He is the author of some fundamental novels to understand why some writers jump the fence of what would be required of novelists to turn their inventions or occurrences into art. between those novels andres beard (Madrid, 1975) can boast of having given printing and advertising two masterpieces, luminous republic (Herald Award for Novel; Anagrama is its publisher) and Life of Guastavino and Guastavino. He has translated, among others, Conrad, Melville and Thomas de Quincey, and that contact is perceived in his own literature. Other books of his, novels, essays and poetry, end up placing him at the top of current prose, forced by himself to an unusual aesthetic, capable of overcoming the present clichés to delve into masteries that are not common in the current history of prose.
This is the case, for example, of this new novel, The last day of the previous life, the unusual story of a boy who, the mysterious inhabitant of a house for sale, changes his life until the mystery of a real estate agent who looks like the inhabitant of Hitchcock or Amenábar movies. It is impossible to read this book without feeling that whoever wrote it is, in part, the child, the real estate company, and even the words that make up this unusual writing.
Barba now lives with his family in Posadas, Argentina. Talking, it seems that she is writing, so it is easy to ask her, and it is fascinating to listen to her.
It gives the impression that you are already very aware of Argentine literature.
Yes Yes. I follow it, I read it. And besides, I am becoming Argentinean in my literature, as this book shows. I was commenting with Rodrigo Fresán [escritor argentino afincado en Barcelona] how fantastic literature has always been present in the Río de la Plata tradition. In Argentine literature, fantastic literature is of the first order.
It will be thanks to Borges.
Could be. This book is very Borgesian, by the way, the previous one too. They are two books where the real and the fantastic come together.
Childhood is also here as the guiding thread of fear.
I believe that all writers have centers of gravity in which we end up orbiting. For me one of those centers is childhood, I revisit it from different approaches. In luminous republic the approach was political and social and now in this book it is a gender and sentimental approach. But you’re right: whenever I touch on the subject, childhood comes together with some kind of violence. It is to end the myth of childhood as the happy age. In childhood there is violence, that is so.
Childhood, you say. But several Latin American countries, being young, almost infants, are extremely violent and harsh..
Yes, but I don’t know which is worse: that Latin American situation or the hypocrisy of first world countries that discriminate against those who want to enter them to have a better life? It is what, for example, the United States or Europe do.
In his books there is reality and fable as if they were of the same seed.
Yes, I think that now that the literature of the self is so fashionable, it is better to return to fiction. Because, deep down, fiction is more connected to what is real than to what is biographical or what is supposedly documentary. Sometimes the best way to document is to resort to the fable.
But today in bookstores there is literature of the self in an exaggerated way.
It is that the pandemic accelerated that fashion. I see the word pandemic in a book and… it doesn’t interest me, directly. What is true is that, being a collective traumatic experience, it is normal that many are sublimating it in literature. The experience of confinement, loneliness, the indeterminacy of time… have been transferred to literature in various ways.
In your case too?
Yes, this novel has something of that. There are two people locked in a house where time remains indeterminate, immobile, something very typical of the pandemic.
Ever since I was conscious, I have always wanted to leave places and then come back. Being a constant nomad, but coming back from time to time to make a landfall”
It gives the feeling that you have always felt like a foreigner.
Yes. I think there are people who have that nature. Ever since I was conscious, I have always wanted to leave places and then come back. Being a constant nomad, but returning from time to time to make a landfall.
Is that round trip life the one that has produced your extraterritorial literature?
Yes. Being fed by different things all the time, the Spanish has been more diluted in me. Now I look at the literature that is produced in Spain and I see that it has a homogeneous tone in which I don’t see myself. But I live that as an enrichment, as an opportunity to reinvent myself.
Your book is very disturbing. Did she write it he in a similarly disturbing situation?
It is a book that has been with me for a long time, almost ten years since I had the initial idea. But one day Carmen, my partner, explained to me what the book was about. She told me: it goes from one person helping another. I understood that and I understood how to approach the writing of this story. During the pandemic we had to make two international transfers, from New York to Madrid and then to Buenos Aires, and in Spain and Argentina they reported us to the police. I think that’s seeping into the final pages of the book where there’s a kind of encapsulation of the trauma and that helped me think about what I wanted to write. The interesting thing was to see how one always needs someone to get ahead. Also, this is a novel about healing.
What disease had to be cured?
The disease of seclusion, of anguish, of thinking that one is responsible for a certain damage.
He said he had two complaints. Because?
Both in Spain and in Argentina they denounced us for… out of fear of the other. In a situation of confinement, a person who did not live there appeared and, instead of asking why someone new was coming, they denounced it.
All houses are called to surpass us in existence. We think we can own a house, but we will be in it temporarily. Although it is true that our type of life depends a lot on the house in which we live”
This book begins in a house and there are descriptions that are typical of architecture. Since you have written about architecture, I felt that perhaps this is the influence on this fact.
It is that for me architecture is more and more a character. In this case it is something very typical of the genre. Here there are ghosts and the houses are one more character. It seems that the house is similar to humans but, in reality, it is suprahuman. Because all houses are called to surpass us in existence. We think we can own a house, but we will be in it temporarily. Although it is true that our type of life depends a lot on the house in which we live. In this sense, the fantastic genre novel has understood that there is no good ghost story without a good house.
The house you describe is reminiscent of the setting in the movie. The others from Amenabar.
Well, this house is very different and the novel is also very different. Let’s say this is a ghost novel without ghosts. It seems to me that rationalist architecture is much more fantasmatic. The gothic house, the colonial house is more typical in ghost stories, but rationalist architecture, so simplified, is the perfect setting for a ghost, isn’t it?
The power of the book is based on the disturbing, right?
Yes. That is something that Jorge Luis Borges understood very well. But, well, we know that there has to be intrigue in this literary genre. He told you that I am a nomad and, therefore, I have inhabited many houses. Well, I think right now I’m a ghost in those houses.
The fear in the reader appears immediately that in the book you precisely name the fear.
Fear is also a fictional structure. There is nothing more effective to be afraid than to summon fear. Actually seeing a ghost may not be scary, but if you project the fear of your father dying, and you think about how you would cry and what you are going to do and so on, you feel fear. Your father hasn’t died yet, you still don’t have your dead father in front of you, but just thinking about it scares you.
Here it also seems that the house speaks.
It is an experience that we all live. We enter a house and feel the joy or sadness of the person who inhabits it or we see an oven and realize that a lot is cooked there. We can also have the intuition that something sinister or joyful has happened there. In other words: the house itself tells us; He speaks to us, as you say. It’s something like the karma of houses, isn’t it?
Are you aware that, as many say, you are already a great writer?
You never feel like that. In fact, this book has been so tortuous in its writing that there came a time when I felt unable to do it. It has been a tremendous learning experience, really. In other books I’ve had the feeling that I was doing it well, but now…now not so much, hahahaha.
I am interested in maintaining the enthusiasm for writing. At other times in my life it was to understand reality through literature. One advances and the reasons change, they adapt”
What matters most to you in your trade?
At this point in my life, enthusiasm. I am interested in maintaining the enthusiasm for writing. At other times in my life it was to understand reality through literature. One advances and the reasons keep changing, they keep adapting and… now I’m interested in enthusiasm.
And what are the readings that now help to maintain your enthusiasm?
Well, now I combine rereadings of classics with philosophical essays and contemporary Latin American literature. I am now reading the Divine Comedy. In the pandemic I read In Search of Lost Time. Latin American literature interests me because I feel that it is where life can be felt the most at this moment.
Names?
Well I will say only two: Felisberto Hernández, Uruguayan already deceased, and Carolina Sanín, new Colombian writer.
You remind me of Manuel de Lope.
Well… I haven’t read it. Maybe in college, but no.
In the epilogue of his book he says that he has written in a period of crisis. What crisis was it?
The writing crisis. I already told you: I had the feeling that I couldn’t handle this story. It seemed that he had no tools, style tricks, resources… That. But this writing thing is like judo: you have to use your opponent’s energy to win, right?