You know those huge billboards announcing the tour dates of big rock bands?
Those broadsheet-sized advertisements where you notice the stadiums that Luis Miguel, David Bisbal or the latest reggaeton star will tour?
Those huge pieces of paper soaked in glue that appear in the interstitial spaces of the walls, sometimes accumulating layers and layers of sticky paper like a geological substrate?
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Musical books to give as gifts
The Anagrama publishing house has thus announced the presentation tour of Mariana Enriquez's new book, and thus one day Barcelona and Madrid woke up, full of those large posters in which this time they were not promoting a stadium-busting
rockstar
but a writer who was going to speak in small bookstores and libraries.
It is well done, because Enriquez, in addition to being a novelist, has passionately cultivated rock journalism: she has even published a book about her “love story” with the band Suede.
“Mariana Enriquez has gained incredible strength and has become an international literary reference.
At the events he celebrates and book presentations, he receives
fan art
[works of art made by fans], bracelets, dolls, records that his followers give him, more recurring phenomena in the world of music, but not so much in the world. of literature,” says Rafael Luna,
marketing
director of Anagrama, referring to the inspiration for the campaign.
Poster of Mariana Enriquez's campaign, in the center of Madrid.Courted by the Anagrama publishing house
It is a fresh and surprising idea, a surprise that has not been seen since Kiko Matamoros began prescribing books, and it turns out that they were good books.
And it puts high literature to compete in the field of mass pop culture.
Surely some clueless passerby has thought at first that Enriquez is not a writer, but rather the latest technopop sensation with
autotune
: she will be looking for it on Spotify instead of downloading it to her Kindle.
How different are the forms of socialization in literature and music, and how different is the public life of the most successful creators of it.
Writers, I once heard it said, are people who write in their pajamas for people who read in their pajamas.
From one solitude to another solitude, chain of the book through.
A world that leaves one brain to enter another in another way.
There is an epic lack, there is little body, the writers do not write live: a lot of teleworking, little in-person presence.
Reading is an intimate, personal and non-transferable vice.
Instead, musicians can share their creations in an atmosphere of euphoria and communion, like that found at a concert.
Sometimes they throw themselves on top of the audience during their live shows.
Writers, at most, can throw their words at the reader... and in a delayed manner.
Writer Ray Loriga was called a 'rock star' in 'The New York Times'.
INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)
For a good part of the 20th century, Spanish literature was the business of very serious gentlemen, with lots of suits and little hair, who never moved their pelvis, as if literature were not a party.
Even so, some writers have been labeled
rockstars
, as was Ray Loriga in
The New York Times
.
He has the pose.
Michel Houellebecq also has it, apathetic like a twilight Lou Reed.
Maybe Hunter S. Thompson, with his
gonzo
journalism and his outdated, lysergic experiences, can accumulate the anecdotes that accumulate in a mindless, drugged-out punk band.
The French Symbolist poets, with their fatal passions and their lives of bohemianism, laudanum and absinthe, could well be precursors of the cursed rockers;
in fact, I once saw Patti Smith reading poems by Rimbaud (and a story by Bolaño, another damn one) at La Casa Encendida in Madrid.
The truth is that Enriquez, often black and with gray hair, would also be great as the
frontwoman
of one of those gothic bands that she likes.
But it's not the same.
“I have never been a rock star, I don't even know how to play the bandurria,” Loriga once said in La Sexta.
And then there is Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez portrayed on November 21, 2023 in Mexico City.
Hector Guerrero
Rockers, for example, can order roast chicken, bourbon and cocaine from the dressing room.
Writers, in their literary festivals and presentations, who come to cover, in a calm manner, the socialization needs of a discipline that involves so much distance, do not usually have a dressing room, and what they put on the round table is a bottle of water. without gas (then, hopefully, they are invited to dinner).
At the music festival people go too many hours (or days) without sleeping.
At literary events you run the risk of falling asleep halfway through.
A
merchandising
idea for future campaigns: authors' t-shirts, like the ubiquitous Ramones t-shirts, which sold more than their records.
Much better than a bookmark!
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