By Emmanuel Caballero
Within the framework of the International Book Fair of Guadalajara 2010, Literal talks with historian and writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II in-depth interview, chaotic, versatile and above all as funny as the author, dotted with smoke and cola . Emmanuel Caballero
: Paco, I read recently The Return of the Tigers of Malaysia and I really enjoyed widely.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II : Did you enjoyed?
EC: I enjoyed very much, what it means to you talk about one of your childhood heroes? PIT II
: I enjoyed a lot, I enjoyed it. Was to convene the sense that reading was exciting then and now what will happen? That feeling of reading when you're a kid and teenager that I think you're missing. Now reads in a more stiff, rigid, compulsory, and well, I was very attracted to that way of writing to get that way of reading.
EC: Sandokan also presents a somewhat different, you say it's a pastiche but a different Sandokan.
PIT II: Someone told me, "the Sandokan of Salgari" and I said "no, mine," slipped through my hands and is no longer the same anymore more. You had to modernize the novel of the century. The nineteenth century novel is full of bad habits, unnecessary dialogs to make more pages, no stroke characters psychological splits between the psychological novel and the novel of adventure and dare not swear. They capture a pirate ship and say "Caspita!" No scrub, Yanez has to say fuck! Or sex, Puritanism in the nineteenth century novel can not take now, or the depth of the characters, where they come in they dream of a lifetime of violence it has to be checked.
EC: Both Sandokan as the 3 musketeers are very yours flags, anti-imperialism and anti-clericalism, go against the structures of power, against the social order, what is your proposal then ideology? How society should work for you?
PIT II: Changing the world Ching, or the world we will destroy us. I do not like the model, the structure, the project of a society based on selfishness, contempt, the nudge, the rise in the pyramid, corruption, plunder, deceit, violence against the most vulnerable, I do not like model of society we have and we live in, then cambiémoslo fast. The literature is building a weapon of ideas, if you can bring your ideas to change the world so be it.
EC: Speaking precisely those social movements, and before you had given voice to Sandokan in Called Hero, I remember that book. We see the 68 very present in your work, is something that marks you, is it a ghost to be exorcised or is a creative engine?
PIT II: is well posed, looking for both, because it is obviously a ghost to be exorcised, because there still have the scar and the wound is not closed, but it is also vital fuel, that the spirit and 68 style not to abandon us and protect us, accompany us to ninety years.
EC: A writer as neat as you, suddenly a year writing a lot, which publishes many books, you run the risk of repetition? PIT II
: No, it is the risk that you forget his early novels, that memory to remind you of everything you've written. And I do not spend so much in the literature but suddenly I read to myself and I spend very well, I say "well this guy writes that imagination" because I have the distance to my first books. But I passed on the story, suddenly I am discussing a topic that I wrote and say "wait for me let me go by the Bible" and you will find your own book to remember, because memory does not give you. I changed the Che Pancho Villa through Mariano Escobedo, Tony Guiteras Pancho Villa, Tony Guiteras to now, the battle of the Alamo, which is what I'm writing. If you are in Houston will be happy, because my next book is The True Story of the Battle of the Alamo a book not for Hollywood, and is cleared of how Hollywood invented the Battle of the Alamo and what really happened there.
EC: So that's one of your projects ...
PIT II: In that I am, hopefully in three or four months will be ready, and the investigation is finished, had been working for several years, and I'm already composing.
EC: Guadalajara recently referred to as someone told you that a book is a commodity, a pair of shoes.
PIT II: "Someone" was the finance minister of this country, my answer to the minister of finance was, "What shoes have read lately?" Became very nervous. (Laughs).
EC: for yourself why the book is not just a commodity, or is not a consumer item?
PIT II: is not at all, the book is a cultural product, and if we forget that, forget everything and become a commodity, and give good value, that is because it circulates in the world of commodities, but is beyond the goods. The book is a transmitter of ideas, a creator of informal thinking, a builder of utopian thinking, a transformer that reads, we are not the same after having read a book. Each book we read we adjust, for better and worse, transforms us. Incorporates our new information sentimental life experience or information in the broadest sense of the word. Reading is one of the most important events that created the human being in history, because it allowed him to be other more subversive What on earth is an adolescent ward Guadalajara low that suddenly opens a novel whose central character is a sixteenth-century Turkish prostitute? While you read it, the essence of subversive thought is to learn to be others, because if you learn to be others think also in terms of others. If you create empathy with the lady in the corner that is selling tortillas and ceases to be a shadow that passes in front of you and becomes a human being, whether literature helps you create this phenomenon, damn you are developing the most important activity human solidarity which is thought.
EC: Is that why your characters are somehow as social, as city dwellers, so, not common but somehow "fair"? PIT II
: (laughs) Common are not, are characters that portray a certain extent in a way ... but well, if you're writing ideological temptations. Esras temptations subordinates the autonomy of the novel, the novel is autonomous with its own rules and you have to preserve and protect that you are not becoming a political speech, a pamphlet that kills the novel.
EC: How does this political mind, (we talked about the secretary of finance), cultural development, a coherent cultural policy?
PIT II: affects mainly because we have a government functional illiterates who have no empathy with the world of culture and to that extent have no empathy to see it as a superfluous and unnecessary spending. They do not understand or ever understand what it is. Then you input a tremendous closeness to the world of power. Go to the conflict that is opening between the Fair [the book] of Guadalajara and the state's governor, does not understand this guy, he does not fit, says "What's that? Is not sit here, does not stop here, to have a conversation like we're having now, then there is empathy with the cultural world. So this seems a sin and not what it is: a wonder.
EC: is said that in our times young people are no longer interested in literature, it is this failure to award other editorial, commercial, social, moral and even religious education who do you think is to blame? PIT II
: I would say education, the great blocking that occurs in adolescents with reading has unfortunately educational background. Education is what is blocking the reading because at one time associated with the growth of a guy, a girl, read with the obligation, laziness, reading fragmentary, punishment, test, read things that interest me to have no qualifications. Then the world of reading becomes a world of obligations, charges, heavy, "read that Roe", "read it click", "read what I would not read", then this whole educational structure being built "antilectura vaccine." So that children get higher education in ninety per cent saying "I do not want to read." He has lost what I had or what she had as a child: the pleasure to tell you a story, taste. The naturally read chavitos 6, 7, 8, are cut when the school makes reading a punishment. Then the whole education system is conspiring against reading because it is unable to detach the formal education and informal education to give their weight and its importance in informal education. And I sometimes worry when they say "No, is that educational programs are now putting more emphasis on informal education" Well, they're going to shit, all they will do is to force kids to read Ben-Hur because every mother is, No! By the time the word appears in the scenario force created the lock.
EC: You have experience in higher education, how do you have a re-love of literature in the time they get the kids to college?
PIT II: Everywhere I've been the message is simple: The classics do not exist, are an invention, there is no obligation to read, fashion is a perversion, not read what is "fashionable" read what you give your rechingada wins, freely read, read you on the trail give a colleague, read the novel you like, you fly neurons, reads forbidden fuck! Viola played the saints and especially click opens the door, because as do not open the goddamn door you will discover thirty years with the door closed and you missed it. I do not know any human reader stronger reader, reading: "I'm bored" because the strong reader knows there is always an interesting book out there hidden that I can reach out and find it, then Why not have this wonderful level contact and find the vast majority? Why deny this possibility by a distortion of the educational structure?
EC: Speaking of youth, youth, what is your opinion towards the young new writers? Particularly Spain, Mexico and the United States. PIT II
: I have the catalog, ie I can not say these are the new writers, authors follow with interest that interest me and some others are young children, others are girls, some are old and began to write the fifties, I have the catalog. Now, if I have something, when I find an author stripping anyone that his mother did not want, it publishes its editor reluctantly because I really like the novel, I miss him win, and I work to open doors because I think it is a compulsory act of generosity among colleagues.
EC: So what do you think the new literature is a kind of hope? PIT II
: When I began to publish editions were four thousand copies, if you sold in 1200 had already been paid and the editor could run the risk with you today the issues are of two thousand or three thousand copies, if you sell two hundred is a complete failure. The young writer working with a handicap much more bastard which I worked in my life to survive in the jungle of books because what you see here is the forest, not seeing the trees, see the tree ... to see tell me what are the new writers in this stand? I challenge you to find out, impossible! Need tracks, Who gives them to you? Pa'poyarte all there is the rumor and I work well in the middle of a very generous Authors Guild when he discovers a young author of a good novel, then after you pass the tip and move pa'echarle hand. But it is a counter-phenomenon, the current closed doors, not open.
EC: literature What nourishes you?
PIT II: Leo a lot of genre literature, I read science fiction, I read detective novels, historical novels I read, I read comics like crazy and then I read a lot of history for reasons of curiosity, of interest for work, then read as a novel without gender and poetry. And I read poetry in a very erratic, I have a bookshelf of poetry on the road between my bedroom and bathroom, my office and bathroom, then go to the bathroom when I read poetry. And I learned something that women are much smarter than men already knew, that is: "You have more time sitting pa'la if meas (laughs). EC
: Now that you mention that you read historical novel you being so anti-clerical, a-religious in some way, where does this interest comes the Song of Songs s?
PIT II: (laughs) Suddenly there is a hint in your life, and I read an essay by a French writer that Song of Songs of Solomon is that this is one of many deceptions that Bible occurs, a pastoral song before, the area of \u200b\u200bLebanon but also the time to be transcribed in the Bible was transcribed wrong. So that is the first third and then first and second in the Song of Songs , then I see that Solomon was not. Return to Song Songs, and I read it and say "right" this historian, this "literary historian." But from the curiosity that eats me, and Solomon Solomon What else I have in my closet? as Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard and then I say "to heck, what about that?", I get to study and there are no mines, no such gold mines in the time of King Solomon in all Judea Palestine. There is no such, there are a fucking tin mines in the Sinai peninsula worth pa 'pure mother and then say "oh gosh this Solomon begins to interest me more yet," then give the next step, which is what the temple? Solomon's temple, well and I am in two wonderful books, of course Where do you take it now I put my house in Mexico?, which are stories of the Bible read by archaeologists, in which I say no, no no temple of Solomon. If at the time he allegedly stood King Solomon Jerusalem was a petty village of shit, was not pa'templo, no palaces, and then I say "damn, this interests me more so Solomon (background laughter) but I was also polygamous and monogamous and I'm at war with the polygamists. As you have seen the curiosity is a string, and above all is a string against the official lies, wherever it comes, comes for free textbooks, comes from the Bible, comes from historians, comes from Hollywood, and my eternal war is against the official lie.
EC: Do you consider yourself a seeker of truth?
PIT II: Ah dammit! I had never been asked that question, let's say I consider myself a curious truth.
Rose Mary Salum: I have a question also, no more desire to keep talking, do not consider as part of the interview.
PIT II: Why? This interview is very funny,
RMS: I got a lot of attention to what you say in the book as no-good, because yesterday I went to one of the presentations on literary agents. One of them was saying that publishers are now being taken by people who are not within the culture but they are experts in business and marketing. You can see that its tentacles are beginning to get publishers to change so that this becomes more of a contest "to see who sells more" and the editor just ignoring it. So it does not matter if you write good or bad but what people want to read because we have to sell.
PIT II: That is the temptation and tension but let me break lances in the opposite direction. Yesterday I was invited to eat the manager of Metro, not the editor in chief, not the junior editors no, the general manager. At dinner we talked all the time in literature, the books he read, he was reading, which I had not read and if you and I was interested. The temptation of evil comes from a publishing industry in which there are no readers, I do not care what they post, everything is marketing, but that temptation is not dominating the landscape, at least in Mexico, I tell you what I experienced yesterday. And we laughed a lot commenting on the story of an editor known both decided that my book would be a bestseller but never read it. We laugh of it, not spend any appreciation, we dedicate a lot of laughs, it was as absurd.
EC: is treating the book as a commodity, as something that is of use, chatted with a girl right now here in one of the stands to make handmade books and tells me is that (sic ) people come here and instead of saying, look at a book about Poe, about Wilde and is made using traditional methods, say parents would be on the table in the room right? "(laughs) it is a matter decoration.
PIT II: Look in a society where the weight is so brutal market, where temptation of the surface from the depth is so large, these events occur, but I think they are still in Mexico and now no majority or dominant. Today an author can expect from your publisher to read his manuscript, and that if it valued in terms of business opportunities because either way, a publisher can not afford to publish a failure because as post ten failures the project was over editorial and if they have to measure this, but today I read your book.
RMS: Well then do not is threatening the e-book industry famous for saying, a few years ago I came to this fair no veía estos stands, y ahora los veo por todos lados. En Estados Unidos te quieres morir de cómo está la situación.
PIT II: Que no te angustie, el libro electrónico es un cambio de formato, no cambia la esencia del libro, solo cambia el formato, ¿Qué importa? Libro electrónico, audiolibro, libro en papel de biblia pa’que (sic) quepan más paginas, libro gordo, libro chiquito ¡que importa! Libro es libro.
RMS: Pero me angustia por los escritores porque no necesariamente pueden…, bueno estábamos viendo otra conferencia donde precisamente se decía como esto del e-book facilita que se salga digamos de la editorial el libro because it is copied so well, that on the one hand, on the other side I anxiety because this traditional publishers Emmanuel says the love-object art, "let's make a book that is going to be beautiful" this is going to disappear ...
PIT II: For love is the same, "we will make an e-book" does not have less love in the production of an electronic book in a book-object-role.
RMS: Well but the guys who are doing this [book art-object] already scrubbed. PIT II
: Well, but is full of purists this society, the mercantilist attack with tanks and cannons and purist defend themselves with straws, please!
RMS: Well but seriously what will happen to all these people who make handmade books?
PIT II: Well that continue to make, there will be a person interested in having a beautiful handmade book in hand, not my case, I am a reader who does not have one iota of a bibliophile, my library is filled read novels Spot sausage and chocolate cream. I am proud, I look bad, I read them while I took a chocolate cream cake and ate a sausage. When they give me an eighteenth century book looking for someone to give it and I replace it with a current version with larger print, I better, but hey I'm not a bibliophile, if others are fanatical bibliophiles go ahead, enjoy it. Total nothing happens.
EC: The important thing is the content of the book.
PIT II: Clearly, the battle is to preserve the book as a circulator of fantasy, imagination, ideas, wishful thinking, critical thinking, that's the big battle, we do not close, a setting that does not come as finance minister to say "the book is a product like shoes" that is the danger, that is the great enemy, the book is not an enemy, is an ally, the e-book, audiobook, are partners in this journey.
EC: is what to Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 401 when at the end everyone knows by heart the books.
PIT II: course, give courses Pa'que memory (sic) you learn a novel and tell it to a guy, because sooner or later end up in jail or on a deserted island.
EC: Paco, what is your career, your degree?
PIT II: I'm a fugitive from three colleges (laughs)
EC: Definitely . PIT II
: Yes, because I decided that my education interfere, then studied what I was interested in each and went. I studied sociology and a half years, I studied English literature two years of loose materials from the race and a year of materials expertise and chased me because I said "you hear is not on the lists, not enrolled, a bureaucratic problem, already arrived "told me. What interested me was taken with Rosario Castellanos comparative literature, or to take with Luis Rios golden. Mother if I had better credit, they give you credit. After three and half years studying history, then lost my file and said "I want it pa'la good (sic)" There was a ridiculous moment which, I would take a subject and the textbook I'd written, then the teacher rushed me, "Where are you going? Go away if your book "said" but if I come to bring live ... "" take off "(laughs). Then I ran away from three high schools.
EC: I'll tell you why, because I knew your book, I met Belascoarán when I was in the CUCEI [Faculty of Engineering], then, to me presents an engineer Shayne Belascoarán fugitive from his job as engineer, and for me it was a watershed because it makes me leak my work as a computer engineer and I will be studying letters.
PIT II: (laughs) I did it! (Laughs)
0 comments:
Post a Comment