just posted a new book and to debut as brand new visual artist. William Saccomannoat 74, lives a very special year, which began in April in the book Fair, when he kicked the board in the opening speech and accused everyone present of contributing to the status quo of capitalism. The long outburst for which he demanded payment of decent fees, caused much talk in the media and literary meetings and aroused praise and heated criticism alike.
The writer, one of the most notable of the Argentine literature, began his career as a comic book writer and also wrote advertising. In 1984, he edited his first novel “Blood Spitting Forbidden”. With “The Clerk”one of his most famous texts, won the Biblioteca Breve Seix Barral Award and for “Gesell Camera”the Dashiell Hammett.
He lives between Buenos Aires and Villa Gessell, the city that he shared with Juan Forn and that he felt empty when he died in 2021.
His latest book is called “wait for a wave” (Planeta) and the sample of drawings and paintings that it exposes until the end of December, “Without words”. Of his recent works and his relationship with writing, money, peronism and the world in crisis, Sacomanno spoke with NOTICIAS, in a long talk in Buenos Aires.
News: One of the texts of “Expect a wave” refers to the omnipresence of money. This was also one of the axes of his speech at the Book Fair.
Guillermo Saccomanno: It is that what we writers do is inserted in the market and nobody is outside the surplus value system, not even the poet who has to pay for his own edition. I live off subsidies. I am lucky to have won the National Novel Award, which is a monthly subsidy; and won two municipal awards. The first is also a subsidy for life and I have retirement. So I’m gathering from there and also from some collaborations with the media, but a writer doesn’t live from his own literature. This is one of the few countries in the world where there is a subsidy for writers. In that sense, Argentina is advanced. In any case, I ended the speech at the Fair with an idea from John Berger who says: “I write with hope in my teeth”. Ours is a job and it is art, and art is there to find an interpretation or transform reality. Art cannot be separated from life.
News: Why did you choose to rededicate this book to Juan Forn?
Saccomanno: It is that Juan is no longer (N. de la R.: died in 2021), but he is there all the time. His death was a disaster for me, he was a brother, we had lived a long time. We had been friends. We had quarreled, we had reconciled. It was a family relationship.
News: You say that you went to live in Villa Gesell to “clean yourself” of what?
Saccomanno: I used to work in advertising and when I left advertising I made a very radical decision: I stopped taking pills and medications and sucking. I lowered the level of alcohol consumption. Advertising is a very toxic environment. I lived with a bottle of vodka in a desk drawer.
News: Her father is a very strong figure in her life.
Saccomanno: My old man was a fiction writer, he was a playwright, a journalist -among his many jobs-, he was a union member, persecuted. We experienced political persecution at home at the time of Peronism and post Peronism, because he was a union member and a socialist. I grew up between militancy, politics and action; at home there were weapons. Sometimes my old man didn’t come to sleep. I remember that once he took me on a trip to the interior, to Rosario, and they kidnapped him. He went three days without appearing while I was in a little ranch on the banks of the Paraná. My old man had been a very profound anti-Peronist and after the revolution of ’55 he totally changed his perspective. After the bombing, after the executions, he approached Peronism. I began to be a soldier at the age of 15 in Trotskyism, in what is now the Partido Obrero, which at that time was Politica Obrera. I grew up between books and politics, I can’t separate one thing from another, I can’t separate literature from politics.
News: And where was Trotskyism?
Saccomanno: I come from Marxism, I am a Marxist, but I am not a gorilla and this is what lends itself to confusion, that many think I am a Peronist, because I am not a gorilla. But to Peronism we must recognize the resistance, social justice, economic justice.
News: The theme of old age is very present in “Expect a wave”. Is it an issue that worries you?
Saccomanno: It worries me because the passing of the years worries you. I am 74, I may not look like it, but I am. The passage of time and memory mark you. When I wrote this book, the first project was to write 100 happy stories, because happiness consists in writing and in nothing else. As I went along I realized that the meaning of what I was writing was eluding me. And this is the best thing that can happen to you, not knowing very well what you are doing. I believe that deep down one writes to find out who one is.
News: There are certain speeches circulating that claim the dictatorship. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Saccomanno: They always were. The dictatorship would not have occurred without the complicity of the political parties. Do not forget that it was not long before the fall of Isabel. Here, what becomes necessary is to question Peronism and Perón, which no one dares to do. This has to do with verticality and not with horizontality, social conquests are one thing when they are given to you and another thing when you fought for them. Peronism only became insurgent and resistant after ’55. That is when Peronism becomes revolutionary. The gorillas were always there, the military coup of ’76 took place with the support of a very important sector of Argentine society. There is a phrase from Tzvetan Todorov that says: “A country that has had concentration camps, has a heart eaten by worms.” Fascism never went away. A country that had concentration camps has to take charge of the civil complicity that has been very great. I believe that we still haven’t gotten rid of the dictatorship. Also, what democracy is this where we have to take care of a foreign debt that neither you nor I, nor your grandparents, nor my grandparents, nor my children contracted. So I think you have to review everything. Because while we are arguing about “los copitos” Sergio Massa’s reforms are tremendous.
News: In this context, what is the role of intellectuals
Saccomanno: For me, the independence of the intellectual is important. I think that the intellectual who grabs a position, is thunderous. One must maintain independence, but intellectual independence does not imply not having a position taken in the face of reality.
News: Fogwill credited working in advertising with great training. Do you feel something similar?
Saccomanno: Yes, just like the world of comics, which is where I’ve also been. These genres give you an experience, they make you lose your fear of the blank page. The issue is to what extent writing puts you in tension with the world you live in, because if you don’t question yourself, why do you write in a world where things aren’t right?
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