At some point this novel Luis Landero You feel that the light that illuminates his workplace in the house where he lives in Madrid Olavide moved from Alburquerque (Extremadura), where he was born 75 years ago, to help him feel that he can continue to be a happy child here. his childhood. Under the same Extremaduran light.
He wrote with that spirit, with that light a happy novel, ‘The last function’. The book is a vivid fiction from the beginning, as if he was telling it so that it would not be erased from his memory. He is the author of ‘Coming of Age Plays’, which premiered at Tusquets in 1990, and since then his prose and the joy of his prose have not stopped growing, he has become an adult without ever losing the joy of his successive childhoods.
These childhoods include: youth, maturity They welcome this moment in which a friend, musician, manager and now the protagonist of this literary splendor called ‘The Last Function’, reviews the successive years of his life.
We interviewed him at his home, where the very symbolic light of Albuquerque is currently on.
From the very title of the novel he foresees an end: ‘The Last Function’.
It was difficult to find the title, my friends helped me with this. One of them told me: “This book has to be named because of my mother. Last function… Theater is also very important in this novel, which is divided into two acts, the first act and the second act. And it is not without reason that the dizziness of the theater dazzled Ernesto Gil, my friend since childhood, a real person who played the leading role in the book and with whom I had to see these days in the square next door… Of example, his love for García Lorca, who for him was the poet of poets , was born from the development of his passion as I accompanied him on tours that took us to New York, Bordeaux or Morocco.
related to This is where the book was born, but what about the story?
real history is not inspired by this. However, the inspiration that gives meaning to the novel comes from this devotion to theater and poetry. As Fernando Fernán Gómez said, the hero does not want success, he wants to be an artist, nothing else. In my time, we wanted to be actors, but we were not thinking about success. We wanted to make a living from art but keep going. Now the actor already wants to be famous from the very beginning.
From the cover, those suitcases, that 60’s car, you imply that the book is a journey…
That’s right, the book is a journey…
And it seems like it was thought out and done before I started writing…
These are two independent stories that come together in the end. Tito’s [Ernesto] It’s an old story in my head: the story of the artist who couldn’t make it in either the big city or the big world. With this disappointment, he returned to the town and was able to establish himself as an artist there. With this discussion, I remembered the story of my friend Tito. The other story, which is completely fabricated, is the story of a woman who got on the wrong train…. Both stories have nothing to do with each other, but they will come together… I don’t forget what I wrote, so it is impossible for those who start to come together not to come together in the end, which is the case. What happens in the novel when it reaches page twenty and when it reaches page 150. I like it when there are choruses, certain echoes that the reader can recognize, because it creates a more closed world. As long as it’s relevant, of course.
Writers say they envy your writings. Which verses are you jealous of?
A lot! I envy Cervantes’ simplicity and creative spontaneity. The sensitivity and evocative capacity that Valle Inclán has. Borges’ short and concise narrative, always thought-provoking and full of irony… I also envy Gabriel García Márquez’s ability to surprise us, Alejo Carpentier’s perfection, Pío Baroja’s formal slovenliness, tearfulness and moodiness. , from Miguel de Unamuno… Every writer has his own style of writing, which is ultimately related to his character and soul, his way of seeing the world… I want to write like all of them!
In the ‘End Function’ example, is the story born as you write it?
No, no, no, this was already planned. Novels like this can’t be made on the fly. It has a very clear structure… For example, a theater show was planned to be held in the town, directed by Tito and in which Paula would take part, one of them was unsuccessful in the theater and the other was unsuccessful. failure in love. And suddenly love and art save these two beings from a life that seems banal. It is culture and art in general that saves them.
Sometimes it feels like these events are happening to you.
These are the materials that life offers you and that you turn into literature. Paula is completely fictional. There’s Tito, you know. His father wanted me to be a lawyer, and my father wanted me to do that. The town (his, mine) has become desolate, and for him, for me, the experiences of Extremadura remain… The macro theatrical representations that are now part of the novel are representations of our common town: there is a beautiful castle, people we know come together in the medieval representation… He Everything that arises from experience is very close to me, the starting engine, the ignition point of reality. Every imagination is based on something, and from all this the novel is born. And then you write. You must earn your living from these materials, sentence by sentence.
Each starts with two characters on its own. They meet 200 pages later… Where is Landero going with these two stories that look like two motorcycles?
The narrators are not Landero, because it is a chorus that tells it! Here is the music of old stories, like the Arabian Nights… Like in a detective novel where everything must be very well measured and everything must be very precise so that there is no waste going backwards… The colloquial tone must be preserved, also with a certain amount of cultured music. should be mixed. Sometimes it seems improvised, but everything is very measured and everything is very meticulous.
In different areas of the novel, it is said that the world is well made, poorly made, nothing but average. Happiness coincides with these ups and downs. According to what you read in your own novels, you too had a happy childhood…
The world of my childhood would have been even better if it wasn’t for my father. It was the dark element of my childhood because it said that life hasn’t started yet, it will start when I become someone… That would be the future. But yes, apart from that gloomy element, my life, especially my life in the countryside, my life in the town, was very happy… I believe that the lives of all children manifest themselves in a state of blessing, they live constantly. you are inspired, you never get tired of living… As with Paula, childhood ends with the emergence of fear, the monster of the future appears and the curse of bread and sweat is already revealed and you have to hold on to life by the sweat of your brow. eyebrow… This is where childhood actually ends and this is the real expulsion from heaven. When the era of impunity and protection ends and the monster of reality called the future emerges.
I heard a colleague say that there will be no one left who will not fall in love with this book.
Damn, damn, how good. There is nothing more beautiful for an author than falling in love with someone’s book… I experienced the surprise of reading from the age of 20 to the age of 30, and then I felt the greatest miracle. . I fell in love with Kafka, García Márquez, Borges, Valle-Inclán… I was in love with books, Machado, Neruda, Juan Ramón, César Vallejo… This happens to you and I am eternally grateful that that book was written, that it made you happy, and that in some way it will follow you forever. The best thing you can say is that you’re in love with a book.