The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Manuel Vilas: "I write better since I stopped drinking"

2023-02-25T10:41:57.037Z


Barbastro's is one of the fundamental voices of literature present in Spanish. He has just won the Nadal Award for 'Nosotros', a novel in which he claims pleasure as the pillar of lasting love. He goes through a moment of serenity after having confessed suicidal impulses in past works.


Manuel Vilas (Barbastro, 60 years old) says that poetry probably ruined his life.

But that already, at this point, doesn't matter, as he confesses in the prologue to

One Life

(Lumen), his latest anthology.

He has no remedy, fortunately, because, if not, we would have lost one of the most unique voices in literature in Spanish.

Vilas does not lament his condition because his vocation has led him to fail as a writer, or to stumble without trade or benefit.

Rather, because that impulse has led him to become obsessed with the beauty that a tire or a fork can give off, that magnet that is not always found in sunsets and that poets dig through the rubble, either to find hope or to certify. landslides

Vilas has been like this all his life, when alcohol drowned and triggered his verses and his narrative or later, sober, when he has been able to enjoy success since he published the magisterial

Ordesa

(Alfaguara).

Before that, he had begun to make himself known in the 1990s with

El rumor de las llamas,

which was followed by

Autopista, Resurrección, Gran Vilas, El sinkimiento

or

Roma,

and in parallel, in narrative, works such as

Spain, Our Air, The Immortals, The luminous gift

and later, in another stage, the extraordinary

Ordesa

y

Alegría.

Then came

the kisses

and now

we

, winner of this year's Nadal prize, a gothic novel with sunshine and moistened by the Mediterranean in which he tells us that the basic condition of great love is based on pleasure.

This is Vilas, open to the grave, openly, lyrical and bestial, as you will see.

Do you think you're a better writer since you stopped drinking?

Man yeah.

Ordesa

I already wrote it without alcohol.

In June 2014 I stopped drinking and had started it in May.

I wrote it for a month drunk and the rest, the entire novel, completely sober.

Was it lost before and since then has it been found?

Yes, this was told to me by Fernando Marías, may he rest in peace: "You'll see how giving up drinking brings good luck."

Almost like a prophecy.

He commented on it in the literary field.

What you want, what you are looking for, will turn out better, because that false rumor of alcohol, that kind of euphoric illusion that you think you convey is a lie.

false.

Therefore yes.

In my case, I write better since I stopped drinking.

That euphoria, what did it consist of?

I had it as standard.

She believed that she was triggered by alcohol.

But when I left him I knew that he had that love of life inside.

As you write in the prologue to Una solo vida, your last volume of poetry.

My euphoria is based on the passion for life.

And you see it more clearly.

Alcohol doesn't give you that clairvoyance.

That is a wonderful discovery.

And cheaper.

And cheaper.

And you live longer.

You are wiser.

"Capitalism has achieved tremendous precision through the price of things," says the writer. Ximena and Sergio

In that prologue he also affirms that poetry may have ruined his life, but it doesn't matter anymore.

I can extend that to all my work.

Literature provides you with an alternative existence, you see everything on that plane.

You look for beauty everywhere, like Irene, the protagonist of

Nosotros.

A passion.

In matter, in anything, a breath of beauty.

This can ruin your life because it creates a very intense obsession.

Why, if you can't find what you're looking for, are you disappointed?

Yes, by continually going after a spell, a mystery, a voice...

Even in the plum jam...

For example.

Even in a plum jam... That obsession enters you.

Living like this is always very exhausting.

Squeeze reality to get the gold it hides.

Even in money?

That obsesses you, beyond the metaphor.

Yes total.

Because money is precision.

If you want to know what's in front of you, ask how much it's worth.

If a friend tells you that he has bought a flat on the beach, what do you ask?

How much has it cost you?

Capitalism has achieved tremendous precision through the price of things.

A house, some shoes, a watch.

The novel tries to reflect love under the weight of capitalism.

But he also uses money as an outburst against hypocrisy.

Against the puritanism that makes us believe how bad it is to talk about these things when everyone thinks about them non-stop.

Oh well yeah.

What a novel cannot contain is hypocrisy.

They are already imposed on us in social conventions so that the gear works, but in a novel one expects to find the truth without limits or rhetorical obstacles.

When I use money and talk about how much things cost, I do it to attack that hypocrisy.

Especially in Spain.

In other places it does not happen so much.


Where?

In the United States, for example.

Here, capitalism seems inhuman to us, but in privacy everyone does their math.

Each has their own talk with capitalism.

Then we attack him, that ferocious face of his.

The left disguises it by giving it a social tint.

And do you know how to do that?

As?

With money.

Exact.

We calm the effects of capitalism with money.

Investing in health and education.

Actually, we always talk about it even if we don't verbalize it.

You, or perhaps your generation, have taken off your mask in that regard.

In other words, he has stopped talking so much about ideals or utopias and more about practical issues.

I do it as a principle of reality.

But to the point of writing in a poem that a bank transfer makes him happy, few dare.

Yes Yes of course.

It happens to all of us.

Damn, I have received 750 euros!

I can eat now.

Well, by saying this you can seem like a neoliberal.

When I raise it in a novel...

Now, in a novel it is much more common.

But not in a poem.

There it does not enter so much, at least in such a clear way.

Yes Yes.

I have taken it to poetry.

Is that what sets you apart?

For me it represents a principle of truthfulness, a moral task.

Be honest with what you see and feel.

If a bank transfer does that to me, why lie?

In a field that drinks from such a pure tradition, you couldn't touch it, it can attract more attention... But since I don't distinguish much.

For me, in the house of literature poetry and narrative coexist together.

Claims the term poverty.

So that?

I do it even for the lower middle class dash.

That today they are poor.

I come from that lower middle class with the fear of someone who can't make ends meet.

That is not erased in life.

If you have experienced it as a child and your parents have transferred that scare to you..., even if you do reasonably well, you carry it with you.

I imagine that I will have a trauma there and that is why I am asking how much things are worth.

Also for being from a village, right?

On the other hand, I consider myself very austere.

Let's see, how much has been spent today?

Nothing.

Today I ate at home, a bit of vegetables.

Some canned chickpeas and two eggs.

It does not reach 2.50.

I think all this.

In the materiality that it carries within.

Throwing away food is a total crime.

And sometimes it's hard to pass it on to your children.

Take care of the things.

A table, a window, folding clothes, parking shoes under the table.

Does that separate you too much from your children?

It unites me more with my father, like a liturgy.

Increasingly.

It doesn't go away.

And that other obsession with watches?

That obsession is mine.

There are cathedrals of the time that are high-end.

What Shakira opposes in her song, here, in my novel, the same thing happens.

It makes me laugh.

In front of the Cartier that Irene gives to her husband, her lovers go by with watches of 100 euros.

She calculates what kind of person she has in front of her by her watches.

Objects on the work table of Manuel Vilas.

Ximena and Sergio

So, who consults the time on their mobile, what do you think?

That's very millennial.

I still like the idea that the measurement of time treasures beauty with a clock.

Is it because he belongs to a generation in which a highlight in his life came when he gave him one for his first communion?

They gave me two.

A Duward and a Thermidor.

That was very important.

The first watch.

And it became the most transcendental.

It probably comes from there.

Inside the clock was the part of the adult who is already going to measure time.

A step from childhood to maturity.

Do you think that before making our First Communion we did not know how to measure time?

They measured it for us, right?

He was deposited in the adults, who decided what time we had a snack, we got up... In that sense, they took away a worry.

The arrival of time in your life is overwhelming.

The use of reason, to some extent, consisted of having the hours.

The child before lives a wonderful timelessness.

So, deep down, did they annoy us when they gave us that first watch?

Yes of course.

With it came a responsibility.

Also, you had to learn how to measure it.

In a certain way.

Circular.

Is it no longer necessary?

Now is time linear?

In a mobile phone, it is also accompanied by various functions.

In a way, it vulgarizes it.

A clock gives prominence.

Category.

Exact.

Because it's very important in our own lives that it doesn't get caught up in a lot of other things.

Pleasure, he says, is a forbidden word.

We use peace, rest... Or happiness if we raise the tone.

The entire novel is based on pleasure as the foundation of life.

I was looking for the intimate association between love and pleasure.

Sometimes we prefer to connect that feeling with loyalty, complicity, but the idea that pleasure is essential in love is not the most recognized.

Shouldn't that be clear from minute one?

Yeah man.

I mean give it a very intense role.

Start and end there.

It is not what is socially valued more in love.

Before, understanding, loyalty, generosity with the other stand out... They are the most valued values.

If you confess that you put pleasure before those terms, they accuse you of…

Frivolous?

That, frivolous would be the word.

When, on the contrary, to place pleasure as the engine of love, isn't it a tremendous depth and risk?

That's the novel, that's what it's about.

The depth of this novel lies in recognizing it.

Have you discovered it with maturity in love?

I have worked from non-autobiographical fields, although, without a doubt, they exist.

I was obsessed here with inventing the perfect love story.

A passion of two people triumphing over any circumstance...

"Voluptuousness is very important. Touching, kissing, eating a sea bass with champagne and without a sense of guilt...", says Manuel Vilas. Ximena and Sergio

The world collapses and we fall in love, as they said in

Casablanca

.

That phrase recognizes that passion can against any collective order.

It is a demand for freedom.

Does it also go against the idea that in love what prevails is suffering?

Also.

We have not come here to suffer.

That is a superstition.

Socially he is not surpassed.

We should undergo an emotional revolution so as not to suffer from love.

Voluptuousness is very important.

Touching, kissing, eating a sea bass with champagne and without a sense of guilt...

And the Mediterranean… You recently spent some time in Rome.

What did you discover there?

The beauty.

In the sense that Paolo Sorrentino presents it to us in

La gran belleza

?

Yes. And from Fellini.

In the sense that we have come into the world to be part of one of their films, with party, passion, laughter, celebration, grotesque.

A lugubrious grotesque, far from Spanish, more gloomy?

Without misery, the Fellinian grotesque is joyful.

Has your discovery of Rome devalued your fascination with America?

No, these are the two countries that fascinate me the most.

United States, for your energy.

That human landscape has impacted us since Lorca wrote

Poet in New York

.

It provokes a lot literary.

But he too rejects, bewildered, uncomfortable.

It can be devastating.

The misery there is wild.

The homeless no longer ask.

In Europe, poverty is accompanied by begging;

There they are like zombies, they don't even ask for money, they are stuck in their tunnel.

A novel that you titled Spain, would you write it again now the same way?

I could not.

I wrote it with great rebellion.

Do you deny that?

I was a rabid iconoclast then, a punk, a free verse of the Sex Pistols and avant-garde lore.

He drank from the Buñuelesque tradition, as Aragonese, in the sense of savageness, that of Un perro andaluz or La edad de oro, impossible to do today.

A celebration of chaos.

I also wanted to provoke from the title.

We live in a country whose main problem is its own name.

Without articulating this from a political point of view, simply linguistic.

What is our problem to begin with?

The word.

The word Spain.

A friend of mine says: “If Spain, Spain, what

a Spain

!”

I continue with the theme.

In

Nosotros

I talk about that through Quevedo's sonnet,

Constant love, beyond death.

If they would let me save a page of our literature, it would be that.

To demonstrate that we have been capable of lighting great works.

You had a great concern in

Ordesa

to know what your parents, whom you portray, would think of this work of yours.

It was a metaphysical concern and impossible to resolve because they are already dead.

However, in

Alegría

he talks more about his relationship with his children.

What did you think?

To them it is a work of fiction.

Maybe later they will understand it differently.

What did I want?

My father took me to many places and I don't remember exactly what the hell we did.

I stuffed it with other things.

In

Alegría

I tell my children what our little one and I did specifically one day in Chicago.

So that it was rigorously recorded, with precision, so that you know.

And that the tears come to him?

Well, that you remember me and you don't have to invent anything.

I would have liked this with my father.

He does remember well that they went to places where there was shade for the car.

Yes, yes.

And I believed that she came from a dysfunctional family.

I didn't want to die without telling the relationship my father had with his car.

But then I have discovered that the same thing happened to many, that they did not go to certain places because there was no shade to park.

I realized that we lived in a dysfunctional country and we weren't that weird.

That spoke well of us.

We took care of things.

When reading

Alegría

, his suicidal impulses were also very worrying.

Still there?

Yes, I did.

But they have passed me by.

I do not know why.

I continue with a tendency to depression, sometimes I fall into wells.

But with respect to the other, I think I've been able to negotiate well with myself and I don't worry so much anymore.

In Alegría my divorce and having broken up a family weighed heavily.

Perhaps when that happens, there comes a time when you conclude that the sense of guilt will always stay with you.

You won't be able to get rid of it, but you must continue...

That is.

When I wrote

Alegría

I still didn't know it and I thought it could be fixed.

Not being able, she fell into the hole.

Now I know and those tendencies have disappeared.

They came from having broken up a family.

That common life of the four of them went to hell.

Time has passed, it is inevitable.

I don't worry so much anymore.

Like the idea of ​​legal prescription of the crime.

There can be no condemnation and you stay calm.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-25

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-16T05:11:03.696Z
News/Politics 2024-02-24T15:53:14.001Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.