The genius of terror

By Varela

They say this Thursday will be the launching of Orlando Bosch’s book “The Years I Have Lived.” They say the title was changed by the editor, because Bosch had written “The Years I Spent Killing.”

In Miami’s Spanish-speaking literary world, a best-seller is a book that sells nine copies. I think Zoe Valdés holds the record.

Now Bosch wants to break the record. So he sells ten. And he sells them because the genre is more commercial – ghoulish terror.

An eminent Cuban blog, Cambios en Cuba, gives the event a backhanded compliment when it says Bosch is a better writer than Stephen King, because the vaunted genius of terror writes fiction while all of the Cuban Freedom Fighter’s crimes are real.

They say the book’s jacket carries a warning – not for minors or impressionable people.

I imagine that Miami’s recalcitrant right-wingers (almost all of them superannuated or overweight) will have trouble reading it. Still, I expect they’ll buy a total of 10 copies.

I don’t know why the petty criminals have begun to write their memoirs lately.

First it was Bush, this year at the Beer Fair (known in Miami as the Book Fair), where he inaugurated the event and autographed some copies.

Now it’s Bosch, a friend of Bush’s father. Remember that Bush Sr. allowed Bosch to come to the U.S. from Venezuela.

It’s all in the family. In the sense of Vito Corleone’s and Lucky Luciano’s families.

Let’s hope that Bosch confesses again what he has whispered so often and admits his penchant for downing airliners, punching holes into merchant ships, blowing up embassies and assassinating diplomats.

That sells. Besides, that’s the true life of a terrorist for sale.

The years he has lived couldn’t have been more deadly for the Cubans.

If he had a shred of shame or remorse, he should have written a book of condolences to his victims, not the autobiography of a butcher.