Just as your brain dances when you find out that Mario Casas is Galician and not some street urchin from Madrid on the back of a Harley-bear crossing the Puerta de Alcalá in the middle, when you listen to Javier Peña’s podcast everything fits together (in substance and form, in body and spirit, in cliché and bagpipes launching northern quejíos). ‘Great Unfortunates’, it is called, and, if I had a dream now, it would be to appear there in 2080 or so. Writers with lives full of pain! What a joy, ‘Great Unfortunates’ is back! The debut chapter of the fifth season is dedicated to Elena Garro and the magical realism of a town (a geographical place) that she describes in her ‘The Secrets of the Future’, and Peña attacks it like this: «Imagine a novel with this plot: While recovering from an illness in Switzerland, one of the most talented writers in Latin America writes a very original book that anticipates the ‘Boom’. It should be more than enough to consolidate her as an author, but what if I tell you that what awaits her is not applause but rejection, exile, ruin, hunger. Let’s go there! «Sometimes, writers have novel lives. And not always the happy ones” is the radio sign of this little room of profuse and brilliantly filtered documentation, and a creative narration to sing the misfortunes of our favorite writers: Rulfo, Kennedy Toole, Vonnegut… ‘Why life can be wonderful ‘, which Andrés Montes said before what happened to him happened. And Kafka on the bench waiting to go out to play, the writer Peña has just published ‘Invisible Ink: about loss, writing and the transformative power of stories’, not read here, but I recommend the ABC report on the same Bruno Pardo titled ‘A dead father, a successful podcast and an essay to say goodbye’. He paints that it deserves its own chapter in his program, illustrated in the newspaper with a photo of Miguel Muñiz in La Coruña with the sea in the background between the irregular rocks of existence. And since man does not live on unhappiness alone, here is the most tender love phrase in all of history, heard on his podcast, from Ofelia to Pessoa: “I appreciate your presence in this office.” Simple but immense, to whomever wrote: «Between life and me there is a very tenuous glass. No matter how clearly I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.
#Javier #Villuendas #joy #Grandes #infelices
