Cristina Fernández Cubas answers the phone shortly after the call from the Minister of Culture. She is happy, but slightly incredulous, as if the fantastic that bursts in again and again in her stories had done so yesterday in her life, but without any disturbing consequences. Quite the opposite.
He had already received the National Fiction Prize for Nona's Room, but what does it mean to receive the National Prize for Spanish Literature for a lifetime of achievement?
I am surprised and very happy, happy. An acknowledgment of the entire work is always very important, I still haven't digested it. This morning I was working when Minister Iceta called me and because I recognized his voice, otherwise... I am amazed and very happy.
What is the role of the fantastic in your literature, how does it arrive in your work?
The fantastic is often talked about in my literature, but I would rather define it as the disturbing. The fantastic appears, it is the way of narrating it, but I always start from very everyday situations, generally familiar, in which however, an element suddenly arises that disturbs everything. An element that then disappears, but things will no longer be as they were before. A dark cloud that has disturbed the tranquility of everyday life. In principle that's it. And then, fantastic… fantastic are also the dreams we have every night.
In what sense?
Dreams are part of reality. Every night we are fantastic beings when we sleep and we are lucky to dream. The boundaries between reality and fiction, if there are any, are broken when we dream, at night, with the dream code, in which everything is possible. Everything that is not a photograph of reality, a report, is fantastic. So I'd say mine isn't a dazzling fantasy. I play with those dark areas that we all have and that life has, I play with the mysteries of life. I like to move in this world of chiaroscuro, in which not everything is white or black, in which not everything is explained. Being able to investigate the dark points, human behaviors, the human condition, extreme situations. In my work I give nature to what is not seen. And every time I finish writing a story or a novel I have learned something that I didn't know, or that I didn't know I knew. For my writing process that is what interests me most.
Have you always been interested in the realm of the disturbing?
Always. It is an interest that comes to me from childhood. I have always liked stories, legends that may have an explanation that is not the official explanation, I have always liked mystery, what is not seen. I have always given nature to what is not seen. Just because it can't be seen doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The jury highlighted his fascinating use of concision to tell stories. Is it essential for you?
Always. In stories, of course. It is intensity versus extension, that is very clear. But in the novels, too. My novels have something of a story in terms of intensity. I have never liked texts in which situations are repeatedly repeated. I have always believed that the reader is intelligent. If he suddenly doesn't understand something, he just has to go back a few pages and figure it out. I don't like to be given things hammered down, but I do like to be given clues, and that's what I try to do with my readers, give them what I like them to do with me when I'm the reader.
The story, the story, is it still undervalued and the novel is the queen, or is all that already in the past?
All that has changed. It is true that a few decades ago, when I started publishing, back in 1980, it was very clear that the general opinion was that a story was basically a path towards the novel, just as a short film was an apprenticeship to later make a feature film. But that has changed a lot. A good example is that the National Narrative Award was given to me in 2016 for a book of short stories, Nona's Room. But then there are also publishers like Páginas de Espuma that only publish stories. What is true is that it is possible that novels have more outlet than stories. Because the story requires not a reader in a hurry, as many people say and think, but an intelligent and not lazy reader. A reader who, as he said, if he doesn't understand something has no problem going back a few pages. I have always really seen the reader of the story as an accomplice of the author, he is with you on your adventure. The story is a genre in itself and it interests me greatly not only as an author, but as a reader.
