Writer and journalist Manuel Vicente (Castellón, 1936), one of the country’s most famous columnists, attends ‘Under the Appearance’ literary conventions this weekend at the Jesús Arencibia cultural space in Tamaraceite (Las Palmas de Gran). Canaria) will speak with author Luis Landero tomorrow, moderated by Mara Torres. Writers Ray Loriga, Elvira Sastre, Manuel Vilas and Juan Gómez-Jurado took over on Saturday.
How would you describe your relationship with the writer Luis Landero, whom you will be speaking to tomorrow under the auspices of Bajo Mirada de Cycle?
I have an admirable relationship with Luis. I’ve read all of her novels and I think she’s a great writer. We do not have a direct relationship, but I always follow him through his literature.
Do you enjoy these meta-literary encounters?
If I go to a beautiful place surrounded by friends and people I love, then it seems like a great adventure.
As the jeweler of the possibilities of language and words, what is the line that separates, unites or, if any, distances the novelist from the journalist?
In my case there is no such line. It is always said that one fears the blank page, but I fear the written page, because the blank page is an endless field that can be anything. But literature is what I want to do when it comes to facing the blank slate. Nothing else. What happens is that writing for a novel is not the same as writing for an article because the format is changing. But my attitude towards foil is purely literary. I have no sense of journalism. For me, the world is just words.
Most of the time, she says she writes with pictures rather than thoughts, searching for words.
Yes, because I don’t have a very analytical understanding of life and what it is, but more of a synthetic understanding. It’s much more comfortable for me or trying to synthesize an emotion through an image or metaphor, rather than analysing. Also, I believe you can reach deeper into the brain through images.
“I think it is possible to go deep into the brain through images”
In an interview with Jot Down, he said, “Everything that happens to us throughout our lives is nothing more than the development of the first five or six knots of childhood, and experience is nothing more than untying those knots.” Is writing nodes part of the decoding process?
Definitely. I believe that we are pure nature until this information reaches the brain, while the brain of emotions, i.e. the limbic brain, which records emotions, symbols, beliefs, fears or sensations, was active during childhood. , intelligent perception of things. That’s when that knot in the limbic brain slowly dissolves like a rising fog that shows you the outline of things. From a certain age, intelligence unties the knot formed in the lower brain, the limbic, where the first tastes, smells or songs are housed; intelligence slowly evaporates, making room for questions about what we are and why we are, and there one by one the knot that reaches the end of life is untied. I think writing about it is a way to go back to those early childhood feelings and keep asking those questions. And above all, it is a perspective on the world.
His latest novel ‘Portrait of a modern woman’ (Alfaguara, 2022), which pays homage to Concha Piquer, is also a journey into the soundscape of his childhood. How was your process of turning your interview into a novel in the 80s?
When I did that interview with Concha Piquer in 1981, I met a woman who was a real character. Based on that interview, I conceived the idea of developing her life as a novel character. But everything that is essential in this novel is based on real data and events, nothing invented. What happens is that I put an atmosphere on it. Let’s say Concha Piquer put the ne and I literally put how.
In this novel, he writes, “you can’t sing so well if you haven’t suffered much, you can’t have this much pleasure if you haven’t enjoyed beyond drunkenness.” How much Piquer and how many you are in this reflection?
This can be applied to any art, right? Because art is a product of experience. And to put it differently, I am not telling you with a song, but with writing, you must have lived, enjoyed, cried, read, seen, touched what the author went through. And this is communicated and indicates whether the author or author has experienced it firsthand. I have a limited imagination with my experiences because deep down anyone who writes a twilight novel will always describe their own twilight, even if it’s attributing it to a character.
Since 2004 I have kept a column of his titled ‘Las Olas’, which begins: “Just as life is made up of successive days and hours, the sea is made up of successive waves.” What were the best waves of your life?
The best waves of my life are those that give me the opportunity to beat them and show that I can beat them, and also help me take me to a good bay or a good beach. A wave can be both a confrontation and an exploration. A wave can turn you into a shipwreck or take you to a wonderful harbor.
“A wave can sink you or take you to a wonderful harbor”
In their literature, as in island writers, the sea often sails, even when it is far from the shore.
Of course, I grew up as a child by the sea and I cannot imagine this life without the sea. And the moment I lost it, that is, the moment I stopped living in the Mediterranean and moved to Madrid, I regained it by turning it into literary material like that column, which is a way of never losing it or turning it into a piece of land. the sea in which you can constantly navigate.
Does infinity fit into a column like in novels?
A sentence can be infinite. Or a verse. Also, an article and a novel can go down in history. What’s going on in history? For example, if someone repeats a line of you and becomes anonymous. You write down a thought, a feeling, an atmosphere, and over time it becomes a wind or an air that other people unwittingly breathe in. Maybe this will pass. But infinity can fit into a word.