Horacio Convertini: “The figure of the tortured writer does not fit with me”

2024-05-11 13:34:00

“It is a story of betrayals, of lost loves, of frustrated dreams, of people looking for impossible redemptions,” is how the writer defines Horacio Convertini to his latest novel. “The accuracy of pain” It is the tragic story of the life of a boxer, Ray, who made all the wrong decisions; and that of his coach, “Rengo” Zafe, who left his only hope in the hands of the wrong man.

Horacio Convertini (62), a long-time journalist – he was editor of the police section of the newspaper Clarín and today he is responsible for the Viva supplement -, He is one of the fundamental writers of crime novels in Argentina.whose novels and story books have been awarded here and in Spain.

In recent years, he has devoted more and more time to screenwriting. In his production, two series stand out, created by the duo of Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat for Disney, “El galán” and “Whatever, whenever”, made in Mexico in Brazil.

““The accuracy of pain” is temporally located between the ’70s and ’90s.. Through this story, Convertini returns to the universe of Pompeii, his neighborhood, hotbed of boxers and territory of a sport that was a passion and today goes almost unnoticed in Argentina. With the tragic future of so many men who lost their opportunities in the ring, Rayo’s story tells with beauty and nostalgia, the fall of a fighter whose battles were already lost beforehand.

NEWS: “The Accuracy of Pain” has something of another time in terms of the place boxing occupied in popular culture. And it also recreates the atmosphere of the most traditional crime novel.

Converts: I like to tell stories set in the ’90s because it is the last analog decade, without internet or cell phones. That historical era is very important for crime novels. Characters can get lost, invent a story. Like “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (Netflix) by Patricia Highsmith. And boxing is a topic of crime novels. One of the founding stories of the genre in North America is “The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway, which is from 1927. There it tells the story of two mafia thugs who go to kill a boxer. The story does not say the cause, but upon investigation I found out that Hemingway had written that story based on a real case. The Chicago mafia had ordered a Swedish heavyweight boxer to be killed because he had not respected the order to lose a fight. In crime novels there is no justice, the police do not exist, there are no astute detectives. There is nothing, just a society in decay and a situation managed by the concrete violence of those who hold alternative powers.

NEWS: What did you like about the character of Rayo?

Converts: In several stories I wandered around boxing because it is a space that narratively interests me and because, furthermore, it is a sport that was part of my sentimental education. I was born in 1961. When I was a child, the world champions were celebrities. They were magazine covers. Some, the most handsome, like Monzón; They entered the jet set. They occupied a place of social respectability and, furthermore, they embodied some type of ethics. I was born in Pompeii, which was also a neighborhood closely identified with boxing. Four blocks from my house lived Alfredo Prada, who had been Gatica’s great rival. Gatica came to get married in the church of Pompeii, precisely because it was Prada’s territory. My dad told me that he and the boys from Unidos de Pompeya went outside the church to do a bit of barding, to defend the honor of the neighborhood. An Argentine champion, Jorge Fernández, was the husband of the baker of the tour. In the tenement that was 20 meters from my house lived a boxer for whom we all predicted a great future and who always ran by and greeted my mother and my aunt who were sweeping. We imagined that he was going to be the champion of the neighborhood but in the end he was not. In my adolescence, I stopped at Unidos de Pompeya, a neighborhood club, a boxing club, where every day I saw the kids training. On Saturdays and Sundays when no one was training, I would go into the ring to pretend I was a boxer.

NEWS: Have you never boxed?
Converts: Impossible. It weighed 40 kilos wet. Even today I have small hands. I am not a man suitable for physical violence. But I liked that epic. In 1976 “Rocky” was released. I saw it every time I could, in the movies and on television too. That was building in me the desire to write about boxing. I had written some stories, for example, in my first book of stories, “Those Who Are Outside.” There is a story there called “The Visit” which is an alternative vision of “Torito” by Cortázar. In this story, Cortazar reflects in a wonderful way the common sense that had been formed at the time with the death of Justo Suárez, the first Argentine boxing idol. Journalistically, I did a profile of Justo Suárez in a magazine where he worked. But he had never written a boxing novel and he wanted to do it. I started working on it with “Winter Quarters” by Osvaldo Soriano as a reference. The fictional town of Soriano, Colonia Vela, even appears, mentioned in the novel. “The accuracy of pain” is having the tools of the crime novel, which are very noble tools, the parable of a loser.

NEWS: Who was the boxer you liked the most throughout your life?

Convertini: As a child I really liked Muhammad Ali. Monsoon too. And Saldaño, who was also called Horacio, which generated more empathy in me. They called him “the Tucumán Panther.” I think I only saw him fight once on television, but it could be an implanted memory, a false memory. When he fought and lost against “Mantequilla” Nápoles for the title. But I clearly remember listening to Saldaño’s brave fights on the radio, on Saturday nights, from Luna Park.

NEWS: Are you still watching boxing today?

Converts: I’m a little disconnected because it is an activity that has become atomized and I can’t understand who is who in this game. For example, I know that in a few weeks Tyson Fury, the world heavyweight champion, a Briton, is going to fight. Since I found him, I want to see his fights. He is a character: the son of gypsies, from a family of bare-knuckle fighters. He himself was a bare-knuckle fighter. He does not have the physique of a great boxer, however, he has beaten the best of his generation. He sings when he breaks up fights.

NEWS: Do you worry about whether your books will succeed or fail?

Converts: I try not to think because that can do two things to you. On the one hand, if you verify that you are doing very well, say “well, now I have to do another novel about boxers.” And if things go badly for you, think “I would have to change gender.” So, on one side or the other you are conditioned, either by success or by insufficient sales. And literature is for me a place of absolute freedom. Furthermore, in Argentina it is very difficult to think of yourself exclusively as a writer. I am a big person who has traveled different paths, so those types of fantasies don’t last long. Literature gives me enormous joy. The figure of the tortured writer does not fit with me.

NEWS: How do you feel as a journalist about the profession today?

Converts: Like a player who has had the rules of the sport he plays changed and who is in a process of surprise, disorientation and search to find his space within the changes he is seeing.

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