(Enrique Murillo, editor and writer, has worked for labels such as Anagrama, Plaza
We tend, as a society, to continue to think more or less consciously that books, culture, art... have a decorative function in the world. That embellish it, adorn it. Having books, pictures, “looks good”. But it seems superfluous to us. It is something that is far from what we consider essential: health (life and death) and the economy (money), others would add politics and laws, even now they would say that science... That, and not much more, it is what really matters to us.
And yet, we have very recent examples in which we can see that the literary (which I use here to also encompass music, painting, theatre...) is as crucial as those activities whose need seems obvious to us.
Who in our days is wondering why there are so many suicides, why the consumption of antidepressants, the feeling of dissatisfaction and populism is increasing so much, will surely find answers in the reading. Not from the commercial novel that pursues entertainment, but from the other. We can measure the relevance of writing by the effort that those who practice it put into writing even in very precarious circumstances. Or provoking brutal reactions.
The most obvious case is that of the attack on the life of Salman Rushdie, which occurred recently. To be the author of such a decorative thing as a novel, what a punishment he has just received. It makes you think.
Closer to home we have the experience of Enrique Vila-Matas, recounted in the emotional interview that Xavi Ayén did with him in this newspaper (September 1). Vila-Matas owes Paula, his wife and his lifelong partner, the kidney that is prolonging his life. And what does he do when he begins to recover physically? He begins to practice decorative arts, that is to say: he writes a book, Montevideo. Because writers use life to write and without writing they cannot conceive it.
Although socially we consider that running a company, for example, is infinitely more important than living from (telling) the story, it is not so frequent that beyond the age of professional retirement and in circumstances as physically hard as those that Vila- Matas, there are businessmen who dedicate themselves to this kind of activity. Surely there is more than one, but it so happens that in the practice of writing this kind of heroism is not a rarity.
Nor is Álvaro Pombo exactly in top form, of whom we saw photos and read another moving interview, this one by Justo Barranco (August 29). Although physically very battered, Pombo has still been able to deliver an essay on his essential themes: the place of the sacred, doubts about the divine and the ethical... That an octogenarian who is in a wheelchair and has his face splattered with wounds of old age find desire and time to write will surprise everyone. And I add another overwhelming example, which was reported in this supplement (on September 2) by its editor-in-chief, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán. A very remarkable story for a country that since the Civil War has made silence about certain behaviors of its citizens an inviolable norm. We have been hiding our shame for too many years.
It reminded me of what that chronicle said about the publication of a simple novel that turns out to be not so simple. Vila-Sanjuán recounted how two members of a family made the brave decision to investigate Grandpa Otto's secrets and make them public. Most of the family had preferred to remain silent, and resisted his attempt. Better, they thought, to continue lying about the fact that Otto Kraus, that great man, had been an SS chief during World War II and responsible for one of the worst massacres of Jews committed in Europe by the Nazis, in this case by Baltic shores.
The publisher Sigrid Kraus and a writer cousin of hers, Chris Kraus, decided to investigate the past of this important member of their family and, faced with the conspiracy of silence from their relatives, one decided to write the story in the form of a novel, and the other publish the Spanish translation of that novel in Salamandra, the publisher whose editorial management she continues to lead after the sale of that company to the Penguin Random House group.
In the confusion of values of our hurried times, writing is less valued than posturing on TikTok. When some writers tried to overthrow the Franco regime with a clean novel, they failed in their attempt because they assigned the wrong mission to literature. But some, and very noble, has. Speaking of political realism in novels, Juan Benet reminded us that literature, at all times, has only served to "bear witness to the little fortune and much misfortune that man can expect." Fortune and misfortune that, adds Benet, are "the exclusive work (of man), of his ambiguous nature, of his clumsy society and of his insufficient science." Which is a good definition of the work of the recently deceased Javier Marías, a writer whose greatness we had to find out thanks to the fact that he was consecrated by critics and readers in Germany.
