Soledad Puértolas chooses a “old-fashioned” bar, small and noisy, a ‘bareto’ lost in the midst of the weight of centuries of history in the Jerónimos neighborhood in Madrid. She has just left the work session at the RAE and is clearly having fun, leaving behind the Casón del Buen Retiro, the Church of San Jerónimo el Real… and entering this 21st century again with a barrel of a cane. He has really enjoyed writing his most recent book, “The Forgotten Novel at the Engineer’s House” (Anagrama), and he wants to continue with that game while talking about it.
Text: Begoña Piña Photo: Asís G. Ayerbe
Absorbed in a new character, Mauricio Ballart, a writer of youth literature, Soledad Puértolas She didn’t pay much attention to the discovery her husband had made, a floppy disk forgotten in a box. It was a discarded novel, to which she had never given importance. Some time later, during a few days of rest in Galicia, he read the manuscript again and discovered that he liked the narrator. What the young Soledad Puértolas wrote years ago is today a good part of the new novel of the writer and academic that she is today, and this thanks to the happy interference of her new character, Mauricio Ballart, in this story: The forgotten novel in the engineer’s house (Anagram).
How did the character of Mauricio Ballart change from novel to novel?
I was writing a novel in which the narrator protagonist is Mauricio, a writer of youth novels, and then I said: “Ah, well, I’m going to give Mauricio this manuscript, and see what he does with it.” Then everything changed, Mauricio got his hands on the text, made the novel his own and it was wonderful because that way everything was closed. A novel written by me 30 or 40 years ago is not the same as the one I could be writing now. But now it’s theirs. (The novel at home engineer It is, as its author says, about the young narrator of the family story that an engineer has discovered in the basement of his country house and that he has given to Tomás Hidalgo, who has passed it on to his friend, the writer Mauricio Ballart) .
Two narrators, the young woman and the writer of youth literature. Who are you anymore?
I am her or what I was. There is something of me, of what I was, in her. Now I’m in the other one. The past and present as an author, as a person and as everything are in the book. They are two contrasts, but it seems that they understand each other and get along more or less well.
Has the manuscript found made you think about the literature you wrote in those years?
More than thinking, I have seen that the narrator there was interested in things that I am not interested in now, but I have tried to understand her. And I’ve wondered if that once interested me too. And there is a moment when it is Mauricio who becomes interested in that narrator and thinks that there is something in this text. I also think there is something there, of course.
Mauricio lets the young writer’s story speak, but sometimes he stops the narrative and reflects on it and literature. “The possibilities of fiction are infinite, the key is that the story is sufficiently believable.”
Of course it has to be like that, it is a rule, it is a principle, although it is not mathematical, you have to know it. If there is an art of the novel, it would be to detect that, to have a sense of what is absurd, but that in a certain way the plausible accepts it. The plots of Hitchcock’s films, for example, are often crazy, yet you believe them. And that is the genius he has as a film director, because what happens in his films is often absurd. You make concessions to that, you open yourself up, that is the challenge, but it is not a formula.
And does it happen in literature like in cinema, which is contaminated by the realism of the series?
Well, I don’t know if we’ve lost a bit of opening ourselves up to the story, I think so. But there are things that may be lies, but they are plausible. It is the art of telling lies well and constructing a narrative that is accepted no matter how crazy it may be. I want to believe the books. I want to believe it, but there are times in series or movies that I don’t believe it in any way. It happens to me a lot.
Another reflection from Mauricio is about detective novels and the “audacity that is needed to confront a murder in these books”…
It’s just tremendous.
But in this novel there is a dead person.
Yes, there is a dead person, but this one didn’t cost me much and I think it’s because the man appears dead before we know much about him. And then what we know about him no longer hurts us. He is a character that does not take much to disappear, he is not very attractive. But, of course, killing a person like that… although this one hasn’t been that difficult. Furthermore, that was done in the story, he was already dead in the novel and I accepted it. I think that, if we know the character a lot and then he disappears murdered, it is harder, but if he already dies at the beginning and then we get to know him, it is different.
He has accepted the dead man and all the rest of a story that he had discarded. Does the entry in Mauricio Ballart’s story give the dimension that the novel needed?
Yes. That novel is in this one, the characters were already there, what happens is that now I have dared more to follow them where they were going. It is a novel that I don’t know why I threw away and forgot about it, I had no confidence in it… but now it has developed more with the intervention of Mauricio. Now it goes much further and what I liked about this whole process is that that novel is no longer that novel, it is something else. It is bringing to the present a past that is youth, my time, but with another look. I saw something, a voice that wants to express itself, that I can’t lose, that is trying to say something… and that is what made me get into that novel.
A novel that bears very little resemblance to his other novels.
It could be because, of course, Mauricio’s intervention makes it different, there are two levels.
Speaking of planes, you live between the literary and the language with your work in the RAE. Is the dictionary still loaded with ultra-Catholic religious content, machismo, misogyny…? Is there much left to clean?
Yes and that’s where we are. It is the work that is done every day, but there are so many words! Many changes are made, because religion, above all, colors everything. It’s impressive. I don’t know if it’s more than machismo, but… The definition of good, of truth, of vice… We are constantly dealing with this. We receive many suggestions. The Institute of Lexicography, which is the one that prepares the work for academics, receives letters, investigates them and offers you options on how it can be presented… It is exciting and we have a great time, there is a very good atmosphere, because everyone likes it. We like to talk about words and we all consider ourselves capable of talking about words. The language is democratic.
And now we speak better or worse?
Before, people were not subject to so much rapid language. Technology has made language cheaper and schematized. There are many young people who you notice do not express themselves well. Some older ones, too. But there is an expressive clumsiness and that is bad.
When talking about the RAE, it is inevitable that the topic of discrimination against women comes up. As a writer, does being a woman still pay?
Of course you pay for it. And criticism, specifically, has certain patterns for women. That is the starting point for criticism. That is not overcome neither in my case nor in any other, it is not overcome at all. And, furthermore, in your relationship with others you always notice it, it is tremendous how it is absolutely extended. It is throughout the literary world, I, of course, notice it, maybe it is because I am very sensitive. There is another view for men, it is something that is in society. I don’t know when we’ll get it over with, but it’s complicated.
Men, women… Before writing this novel, you were building the character of Mauricio, a man…
I wanted to speak from the point of view of a writer at a certain moment in life, but not me, so, of course, the easiest thing was to change the sex of the character.
But you have sometimes said that you identify more with male characters.
It’s not that I identify more, it’s that I keep more distance and perhaps that’s why they are freer. With women, perhaps I identify a lot and I put myself more on myself. Mauricio came out, he was already in my life when I came across the manuscript… Furthermore, he was a man, a writer of young adult novels, and that also allowed me to change my vibe a lot. He is a writer who believes a lot in what he does, but is not considerate. I was very interested in the idea of social consideration. Also his relationship with other colleagues, with an illustrator… I identify with him a lot, but at the same time he is very much himself.
It seems like an entertainment novel, but you have added many layers, was that the intention?
It has been a lot of play, but yes, I have put a lot of things into it, although it doesn’t seem like it. It is something that has to be discovered and that enriches the novel.
It’s funny, because you are a plot-wise writer.
But here the plot does matter, although I know that the plot is not what is important.
It seems that he wanted to talk about literature with this book.
I didn’t have it in mind, it wasn’t a purpose at all, it was getting away from me, I even thought that maybe I would get rid of all those reflections. I didn’t know if it was going to work, but I had my opinion.
That must be because you want to think about literature right now, right?
Yes, of course, but I also want to respect the freshness of literature. I didn’t want to make a meta-literary game at all, if it turned out, it turned out, but that wasn’t my intention. I am not that type of writer, meta-literary, I have never reflected on literature. It is not a meta-literary novel, although there is a lot of reflection, because I think a lot about literature. Thinking occupies a lot in life, I spend a good part of the day thinking.
She has once said that she is not a professional writer. Now she says she is not a meta-literary writer, what kind of writer is she?
It seems that I am recognized in my novels, although they do not resemble each other. I love that, but I am very surprised, because I don’t know what I am as a writer, I know what I am not.
What is not?
I am not a writer who makes literary games, nor one who knows how to create plots very well because they do not interest me very much, I do not write much dialogue… I search, I do not take it for granted, I do not have models that I want to reach, but I know where I do not want be. I don’t want to be in costumbrismo, I don’t want to be in total introspection, I don’t want to be in that total meta-literature. I want to look for something fresh that reflects us. I believe that no novel of mine is similar to the previous one, although in all of them there are people who are searching, it is always the same starting point.
Another thing that is not in his books is the cynicism of this world that has already invaded part of literature…
No, because I’m not interested, in fact, I don’t want to make that denunciation of cynicism, I want to make a counterpart, I want to rescue another perspective, look for a perspective that encourages me. And that’s not out of kindness, although I wouldn’t rule out the idea of kindness, I wish! but no, I’m interested in rescuing.
Let’s rescue the character of Mauricio then, what will he do in the next book, which is the book in which he was born?
Think a lot. He is a writer of youth literature who has already made a career, stood out with a couple of well-known books, has experienced success, has had girlfriends… but now his days are very empty and he is at that moment in life that he wants to continue writing. He has many friends who tell him that he is a writer of everything, not just youth literature, and he is like in another phase, I’m not saying introspection, but looking for another type of link with literature, that is not just youth literature. He is more bewildered than I am.
Do you remember what moved you to write that story then?
She was very interested in mysterious family stories. It was a time in my life when I was already married, with small children, and then you realize that you are in the whirlwind of your life and that you are going to forget about your previous life. And then I think I went back to family studies, stories that were in the air, that I had heard or that brought me the aroma of what my mother had told me, that I heard at home… I wanted to recover that world, understand it. . It was a mysterious world, with sinister characters, with crime.
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