It is one of the most successful cultural podcasts in the Spanish-speaking world. It is called “Great Unfortunates” and each of its chapters is dedicated to narrating the life of a famous writer. Or more accurately, the tormented existence that hides behind some of the greatest literary works of the last century.
Its author and presenter is Javier Peña, writer and journalist born in Galiciaauthor of the novels “Infelices”, “Agnes” and “Invisible Ink”. The project was born when Peña proposed to his publishing label, Blackie Books, to create a podcast about authors whose turbulent lives had strongly influenced their books. The publisher accepted the idea and the experiment was a success. Today it has engravings 31 45-minute chapters, dedicated to the most diverse writers, from Franz Kafka to Salman Rushdie and from Fernando Pessoa to Roberto Bolañowith an audience on Spotify estimated at 250,000 listeners.
Javier Peña spoke about tortured writers, consumerist readers and consecrated books in this interview with NOTICIAS.
News: Most of the chapters of his podcast are dedicated to classic authors. Do you also read the literature that is produced today?
Xavier Grief: Since I have been working on the podcast for 4 years and my book,Invisible ink”, where I also tell stories of writers, I practically don’t read news. Although a fact that catches my attention is that the market itself today rescues writers from other times. For me, a very particular case is that of Stefan Zweig. When I was a child, my parents had books by him in the library and it already seemed like an antique to me. Nobody read it. But he came back with great force. Maybe because it fits with what is done now: short, fairly direct books, a mix of essays and fiction. It impossible is that “War and Peace” becomes “mainstream” againbecause it is very long. It requires at least two months of reading and people want something they can read in two days to say, “I read 253 books.”
News: It’s a shame that those great authors are no longer read.
Grief: Since those authors are not read, those novels are not written. In many novels today I see an Instagram post, a little longer. Without depth, just with a certain skill in the way of expression, some play on words. It is very difficult to read those types of novels and then write “War and Peace.” You write what you read. And you have to read well.
News: How do you prepare each chapter of your podcast?
Grief: At the very least I read a long biography. For example, for the episode Fernando Pessoa (he is one of my favorite authors) I read a very good biography of Richard Zenith, which has more than 1000 pages. It was so complete that it gave me practically all the material for the episode. But, for Roberto Bolaño I did not have a biography like that. So I looked for information in interviews and autobiographical texts. Preparing that chapter took me much longer.
Nnews: You impose your gaze on that material. For example, in the chapter dedicated to Sylvia Plath, she also tells what happened to Ted Hughes’ next wife, her husband, who also committed suicide. As if to highlight that Hughes was a really complicated guy.
Grief: Ted Hughes is indefensible, but at the same time I wonder if he was bad or a product of his time: a macho man facing two women with a lot of personality, a lot of character and a lot of problems. Sylvia Plath had mental problems before meeting him. She had been hospitalized and you They had given electroshocks. Was a very complicated person. Like Alejandra Pizarnik, for example. And the people around them didn’t help them either. For example, when I devoted myself to Kafka, I discovered a very particular fact. In the company where he worked he was highly valued. He never showed anyone his texts, but he was very proud of the company yearbook, in which he collaborated by writing 20 pages. When he made a terrible review of a writer at his request, he then wrote to him saying: “Well, excuse me, if you want to make it up to you, I’ll send you my company’s yearbook that I wrote.” It seemed so naive to me. Who the hell wants an insurance company’s yearbook? Kafka had a distorted image of himself, much worse than he was. He is a character that fascinates me. The patron saint of the great unfortunates.
News: How long does it take you to produce each episode?
Grief: One month per episode. And more and more. I do it at my house. It’s something completely homemade. The publisher pays me to do it and pays me more and more, but it is still very unprofitable. I have sometimes considered doing it for a fee, a very small payment, a dollar per season or something like that. But in the end I know that’s going to stop a lot of people from listening to it. And I’m interested in visibility. The podcast has allowed me to make the leap to Latin America. My last book, “Invisible Ink”, was published also here.
Nnews: Many writers’ stories also appear in that novel, similar to those in the podcast.
Grief: For me it is a joint project. Even now we are thinking about expanding it and doing a live show, which has to do with this idea of the lives of writers crossing our lives. For example, as I tell in the book, my parents’ library had a great influence on me. Since I was born late and they weren’t expecting me, they put me in a room that was the living room and there was the library of the house. Then, I would wake up, my parents would take a while to come pick me up, and I would learn the entire library by heart. TOthere was “The Exorcist”, “The Third Eye”, Stefan Zweig and Knut Hamsun. For this reason, I am more interested in literature that has survived than in current literature, which is 99% disposable. I can give a billion thoughts to “The Trial”, “The Castle” or “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka. But you read most of today’s books and forget them. Sometimes I wonder if with this idea of rapid consumption we are going to be able to generate a literary and intellectual corpus that lasts. When there are 100 new items a week, journalists are not able to read them to recommend them and neither are booksellers. So, people choose from those 100. I choose this one and this person chooses this other one. Which does not generate conversation. And I think the important thing in literature is that it generates conversation. But if everyone reads a different book, what are we going to talk about? It is very good that everyone has the opportunity to publish, but in the end we do not generate culture. Because for me there is culture means there is conversation, it is not just publishing books that no one reads.
Nnews: Do you care about listener feedback?
Grief: I try to get away from that a little bit. In the past, a writer wrote his book and the cultural magazines or newspapers did their reviews, their criticism, and that’s it. Now writers are exposed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to someone on social networks telling us: “This is bullshit.” I want to protect myself a little from this.
Nnews: Who are the Argentine authors that make up the podcast?
Peña: Alejandra Pizarnik, Horacio Quiroga (although the Uruguayans are going to kill me for saying this) and Jorge Luis Borges. I also did a special on cities that includes Buenos Aires. And I chose to talk about Borges in relation to Buenos Aires. With fear, because he is a very studied figure. When I play a Hispanic American writer I am always more afraid. I know that if I play Sylvia Plath, her daughter will not listen to me, but if I play Roberto Bolaño it is possible that her children will listen to me. For example, I know that the Elena Garro episode, the defenders of Octavio Paz, did not like it. In that episode I tell that Oriana Fallaci was wounded in Tlatelolco, the place where the massacre of students in 1968 took place. That is the type of data that interests me. When I’m researching to write a script, I try to find things like that. And I say to myself: “If it fascinated me, there must be people who are fascinated.”
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