“Literature that serves a cause is harmful”

I put myself in his shoes and wonder how he started writing again after the success of his previous novel.

Of course, the worry that the next book will be on the same level, because you know they will measure you so much against the last one that it can be very disappointing. I love the short format; Firstly, because I have little time to write, and secondly, because people read so little.

Do you think people read less?

I believe that people who do not read read very little. For people who do not have the discipline to read and the decreasing ability to concentrate, a large novel seems too long, while a short novel can be read in two sittings. I feel very comfortable in this format. But what I’ve done now with the previous novel is distance myself from myself.

But the self is in this novel.

Yes, it is a fake third party because it is just a point of view. But it was important to try to get outside of the self a little bit, because the constant confusion between the narrator and the writer bothers me. I also think there is an excess of self in literature. I wanted to explore how to make a narrator with a character that was further and further away from my life; It is not me and it bears very little of me.

And by doing this, were you also trying to protect yourself in some way?

I think so, and I also think we need to learn how to write remotely. In this third novel, I really had to look for a character to create.

It has been four years since he published his first book, Seasons of Return, which was entirely self-fiction. Do you already feel comfortable in the writer category?

Yes, the truth is I’m starting to believe it. It’s something you don’t quite believe in at first, especially when you wanted it to be and it came so late. I try not to obsess about it and try to think about whether the stories are good or not. Because I’ve been drinking, going out, having meetings and writing plans since I was 15. I was a writer who wrote without writing. What interests me now is that there is a good story to tell, rather than the name of the author.

So, once you have that good story, do you worry about how you look on the outside, does it bother you?

Of course, I will not deny this. You start getting exposure and criticism comes.

Critics didn’t mistreat him.

No, but it saddens me to see two stars on Goodreads. And then when you start to be seen as a writer, they start asking you what you think, which is very dangerous because I don’t have an opinion about everything, but I started to think that I should have an opinion. Then you start saying what you think and giving your opinion.

So is this a danger zone?

Of course, there you start to build an image that goes into politics, how you position yourself relative to reality, what’s going on, public opinion… Just like everyone is always trying to know whether a person is left or right. wing, you’re trying to place writers too much on this stuff.

Should we, as writers, express our opinion or take a position? And not only when they ask us, but also through articles and tweets…

I envy people like Beckett or Salinger, who openly say that they have said everything through their books and that they have nothing more to add, and who do not do this. They were very disciplined about talking only through their books. Of course, it is very difficult to make a living from literature and it is necessary to use writing talent in other media. I think you can express your opinion, but you should avoid talking about politics all the time.

So tiring.

It’s tiring, and on top of that, it’s easy to react to the latest thing that’s happened, and most of the time, you’re just another voice in the crowd stating your own opinion. You should try to look further. What concerns me is using literature, especially fiction, to support a cause, putting it in the service of a cause. When you write, you are writing, researching and explaining to yourself about a subject that you do not fully understand. But he who writes for a cause writes not from doubt but from certainty and, moreover, in the spirit of devotion and evangelism, and this does great harm to literature.

You’ve quoted Beckett and Salinger before. What do you say, what are you trying to say with your books?

I don’t know at all, I’m not very clear. I worry about love relationships, couples…

Death…

I’m very worried about death. I believe there are three wounds: the wound of love, the wound of death and the wound of life… Big themes: how to love people, what do you do with death, how do you replace it… And in this The topic of fatherhood is very important in the last book.

Has your opinion about these wounds, including fatherhood, changed after writing Veda?

Fatherhood is the legacy of life. A friend of mine’s brother committed suicide a week before his daughter was born. I was wondering why, how he could do this, and then my friend’s process for dealing with it. You have to learn to accept all deaths, which is very complicated, it is a very long journey. But after writing the novel, my attitude towards suicide changed a lot. Suicide has not crossed my mind, I do not understand the idea of ​​suicide, but my thoughts on this subject are changing. My perspective on fatherhood has also changed; If it’s biological, if it’s an emotional bond…

The most important family we can build in life is the one that is not determined by biological facts.

I believe that family is a kind of life struggle where you accept people you did not choose; It’s the love you have to create with someone you didn’t choose.

Another of the major themes of this novel, which recurs over the previous one, is a kind of ode to lost, idealized love.

Yes, it is very temporary, but it is an idea that will change your life, waking you up from a life you were immersed in like an automaton. Basically, these are memories created by a person that what you have can no longer be changed, especially when you have already experienced a crisis of contingencies in life, and then you begin to look with different eyes. the detours you didn’t take. In this respect, the two novels are similar to each other.

Now that you’ve mentioned memories, do you use memory as material for writing?

My own memory?

And the memories of others.

This book is full of true events.

This is dangerous because when your friends read this they will call you.

Of course this is a bad thing [ríe].

Salter said that the raw material of writing is reality and that writers who say they made up their stories are not believed.

This is true. Even though it’s fantasy, it comes from reality. Camila Sosa Villada has a great book called The Useless Journey where she says there are two types of writers: those who invent and those who can’t invent and use their own lives or the lives of others, and I’m kind of there, too. .

And one type of writer makes literature as good as the other.

I think so too. I’m not interested in things that don’t speak too much about reality, and the more that happens every day, the better.

Plus, that’s the hardest thing: telling a story where nothing apparently happens.

And these are the things you deal with all the time: boredom, desire, love, heartbreak, parents, children… What do you do with all this? This is what upsets me and what I am trying to write about.

By the way, music is also very present in this novel.

Yes, definitely, very much.

He is a very musical writer.

I really love music, I’m trying to learn to dance and play but I’m terrible at it. I have a history of disappointment with music due to lack of discipline, but I listen to a lot of music, I collect music. I think the connection to music has to do with the connection to memory and emotions. The people who allow themselves into the music, who pay attention to it, who pay attention, are the people who want to feel it. Music is often a tool for memory. It amazes me people who never know what music to play or people who experience music as noise…

Do you listen to music while writing?

No, I’m clumsy. The moment there is music, even if there are no lyrics, I focus on it, and it makes me very sad. I already have music that can be in the background, like Lester Young, and it becomes a kind of musical landscape that doesn’t grab my attention but makes me feel good.

What do you recommend listening to while reading Veda?

There’s a great song in this book called Dark Star from the Grateful Dead’s first live album. If you enter that song under the influence of a substance…

Let’s leave this to wine…

can be a wine [ríe]. I said, under the influence of a substance that could be love, melancholy… But in a receptive state, with the desire to enter into what is happening in that song, which is an endless transforming landscape.

It seems to me that there are writers who do not feel a special bond or bond with music… These are twin arts.

I don’t know, I think literature and music have always been very connected, especially through the song genre.

There is a Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan.

And from Prince of Asturias to Leonard Cohen. There is a very clear relationship. The Velvet Underground has one of my favorite short stories, The Gift. This is on their second album and was written by Lou Reed. Rubén Blades has another great story in Looking for America. Music and literature interacted a lot.

The last one has to do with your personal history and mine: Does grief go away?

[Largo silencio] Have you read the book The House on by Luis Rosales?

NO.

A great book about pain. In it he says that people who do not know pain are like a consecrated church. I believe that grief transforms you, brings you closer to people’s pain and gives you a different awareness. And I think if you let go of the dead, which is the hardest thing, because you hold on to the dead like someone carrying a balloon, but if you let go of the dead, they come to you with a song, a song. Taste of ice cream, with a view… They come again, your wound hurts…

But this is a different pain.

And also the joy of meeting them again.

Did you achieve this?

Yes, I… My brother was the person I loved most in the world, we were neighbors, we used to tell each other everything. But I managed to let it go, let it go, and not build my life around this loss. Because after all, it’s very easy to make a life out of pain, because pain is a way to show them that you haven’t forgotten them.

Moreover, pain is almost addictive, it is very easy to get carried away by it.

And this gives you a certain advantage. Complicated. But I believe that pain can be overcome… well, if you want it and you can, there are people who can’t get through it.