Felipe Restrepo Pombo arrives dressed as Leonardo Di Caprio in one of his recent films. It is not an approximate comparison, it is exact: the same coat, the same shirt and almost identical shoes. A 43-year-old journalist and writer, he became known in Latin American narrative for the sharp profiles he writes about personalities from the continent. In 2017 he was selected as one of the young authors of the decade by the Hay Festival and was director of the magazine leopard for several years. In the middle of this interview another Colombian author will arrive and sit down at the table to chat for a while. The conversation, when we talk about others, will be sprinkled with adjectives like dear, loved, beautiful, beautiful. They are not necessarily compliments. That world of Bogotá’s high society, with its cryptic language and full of misunderstandings and small evils, is what Restrepo Pombo has portrayed in his second novel, Ceremony.
Ask. You knew García Márquez.
Response. My father worked at Alternativa magazine with other mythical journalists such as Enrique Santos and Antonio Caballero. Gabo was a fundamental part of that magazine, very left-wing, very close to the M-19. Later he was an editor at Cambio, where I worked as a journalist. He would appear there from time to time and it was impressive. A captivating presence.
P. Delve into high society the way Truman Capote did.
R. Capote has always been a fundamental reference for me. I wanted to do something like Answered Prayersa portrait where there was no moral judgment on the elites, exploring an exclusive world to which few have access.
P. Capote ended badly, repudiated by the people of his time for the secrets he revealed.
R. Of course there is a cost to write about elites. Many real people see themselves reflected and feel caricatured. An aunt, for example, called me a few days ago very angry. She saw herself reflected in a character in the book. I explained to him, very patiently, that Ceremony is pure fiction.
P. There are sects to capture rich.
R. I researched these cults for the book. They are very common in Latin America. One of them was directed by a guru who offered to teach a technology to be happy. Of course, happiness can never be bought, although they try. I found that sometimes people who have everything are haunted by a sense of emptiness and loneliness. Or they have to appear in front of others to belong to a certain social group.
P. Wealth does not exempt you from having many problems.
R. I insist that I did not want to make any judgment. I only sought to portray a family that seems to have everything but suffers immensely. It is naive to think that excess money solves problems. All the generations I portray live in imaginary prisons from which they cannot escape.
P. Brands are important in this world.
R. Consumerism is a code of belonging. It is a way of saying how much something costs without saying it. In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis does that kind of enumeration all the time, until he loses his senses. It becomes a list of ridiculous things.
P. And these rich took over the art.
R. The world of contemporary art has become a place of speculation and entertainment for millionaires. In many cases, we no longer talk about the aesthetic or cultural value of the pieces, only about the price they reach in the market.
P. How do you write about the rich without falling into stereotypes?
R. It is very easy to fall into cheap caricature. Saying “the rich are bad and empty, period” is stupid. I want to explore as many nuances as possible and portray characters in a world of opulence. Obviously there are moments of irony and sarcastic look with them, but I tried to run away from that.
P. His thesis is that the wealthy people in Colombia fell into the hands of the paramilitaries to defend themselves against the guerrillas and in the end they ended badly.
R. The Colombian oligarchies created these private armies in complicity with the State forces in public, it is no secret, to defend their properties and ended up being dispossessed of their lands by those they had hired. That paramilitary class began to take over after politics and they are still there, to this day. I tried to show that toxic relationship between economic, social and political power.
P. In Successionfrom HBO, the rich do not stop betraying each other and harming each other between parents and children.
R. I saw that fantastic millionaire drama and I thought that someone had already done my book before me. Then I felt that I could make a Succession Latin American. I focused on the peculiarities of our upper classes. And, in the middle of writing, a social explosion occurred in Colombia, Chile and other countries.
P. The reaction of the elites, in general, was condemnation.
R. It seems almost immoral not to comment on the social abysses that exist in our continent. I thought about the injustice of these countries of ours, where few have so much and so many have nothing. Those protests permeated what he was writing. And I still believe that the elites have not understood the dimension of the discontent that exists in the streets.
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