Quim Monzó (Barcelona, 1952) has gathered in the book Ments preclares, with the subtitle "The book of idiots" (Libros de Vanguardia) about eighty articles that he has published in La Vanguardia for a couple of decades. The common denominator, as the title indicates, is the idiotic behavior that drives Monzó out of the loop, as he did in the stories of A Thousand Cretins or in the articles on Esplendor i glória in the International Papanates (Quaderns Crema). To fight them, the writer uses his best weapon: the word. And the choice made by Julià Guillamon is so good that even Monzó, the king of pessimists, has dared to confess that the book has turned out well enough.
what is this book
Well, it's a book called Preclear Minds and it has a subtitle called The Book of Idiots. This subtitle is two ways of approaching an explanation: one is ironic and the other is what would be the literal one, the one that does not seek a second level or a first, but instead pleases the editors a lot.
Where did the idea to do it come from?
I have become too old to write books and they thought of commissioning Julià Guillamon for a book. Given that I sometimes avoid the irony of saying: wafer, this lamp, how well designed it is; and in fact I'm saying the opposite: that it's a radish, that it's a nyap, that it's very badly done, and sometimes something is so obviously stupid, that I use the word idiot.
As a result of the book, idiocy is one of your recurring themes.
Since the published articles can be searched, Guillamon began to search for those containing the word idiot, idiotes, and all those that have to do with it. A lot of articles came out in which he went from irony to insult. It's funny because, before, you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of looking for an idiot by reading all 50 years of articles.
The selection covers more or less the last twenty years.
I guess I'm tired of using irony.
In other words, in front of an idiot, you lose the irony.
No, no. I always use it, but since you idiots come across it every five minutes, I guess there is a time in the article that you don't use it. That's when you explain. Instead of one praise and another, you make a direct insult.
You really like Enrique Rubio's phrase: "Idiots never end". You even call it a synonym in Latin.
Yes, "Stultorum infinitus est numerus". I was already using this phrase before all this Enrique Rubio reference. I had listened to him when I was young, on the radio, and I liked him very much.
He was a chronicler of events, wasn't he?
Yes, he chronicled events and focused a lot on the poor scams, such as the tocomocho or the stampede, which make people rich. They are such obvious scams, you wonder how this person can be so short-sighted to have fallen for them. He explained it very well and always had this phrase that says that idiots never end.
You have made the phrase your own.
It came to my mind a lot during the years of the 2000s, because the sound technician of La compétencia, from RAC1, Víctor Ollé, who was very good, was also obsessed with this phrase and had it as a wedge. Enrique Rubio had also written a lot of articles, among other places, in La Vanguardia.
Is it a subgenre, idiocy?
There are many writers who have dealt with this subject [and he underlines the word subject, which he deeply hates, as the title of the book The subject of the subject shows], such as Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, with a lot of articles in which he often insult towards idiocy. Or Carlo Maria Cipolla, who developed the theory of stupidity.
You also mention the Darwin Award. That is?
Now it's already very burnt, because the internet burns everything. But when it appeared, it was fascinating to read in the press that the Darwin Award had been given, that it is given to that person who has died childless, so that he does not convey his stupidity. With Darwin, the species evolves from one generation to the next. But not here, because if an individual does something stupid and dies without begetting, he doesn't pass his stupid genes on to future generations.
Criticize social media.
Because people are very idiotic. There are those who commit a crime and it turns out that they are revealing a lot of things there and the police immediately tie heads.
And on the other hand, you're very active on Twitter, right?
According to the days Now, starting with Kate Middleton, yes, because I have become very fond of it, with this colebrot, I love it. It is very good! But in general I do use Twitter, you find really good stuff there. Not because of originals, but because you find answers faster than on the radio. You look on Twitter and you have this information much earlier than on radio or digital. That is why it is very useful. But, of course, there are just as many idiots as there are in ordinary life.
When you listen to the radio, do you follow one station or do you keep switching?
I turn it on at half past seven. I listen to one station or another if it's a weekend or a weekday.
Don't you change the station with the memories?
I don't have radios with memories, I don't want them. I have several transistors, each tuned to a station. It's a silly thing, yes it is. But, at the right moment, I close one and start another. I really like them, I have three at home next to the bed.
In these articles, you talk about real idiots, which you have discovered here or there, but sometimes you also identify as an idiot.
Calling myself an idiot doesn't offend me, because I've told myself that all my life. Now, just because I've been saying it all my life doesn't mean it's right, but yeah, I'm an idiot. I don't find it so bad to call someone an idiot. I'm often an idiot, I should behave differently and things would be better for me. But they would do better, in what sense? Maybe I think they would do better and in the end they would do worse. I'm an idiot
Idiot to another, but if you're already good at what you're doing...
Yes, yes, and so much, and so much. For example, I remember a time, decades ago, when radio cassettes came out. Now it's mobile, mobile has everything. I can't stand it having it all: a feature or two, and not much else. With the radiocassette he was outraged. A character in Benzina, I don't know if I can remember right now, was deeply against the radiocassette because he wanted the radio to be a radio, but the cassette to be a cassette. In other words, this mixing of various things has led us through the rocks. Everything has to be something.
What do you think of social gatherings, which also appear in the book?
I don't listen to talk shows. I listen to the radio until around nine o'clock the talk shows start and then I switch off. I'm fine now, because this way I can write, I can work and I can read. Tertulians are individuals who know everything. And there are some people who know something and know a lot about it. But they are obliged to talk about everything and know everything, have an opinion about everything.
But you have experience.
Once I was a talk show host, because Màrius Carol asked me to, on a Citytv program in a talk show at noon. I was there and I didn't know what I was painting. My position was almost always, unless I had a formed opinion about what they were talking about, to say, "I have no idea, I don't know what to say." I think it was good, this character, a socialite who doesn't know what to say about things.
The talk show host who doesn't have an opinion.
It's just that I don't have an opinion on a lot of things. I read political articles, but I don't know if they are right or not. I have an opinion on certain things, but feeling compelled to give an opinion costs me a lot, and sometimes I suffer for social media, because it's a job they have to do as well as they can.
Beyond the idiots, other constants of your work appear in the book, such as restaurants, which already appeared in Taula i barra.
I have a fondness for it because since I left my parents' house at the age of 18 I have had breakfast and lunch almost always, unless I am sick, in restaurants. So, for decades, my life has been in the restaurant and I have seen how they have evolved and how they have perverted more and more something as simple as cooking well, bringing it to the table and paying. Now you have to become more sophisticated, you have to go a little idiotic.
Have you already assumed that the plates are square?
This is another: the gregariousness of fashions. I no longer talk about square plates because they have been normalized for decades and now there are new generations who no longer see what I see as strange in a square plate.
Why does everything evolve into an idiot corner?
The other day I tried to go to a restaurant in the Sant Antoni district, Doppietta, and making a reservation there was an odyssey. I called and no one answered, because you have to book online. You have noses that you have to book on the web, that should end. They only gave me two options: bar or terrace. I don't like eating at the bar, because it's more tiring than eating at a table, or on the terrace, I don't like eating in the street. But you see the photos of this place and it's full of tables. Why can't I eat at a table? Everything becomes enormously complicated because you can't talk to a person, because it's easier to do it over the web. I finally managed to go there and I was in for an extraordinary surprise, because the restaurant is very good, which I did not expect from a hipster place in Sant Antoni.
Another thing comes up that you are passionate about: language.
If I were to be born again, something I would like to study, because in this life I have not studied anything, maybe it would be language, philology. I like languages and watch how they evolve for the worse or for the better.
