Antonio Soler (Malaga, 1956) wrote: book I was a dog Readers like (Galaxia Gutenberg) and this interviewer took our breath away. It is about a character who can be associated with evil, whose way of existence is dark and difficult, obsessive, and extremely harsh from the beginning of the book. This individual’s passion is to look at others as if they were all his enemies or adversaries; In addition, he acts as if what his friends, girlfriend, mother or wife say is always right. neighbors are like that… Until we reach violence that mixes disagreement, evil and machismo. Soler found his identity on some pages someone provided him years ago. This text, rescued and transformed into a primitive metaphor of a 291-page text, Contemporary proof that today will be irrepressibly sexist.
The inescapable, the simplicity, the direct language in poetry, as José Hierro liked to describe it, is also a testament to the great literature that serves the author. to describe the different consequences of human evil or carelessness (e.g. war, darkness, force, religious evil). Outside Ritual, His penultimate novel, about a royal priest who uses his pulpit to force his parishioners into orgies, his most acclaimed books include, among others: the way of the british, Apostles and assassins And South.
Soler brings to these literary qualities an admirable calmness that makes him a person whose speeches are as profound as his writings. Transcribed here is an example of this. The interview was conducted via Zoom, him at his home in the upper reaches of Malaga and the journalist in Madrid in the heat of early September last year.
This is a novel about evil, isn’t it?
It’s about a man who wants to set rules by which his environment should be governed. This is the seed of true evil that leads to the existence of characters like Stalin or Hitler who want nothing more than to put things in order. Your order.
So the character hates everyone who is not like him. But he will also hate anyone who looks like him…
There is almost a denial of the other in him. He doesn’t want to accept someone else’s impositions, he doesn’t want to be a lap dog, but he calls himself a dog. He’s in a relationship, but instead of ending it, he tries to model the person he met in some way, saying that she doesn’t exactly want to be his lap dog.
How did such a novel come about?
I say it at the end of the book. I found some pages among some books. It’s true that I found them, this is not a last page source. These were the diary entries of someone I didn’t know who he was. A neighbor who knew I loved books gave these to me. Among these books, there were also pages from which the novel was inspired.
What was there?
The epitome of a personality that I find very disturbing. There was no literary intention here, for it was written quite directly and without pretense. But I seemed to identify the strength of a character and an individual. I read and saved these pages, and when I looked at them again a few years later, I realized what an impression they still made on me. And they left the same impression on me: there was a very strong impulse that could serve to delve deeper into the character.
Today, a character that has to do with some or many people who present arrogant evidence of machismo, like the character you describe here… A machismo that belongs to Vox and borders with the People’s Party due to alliances…
This is an idea that is not in the novel but is necessary. I got the impression that they did not do this in the PP, although it was at the root of what happened in the July 23 elections; It’s not terribly progressive, but it’s certainly not sexist, and it’s seen in Vox’s attitudes in some communities and in some city councils’ attitudes that lead them to vote for what they vote for.
In this novel, the protagonist hates, feels disgusted and disgusted with himself, believing that he is hated.
Yes, because he sees himself as a victim. It seems to him that the world is at war against him, and he participates in almost nothing. He even measures his friends to the millimeter: He interprets any gesture, any detail of the other as an attack. This is obsession, this is jealousy; I think this stems from a great distrust of oneself, typical of someone who lives in a very small world and also experiences social relationships as a danger. These are the people we later see on the news who have done something terrible and whose neighbors go so far as to say they seem like normal people. It is the nature of the lone wolf, of those who go out into the street with a knife in their hand, or in the United States, of those who go up to the roof and shoot.
“This obsession, this jealousy; I think it comes from a great insecurity in oneself, typical of someone who lives in a very small world and also experiences social relationships as a danger.”
At the end of the book, this tendency towards hatred brutally manifests itself in the scene where the character violently attacks his girlfriend. It’s as if he’s lost his mind, and as if the love he brags about isn’t a real thing.
Sometimes we tend to think that this is due to a break with reality, but this is not the case. There’s enough data to know that all of this responds to a specific relationship and real events… In reality, he’s a moral dwarf and identifies with that cruel, lonely character who fights against the world. It reads, but it’s not perfect; The books come to him thanks to a friend of his who is an intellectual… For example, Pío Baroja’s books come from him, there are people like him in his literature… And he also has his girlfriend with him. Just like her mother, she hates him and dislikes him because of the world he interacts with and cannot control. After all, as with many sexists, there is control and manipulation behind this individual. What he wants is to control his little world.
“A strange virus has stuck in the biological brains of some men who cannot stand the feeling of displacement in this situation that is new to them and implies the advancement of women in society.”
He looks out from his balcony, seeing buildings, including the one where his girlfriend lives, as if they were threats and not just the people living in them. When you write about this, are you thinking only of literature or the life around us?
I think about the life around me. And as a result of life comes literature. Indeed, this building is the incarnation of his girlfriend Yolanda. It is neither cement nor brick, the building is his girlfriend, whether there is light or not, it has something to do with her, with Yolanda. What happens on this front has a very direct impact on your mood.
He is a manipulator who wants to hurt, and he hurts everyone. But he says he is incompetent “because I am a coward”…
Yes, he is known there. And in another moment he confesses that he admires a friend because he is so manly. That concept of masculinity, that vulgar machismo is also present. He instilled this in his mind. What I told you happened in the 80s, but it also applies here, unfortunately it still happens now. A strange virus has been stuck in the biological brains of some men who cannot stand the feeling of displacement in this situation that is new to them and implies the advancement of women in society. So they take refuge in the old island, where everything is solid, there is human nature, and we shouldn’t give it up. I believe something like this is happening in society right now.