George Assisi it has a fluid relationship with everything esoteric. She says it, you know, and in case there are still any doubts, there is a rosary resting on the keyboard of his computer. The journalist and writer is sitting behind both of them, listening to classical music, while he narrates the benefits of the office that he recently opened in downtown Buenos Aires. Not only because he has fun watching the couples come and go from the temporary shelter that he has right in front of his desk, but because he can now hang out with his sources without breaking a sweat. “Before I would sit in a bar or in a hotel to talk to someone and they would look at us, or come to say hello. Besides, I need to lock myself up to write, my literature has to be almost secret”, he says, while he adjusts his classic mustache to pose for the NEWS lens. Behind her appears, silhouetted by her figure, a gigantograph of New York on the wall, a gift left for her by the unknown previous owner of the place.
But Assisi’s relationship with the supernatural world reaches its peak when it comes to literature. When he tells it, it seems that he wants to make a joke, but the piercing sound of a drill breaks down any skepticism. It is that every time the journalist mentions the title of “Boiled churrasquitos, crispy bills”, his 40th book published by Editorial Sudamericana, comes from the top floor the penetrating sound of the machine. It is not the only detail. The day the posters of his latest work reached the walls of the city, Assisi had two problems: a minor accident, which left him with an immobilized arm for four weeks, and his bank account was hacked. He says that it is a tradition -a curse?- that he has dragged on almost since it came out in 1980 “Flowers stolen in the gardens of Quilmes”, one of his first books, which was a classic for portraying the Argentina of the dictatorship.
George Assisi: I have a complex relationship with the world of literature. When I was an ambassador (ndr: in the Menem government, in Portugal and later in UNESCO) literature was a nuisance for me. How can it be that “Monsieur l’ambassadeur” withdrew his circulation books from Argentina? Literature was never easy for me, which generated a conflictive relationship with the big media (ed: because of his book on the Clarín newspaper, “Diario de la Argentina”). In the last section of my book “Memorias Distorted”, in 2017, I could not enter a bookstore, something always happened to me. There was also something that I always wrote desperately, I always thought I was going to die young. So I wrote desperately because I wanted to tell absolutely everything. Luckily I didn’t die a cucumber and I continued with other new things.
News: And if you know that it is complex for you, why keep insisting?
George Assisi: Why? Because if. Because it’s my thing, because it’s always been that way.
Present. assisi he turned 76 in early March. “When you turn 75 it seems like you’re at the end of the stretch, but I say, we’re going to start a whole new stretch,” she says. The day he turned three-quarters of a century was when he moved into his new office. The moment he arrived he began to write the book he has just published, in which he recounts, for the first time, everything he saw and knows about the last 30 years of national politics, but in the key of a novel (see box ).
Asís keeps its digital portal active, and is attentive to the political reality. In recent days he has been following the enthronement of Sergio Massa or, as he calls him, “El Profesional”, one of the many political nicknames that he gave throughout his career and that were attached to the popular imagination.
Assisi: The advisable thing would be not to cling to Massa, nor to treat him as a providential man: he has the right to fail calmly, as any other fails. But he is the ideal age for power, 50 years old, he has contacts, he has his own agenda. But his recognized ability contrasts with the deplorable image in the polls. However, according to our possibly erroneous assessment, when power is at stake the question of polling is relative. The Government has only the last bullet left.
News: How is CFK in this scenario?
Assisi: With the political change that is being seen in Latin America, What can the Doctor think now? He thinks that the Latin Americanist wave is coming again. If Lula is going to be a candidate at 78 years old, she, who is going to turn 70, why wouldn’t she be a candidate? Especially if in her space there is no one who handles the number of her votes. But both she and Alberto and Massa need her government to solve some problem. But Argentina is going to recompose itself, as always happened. This country cannot go to hell.
new book “Boiled steaks, crispy bills. The novel of power, is the title of the latest book by Jorge Asís, published by Editorial Sudamericana. It is a novel that borders on reality -or the other way around- in which the history of Peronism is narrated from its genesis to the present, with a strong emphasis on Menemism and Kirchnerism. It is a journey to the depths of power in recent decades, of which the journalist was a privileged witness.
Assisi: It is not a novel to be silenced as happened with others, it is a novel that is sustained because it seems to me that there is an attempt to understand something or other. This is not a book that has to do only with Argentina and its last years, but with the politics of power, with the problems of power. That is what I try to tell through these characters (Ivan Smirack, a Patagonian governor married to Soraya, or the Turkish President Omar Masud, to name a few). This is a good time to read this book.
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