Can writing westerns in the 21st century? Is it possible to create interesting stories within a genre so successful in the past, with unforgettable heroes and villains? And even more,You can tell a story of the American West if you were born in Europea century and a half after the events that he narrates and writes in Spanish?
Jon Bilbao’s books are proof that the western is alive and resurrected in Spain. Very recently, the writer visited Buenos Aires, invited by the International Literature Festival, FILBAand many readers who did not know his books had the opportunity to discover them.
Born in Asturias, he lives in the city that bears his surname. As a curious fact, he studied two careers, in principle, incompatible: Mining Engineering and English Philology. But the second was definitive because almost his entire life was dedicated to literature as an author and translator.
He had already written several books of short stories and novels when he was tempted to experiment with a genre that he had loved since his childhood, when he was still the adventures of Lieutenant Blueberry, in the French comic created by Jean Giraud and Jean-Michel Charlier. “I wanted to see how I felt writing a Western. Because one thing is what you enjoy reading and another thing is what you enjoy writing. It could happen that I felt ridiculous. But I wrote the first story and I felt good.”
The result was a trilogy already completed, with a central character, John Dunbar. The books are “Basilisco”, “Spider” and “Monster Killer” (Impedimenta). In them, stories alternate between the past of the West and the present in Spain, with another protagonist who functions as an alter ego. “I used that formula because I didn’t want the western to be seen as something isolated from the rest of my work, as an eccentricity, as a passing whim, as an inconsequential diversion. I wanted it to connect with what I had written before thematically. That’s why I also resorted to a character who had already appeared in several previous stories, who had certain biographical coincidences with me, a kind of alter ego that seemed to me who could function as a master of ceremonies.”
The two, John and Jon, embark on their own daily adventures, one in the hostile desert of the United States and the other, in his own Spanish home struggling with his own reality as an overwhelmed father and conflicted husband.
Far and near
The experiment worked in such a way that not only did Bilbao not lose readers in this change of direction, but on the contrary, it added copies sold and good reviews. There were only a couple of issues that worried him. The traditional western was a very masculine genrewhich told stories between men. This fact impoverished the narratives from a current point of view, which is why Bilbao decided to give diversity to the cast of characters.
Another point in question was a certain inner immobility in the most typical heroes. The central protagonist of the traditional Western always appeared the same as himself without any evolution. “I wanted to start from an archetype that practically bordered on abstraction. A very physical character, very little verbal and not at all cerebral, who thanks to the experiences he goes through and the people he comes into contact with, gains nuances. He becomes more complex, ambiguous, earthly, fallible. And that journey has been very interesting to me. That was the arc I wanted to give to the character of John Dunbar.”
As the stories multiplied, Bilbao felt the need to investigate the historical context of the genre. Because it was a close time, he found great archival material, from written documents to photographs, press and testimonies. But what he discovered in that search was disturbing. “What comes to mind for all of us when thinking about the Western genre: the landscapes, situations, characters, outfits, violence; it did not exist. They are narrative constructs basically created through the strategy of exaggerating and generalizing very specific events. People did not dress as we think, weapons did not make the noise we think, the use of violence was not so everyday and the houses inside were different,” he explains.
So the stories of fighting against indigenous tribes, gold diggers, opportunists and settlers did not exist? “Yes, but what keeps the genre alive is something else: the symbol of the border. The border not so much as a physical space, that is, a geographical strip that moves from east to west; but as a symbolic space. If you were not satisfied with the cards that life had dealt you, you went to the border. If you wanted to reinvent yourself, you went to the border. If you wanted to escape from something, you went to the border. If you wanted to make your fortune, you went to the border. When the geographic border disappears, what do you do? That border is a symbolic space, we have to look for it in other places.”
According to him, the western will never die because its essence is still much more alive than we believe. We see examples of the genre every day in film and television, even if they take place in another time and place. “Many of these stories take place in the future. Characters faced with a powerfully new and hostile environment, places where physical solutions are necessary. Science fiction has often offered us rewritings of typical Western narratives.”he explains.
eternal west
He says that his passion for the genre was not born in cinema, like most fans, but thanks to comics, which had great authors in Europe, in Italy, France and Spain.
But John Ford, the famous American director of films such as “Stagecoach” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” He is one of the ones he admires the most.
“I think that watching John Ford films makes you a better person. Ideologically, you may not agree one hundred percent with them, but they were narratives free of cynicism. Freeing your characters from cynicism already puts them on a higher level. I would like people to behave like characters in John Ford films. We would live in a better world.”
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