Javier Marías: "I write about topics that seem particularly serious, dangerous, unfair or stupid"

Javier Marías (Madrid, 70 years old) does not have any books in progress after the accumulated fatigue after publishing four long novels in the last decade —the last of them

(Alfaguara, 2021), finished during the pandemic—.

It is normal for him, that he remains "impregnated" for a season of each newly published book and without the courage to start a new fiction.

Luckily, his readers can find his prose every week thanks to the columns he has published for more than 19 years in

.

He has already exceeded 920 articles.

A calm and serialized analysis of current affairs, also of the drift of society, which he regularly collects in volumes.

The last one,

(Alfaguara, 2022), brings together his texts published between February 2019 and January 2021. In a telephone interview from Catalonia, where he spends time, he also explains why he has begun to include stories with fictional characters in his columns that may be included in the future in other volumes.

Question:

What inspires you to face your articles?

Answer:

Columns must be delivered two weeks in advance.

That is why they are current, but not strictly current.

And reality tends to repeat itself a lot.

Sometimes one believes that one has sufficiently argued the erroneousness of such a thing and the harm of such another, and after a while the topic returns as if one had not written anything, so I write about it again.

But I try not to repeat myself too much.

P.

A few months ago you began to write a series of short stories with characters such as Professor Pírfano de Lerma, Mr. Cotta and Catherine del Biombo.

A.

I thought people must be a bit tired after 900 Sundays.

It is also a way to oxygenate myself a bit within the narrative genre.

And in part I had a certain need to write some entertainment.

So far, as far as I know, there have been no protests.

P.

Is there a link in the themes that inspire you?

R.

The things that concern me as a citizen.

There are many current issues that I let go absolutely completely.

I write about what seems to me to be particularly serious, dangerous, unfair or stupid.

Obviously, sometimes I'm wrong or I can go very against the current.

P.

Have you regretted over time some particularly harsh text?

A.

One also forgets the columns themselves.

To retain in memory all that he has written, that would be a horror and a curse.

Regret an entire column, no.

Perhaps some phrase or some adjective, yes.

Anyway, I write too light-hearted sometimes, and then in another version you polish those things.

Even so, there have been articles that have made many people very outraged.

But that's already inevitable, and I don't care much either.

Q.

When have you seen the biggest rejection?

R.

Many years ago I wrote a series of three articles entitled Los exterminadores de toros.

There were many people who thought I was going to refer to bullfighters.

And no.

I am not bullfighting, by the way.

But he explained there that those who exterminated the bulls were those who tried to ban bullfights: that breed only exists because there are bullfights and if they were suppressed, who would raise that animal.

In another I got involved, not with the poor dogs, who are generally nice to me, but against their owners.

It caused real anger.

P.

What do you think about the drift of the Ukraine conflict?

R.

I recently wrote an article about Putin in which he said that if he insists, he will win the war.

Even with the sending of aid and means to Ukraine by Western countries, the disparity of forces is so abysmal... He is a type of individual who I do not see with his tail between his legs, and I have a hard time imagining that he could be militarily defeated.

Much optimism cannot be had at the moment.

In Ukraine, the only reason for some optimism is the response of unity and firmness on the part of Western countries

P.

The panorama is not very hopeful.

R.

Having an open front that lasts a long time near the European border is clearly discouraging.

Not to mention how much it discourages to see the horrors and barbarities that are being committed.

That's how a war is.

The only reason for some optimism is the response, I think quite unexpected, of unity and firmness on the part of Western countries.

With those kinds of sanctions, the Russian economy is going to be a mess: an impoverished country, a country plagued for quite some time.

Q.

In addition to an economic veto, there is also a cultural veto.

R.

They are doing crazy things: there are places where they dedicate themselves to throwing down statues of Pushkin and conferences on Dostoevsky are cancelled.

The era that we have lived through, almost since the beginning of the 21st century, is very exaggerated in everything, everything is taken to the extreme.

Now the Russians are horrible, then Pushkin is disgusting, when he was a great poet.

There is an old saying that says “when you are right, but you exaggerate it, you end up losing your mind”, and this is what happens all the time.

Now the whole world has been a slaveholder, and the whole world has been a colonialist, and the countries have to apologize for remote things that have nothing to do with the current era.

Quevedo killed an individual in a brawl.

What does this have to do with Quevedo's verses or with 'El Buscón'

P.

You have also written about that, about the cancellation culture.

R.

Seen from today's perspective, everything is terrible.

We're talking ridiculousness on a par with saying I can't eat this dish because I'm not sure how the cook treats his family.

Quevedo himself killed an individual in the Plaza de las Descalzas in Madrid in a brawl.

It is that he was a murderer, he killed a fellow man.

What does this have to do with the verses of Quevedo or with

?

The writer Javier Marías Klaus Holsting

P.

Live for seasons in Catalonia.

Are you more concerned about independence now?

R.

I saw him serious at all times.

My wife is Catalan and also Catalan-speaking, from Barcelona.

Here I have seen a sensation of horror and scandal, the appropriation of Catalonia by the pro-independence party.

The ones who scream the most are the scariest.

I don't care much if Catalonia becomes independent or not.

Personally, I am not at all a Spanish patriot.

I wrote that if I were Catalan I wouldn't be worried about the possible independence, but the possible independence achieved by these individuals and remaining in the hands of these people, who are absolutely totalitarian, who don't understand the separation of powers.

As was made clear when they presented their plan [Transitory Law] in 2017.

P.

You usually write about the ineptitude of politicians.

Is there one that hasn't disappointed you yet?

R.

Disappoint I don't know if that's the right word, because it's not like I had placed great hopes in almost any of them.

On the contrary, my worst expectations have been fulfilled.

Right now all the games are in the hands of very mediocre people to put it mildly.

There is a type of feminism that I find stupid, unpleasant, frowning, puritanical and prudish

P.

You often address in your columns your discontent with a certain type of feminism.

What are the points of friction with his thinking?

R.

At this point, everyone is a feminist.

Anyone who isn't a halter has been.

It is clear that historically women have been subjugated, they have suffered the prohibition to study or practice numerous professions, there are still in practice inequalities in salaries.

All this is true and in all this it is something in which I have been in favor of absolute equality.

Now, there is a so-called fourth wave feminism that for me contravenes classic feminism.

They are saying exaggerated things and nonsense.

And above all, there is an error in that they are dangerously close to the intolerance of the Catholic Church during the Franco dictatorship.

When one reads that the Ministry of Equality talks about punishing or prohibiting or fining lewd looks, the looks! This sounds familiar to me;

and it sounds to me like priests and nuns.

This seems to me an intolerable interference in the freedom of people.

How does one decide which look is lewd and which is not.

It is a subjective question.

One can look at a face as one looks at the ceiling.

This is typical of Puritanism.

Just as censorship is horrible, wherever it comes from.

That kind of feminism is what I find stupid, unfriendly, frowning, puritanical and sanctimonious, as much as the Catholic Church in the worst of times.

Q.

How is the next novel going?

R.

I'm taking the next novel… nowhere (laughs).

I wrote a few lines one day and there they are.

I think I needed a bit of a break after four novels more or less in a row.

Q.

Aren't they motivated to pursue fame, glory, transcendence...?

R.

As I get older, all that matters less to me.

If they consider me, I'm glad, I appreciate it, but if they don't consider me, I don't care either.

In my case, everything that had to happen has already happened to a great extent.

I can't complain, I've been very lucky.

P.

Nor the importance of his works?

R.

Posterity is a concept of the past, despite the apparent contradiction.

Today it doesn't make any sense.

Everything gets old at an excessive speed.

How many authors, as soon as they die, pass into immediate oblivion.

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