If a classification of current authors in Catalan had to be made, surely Albert Pijuan (Calafell, 1985) would have his own parallel ranking, where his work could be explained by itself without links or references to other literary creators. This is how unclassifiable this Thelonious Monk of Catalan literature is, who already in the past attracted the attention of critics and the public thanks to novels such as The great wave (Sexto Piso, 2021), written in Catalan under the title of Tsunami (Angle, 2020). Or essays like What if we consider cannibalism? (Libros del Zorro Rojo, 2023), also previously written in Catalan and published by Editorial Medusa.
Last October he published The great replacement (Sexto Piso, 2024), also originally written in Catalan as The great substitution and published by Angle. Closer at times to Berlin-Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin, or The seven fools, by Roberto Arlt, that with a plot of classical coherence, Pijuan offers us in this latest work the hallucinated adventures of Dino de Laurentiis junior, a young man from Sabadell who is convinced that he is the son of the legendary film producer.
Dino is also a great admirer of the actor Nicolas Cage and especially the evolution of his hairstyles from film to film, which involve a desperate fight against the advance of alopecia. This fixation on Cage’s hair and his cinephilia led him to write a series of serial reports about it called Cagepilarwhich publishes in a specialized magazine. The texts have a certain impact and finally reach a sect of worshipers of the actor’s hairstyle, who kidnap him.
From this point, The great replacementwhich begins in an aesthetic clinic on the border between Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, takes flight with a story that appears extravagant and impossible, but with a serious and coherent background that Pijuan makes evolve with mastery and a sense of humor. worthy of the best Martin Amis. In the end, this great comedy leaves us with that bittersweet taste that we have when when we close a book we don’t know if we have laughed with it or if it is the author who has laughed at us.
Nicolas Cage has something wrong with his hair…
Pijuan confirms, in conversation with elDiario.es, that The great replacement It is not a crazy idea resulting from improvisation. “The project was born when I was writing The great waveback in 2017,” explains the author. “I’m always involved in various stories and this one had been on my mind for a long time,” he says, “because when I saw Nicolas Cage on the screen it became clear to me that the man has a problem with his hair and tries to solve it by changing his hairstyle every now and then. every new movie.”
“Initially I considered that it couldn’t be possible to make a novel based on Nicolas Cage’s hair, because it was too stupid an idea,” Pijuan continues. But he finally decided to build the novel, especially when he realized that Cage arouses true fascination in some people, there is even a church dedicated to his cult. “It is on the Internet and at a purely web level,” he points out, “but it shows that there is an underworld of fascination with Cage that surpasses even the subject of the novel.”
Once in the project, Pijuan recognizes that he did not design the plot structure a priori, but rather based on the established characters and the leitmotiv of Cage’s hairstyles, established pillars on which the story evolves, between improvisation and the logic of events, if it can be considered logical that a sect of worshipers of Cage’s hairstyle names you medium of the deceased founder of the same. “When I presented the plot to my editors, they didn’t know where to look,” Pijuan admits while a mischievous smile appears on his face. But he finally convinced them and managed to push the novel forward until its publication.
Cage, a multi-register actor
During the interview, Pijuan declares himself a devoted admirer of the actor Nicolas Cage, as well as being fascinated by the public figure. “After watching his entire filmography and following all his movements, he seems to me to be an exceptional character and a gifted actor,” he says and explains: “He has never shied away from playing any type of role, working with the Coen brothers or David Lynch. , but also doing all kinds of action movies and romantic comedies.”
If anything should be noted in the “must” of Cage’s career, according to the novelist, it is that “he is missing a musical.” “I would say that it is one of the few genres that he has not dared to do yet,” he observes. As for his hair, he confesses that he has studied all the hairstyles with which he appears in his more than 100 films, an obsession that he recognizes is very rare.
In any case, he defends himself by ensuring that he is not the only one who has noticed the happy hairstyles: “Paco Alcázar and Torio García did an illustrated book reviewing the filmography and the first hundred works of Nicolas Cagewhere there is a special section dedicated to hair.” “It was there that I met some traveling companions,” he emphasizes with pride. And Pijuan claims the importance of hair as an essential element of our image. “The issue of hair is something very intimate in everyone’s identity, something that concerns us from the moment we are born,” he explains. “Hair is almost sacred, we only let people with whom we have a very strong relationship touch it,” he emphasizes.
Story of an escape forward
But after the grotesque idolatry and the apparent absurdity of history, The great replacement It hides a fundamental theme in all of us: the flight forward to avoid the responsibilities of life. “Dino is an absolute ‘NEET’, between 20 and 30 years old, with no other job than being an unpaid intern and with many projects in his head, but no ability to carry them out despite his intelligence,” explains Pijuan del protagonist.
Through his fixation on Cage’s hairstyle, Dino escapes from a dull reality in a neighborhood of an industrial city like Sabadell, where he lives with his stepfather and his mother, an obese and alcoholic former hairdresser who had some professional success at the end of the 70s in the Italo-disco environment. Or so he says… And his escape is told in the form of a modern and suburban Iliad, in a kind of alienated mythology where at no time do we discern the reality of the hallucination, in which for most of the story we doubt if Dino is in a madhouse instead of a Balkan aesthetic clinic.
But The great replacement It is also a reflection on split identities: “Between what we really are, what we can be and what we would like to be.” Dino dreams that he is the son of the great Dino de Laurentiis, a character who in his own way was a great impostor, split between his reality in Italy and the one he was selling in the United States. “He arrived in the United States in the 70s presenting himself as the great winner and magnate of Italian cinema when in reality he was fleeing debt and ruin and also did not know a word of English,” explains Pijuan.
The novel is told in the form of a modern and suburban Iliad, in a kind of alienated mythology where at no time do we discern reality from hallucination.
On the other hand, at the aesthetic clinic he meets one half of Den Harrow, star of Italo-disco, a genre that filled dance floors around the world in the 70s and 80s and which was in itself a great imposture. “It was about English people posing as Italians,” adds the author of The great replacement about it. In fact, Den Harrow was an artist completely split in voice and body, since in reality it was a fraudulent project composed of the physique of the Italian dancer Stefano Zandri on the one hand, and on the other by the voice of the American vocalist Tom Hooker, who Finally he wanted to vindicate his role in the “Den Harrow project” by denouncing that Zandri never opened his mouth either on records or live shows while he was Den Harrow. It is this half Tom Hooker that Dino meets.
The great replacement reserves even more surprises – and more amazing – for its readers that cannot be revealed without falling into the spoiler. The best way to discover them is to delve into the story that, from the Croatian clinic, Dino explains about his adventures to that half of Den Harrow-Tom Hooker who is in the postoperative period after a comprehensive physical reconversion, with the intention of physically becoming the half Den Harrow-Stefano Zandri and thus combine voice and physique in a single Den Harrow.
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