okay. I think he was just thrilled with the idea that García Márquez might have one of his works in his collection. So anyway, García Márquez comes and he's completely charming and I put an author's note in the back of the book about how much of this was true.

I do have a few words from that chapter if you'd like me to read them if this is a good time to read them. 

Carol Cram
Yes, let's do it right now because I did want you to do a reading and you had mentioned you were going to read that scene so that would be great. 

Linda Moore
I'm not going to read the whole scene; I'm just at the point in the scene where I give him this little encaustic box that the artist has made that has a picture of the colonel in the town of Macondo.

So García Márquez responds to Allie. 

“How generous. Thank you. What a pleasure.” He looked closely at the work and then at her. “I want to give you a gift, too. When do you leave?” He looked to one of his assistants waiting at the edge of the booth, holding back a whole group of fans following him. Being close to him brought national pride and wisdom, hope to people of all stations.

She regrouped to respond, “Sunday. We leave late Sunday.”

Márquez motioned to the assistant and asked her to gather Allison's contact information. Allie had another thought and asked, “Perhaps a simple thing you could do. It would be a great gift for me. I've heard you don't sign autographs. May I ask you anyway, would you sign this old copy of 100 Years of Solitude?

She brought the Spanish version in case someone asked her a question about the translated lines in McGraw's paintings. He took the tattered book with the coffee stains on the cover from her student days into his hands. Márquez turned it over again and again, his eyes filled with emotion. 

“Where did you get this?”

Was he offended by her careless treatment of his famous book bought over 20 years ago? 

“Madrid, 1967. I was a student at the university there.”

She shifted from one foot to another while he examined the book, even reading the copyright page. Finally, he spoke. 

“This is a very special edition, printed by Editorial Sudamericana in Buenos Aires. Political issues with Cuba, my friend Fidel, dominated the news and my life, kept me out of the United States for years. When the print run was shipped from Buenos Aires to Colombia, the Colombian government impounded all the books and…” That sad look returned. “Destroyed the entire shipment.”

She gasped and stayed silent, considering the loss of precious books, this masterwork. The idea that any books, however famous, well written or not, could be destroyed disgusted her. 

He spoke in a quiet voice, absent the rage she felt. “Some copies got out of Argentina, mostly to Madrid. This is the first time I have held this paperback edition in my hands in many years. Can you imagine my joy to learn it survived and made this journey back to Colombia?”

He lifted his reading glasses off his forehead, stowed them in his jacket pocket, and focused on his eyes on hers. “You've made me happy twice in a few minutes.” He smiled and searched his other pocket for a pen, which his assistant produced like handing an instrument to a surgeon. Márquez, a writer without a pen.

That was something she'd remember.

Carol Cram
Thank you so much. I just love that scene. That's a wonderful scene. It's wonderful to know that that actually happened. Is that correct? 

Linda Moore
Hey, here it is. And here's the autograph. 

Carol Cram
Oh, my goodness. 

Linda Moore
And he signed it Gabriel. I love that. That's in the scene too. The scene really did happen. He has another bigger role in the book, too. But yes. That actually did happen.

As I have said to a number of people, I told my husband, if the house catches fire, forget the wedding photos, the grandkids' photos, get the book. 

Carol Cram
That is quite a treasure to have. Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us. 

I also wanted to ask about how central to the novel is the discovery of these two paintings that are worth millions. Now, are those fictional? 

Linda Moore
There was at that time, and still, there are Colombian artists, contemporary artists, whose works do fetch that kind of money. We can talk more about the art but this is fictional. These are paintings by that kind of artist. It plays with some iconic images of very thin people with big feet. And so I picked something that wasn't like any artist I knew. Probably some artists will come out of the woodwork and say, Oh, that's my work.

But I don't know that artist. But it made it easy to talk about what these paintings were. And of course, they are part of a conspiracy, a scheme and this is not uncommon, honestly, it’s one reason why I'm not a fan of contemporary art being sold at auction is what happens is dealers or collectors or collectors, even artists themselves, can put a piece in the auction and get people to competitively bid for it. Sometimes a dealer has to step in and protect their artist's work in case nobody bids on it. 

It's a roller coaster in the auction world and many times dealers will work hard. When you hear the newest, latest and greatest artists are fetching all these high prices, I always stand back and wait and watch because it is my experience that sometimes it's just a bubble that's going to break.

And it isn't a real market; they're working at creating a market. So all those shenanigans are not special to Colombia. They happen throughout the world. 

Carol Cram
Yes. I know. And that's what I found very interesting because I know a little bit about the art world. And so that was a lot of fun to read about.

So are you still involved with the art world, Linda? 

Linda Moore
As a collector and it's been at least a decade since I've actually been selling art.

I got very involved as a trustee in a number of museums, including the San Diego Museum of Art. And I think it's probably important that people who are in those roles are not also dealing in the art market. It presents conflict. Not that the conflicts go away, but I personally did not want to be in that situation.

And I spend more time trying to help bolster all of these art institutions that do struggle to have enough funds to run their operations and continue showing art. It's sort of like independent bookstores. I now feel as a writer, I now feel a certain obligation to try to nudge people towards purchasing books at bookstores.

And I spend a lot of my time going around and doing book events, book signings, and trying to nudge people to purchase the book at bookstores. 

Carol Cram
Definitely, we want to support our independent bookstores. So this also leads me to ask you, you've come to novel writing a little later in your life, like myself. I had a long career before I started novel writing. So why did you start writing novels? 

Linda Moore
Well, my children had graduated college. I had a friend who had written and edited a memoir for some refugees. That was very interesting. And she invited me to join a read and critique group. I was a big reader, but I had never aspired to write novels. I had written a lot of artist catalogs. I published chapters in art anthologies and other books and articles in journals. But I had never written fiction. So I wrote a novel in that read and critique group. You stay in long enough, eventually you finish the novel.

And I submitted it to a contest, and not only did I not win, I got ruthless criticism, for which I actually thank those judges because it made me realize I did not know how to write fiction. So I applied to Stanford's novel writing program and shockingly got in and I spent two years learning how to write a novel. The program's unique because you actually do have to write a novel to complete the program.

And that's unusual. Most MFA programs you're writing short stories or novellas or something else because the structure of the academic program doesn't allow the time it takes to write a novel. 

Carol Cram
It takes a long time. 

Linda Moore
So this is more of a program that you can flexibly finish when you finish the novel, but you can't finish the program without the completed novel. And that's also a gift because I am here and something like 90 percent of novels started and are never finished. So I guess that's good news because we're in the final 10 percent here, Carol. 

Carol Cram
I know. Isn't it amazing? I do like to remind myself of that when I get down. And I wanted to ask that Five Days in Bogotá is a thriller. So what is it about writing thrillers that appeals to you? 

Linda Moore
Well, it started out more to be suspense, but then I realized that this decision she makes to leave her two children who recently lost their father and her husband with the housekeeper because she hasn't got a relative that's easy. She's so desperate to earn money. And she's trying to figure out a quick way to do it. And I thought, well, she needs to be able to and that fear of something and that kind of transitioned into a thriller. But I call it a thriller light because it's very much literary. It's very much the character's journey And typically thrillers are more plot-oriented than character-oriented.

They also have, I was stunned to learn, every scene is a chapter. Did you know that? I did not. And as I was writing it, someone mentioned that to me, and one day I was signing Attribution at one of those bookstores that has books all around, and it was a quiet moment. I started looking through Clancy and Patterson and Silva and a lot of these people are well known for their thrillers. And I learned, yes, they have, like, 75 chapters. 

And I thought to myself, I don't think I can write like that because I take so much trouble to put you in the scene when a chapter begins and to ground you where you are and what the narrator is seeing, you're seeing. And just jumping around like that didn't feel right to me.

So I stuck with my 30 something chapters and multiple scenes in a chapter. No one's really complained. One person who helped me edit the books, I asked them what genre they thought it was and their answer....I love that... they said genres are for librarians and booksellers who need to find a shelf to put this on.

And that's not the author’s worry, so I kind of don't worry too much about it, but I think most readers will find it an exciting page-turning ride. At least that's what they've been telling me.  

Carol Cram
Well, it is, but it's got more to it than just a typical thriller, which I think is why it's so much fun to read.

I think because all of the stuff about the art and Colombia and everything, and it's not just fast paced, guns and that kind of thing. There's a tiny bit of that, but really you're right, it's about Allie's journey and really rooting for her all the way through. 

Linda Moore
And somebody said to me, it's, like, yes, while there are thrillers that have, you know, single, mostly attractive young women, we don't have many thrillers where you've got a mom of two who's got to try to get herself out of a very difficult situation and live to tell the tale. So I had a couple of people comment on the fact that they liked that it was a mom who had this challenge.

I also really hope that when people read my books they are entertained. Of course, that's the first goal. But also that they come away and they learn something. It's very gratifying to me when I meet with book clubs or give talks that people will say to me, I didn't know this or that.

And now I found that really interesting. And I think it's kind of a painless way to learn something, if only the geography of South America. 

Carol Cram
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. I know. I love that when people say, Oh, I never knew all of that about painting because my first novel is about a painter, right? 

I wanted to talk about Attribution, which is set in Spain. So this is based on your background as an art historian. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this novel? 

Linda Moore
Yes, actually, I'm not an art historian. I've taken a lot of art history classes, but I've never written or worked as an art historian. I love it though. 

I lived in Madrid. I took art history in the Prado and I know something about it. But Baroque art was not my field and I needed to work at doing a lot of research. And frankly, I loved it. If I never published a book, if I just, like, go down those rabbit holes and reading about that particular time in the history of Spain, the golden age of art, I just found that so enjoyable for myself to learn.

But the inspiration of that book came from a lecture I went to at the San Diego Museum of Art. I was a trustee, and this was a young curator who was talking about a painting he had attributed and the challenges. I was riveted because it talks about the science, the chemistry, the x-rays, the pigments plus the important aesthetic ability to look at a work and know enough about the artists of the time to be able to say it is or it isn't. It's, like, Oh, well, that person always had a fleck of white in the eyes of his portraits. And this does not have that fleck of white. Therefore we are ruling it out. 

And beyond that, the other things like the provenance and what other documentation can you find or sales records or somebody commissioned this. So you're in libraries digging through documents that are hundreds and hundreds of years old.

And then, after you get to a certain place, then you have to deal with the titans of the art world, who may have already declared this painting something else. There's a Velazquez in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that has been a Velazquez, has not been a Velazquez, I think at least five times, and a good friend of mine teaches art history at the New York University, and he told me he was asked to write a paper on that painting.

We were standing in front of it at a recent show that they did on Juan de Pareja, who was Velasquez's slave, later was emancipated, and they had that painting from where he had emancipated him in the show and I had only seen a few of his works, but he became quite a good artist on his own.

And this painting was in the show and we were standing there looking at it and I said, and now it's a Velazquez, right? And he had to write the paper about why it wasn't a Velazquez. I said, well, what made the difference? He said, well, they cleaned it. And there were these nuances in the pigments and shadows of the tunic.

And I'm like, oh, come on. That's so subtle. I can hardly even see it, but it's interesting how things change over time. When people walk in museums, they think all those labels on the wall that they're, like, the gospel, right? Actually, they're not true. And it's also very common. Like right now, the Prado is all happy that they have just declared this Caravaggio that someone put in auction.

For $1,000 more or less and a family that had had it forever and the government of Spain was alerted and they stopped the sale and gave the work to the Prado to do scientific tests and declared it was a Caravaggio. It's on display if anybody is in Madrid this summer and the owner sold it for $32,000,000 , so y'all go to auctions and look for those treasures.

Who knows? 

Carol Cram
So one of my goals with The Art In Fiction podcast is to inspire other authors. So what's one thing you've learned from writing your novels that you didn't know before?  

Linda Moore
Well, I guess I did not realize how important the details were. As a reader, you just sort of absorb them and don't pay attention. But when you're writing, there are many times where I'd be writing something like, oh, around the corner from the hotel was this or that restaurant or something. And then I think, oh, I can't write that if what's next to the hotel is a big freeway.

So I would get online and I'd research and it's part of the reason that it takes a long time to write a good book is you don't make assumptions about almost anything. And that I was not aware of. 

But there were a lot of things that I think come from other parts of your life that when you're writing a book, for example, perseverance is everything; it's the plain old work ethic.

I mean, what field can you even think of where those qualities are not important and they're especially important in a writer because you will go a long time before you will get a lot of positive praise. Yeah, there's a lot of people talking in your ear saying, oh, this isn't good.

Or your self-talk. So I remember the first sort of writer's retreat I went to, I went with that friend and I was so proud of what I was presenting, a couple of chapters, and I got a lot of criticism and I sort of bit my lip and went back to my room and sat there and I was in tears and my friend came to find me and she said, so did you come for praise?

And I thought, what a great question. No, the only way to get better is not to have especially gratuitous praise, which is what your family and your friends will give you. But you want to get better. You have to get a tough skin and you have to take what people are saying, particularly if multiple people are saying the same thing, and work at improving and solving those problems with your work.

It is astonishing to me when I look back at what I was writing 15, 20 years ago and what I write now. And I marvel at how far I've come and how much I've learned, but embrace the learning. Your best friends are the ones that give you the tough feedback. 

Carol Cram
I'm very fortunate. I have a friend who does that. She reads what I write and she doesn't hold back, which is great. Sometimes it's hard, but I am grateful to have that because you have to be willing to put yourself out a little bit and take criticism because that's how you're going to get better. Which is really our goal. 

Linda Moore
And there are times when I have actually said to someone who says, oh, I think it's terrific. And they're a writer. And I'll say back to them, no, no, no. Dig deeper, find where it can be better. Because I'm unsettled about it being finished. I need it. I need more ideas. 

Carol Cram 
Exactly so, and that's worth gold. And someone will actually tell you.

Well, thank you so much, Linda, for chatting with me. This has been just wonderful. 

Linda Moore
My pleasure, Carol. Let's stay in touch. And if you have any questions or your listeners do, please reach out to me at lindamooreauthor.com.. And if you hit the contact, those emails come right to me. So I'm happy to have those.

Carol Cram
Yes. And your link will be in the show notes. 

I've been speaking with Linda Moore, author of Attribution and Five Days in Bogotá, both listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction at www.artinfiction.com. 

Be sure to check the show notes for a link to Linda's website at www.lindamooreauthor.com. You'll also find a link to a 20% discount on a subscription to ProWriting Aid, a fantastic editing tool for writers. 

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