A literature not willing
Interview with Daniel Sada
Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
just a few weeks ago, it was announced that a jury Clotas Salvador, Juan Cueto, Luis Magrinyà, Enrique Vila- Matas and editor Jorge Herralde, unanimously decided to award the Prize Novel Herralde 2008-one of the most important in English-Mexican writer Daniel Sada, for his book rarely.
Sada (Mexicali, 1953), who was already a recognized writer and winner of several literary awards previously obtained with this award is a distinction that will surely facilitate internationalization, though most of his work has been translated into several languages, including Slovenian, for example-and a greater interest in their work.
way of getting his award and his recent book Sada had with a conversation about their training and development as a writer, his literary training in the desert is mixed and classical readings as well as its foray into journalism career. The author also conducted a general reflection his work both as a poetic narrative, as well as future projects.
AR: You were born in Mexicali, Baja California, and then lived in Coahuila. How has expressed in his work his experiences in the desert?
DS: Almost all my work was farm in the desert, and especially in the central region of Coahuila. There I lived my childhood in Sacramento, where I learned to read and write, I began to read literature and got my literary education.
My father was an agricultural engineer, and got a chamba in Mexicali. He was an expert in cotton and cotton Mexicali was an area, so there he went to live with my mom and there I was born. After the business was over and we came to Coahuila, where we live a long time.
It was very impressive, very significant that all of my childhood. I must say that I can brag that I had a very happy childhood, Marcel Proust said that authors put their entire childhood literature are far more things to say. I think it was very shocking to me all that I lived at that time because I had no restrictions at all. He lived in a village, I could go to the river, the hill, no prohibition of any kind. It was an absolutely quiet town, I went to the river, bathed me, I could spend all day, despite that my mother sometimes worried that I was absent, in fact I felt I owned the world in this little town. And all that I lived there for me was a landmark precedent in my life.
AR: In those early formative years, and also as a teenager, what were your favorite authors?
DS: from very young I read the classics, I read many poets. read The Iliad and The Odyssey since childhood, as well as children's books as The White Elephant , many books of stories from India, and that was my training. But I really had no reading the classics. In Sacramento there was no library, the only was that of a teacher, and I had no vision of classical literature. The local bookstore had was in Monclova, after I hit puberty that I began to search for books, other literature, but it was very difficult to transport 50 miles to find a book. So I stuck to classic literature.
AR: Then what followed in their readings?
DS: Well, I arrived in Mexico City and I felt at a disadvantage because I had a classical culture that nobody here had, everyone was reading Joseph Augustine and the nouveau roman, the French and experimental literature. I felt very out of date because they did not even know nineteenth-century literature. It was a fight against the tide, collecting time readings in order to nurture and be aware about everything that was done in the nineteenth century, early twentieth century and what was written in those years.
Incidentally, when I read Joseph Augustine as I did because it was a way into Mexico City with all my friends in the neighborhood, read, and then I had to read all that literature in order to live, if I was not very isolated.
AR: You also had training as a journalist, How was your visit to this profession?
DS: I studied journalism because I was interested in the career of Arts. I never thought that humanism were academia, said: "Well, if I study lyrics, I'll end up as a research cubicle, cubicle literature, and I need the streets." Then I liked journalism so, because I learned literature, economics, history, politics. I
agency a number of skills that would have been impossible to capture in the career of letters. I studied journalism because there was no other: it was the closest thing I found in the literature, and besides, I felt that in my case journalism was also a way of living. To become a master of cubicle, who knows what would have done.
AR: In the last two decades appears to be a literature boom in northern Mexico, you would be part. Do you think there is such a stream?
DS: This question is for both sides. For the first time in the eighties began to appear the literature of the desert, Jesus Gardea, Ricardo Elizondo, Severino Salazar, etc., but it was the first time the literary optical moved north. Began to call attention to writers from the north, and now there are many writers there. Now not said desert culture, it has diversified and expanded both the northern culture that now there are many authors that interest abroad, they begin to be translated and with increasing force.
other hand, say that I do not care if literature is north or south, central, or Chiapas chilanga: I think there are good and bad literature, and I would not classify the literature of the north, or I'm interested to see me as a writer from the north. Abroad does not matter where you are, in other countries are not valued because it is such a place, but the quality of books and literature.
AR: Some critical notes on his work have been written, is may highlight the claim that you are an author difficult to classify, which is a difficult author, uncomfortable. What would you say are the specific characteristics of your work?
DS: Well, I'm very strict in what I write. My world is verbal, I really like the expression, the cadence, the language, I hate maquinazos in any form. I can not write to vuelapluma, I am very analytical writing. So in that sense maybe I am uncomfortable because I'm not going with the flow, the inertia of many writers who produce and produce.
I am very slow in production, I'm steady but slow. Since I have 15 books, but all I have cost a lot of work. But that is not the value, but I like to do so, give it my best and look for more expressive in what I do and the best insight as well.
So I can not predict what my work projected. I think there are some that do not like absolutely nothing of my work, others are fascinating, but in that sense I am unarmed, I do not know what impact may occur.
Epictetus said that there are things that are unique and things that are foreign. The same is to do my best, that is the responsibility of one, or your job, your profession. But what are the fame, prestige and reputation, that is totally foreign. One can make cartwheels and a half to get attention, but the others are famous, you can not give himself fame. That belongs to others, and one is helpless before these things. At one point, for as one moves and turns of the head, can influence people to read, but fame is a fleeting, lasting fame can not identify one as an author.
AR: Behind his writing is all work and rigor that are not usual. In this direction, what challenges it presents you the reader?
DS: My literature no longer a challenge, I am not complacent, nor my writing is conventional. I've always imagined a hypothetical reader will want all the best, that taste is very demanding. I can not know in advance what the desires of an ordinary reader, who does not cost any difficulty reading.
AR: Many people consider it a good book that you read fast.
DS: It is not my case, I am happy in that sense, but in another, appreciate other forms of expression. That's the writer I want to be and I wanted to be forever. If I succeed or fail, it will be strictly on what I do. But I'm not going to bow to the demands of the market, I do not want publishers to win the battle.
AR: The prize you just won also implies recognition of some of the major publishers in English, such as Jorge Herralde. How was your relationship with publishers, while his work is not so simple and commercial?
DS: There's always suspicion of how he is going to the book. The bet is for literature, but have no absolute certainty that it will succeed. It is hardly a prize, do not know if the book will be widely read or not, but what is rewarding is literature, not sales or whatever you can enable.
AR: So many publishers are very accommodating with his readers?
DS: Well, there are currently very specific aesthetic parameters to which many authors are attached. Now, to be in the market there to sell, that is indiscernible. If you do not wants to be marginal and is on the market, then one has to sell and have an audience. Now, within that age some people are more receptive to literature, and there are others looking for entertainment at all costs.
AR: To move to another topic. broadly understood and how the policy expressed in his work?
DS: To me politics is an issue, it is not something absolutely inherent. What happens is that politics affects us all, is part of our daily lives, we are people who live in a society, we need her and she needs us. In that sense I am interested in politics, but I can not give political guidance in my work, and especially if it is a work of fiction.
I do not want to demonstrate anything, I want to do thesis novels where you read this or that, or disclose unpublished stuff that is political corruption or the vicissitudes of political grid. It is not my intention.
To me, the most important literature is the fable, imagination, and there affects politics. Not an end, a means, say it is one issue among many others.
AR: I think it also has talked more of his work in the poetic narrative. How important is it in his poetry and how it relates to his narrative?
DS: Most part of the same, nothing that I have not saddled the name of poet. I write poetry without knowing what will happen also. I can not be hopeful that someone do a test or pay attention to it. I have some demons that I have to get afloat, and among them is the poetry. But sometimes I write test, but not much.
literature is also breaking: to break the mold, to seek new forms of expression, new climates, new insights. Not every day I write poetry occasionally. In my narrative there are a lot of poetic power, but I could not speak of poetic prose, I hate using that term. To me poetry is poetry, but is in prose, do not have to be ready in verse to be poetry.
AR: In all his work, where are you located Rarely, the novel prize?
DS: Here I return to the north, is a novel that is located in the forties. It leaked a report that took me 25 years to write this novel, and not true. The was conceived 25 years ago, but the novel took me less than three years to write.
is a story I wanted to tell but I did not dare because some characters are real, and some still live. So, I did not want to see involved in this. Although 70 percent is a matter of fiction, I based myself in many facts to write this novel, so I dared not write or make 25 or 10 years ago. I was a little scary. Now I said: "I no longer have to be scary," there he goes, to see what happens.
AR: How important attributes Herralde Novel Award?
DS: It's a push, a very strong boost after nearly 35 years of writing and publishing. Obviously you want things to arrive much sooner, this award, if he had received 15 years ago, would be nothing, but I also would have reacted very differently.
I am grateful for the award, but also confuses me: I do not feel the best of all, much less. It is simply the recognition of a job, I thank you and pushes me to continue the struggle and creativity.
AR: What lies ahead?
DS: I have a book of short stories that I'm working, but still do not foresee when it will finish, I'll give you all the coming year. I'm giving too much air to a novel, not want to rush, as I've ever done, take things calmly, slowly things are coming. I have several projects and I have work for 15 years: two novels more or less extensive, and I want to write a book of essays. I have ideas but are not yet consolidated.
* interview published in Millennium weekly, no. 581, December 1, 2008. Reprinted with permission from the director.
