The publication of a new novel by Pedro Mairal, After the international event of “La Uruguaya”it is an important news in the editorial and literary world. Innumerable editions in diverse languages and a successful film, made it a rare phenomenon in these times of scarce readings.
The new book is called “The new” and separate 9 years from that unforgettable novel. In the middle, things happened. A book of poems (“pornonetes”) and three compilations of non -fiction text and stories (“evasion maneuvers”, “brief eternal loves” and “This story is no longer available”). In addition, for 5 years the writer settled in Uruguay with his family and, as he confesses, is quieter and more happy. “Buenos Aires is very close. When I miss, I come,” he tells news in a talk in which he talked about his latest book, his family of origin and the pain of being a teenager.
Because The “the new” characters are three middle -class guysisolated by the incommunication with their parents, who only find the support for adulthood. His suffering question the loneliness of each of the readers, children or parents, and reminds us how difficult it was to grow.
Here the best of the dialogue we had with Pedro Mairal.
News: What is it to write far from Buenos Aires?
Pedro Mairal: Emotionally you are not leaving Buenos Aires. As in Borges’s poem: “The streets of Buenos Aires/ are already my entrails.” It is always. I am literally.
News: “The new ones” is a very painful novel for the total misunderstanding of parents who cannot dialogue with the boys. Was there an intention on your part of showing this lack of communication?
Mairal: Yes, it is deliberate. And just as they are “the new”, young people; They are “the old.” It was deliberate to show that incommunication, that silence, something that is broken among generations.
News: oTro fact is that they are upper middle class parents who are much more concerned about what happens to their money and their social place than their children. Does any of this have to do with your own story?
Mairal: No, I had very present parents. And I couldn’t say that this is my relationship with my children. Yes it seems to me that there is some vulnerability in the three characters that I felt somehow. But I made myself listening in my family and they had no choice but to listen to me.
News: His father (Hecto Mairaral) is a very prestigious lawyer. Was there any idea in your family that you followed that professional path?
Mairal: Luckily my biggest sister picked up the law flag and that relieved a bit. There was a mandate to follow a traditional university career. Then I noted in medicine but failed before starting, in the basic cycle. Biology, chemistry, mathematics defeated me completely. This always tells this and is very shameful. I was still going to the Faculty, even though I was no longer studying. I went to the cafeteria to simulate that I was leaving home, because I was not encouraged to say that I had abandoned the race. It was horrible, I lived almost a year in that lie. Living inside a lie is a toxic thing. But the pot was uncovered because by a son of a mother’s friend who was going to me to mathematics, she discovered that I was not studying. The confrontation was ugly, the revelation of that lie. I wanted to study lyrics. But it was not a possible race in my house. At that time they were giving the movie “The Society of Dead Poets.” There is a boy who committed suicide because they don’t let him study theater. Then I told my old ones that they had to do with it. That was important for me. And they returned from the cinema, saying: You have to study what you want. A very tremendous psychopateada, but worked. And my old man told me something that I never forgot: “My father would have told me that it is a career for women, but I don’t tell you.” That was his phrase. I went to study lyrics and invented myself. There was no family figure in relation to art. That did not exist in my family. Art was the weekend hobby. He had a musician grandfather, another who painted, but on weekends.
News: Were they all lawyers in the family?
Mairal: No, just my old man. My paternal grandfather had made the diplomatic career and was ambassador. My other grandfather was a musician but very frustrated. The musical career never followed. He dedicated himself to ruin all the businesses he played. A very bitter guy.
News: And did the lyrics race end?
Mairal: No, because I won the Clarín novel award (with “One night with Sabrina Love”). He was 28 years old. Before giving the last three exams I won the prize. I gave a little classes as attached to the Chair of English Literature, but I was not interested in growing in the academic world. I was received with that award.
News: A prize like this in front of some parents who had doubts about their choice, is a great rematch.
Mairal: It was also a lot of silver. It was the “one by one.” The 50,000 pesos of the award were $ 50,000. That helped me start to start my life.
News: And now they are proud of you?
Mairal: Yes. Beyond family doubts, they were proud. Between proud and worried. It is a family where there are no artists, so the exhibition of art, the fact of using life and family anecdotes to write and expose you was always very disturbing. They respect me, they come to see me, they read me and tell me. The truth is that it ended up being something that they understood well and that support.
News: Do you keep making music?
Mairal: Last year we finished an album with Rafael Otegui, with the duo “I thought it was Friday.” The album is called “La Vidita.” It is already in Spotify and the theme that gives title to the album is a zamba that we write for the movie “The Uruguayan.” I play the guitar and compose songs. In “The New” there are three songs. And there is a QR code in the end that takes you to an essay of them three that I fabried with musicians. Somehow in this novel the musician and the writer intersect for the first time. It gives me a lot to say that I am a musician. Music is very present throughout the novel. And in fact it works for the characters with all that incommunication they have. Music is a kind of smuggling of emotions.
News: This book has a disturbing final message. “The new ones” are those who do not have “callus”, but life is going to make the “callus.” The suffering reaches everyone.
Mairal: That thought is the character of Pilar when he sees the painting “Adam and Eva” of Durero. He sees them so new, going out to the world. Adam and Eve are 18 or 19 years old. She feels reflected in them. He wants to take care of them, to warn them. They are getting into the world without knowing what this is. Penance, shame, mandates, different social spaces, differences, works are coming. The heartbreak comes. How to take care of them? It can’t be done. The new ones have to go into the world. You cannot avoid pain because pain is the only thing that makes you grow. It is a feeling of helplessness and very large lack of control. I was interested in putting the story in that place. Boys thrown into the world, leaving their homes, looking for a life and leading with these painful situations. In that sense, the book is Adanico, it is that departure from Eden in some way. Even if they have not had perfect childhoods.
News: One of its most notable virtues is the management of everyday language, without ever falling into excess.
Mairal: I think that also has to do a bit with generating some intimacy in language. Take care that language is accurate and expressive without going to a too literary and cultural place. Do not go to the last word that is used today because that ages immediately. There are expressions that the Spaniards, in correction, do not understand. It is a big topic. I write in the Castilian of the Río de la Plata. But they interpret some our expressions as an error. You have to defend your Spanish all the time. It is your mother tongue, in which you know how to convince, make laugh, even seduce, tell a joke, insult. And you write with that language. “The Uruguayan” was full of rioplatenses words, Argentinisms and it was understood the same. And people read it. Even that was part of its flavor. That gave me a good support.
News: The three characters bring the memory of that immense loneliness of adolescence.
Mairal: I went emotionally at that time. To that loneliness. I wanted to go to that place. I didn’t have a bad time, but I didn’t have a good time. Until I discovered literature, I discovered that the word was my house, my tool, my way of communicating. All of the above was an invertebrate anguish, without too much, I didn’t know who he was or what he was going to do. I felt that I did not fit in the world of adults. The literature that was salvation for me.
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