The writer Julio Llamazares. Quim Llenas (Cover / Getty Images)
It was another summer.
In the restaurant's garden, Elena Foster, founder of the Ivorypress gallery and publisher, talks;
the artist Maya Lin;
the art historian Manuela Mena, and Norman Foster, perhaps the most influential architect of the last half century.
“Creative technology makes those who use it more creative,” he launches.
The phrase remains stranded in the heat and night air of July in Madrid.
It carries an inner literary echo.
Are there differences between the writer on paper and pencil and those who use the computer and the screen?
Thought is more immediate on the page than on the liquid crystal of the computer.
Typing imposes more time for reflection.
You can delete, correct, change sentences and paragraphs in an instant.
But does it change how it is written?
The chosen ideas?
More information
The abandonment of handwriting harms learning in children, and the digital pen can be an ally
Norman Foster was referring to technology applied in a generic way to any creative activity.
Literature fits that sentence.
Five writers analyze their relationship with technology.
They explain how they understand the
carpentry
of their trade.
Antonio Muñoz Molina (Úbeda, Spain, 1956), Sergio Ramírez (Nicaragua, 1942), Brenda Navarro (Mexico City, 1982), Leila Guerriero (Argentina, 1967) and Julio Llamazares (Vegamián, Spain, 1955) write pages and use very different methods or technologies.
It's as if they've been hurtled down uneven tree trunks from
Alice in Wonderland
.
Antonio Muñoz Molina at his home in Madrid in 2020.Santi Burgos
In the 1980s, Camilo José Cela (1916-2002) and Francisco Umbral (1932-2007) criticized the fact that young people at that time wrote “computer novels”.
Cela always wrote by hand, either with a pen or pencil, leaving a small and tight handwriting, while Umbral looked for his words on the typewriter.
One of those "computer" novelists was Muñoz Molina, who soon stood out with
Beatus Ille
(1986).
Today, he himself claims the "feeling of greater freedom" and the "absolute immediacy" of a good pen, a good notebook or a good pencil.
It is the possibility of working at any time and place.
Because speed is not given by the tool, but by the “maturation process of the idea, which occupies its own time.
It grows in memory.
That is what makes it slower or slower,” he says.
The author of
The Polish Rider
takes about two years to complete a novel.
He uses, of course, the computer.
“Sometimes I get the feeling that writing is done by two different parts of the brain,” he says.
“One is the invention, and the first draft process, which has to be as fast as possible, and not stop constantly to correct;
and another, the rewriting, which can be very slow, due to that internal maturation;
never for technical reasons”.
However, he cannot imagine spending a whole day in the light of half a page.
"It would be an ordeal," he admits.
Beatus Ille
means "blessed one".
In the course of time, writing more than said requires effort.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald took three years to deliver a novella,
The Great Gatsby
(1925), Nabokov spent seven to finish
Lolita
(1955), and Truman Capote spent six on
In Cold Blood
(1966).
All three masterpieces were created by hand and paper.
The writer Sergio Ramírez at the Madrid Book Fair last June.Cristina Arias (Cristina Arias)
Those days for many contemporary writers are far away, like someone who could live two lives.
Sergio Ramírez (
Tongolele did not know how to dance
, 2021) acknowledges that the pencil no longer exists for him.
He takes notes on the mobile phone screen.
And from there, to the computer.
Perhaps because he is "a lousy typist," he admits.
“But technology always affects writing.
I imagine that for those who wrote with a chisel on the stone, the thoughts were desperate in his head, due to the slowness of the registration procedure, ”he admits.
The medium is the message.
Who would think of sending a teletype loaded with subordinates and ellipses?
No one writes indelibly.
The Argentine writer Martín Kohan (
Confesión
, 2020) writes by hand and then settles accounts with the computer, and his compatriot Ricardo Piglia (1941-2017) revealed, in his diary, that it would be interesting to investigate how the neural connections of writers with the use of technology, according to Leila Guerriero (
The Suicides at the End of the World
, 2005 or
The Other War
, 2020).
“It is a very interesting topic and very difficult to find out.
The difference between writing with a computer or a typewriter”, says Guerriero.
Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero during an interview in 2017. Álvaro Sánchez (EFE)
Until 1995, Guerriero used the typewriter.
He later imposed the computer.
The screen, at first, generated claustrophobia.
He got over her.
At this time, in Buenos Aires, he lives with three computers.
The ultrabook he uses when he travels.
And he travels a lot.
Allows you to take notes.
And at home he houses two desktop computers that, at the same time, serve as backup copies.
Claim of calm.
“Writing is pounded with anxiety and speed,” he sums up.
Especially in a journalist "obsessed with punctuation."
Technology allows you to change, erase, recover.
"It gives you the opportunity to take risks and go down a path that is not the right one," he underlines: "The freedom to try."
Within that imaginary club of lost conversations, the dialogue between Piglia would have been interesting (“the essential thing about a diary is that it is not corrected: it is the closest thing to automatic writing”, he commented in Babelia in 1995) and the young Brenda Navarro (
Empty Houses
, 2020 or
Ash in the Mouth
, 2022).
"I am a great defender of technology, I am sure that with it Rulfo, García Márquez and all these great writers would have produced more," she says.
The American influence, "being a bad typist" and the perpetual possibility of correcting underpin the value of technology in her
carpentry
.
"I'm starting to dictate to the computer when I walk or an idea suddenly comes to me," she advances.
But the paper has not disappeared.
In front of the computer (MacBook) she places a "map" of notes that guide her in the writing process.
She only has to look up to find the way.
In half a year she completes a novel.
The writer Brenda Navarro in 2020. Santi Burgos
Julio Llamazares knows a lot about steps and paths (
Luna de lobos
, 1985, or
El río del olvido
, 1990).
This summer, in the mountains of León, he is working on his new novel.
The computer allows you to erase, correct.
"You never find the right word the first time," he says.
"The problem with crossing out is that it leads you to infinity."
Writing requires a sixth sense.
An iron will.
And know when to give up.
The writing speed is never imposed by the computer.
"You write with your head," details the novelist.
He has passed — in this he resembles his entire generation — through the typewriter.
From 1990 he belonged to those computer novelists.
Although poetry (
The slowness of the oxen
, 1979) always arises by hand.
Perhaps because it resides closer to the feeling.
And he doesn't use maps or compasses.
When he wrote
The Yellow Rain
(1988) he only knew the last sentence:
—The night remains for who it is.
That is why his poetry is quiet.
“Everything is as slow as the passing of an ox on snow.
Everything as soft as the red berries of the holly”, he repeats, like a prophet before his faithful, in
The slowness of the oxen
.
Writing is carving words.
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