’39 years old, Uruguayan, of island origin, from Tenerife and has written a book, ‘The rest of the world rhymes, A punch to the table of literature, as if Onetti’s rebirth, for example, had put him on the path of metaphors that carried reality or blood in him. The subject is well explained by the editorial on the credits page: “A coincidence brings together fugitive Andrés Lavriaga, who has just robbed a credit branch, and Julia Bazin, a biologist who has reached a blind spot in her life. same scene and same label: they are the only survivors of a triple car accident on the road”. But from a book by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, as the title says, anything written, anything that sounds good or rhymes is literature, and of course it’s not a novel with events.
The woman who wrote this Caroline Bello, already published ‘Written in the Window, Saturnino, Urquiza’ (2016 Gutenberg Prize for European Literature), October Y A monster with a broken voice… These ‘The rest of the world nursery rhymes’ have been selected by Random House for their Map of Languages collection for Hispanic-American writers from 21 countries that have made the leap into Spanish’s global territory. Here are some questions and answers from what the journalist discussed with the author.
Q. What consequences does the proximity of Latin American literature have on your literature?
r. As a child, literature came without nationality, because it was not the first thing that mattered to the girl’s mind. Stories by Julio Cortázar, the poems of Pablo Neruda or Octavio Paz were passed out trying to find literary references in the music I was listening to at the time. The influence of Argentine literature and popular culture was enormous for my book ‘Oktube’. This book could not exist without all the luggage from Argentina. Each of the books I read becomes a delta of all my books. I also include these as an explicit eulogy, but not just as a reference, but as part of the narrative structure, just as in the book. The rest of the world rhymes With the work of Argentine Roberto Arlt, Rodolfo Walsh or Sergio Bizzio, all writers who know how to create the world, it reminds us of the art of reinvention. Literature is a future where time is always expressed before us.
P. How do you feel that Latin American literature is now so respected in Spain?
r. Latin American literature has always deserved respect for the rest of the world, but it has been harder for him to find regularities that escape pseudo-literature. boom. Where to read Latin American literature is a concept that needs to be emphasized and how to solve it: From the concept of Hispanic America? Or considering the heterogeneity of the continent? Writing in Spanish is a statement of intent, not to mention doing it with linguistic varieties that respond to the logic of the geographies in which the stories take place. Many books that are beginning to be read in other countries prefer neutral language, as if the signs of the words of the characters acting in a certain context were an obstacle to understanding. I realize that I am now open to reading literature from different parts of the continent and a curiosity to understand or know what is going on on this side beyond the great bases. There is a desire for a reassessment and an afterthought from Spain: it begins in the colony from now on and has not ceased to be literary raw material on this side of the ocean ever since. For Uruguayan writers, it is even more unprecedented that our literature is read in other countries. It’s very common for us to have ‘Spanish, Italian, French literature’ subjects in high school or college, but I don’t know of common cases in the world where Uruguayan literature is specifically covered. That’s why it’s so important that Latin American authors are being read more and more carefully elsewhere in the world. I think this is not due to our nationalities, but to the literary value of the works written.
I write because I want to express myself. Because putting myself in order and having a perspective to make sense of what makes me who I am.
S. in The rest of the world rhymes There is a feeling in the book itself that you don’t believe what’s going on.
r. I write because I want to express myself. Because I’m scared and I want to have a perspective to put myself in order and make sense of what makes me who I am. So we should look at the truth with some surprise. Reality in itself is so surprising that you have to look at it with some surprise.
P. The point is, the accident is seen from all sides of a disaster…
r. In college, I studied the stereoscopic version of observing the same event from many angles, and I’ve never been able to get rid of this concept. That’s what Tomás Eloy Martínez does. avoid the saints. Like him, I think adding vision enriches the story. That’s why I’m doing it. Language also burdened me with the difficulty of following the style of the poetic function in the service of seeing the ordinary. I had to work hard on this. The other challenge was the authenticity of the oral narration of the characters. I was very interested in the transparency of the language. I was intrigued to find the narrator good: where is he speaking? I wanted to make a novel that would contribute to the discussion of how a novel is written as well as telling something.
Q. Why an accident?
r. That car accident happened on a route in Uruguay that scared me when I was a kid, because that’s where the crashes happen all the time. It was very popular. Many people died, including a whole family: marriage and children. And marked me. Also an Asian movie made me ‘Mr. Six’ had a tremendous final scene on a frozen lake, and I wanted Julia to describe it like it was a dream. By the way, this would be the first episode. But then I remembered the accident and said: better to start there… I wanted it to be a quarantine novel. Hospitals scare me and when I started writing they accepted my father and this gave me the opportunity to write down my experience of caring for my father for two months.
I like to honor. There is literature because there is literature. That’s why there are other voices seeping into my writings
P. There are two important visitors to the book: music and foreign literature.
r. I like to honor. There is literature because there is literature. So there are other voices seeping into my writings. So if you’re going to tell a story today, you have to know what intertextuality is. I was also concerned about the soundness of my book, yes. I wanted you to be able to hear something through the written code. I don’t know if I succeeded, but at least I tried.
P. The book is about people’s pain and loneliness.
r. Yes, all the characters are very lonely people and that interests me because as the song Heroes of Silence says, it’s possible that cold comes with age. This is a novel that I wrote at the gates of the 40s, when people began to understand that one is born alone and will go alone. Julia, for example, has the right to suffer, even if nothing too serious has happened to her. Julia suffers from loneliness, building a world and being someone else. He’s a misfit character, but why do you have to conform? Who said you always have to adapt? I was also interested in explaining this. The accident happens at a time when everything in Uruguay is falling apart and as I said, the space where someone grew up dictates their actions and if the outside is shattered, your inside is shattered.
‘The rest of the world rhymes’
Caroline Bello
random house
224 pages | 17 euros
Source: Informacion
