“Whether things come together and are successful does not depend only on desire or sacrifice or will. Chance and destiny also play a role, but once it happens, it is a great goal. And I can shout goal because I am where I want with those I want, I say no to most offers because I don’t need them, it sucks money for me,” he says. Hernan Casciari from his house in the countryside, he lives there and only comes to CABA on Fridays. Despite that, even my mother knows who Casciari is, “the one from ‘More respect that I am your mother’, the one from ‘The best heart attack of my life’, the writer who reads stories on the radio,” she says. We all know who the guy is who managed to tie together literature with the internet by creating the Orsai Editorial, Orsai Education and Orsai Audiovisualesresponsible, among other things, for “The death of a comedian”a film directed and starring Diego Peretti, produced by more than 10,000 partners who put in money, time, enthusiasm and trust. Hernán Casciari gives himself over to this talk that asks to be read aloud.
News: I read somewhere that the typewriter was his first toy. Are there people who don’t know the fascination that an Olivetti caused?
Hernán Casciari: It’s true. Look, I have the memory of having done all my primary school folders on a typewriter. I liked it so much that I went to school, took notes, but then I typed everything. Do you know what hobby he had? That of justifying the margin on the right, then, I think I found a way to look for synonyms so that the word was shorter or longer and in this way it could be cut into syllables without it being sawed on the other side. A ridiculous obsession, I know, but I had a lot of fun! (Series).
News: When they ask you for a tip for writing stories, you answer that to write you have to read. Some no longer even read Instagram posts. What do we do?
Casciari: Really, the first thing you have to do if you want to write is read; It is not a cliché. I have no advice or rules for people to read more, but when I discover that they no longer read, I look at what they are doing and I go to that place, with the aim of telling the same thing that I told in writing so that they continue to hear my voice in whatever way. I know that you have to read aloud so that they hear what they don’t read; that’s for sure.
News: Rescuing the oral tradition of telling a story requires capturing the attention of the listener. How do you catch that interest?
Casciari: First of all, it is necessary to make it not look like it has been read. If you start a story with that solemn voice of literature, everyone will go to hell! (laughs). It’s something that scares. If you start a story by saying: “You don’t know what happened to me yesterday”, with the colloquial tone of a barbecue after dinner, then you can insert a story by Borges, because that initial intonation leads the other to lower the guard of prejudice and you are already half way gained. I learned a lot on the radio, I wanted people not to leave the studio when I was reading and for that I understood how important it was to edit my own material, to find the tone and also to use certain connectors.
News: What are they?
Casciari: Football and laughter, for example. When I write stories and put football in the middle, I realize that many people begin to get hooked not on the story but on football; You also talk about other things, but that is the entry. The same thing happens with laughter, it connects you immediately and then you can take the reader into a depth that was not anticipated. I understand that the reader, the listener, the viewer, the user are distracted people who have a lot of stimuli at the same time while I am talking to them.
News: You were very well positioned writing in prestigious print media such as the newspaper El País and publishing your books in traditional publishers until one day you broke with that. Did the turning point have to do with being encouraged to create your own format?
Casciari: Yes, more than encouraging me, I think I was lucky to find it without looking for it, because at that time very few people talked about community and I was fortunate to build one. I am referring to a group of people who freely and without having a gun put in their heads came to my blog to look for stories that I published for free without expecting any change, which generated for years an enormous flow of people who began to arrive and consume what I made. And one day I realized that I was more interested in that than what the traditional companies I was already in were giving me.
News: You have said that since you were a child your dream was to write for El País. When you achieved it, was it a “be careful what you dream about, it can become a reality”?
Casciari: El País was an extraordinary newspaper, not so much in recent years, when it began to decline for various reasons. The thing is that I lived in Barcelona, I wrote in El País, I did a weekly column here in La Nación and at the same time I published things in big publishing houses, but I realized that it wasn’t that way. Because on that side I was very bored, plus they gave me shit and did other things like that. Sometimes there is no choice but to stay in those places, but since I had a community, I began to fantasize about generating media that would help me publish my books or produce other things. This is how the Orsai publishing house was first born, then Orsai Audiovisuales and Orsai Educación, everything arose from the need to be able to have fun without breaking my balls (laughs).
News: I read that as a child he really liked detective novels, maybe that’s where the text comes from searching all the time. If you were a detective, what mystery would you like to solve?
Casciari: I would very much like to solve the mysteries of Argentine society. Mysteries that for most of us are absolutely dark, finding the answer to that big question of why what happens to us happens to us. All these things that have to do with what happened in the last elections… which is so similar to what happened in the previous ones, which were already very similar to those that preceded them. I would like to reveal why we live with this feeling that it is always the same. Understand why such an absolutely spectacular and privileged place has such a reward. I’m not looking for a petty answer nor do I accept little answers about current politics, I’m asking this seriously and I want to get to the bottom of it. Is it because of the quantity and quality of immigration we receive? Is it true that when Perón arrives everything rots or maybe when Perón arrives everything is better and… then when does it rot? I don’t want to get to the result that my ideology aims for but to the great answer of truth. If instead of being a writer of nonsense I had studied, perhaps I would have solved the mystery! (laughs)
News: “More respect that I am your mother” was already a blog, a film with Florencia Peña and Diego Peretti and an emblematic play starring Antonio Gasalla. Now your real mother, Chichita, does a show with you on Paseo La Plaza. Was it strange to see a legendary figure like Gasalla and feel like there was something of your mom there?
Casciari: Look, when I transfer the rights to a material for me, the original work left and it is something else, I have to let it go. I knew Gasalla very little, I think I saw him only four times in my life because just when the play was being worked on I did not live in Argentina. But Antonio’s departure hit me a lot, not so much as a co-worker or as a partner in a project, but especially as a spectator. He is a person I admired since I was little. When democracy began, I was 11 years old. I think that was the first time I heard about him and very quickly he started on television. I remember watching his program on ATC and it was tremendously disruptive with respect to other humorous things that were happening on TV at that time. The whole underground was there, Urdapilleta, Tortonese, Daniel Aráoz, Vero Llinás, Juana Molina… much later, in perspective, we understood the magnitude of that marvel that Gasalla had done.
