It is difficult to tell what they deal with The Tales of “The Good Evil”, the last book by Samanta Schweblin. There is a man who receives mute calls in the middle of the night, a woman who wants to kill himself but discovers that violence is a way to get anguish away, two girls who wear and comb a poet against his will and a cat that reveals his true face from the other end of the planet. As in your previous books – “Rescue distance”, “Seven empty houses”, “Birds in La Boca” and Kentuckis “-The things happen, on the one hand, in a tangible reality and, on the other, in an interiority where fears, ghosts and demons coexist. The danger is always present but sometimes the characters find a thin path that leads to some form of salvation.
His stories have turned Samanta Schweblin into one of our most read writers, inside and outside Argentina. The list of its awards is very long and your books have been translated into forty languages. His novels were nominated for International Booker (One of the most prestigious literary awards in the world) and “The New Yorker” and “The Paris Review” have published their stories. Some of his stories were transferred to cinema and theater.
He has lived for years in the city of Berlin but spends long seasons in Argentina, in Lake Puelo (Chubut)where his family resides. “It is a relationship and a very different Argentine thinking than I had when I lived in Buenos Aires,” he explains later, in this note.
How he writes, why parents and children always occupy the center of their stories and how it affects the pain of their characters, are some of the questions that answered news. Here your answers.
News: 10 years ago he did not publish a storybook and spent 7 since his last novel. For the speed with which the editorial industry is handled today, its times seem very slow.
Samanta Schweblin: The writing of “The Good Evil” was a process of about three years. I wrote the first story at the end of 2021, with which I open the book. In my experience so far, each story takes me about four or five months of work. But it is only an average, in reality it can happen that I work several stories in parallel, stopping for periods of time in one or the other. Or suddenly I write one of a pull, as happened with “William in the window”or I got in some who need a deeper immersion period, such as “The Atlantis woman”which ended up occupying more than a year of work. It may be uniforms in the book in its extension, but with each one I liba very different battles. The book was over more than a year ago, but even delivered the manuscript already to the publisher, I like to continue editing and rewriting with the impressions and feedbacks of my editors and the readings of friends. I see no need to hurry to publish and I like to release the material when I feel safe to do it.
News: sorS Books have received very important awards everywhere in the world. It is one of the best known Argentine writers outside the country. Does it weigh or no matter that recognition when writing?
Schweblin: I try to leave the weight of those things about books. Sometimes the expectations, especially those of the closest people, make me nervous when starting new projects, but it is something that in any case happens very at the beginning, because once one is already fully involved in a new story, the head is in something else. I am thinking of arguments, rhythm, atmosphere, meaning, attention, each new project is a long and entertaining career that I do with pleasure and that I play only if I feel that it is working. And if it is really working, all these ghosts for which you ask are very, very far from the desk.
NEWS: How is your relationship with Argentina today?
Schweblin: Very close. Argentina is still the family, friends, home, much of the literature that I read and admire. It is true that I spend little in Buenos Aires, but I usually stay several months a year at Lake Puelo, Chubut, where my family lives. I really like that life in the Andean region. There is a force, and even a senselessness, in that more community life, more connected to nature, which immediately puts me to write. It is a relationship and a very different Argentine thinking than I had when I lived in Buenos Aires.
NEWS: Why the title “The Good Evil”?
Schweblin: I wrote this book thinking about what kind of forces they command us. I mean invisible forces, how much certain fears, or denials, or mandates, so many stories that may not be true but define us are conditioned. How much are we what we are without having chosen it? And what forces would then be the ones that put these trends in check. And if a bad force, or perhaps not bad, but dark, or unknown, or resistance to these trends or allow us to disposure, would it then be good or bad? From all of this the idea of the title began to be born.
NEWS: In this book, as in previous ones, the boys are protagonists. Its fragility can unleash a disaster. Why are the center of history?
Schweblin: More I move away from those years of childhood, I have more curiosity for those worlds. I remember having been very fragile and vulnerable, and yet having had some things, from instinct and common sense, both clearer than now. As if I had a type of wisdom that came with me from another place, and from which I now feel more disconnected. That has the characters of that age for me. Especially the hurt boys or those who are very alone, as if a radar and an intuition were turned on in them that sometimes knows more than that of an adult.
News: anguish of the loss, of death, of what we no longer have it is installed in the stories. All characters live situations close to death. How did he face that pain while writing it?
Schweblin: This type of writing can be mobilizing, but it is not painful. The pain passes, one is a bit like a medium. It sounds like a mystical but I think it is something much more practical and concrete. I take care with my own fears and discomfort, and it is precisely to find an idea, an argument, a character, who is able to put those energies in motion and move them somewhere else, which makes me get to take them out. It is almost a release. I write to understand a little more how much things can hurt, and why, and leave these pesos behind.
NEWS: The relationship between parents and children is also central in the book. From the man who sees his father through the glass in “The Superior makes a visit”, to the Son who without words communicates with his in “The eye in the throat.” Why do you think these relationships are so present in your texts?
Schweblin: Well, it is true that not all are fathers or mothers, but we are all sons or daughters of someone. Even if they are not present, this is the relationship that weighs and marks the most, and has a burden that can be as healer as a destructive. Of all relationships, it is the first, and it is the one that means us throughout a lifetime. I do not have a particular question or a conscious interest about this relationship, but I realize to what extent he plays in one way or another all my stories. Perhaps it is simply that it is part of who we are, and what we are, and why are we here, they are two questions that I have always lit when I write.
NEWS: What was the most surprising thing that appeared, without looking for it, in the writing of the book?
Schweblin: From the formal, the particular narrator of “the eye in the throat.” It was hard for me to understand it, see the logic of its limits and why I needed to tell this story from that place, but when I finally understood it was a great discovery, I really enjoyed the writing of that text. Then, at the thematic level, although my fiction is not autobiographical, I am impressed to see so many details of them everywhere in this book.
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