Luis Landero’s life sentence by sentence

In this spirit and in this light he wrote a happy novel called 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 Late Age Plays, which premiered at Tusquets in 1990, and since then his prose, the joy of his prose, has continued to grow, he has become an adult without ever losing the joy of his successive childhoods.

It includes this moment in which he reviews his childhood years, his youth, his maturity, and the successive ages of a friend who became a musician, administrative manager, and now the protagonist of this literary genius.

“Childhood ends when fear arises”

He foresees an end from the very title of the novel: The Last Function.

I had a hard time finding the title, friends helped me. One of them told me: «Because of my mother, this book should be called The Last Function… Theater is very important in this novel, which is also divided into the first and 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.

From there the book was born and the story?

The real story is not inspired by it. 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 made up, 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 there is no way that what starts to come together won’t come together in the end, and in the novel, I go to the twentieth page and the 150th page. That’s what happens when you reach it. 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 his way of seeing the world, which is ultimately related to his character and soul. I would like to write like all of them!

In the case of The Last Function, 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, to be directed by Tito and in which Paula would take part, one 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 bring these materials to life, 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 soundtrack to life-long stories like One Thousand and One Nights. Just like in a detective novel, everything has to be well measured and everything has to be very precise so that there is no reactionary waste. The colloquial tone should be maintained and at the same time mixed with a certain amount of cultured music. 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 all children’s lives are a blessing, that they live with constant inspiration, and that they never tire 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 there and you have to hold on to life by the sweat of your brow.

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! Nothing better could happen to a writer. I experienced the amazement of reading from the age of 20 to 30, and that was when I felt the greatest amazement. I fell in love with Kafka, García Márquez, Borges, Valle-Inclán… They were in love with books. This happens to you and you feel eternally grateful that that book was written because it made you happy and in some way it will follow you forever. The best thing you can say is that you’re in love with a book.