Alrevés Editorial has just published “Gambuesa”, the latest novel by the Canarian Carmen J Nieto.
Text: LP Photo: Leo Saavedra
Prawn It is a work that deals with the loss of origins, dehumanization in some work environments, the decisions we make and the consequences they entail. A novel in which all the characters lose something and as if the work were one more, the text itself lacks one of the letters of the alphabet. Writing with restrictions is another of the challenges that Carmen J. Nieto usually imposes on herself in her novels.
Prawn It is a word typical of the Canary Islands, what does it mean and why did you choose it as the title of the novel?
If we look at the website of the Canary Islands Academy of Language, gambuesa means “large stone corral in which the cattle gather during the apañada.” The power of the image of a shrimp alone justified this title, as well as the sound of the word.
It is a word typical of Fuerteventura and what at first could be an inconvenience, because it is a little-known word, can become an incentive for the reader to approach it. I think it’s a word that attracts. In fact, the primitive attraction that the world of tricks exerts is an important element for the development of one of the characters.
When I was investigating from a linguistic point of view, I found that one of the possible origins of the word is in an Arabic word that sounds very similar: shama-ueshaand which means “great meeting.” This is a novel of characters, different archetypes that meet on the island, as if the island were a huge pool where everyone comes together.
They say that a good title should contain the entire novel and I believe that in the novel everything revolves around the real or metaphorical gambuesa.
At the beginning of the novel, a window cleaner falls from a considerable height in the middle of the reception, he lies unconscious and bleeding and the first call that is made next is not to an ambulance. Do you think it is fiction or unpleasant current reality?
The novel is fiction, but it is the best way I can find to tell reality. In the event of a work accident, the priority is not always the life of the injured person. You quickly have to evade responsibilities. Justice, with its alleged blindness, quickly charges against the employer and the opposite effect to the assumption of responsibility is produced. On the other hand, as I did in the previous novels, I leave a reflection on the table: How much is a person’s life worth?
What impact do you think tourism has on the Canary Islands? Would it be possible to limit it or even do without it?
With the arrival of tourism to the Canary Islands there was a great development, from my point of view, very positive. In the mid-fifties and sixties, it contributed to improving the economy and quality of life of the Canary Islands. A window was opened to the world and it favored social and cultural development due to personal exchange with other countries. I would even dare to say that it was a form of “escape” from the darker and more dictatorial environment that existed in the rest of the country. I believe that we should not forget this. You have to put things in their context.
However, as has happened with other aspects of life, everything has tilted on the side of mercantilism; the massive and rapid profit only for a few. As events are developing, the tourism industry (no longer an activity) is generating poverty, as well as poor working and social conditions for the Canarians. The tourism magnates are getting very rich. In addition to enriching themselves, they generate a discourse that hijacks public opinion and political agents.
I don’t think we should do without tourist activity. It is important to regulate it in favor of a way of life that is more balanced with the environment and with ourselves. And, above all, each of us must become aware and educate ourselves to respect the environment that surrounds us and ourselves.
In your novel all the characters lose something. Do you think that whoever loses their origin loses their identity?
I am concerned about the disconnection that people have been suffering. We disconnect from the environment that surrounds us, from respect for others, from our history and in the end, we disconnect from ourselves. It is true that there is an economic interest in keeping ourselves connected to other things and the general trend leads us to generate benefits for others. I believe that, if we lose our origins, if we forget who we are; There remains a void that can be filled by sellers of anything.
One of the aspects that I deal with in the novel is the aggression that the system inflicts on individuals, even making them doubt who they are.
What benefits do communal lands have and what importance have they had in the Islands?
Talking about communal property and its use is one of the motivations that led me to write this novel. The tricks seem to me to have a very good narrative load, but that is only one aspect of what the Mancomún encompasses.
In the case of Fuerteventura, we have to think about the island in the past. The means of subsistence were not like now. The communal lands and their communal use facilitated livestock farming. In the fight for survival, it was more beneficial to be united. Everything belonged to everyone and everyone was interested and did everything necessary for the work to go ahead. In an isolated place, where conditions are not always favorable, the feeling of community is necessary.
In the novel this group work is exposed in contrast to the individualism of the current system in which each person thinks about their benefit.
Are the characters in your novel victims of the “system”?
That is the true villain of the novel, the one who hurts everyone to benefit. In some characters it is more evident than in others. In the characters most attached to the territory and rooted in the roots, like Perico, this link with identity acts as a shield against the abuses of the system, but it is a shield that does not always achieve protection.
Other characters are dragged by the inertia of a way of life that does not benefit them, but they continue in that current suffering the effects of a “letting themselves go” against which they do not know how or do not want to stand up. And a character also appears who is beginning to see beyond that system, he is a character who has a very difficult time because he has already suffered serious damage and has not yet fully recovered, but he is aware of what the system can do to him. a person
We created the system, we maintain it, it is a choice we make every day. Prawn It also talks about that, about the decisions we make and the consequences of those decisions.
Should we be aware of the psychological damage that some jobs cause?
It is curious how we have already assumed the danger of certain jobs that by their intrinsic nature are dangerous: work at height, repetitive movements, handling of dangerous substances. Almost always, this danger is related to physical health and can only be mitigated by extreme risk prevention.
However, it is more difficult for us to accept the psychological damage caused by the dynamics of certain jobs. Jobs related to economic activity such as banking employees or consultants are subject to a high level of stress. They are jobs that we recognize as well-paid and socially we take for granted the personal damages that these jobs imply. Civil servants are a highly criticized group, and there would be a lot to say about it. But we do not notice the lack of means or the lack of legal security and, sometimes, personnel who suffer in their work; which often leads to apathy and demotivation. It is often joked and naturally assumed that public-facing jobs “burn out” workers. Dealing with the public produces wear and tear that is natural to us. That audience can be the parents of the students, the customers at the supermarket, the patients at the doctor’s office. The public is us. We fill our mouths with words like empathy, conciliation or sisterhood, but we forget their meaning when we are on the other side of the counter.
Losses from work due to mental or psychological damage are increasingly numerous and, in some cases, people never recover. The unfortunate thing is that this damage is avoidable.
¿Whatand Did OuLiPo catch you to write with restrictions?
Well, I always say that asking me about the OuLiPo is a risk, it may happen that we don’t finish the interview.
I was fascinated by the novelty, discovering that writers like Perec or Queneau existed was very exciting. Calvino was already one of my favorite writers and I didn’t know he belonged to OuLiPo. That whole discovery process caught me from the beginning. Then, I began to delve into that concern for form and structure. And that leads to improving the style, which was something that worried me a lot when I started writing. Restriction is a creative lever. In my case it helps me focus on the text and look for alternative paths. In the end, we all tell the same thing, the important thing is the way we tell it. And restriction favors creativity, it distances me from commonplaces in the form of expression.
Furthermore, I feel very identified with them because they do not always come from the world of letters: they are engineers, mathematicians, physicists. They are writers concerned about writing good texts and they leave behind all that sacralization of Literature to put the work in its place. As Hermes Salceda said: “To the inspired genius and the hallucinated writer, the Oulipians oppose the modest artisan who in his workshop manipulates language as raw material.”
Has it been very difficult for you to write the entire novel without using one of the letters of the alphabet (we are not going to say which one)?
I confess that I was about to give up. It was more difficult than I thought and there were moments of great frustration, but I no longer conceived the novel with that letter because the letter is missing for a reason. It is a motif that is related to the plot and also to the theme, which is loss, the disappearance of the pieces with which we build ourselves. Therefore, the lipogram gave meaning to the novel. When I started writing, I didn’t use that letter. The writing became slower and much more reflective and that suited the pace of the novel very well.
Nowadays we have word processors and you can search for the lyrics and see if you have missed any. You can replace that word with a synonym, but that’s a trap because synonyms don’t mean exactly the same thing. Sometimes, the synonym I found was more precise than the word I had put in with the forbidden letter and that was like winning the lottery. But in most cases, the word could not be replaced by a synonym because the meaning was not precise, because it did not respect the level of discourse, because it did not fit the character’s idiolect or the narrator’s voice. That often forced me to turn around an entire paragraph because a word didn’t fit. It was a learning process and I am very satisfied in that sense.
Your previous novel did not have adjectives and in this one you have not used one of the letters of the alphabet in the entire text, what will be next?
The truth is that I am already fully immersed in the next novel. I wanted to take it easy and enjoy the promotion of Prawnwhich I plan to enjoy a lot, but in the process of documenting this new novel I have discovered very interesting data and it is absorbing me quite a bit. As for the shape, I’m going to try something different, let’s see if the experiment explodes.
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