Musings of a minimalist: called a writer's writer by literary greats, Augusto Monterroso reveals, in mini-masterpieces, the precarious and humorous condition of humankind.

• Author: Bach, Caleb

The essays, fables, micro-tales, and host of other tight, abbreviated writings of Augusto Monterroso can be as elusive to categorization as the author's de facto nationality. Born in Honduras as a Guatemalan national, mostly he has lived in exile in Mexico, but he also has spent extended periods in Bolivia, Chile, Spain, Italy, and the United States.

Befitting a citizen of the world, Monterroso enjoys a global reputation as a "writer's writer," possessed of body of work notable for its range, concision, and astringent humor. A fiercely independent outsider, nonetheless he has enjoyed the admiration and close friendship of many celebrated writers, including Juan Rulfo, Alfonso Reyes, Juan Carlos Onetti, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who, in recommending Monterroso's La oveja negra y demas fabulas, wrote: "This book should be labeled `stick `em up!': its danger is based on its hidden wisdom and the deadly beauty of its lack of seriousness." Fuentes was equally enthusiastic: "Imagine the fantastic bestiary of Borges sipping tea with Alice. Imagine Jonathan Swift and James Thurber exchanging notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who actually had read Mark Twain. Know Monterroso."

Now in his eighties, the author possesses a cherubic, grandfatherly countenance, but his good humor often struggles to contain a smoldering anger fueled by gross political injustices he has witnessed during his long life. In talking with him at his residence in the Colonia Chimalistac district of Mexico City, he is reticent to say much about himself; modesty and self-deprecation lead the way. Although near the end of the interview he proffers a lean volume, The Gold Searchers, a memoir covering his earliest years. In the second chapter he explains the title, which refers to a fever contracted during childhood and associated delirious visions of himself and two companions searching for bits of alluvial gold in a swollen river near his house.

Monterroso's search for real nuggets of a literary sort began as a teenager. Until then he had received only a smattering of formal education either because out of boredom he constantly cut classes or, as a pretext not to attend school at all, used his family's constant bouncing back and forth between residences in Honduras and Guatemala. It was not until he was fifteen--by then he was supporting himself with a full-time job as a clerk in a butcher shop--that he embarked on a program of self-education, a process that continues to this day. He enrolled in night classes and studied foreign languages, but mostly read at the National Library of Guatemala, where he developed a fondness for Greek and Roman classics--Catullus, Aesop, Juvenal, Virgil--also the masters in his own language--Cervantes, Gongora, Quevedo, Calderon de la Barca.

"I recall finding in the library a first edition by Gracian--a seventeenth-century work in its original leather binding. Every library, no matter how remote or small, can yield remarkable treasures," he says with a gleam in his eye. The writings of Baltasar Gracian, the Spanish Jesuit scholar who often expressed himself satirically and epigrammatically, eventually would serve as a model for some of Monterroso's own work.

"I had to support myself, because my father, Vicente, lost much of the family fortune," Monterroso explains. "He was a Guatemalan national. There were revolutions, and he made bad investments. My mother came from a prominent Honduran family and was well off, but he was a bohemian who squandered her resources on ill-conceived publishing ventures. He also drank too much and had affairs." (In The Gold Searchers, the author describes his father showing him and his two siblings a lead slug permanently lodged in his arm, the remnant of a round fired at him by a jealous husband.) His mother, Amelia Bonilla, directly related to two earlier Honduran presidents, was a cultured lady who introduced her son to good literature and classical music. His father also liked books, the company of writers, and even published a literary journal called Los Sucesos. Monterroso's uncle, for whom he was named, sang professionally in light opera and performed in movies, while his paternal grandfather, Antonio Monterroso, was a respected army general who may have been poisoned by political enemies for his presidential aspirations.

Young Augusto became politically active in the early forties during the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. Intent on pursing a literary career and as a member of the so-called Generacion del 40, he signed manifestos demanding the dictator's resignation, led street demonstrations, and founded a political newspaper, Espectador, for which he was arrested in 1944. He managed to escape, sought asylum in the Mexican embassy, and made his...