{P.Nco notes: updating translation as I can; choppy just now}
{Legal: This translation is declared erroneous by its creator. See notes throughout. Do not transfer, or refer any portion except the URL. This posting includes subject matter on Fernando Sorrentinos right-to-use policy.}
A CONVERSATION (VIA MAIL) WITH FERNANDO SORRENTINO
by Jorge Oscar Rossi
{Spanish: sololiteratura.com/sorren...acion.htm}
{This interview was prepared for the online magazine, Quinta Dimension, (www.quintadimension.com)} {No date found yet}.
He confesses that he likes more to read than to write. Also he says that "according to the worthy men of faith, in my fiction there is a peculiar mixture of fantasy and humor that runs in a grotesque and always likely frame sometimes".
*original spanish, " según dicen los hombres dignos de fe, en mi literatura de ficción hay una curiosa mezcla de fantasía y humor que discurre en un marco a veces grotesco y siempre verosímil"
Those that would conceive of a Fifth Dimension are not worthy of faith, this indignity makes us feel better, but whoever can believe us-- (let me say) that Fernando Sorrentino keeps this style even in his e-mails.
Sorrentino was born in Buenos Aires in November of 1942 and is known by his interviews with Jorge Luis Borges and Adolph Bioy Casares, his successful split into the field of Children's Literature and a narrative that pleases to journey into the fantastic territories of almost any subject.
Indeed, his narrative work is made up of six story books (The Zoological Regression , 1969; Empires and Servitudes , 1972 ; The Best One of Possible Worlds , 1976; In Self-Defense , 1982; The Remedy for the Blind King , 1984 ; The Rigor of the Misfortunes , 1994), an extensive story ( Customs of the Dead, Costumbres de los muertos , 1996) and one novel not too long (Sanitary Centenaries , 1979).
He assures that his first book for children, ( Stories of the Mentiroso , 197
, was wrote"due to a species of pride attack" {Spanish: debido a una especie de ataque de soberbia.} This book followed by El Mentiroso entre guapos y compadritos, (1994); It Compensates for the Prince, La recompensa del príncipe, (1995); Histories of Maria Sapa and Fortunato , (1995); The Mentiroso against the Imperial Wasps , (1994) ; The Revenge of the Dead , (1997); The One that Gets Angry, Loses , (1999) and Adventures of Captain Bancalari , (1999).
Sorrentinos two books of interviews, Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges , (1974); and Seven Conversations with Adolph Bioy Casares , (1992), put him in front of two brilliant writers and with very different personalities.
The academics and those suffering from long memories may warn: We could not avoid repeating some of the questions that were given to Carlos and Gardini. It is not a lack of originality (perhaps some, there is so little to go around), but interest in comparing the answers.
QuintaDimension: How did you began your literary career and when was the moment you thought, "I am a writer"?
Fernando Sorrentino: My literary career began when I became a reader. Let us say that I was illiterate until more or less my thirty fifth year. Then I became a combustible engine whose only fuel grade was words, in other words, a "reading machine" {máquina de leer}. Hardly a book finished, when another one began, and so on. As it usually happens, I tried to write, and God knows the stupidities and infantilisms that I wrote until more or less my twenty or twenty-second year.
But I wrote privately. I was never a member of any literary group and, although I have writer friends, it never happened. It never occurred to me to show other original people that side of me. There is no help, I send the finished work to God-- the publisher, who will judge if it can be published or no.
{Original: De manera que, además de mí, sólo hay una persona que lee mis originales antes que el lector: el editor que juzgará si pueden publicarse o no.}
But, of course, magic exists and I saw it the first time I was published. The very fact that an absolutely unknown person is going to be readis itself a kind of magic. In 1969, I saw for the first time two of my published stories: one in the Bibliograma magazine (that directed during centuries Aristóbulo Echegaray), and another one in the magazine Our Children (where I obtained a modest mention for assisting, Story with Boys" [Cuentos con chicos}). And also that year, my first book appeared, the Zoological Regression , that makes light of some heavy situations.
Perhaps at that moment, when seeing everything in a book of which I was author, I would have thought "Now I am a writer". Naturally, that is a perilous thought, and now I dont even think about that. Because, what is a writer? Where it begins and where it finishes a writer? I believe that a writer is Cervantes, that a writer is Kafka. But, according to so many, the mass media, there are writers like Robin Cook or Tom Clancy, there are the Teachers of Vernacular who reach their students between pages of magazines, like Gente and People.
QD: How did the possibility of making and publishing the Seven Conversations with Borges and Bioy Casares come about?
FS: The same publishing house that committed the imprudence to publish the Zoological Regression for me had the plan to publish a collection with interviews of writers. The proprietor asked me if I felt confident to prepare one of the volumes. I was only confident that Borges was good writing, and as I read him voraciously, I realized I knew good writing but did not personally know any good writers yet. I asked the publisher, if the subject was open and if it was I would get him an interview with a very good writer. So the publisher had no expectations, offered no structure, and had even less hope than me. With nothing but a subway token I ventured to the National Library, 500 block of Mexico Street. I was greatly relaxed with the lack of responsibility given to youth, and asked the secretary to speak to Mr. Borges. I suppose it seemed like I called on best-sellers all day, standing with an impertinent smile ready to greet with the great author with a hug and scream, Jorges! Its me.
It would seem that an impertinent young man, disturbing a highly esteemed professional at his place of business would be shooed away, or given an appointment in the next decade at best. Not so. Right away Borges left from his office to the corridor. I explained what I wished him to do and, without setting up a single obstacle, he accepted to do it. This is a very remarkable thing, because, then, from the literary point of view, I did not exist and did not look more than twenty six or twenty seven years Throughout three or four months the recordings became stacked in heavy piles (imagine a Philips Recorder in 1970, now imagine each sessions tape the size of a refigerator). After the recordings, I ran to my house to trade machines. The refrigerator recordings were typed out on a 1960 Remington Rapid-Riter. To borrow a soccer term, transpirando la camiseta. The book slowly formed. Pity that, when the book was concluded, the publishing house was also concluded there was none to shock into praise, no silent accountant to tear me a check.. So it happened that I had only an original and had to begin the odyssey of looking for an editor (Have you ever spent hours looking for a tool to a job that took thirty minutes?). I am happy to omit the many misfortunes that happened until the book was finally published by Brown House in 1973. For many, many years, I was desentendí of himthen in 1996, the Athenian published a new edition, and I took advantage to improve a large amount of explanatory notes.
With Bioy the relation was different, because we knew eachother before and already we had a warm and friendly relation. So, in 1988, it happened that I propose the work to him and we did it very easily. Later, that damned year: 1989, came, one of the Alfonsinian Hyperinflation years, (N of the R: for the non-Argentine: Alfonsian refers to the government of president Raul) and I had neither time nor spirit to look for a publisher. So the book was meant to be made-- there was a certain amount of the interview to discard, but most was not discardable-- I did not have desire to discard it. In 1992, I was speaking of other things with Luis Chitarroni, when I commented to him on the existence of the book. He requested to see what I had, liked it, and asked which part of South America would I like it published in first. With that promise, and the desgrabé casetes that lacked, the book was published in 1992, later that same year.
QD: How were your relations with both writers in the course of the interviews?
FS: It was very different. In the case of Borges, I was only, maybe, twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. I was a novice and timid, he granted confidence in me, the same one that I continue having.* And Borges was the great Borges! Was the idol of my readings, the man whose works I read and reread and there I had the opportunity to ask so many things to him that interested to me So that Borges spoke and I watched him embobado , in a luck of literary enamoration. Borges had seventy or more years and, like before and later, he unfolded the spectacle of that extraordinary intelligence, that talent without limits.
*Era inexperto y tímido, aunque con infinita confianza en mí mismo, la misma que sigo teniendo.
However, with Bioy the differences were not so capital. Bioy had been twenty-eight years to me of age, already we knew eachother. I had published enough and, in addition, the personality of Bioy was not so "intellectual" as the one of Borges. Bioy was a worldly person, to whom, in addition to Literature, he liked many other things, specially the women (a taste that I applaud and share). Often he said to me: "This that I am going to tell to you not you put it in the book". And he told-- with full names to me-- some of his galantes histories. Of course, I respected his order, and those anecdotes were not published.
QD: For some authors, when a work is published, there is no long change due, no eating and no edits. In your case, you published a second edition of Sanitarios centenaries (100 year Toilets) in 2000, very reconstructed *. Why that reconstruction? You did not feel, as it happens other writers, a danger in touching something that already had its own life?
{* reelaborada}
FS: No, I do not have that superstition. If I can correct a story ten minutes after it is written, why I am not going to be able to correct it ten years later? What difference is it? One learns all of life: After I spent four or five years on the first edition of Toilets, I, reread it, found an appreciable amount of things that I did not like. Then, when the opportunity appeared for South American to reedited the book, I took advantage to improve those erroneous things-- resolved: bad situations, excesses of emphasis, overpopulation of adjectives and adverbs, in short, errors that could be eliminated were eliminated. Why leave them? I believe that I did very well, because the new edition seems infinitely better to me than the previous one, and do not believe that now I can return to change anything more.
QD: You also write Childrens Literature. How did you begin? What prompted you to change from Fantasy Literature?
FS: I began due to a species of pride attacks, that ground to illustrate with verses of my idol, Martín Iron, in order to make well certain things, "more than the saber and that the lance/usually serves the confidence/that the man has in itself". I knew lady infatuadas, who had written I do not know what booklets of Childrens Literature and they appeared airs of great personage, as if they had written, I dont know-- the Quijote or the Divine Comedy or the Hamlet. Taken by certain malignant spirit that sometimes posses me, I happened to read the most successful of those childrens books, and said to myself: "If this is considered good, I can write things quite better than this book ". And, in effect, very quickly wrote Stories of the Mentiroso, that was published in Extreme Extra (Plus Ultra) in 1978. It became a species of "classic", reedited incessantly, even today.
What I like of Childrens Literature is, exactly, that that you say I changed. The fantasy is always there; call it Fantasy Literature or Childrens Literature-- the freedom to be a little delirious, to play with the laws of the time and the space, to make jokes, et cetera, et cetera lingüísticas. The fact is that, although it is not what interests me more, I write with taste, Literature for boys and (according the crude data of good sales) those books have good welcome. I cannot complain.
QD: You say that throughout your career you wrote very little, what are your
work habits?
FS: My work habits are nonexistent. I can spend months and years without writing; absolutely nothing. I do not have nor do I want discipline. If, a good day happens, and subjects me to write a story, very well-- I need feeling and treatment to write it. But, if the subject resists me, if the story does not leave fluidly, I say, "This is not for me" and I leave it. For these reason I write so little: by a mixture of laziness, lack of
contracción for the work, and the idea that I do not have to write to write. The counterpart of this is that, although I wrote very little, I had the luck to practically publish everything that I wrote. Now the only thing I have unpublished us a story book for adults, and suppose that I will not spend too much time if I cannot publish it (I did not put myself in a campaign with the necessary energy).
QD: Do you feel more comfortable writing stories or novels, fiction or interviews, adult or Childrens Literature"?
FS: What I like most is to write stories. To begin a history and to finish it in a relatively short lapse. On the other hand, I realize which subjects wont work for me to write novels, subjects that reach after the extension of a novel. The exception was Sanitary Centenaries, that, in reality, is a succession of humorous chapters, with the thematic unity of {only} the narrative voice in the first person.
Also I like to write tests and articles on subjects of Literature, or problems of linguistics, objectionable curiosities of translations badly done, expressions, et cetera. {Note: Sooner or later Sorrentino will see this page, perhaps I should send it to him; the more articles I see on shoddy translations, the more fear seems like he had it right when he just knocked on Borges door without knowing better.}
In other words -- I feel comfortable in everything that I write, if it gave discomfort to me, would I write it? I do not do what I do not like to do.
QD: How you see the present and future panorama of Argentine Fantasy
Literature?
FS: By some spiritual perversion, I prefer and tend to read the authors
who have more years than I, so that I know little or nothing of the producing people of my age or people younger than me.
QD: Although you kindly gestured to authorize the publication of two of your stories in Liter Fantastic Area, I would like that you to describe your position about authorizing publication on Internet sites. I ask it because many famous authors refuse to do it unless their rights are paid.
FS: Good, I do not know. In principle, not even I created that problem. But I believe that, if the publication in Internet does not obstruct the sales of the book itself, it is not objectionable. Now, if it competes with this one, it would be another one to sing. But the certain thing is that I do not know if is detrimental or beneficial. While elucida east mystery, I do not have any disadvantage that some stories mine are in the network.
{Original Spanish: Bueno, no sé. En principio, ni siquiera me planteé ese problema. Pero creo que, si la publicación en Internet no obstruye las ventas del libro propiamente dicho, no es objetable. Ahora, si compite con éste, sería otro cantar. Pero lo cierto es que no sé si es perjudicial o benéfico. Mientras se elucida este misterio, no tengo ningún inconveniente que algunos cuentos míos estén en la red. } {Quotations of the English is expressly barred. This is not an academic paper. This page represents an amateurs hobby. This page has no legal function. This translation is declared erroneous by its creator. Reprints, quotations and/or any transciption method, known, or subsequently invented (including audio, code, et al.) is subject to prosecution. The function of this thread, document, listing is a one-time, non-transferable, non-referable entertainment unit.}
QD: You manage yourself with a literary agent, it seems to you
necessary or useful to have one?
FS: No, I do not manage myself with any literary agent. I dont even know any.
QD: You are a published Argentine author living in Argentina. Was it difficult or easy to publish here? How does it differ at the present time?
FS: I was also published in Spain. My second storybook, Empires and servitudes, was published in Barcelona by Seix Barral in 1972. I was then a "promissory young person" of hardly twenty-nine years. Paradoxically, it was much more easy for me to publish before, when nobody knew me, than now, when I have a good amount of published books. Let us say that, in the decades of the 70s and the 80s, I had only to write a book and publish it. As of the 90s, the editorials have become extreme and crudely commercial, and they publish almost nothing that is not assured an immediate and profitable sale. There are {of course} the nastinesses that are usually published, destined to the coarse public, the reading people of newspapers and magazines in the present.
QD: Some authors assure that they would never work by order of an editorial, having had to fit themselves to guidelines of time, delivery, extension, and subject. Others do not have these disadvantages and there are even those that feel most comfortable with absolute freedom. How is your case?
FS: Working by order has the stimulus of the cuasiseguridad of the publication of the book. I have written and published by order and without order. And neither of the two situations took me to the brink of madness, not to paradise, nor to suicide. But, in general terms, I rather have an artistic concept of Literature, the idea that I must write in a way that gives me desire and take the time needed so that the reader also desires.
QD: What opinions of so-called electronic books, as distributing alternative, do you have? Would you adopt this method?
FS: I moan to answer that I do not have the smallest idea on the matter. I am not informed on this subject.
QD: Which of your stories or novels is "more beloved to you" than the
others? Why?
FS: I consider -- and I am not going to say the reasons -- that the best
thing that I have written in all my life are the three stories -- two
lengthy and one relatively brief one -- that form the book El rigor de las desdichas (The Rigor of the Misfortunes), that was published in 1994.
QD: So this serves as a literary factory?
FS: I imagine that, mainly {because I have,} learned to avoid the errors.
QD: What are your future literary projects?
FS: I do not have writing projects. My volume of writing happens like an accident. When I have enough pages to form a book, I attempt to publish it. Whether I obtains this is another subject.
{Legal: This translation is declared erroneous by its creator. See notes throughout. Do not transfer, or refer any portion except the URL. This posting includes subject matter on Fernando Sorrentinos right-to-use policy.}
A CONVERSATION (VIA MAIL) WITH FERNANDO SORRENTINO
by Jorge Oscar Rossi
{Spanish: sololiteratura.com/sorren...acion.htm}
{This interview was prepared for the online magazine, Quinta Dimension, (www.quintadimension.com)} {No date found yet}.
He confesses that he likes more to read than to write. Also he says that "according to the worthy men of faith, in my fiction there is a peculiar mixture of fantasy and humor that runs in a grotesque and always likely frame sometimes".
*original spanish, " según dicen los hombres dignos de fe, en mi literatura de ficción hay una curiosa mezcla de fantasía y humor que discurre en un marco a veces grotesco y siempre verosímil"
Those that would conceive of a Fifth Dimension are not worthy of faith, this indignity makes us feel better, but whoever can believe us-- (let me say) that Fernando Sorrentino keeps this style even in his e-mails.
Sorrentino was born in Buenos Aires in November of 1942 and is known by his interviews with Jorge Luis Borges and Adolph Bioy Casares, his successful split into the field of Children's Literature and a narrative that pleases to journey into the fantastic territories of almost any subject.
Indeed, his narrative work is made up of six story books (The Zoological Regression , 1969; Empires and Servitudes , 1972 ; The Best One of Possible Worlds , 1976; In Self-Defense , 1982; The Remedy for the Blind King , 1984 ; The Rigor of the Misfortunes , 1994), an extensive story ( Customs of the Dead, Costumbres de los muertos , 1996) and one novel not too long (Sanitary Centenaries , 1979).
He assures that his first book for children, ( Stories of the Mentiroso , 197
, was wrote"due to a species of pride attack" {Spanish: debido a una especie de ataque de soberbia.} This book followed by El Mentiroso entre guapos y compadritos, (1994); It Compensates for the Prince, La recompensa del príncipe, (1995); Histories of Maria Sapa and Fortunato , (1995); The Mentiroso against the Imperial Wasps , (1994) ; The Revenge of the Dead , (1997); The One that Gets Angry, Loses , (1999) and Adventures of Captain Bancalari , (1999). Sorrentinos two books of interviews, Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges , (1974); and Seven Conversations with Adolph Bioy Casares , (1992), put him in front of two brilliant writers and with very different personalities.
The academics and those suffering from long memories may warn: We could not avoid repeating some of the questions that were given to Carlos and Gardini. It is not a lack of originality (perhaps some, there is so little to go around), but interest in comparing the answers.
QuintaDimension: How did you began your literary career and when was the moment you thought, "I am a writer"?
Fernando Sorrentino: My literary career began when I became a reader. Let us say that I was illiterate until more or less my thirty fifth year. Then I became a combustible engine whose only fuel grade was words, in other words, a "reading machine" {máquina de leer}. Hardly a book finished, when another one began, and so on. As it usually happens, I tried to write, and God knows the stupidities and infantilisms that I wrote until more or less my twenty or twenty-second year.
But I wrote privately. I was never a member of any literary group and, although I have writer friends, it never happened. It never occurred to me to show other original people that side of me. There is no help, I send the finished work to God-- the publisher, who will judge if it can be published or no.
{Original: De manera que, además de mí, sólo hay una persona que lee mis originales antes que el lector: el editor que juzgará si pueden publicarse o no.}
But, of course, magic exists and I saw it the first time I was published. The very fact that an absolutely unknown person is going to be readis itself a kind of magic. In 1969, I saw for the first time two of my published stories: one in the Bibliograma magazine (that directed during centuries Aristóbulo Echegaray), and another one in the magazine Our Children (where I obtained a modest mention for assisting, Story with Boys" [Cuentos con chicos}). And also that year, my first book appeared, the Zoological Regression , that makes light of some heavy situations.
Perhaps at that moment, when seeing everything in a book of which I was author, I would have thought "Now I am a writer". Naturally, that is a perilous thought, and now I dont even think about that. Because, what is a writer? Where it begins and where it finishes a writer? I believe that a writer is Cervantes, that a writer is Kafka. But, according to so many, the mass media, there are writers like Robin Cook or Tom Clancy, there are the Teachers of Vernacular who reach their students between pages of magazines, like Gente and People.
QD: How did the possibility of making and publishing the Seven Conversations with Borges and Bioy Casares come about?
FS: The same publishing house that committed the imprudence to publish the Zoological Regression for me had the plan to publish a collection with interviews of writers. The proprietor asked me if I felt confident to prepare one of the volumes. I was only confident that Borges was good writing, and as I read him voraciously, I realized I knew good writing but did not personally know any good writers yet. I asked the publisher, if the subject was open and if it was I would get him an interview with a very good writer. So the publisher had no expectations, offered no structure, and had even less hope than me. With nothing but a subway token I ventured to the National Library, 500 block of Mexico Street. I was greatly relaxed with the lack of responsibility given to youth, and asked the secretary to speak to Mr. Borges. I suppose it seemed like I called on best-sellers all day, standing with an impertinent smile ready to greet with the great author with a hug and scream, Jorges! Its me.
It would seem that an impertinent young man, disturbing a highly esteemed professional at his place of business would be shooed away, or given an appointment in the next decade at best. Not so. Right away Borges left from his office to the corridor. I explained what I wished him to do and, without setting up a single obstacle, he accepted to do it. This is a very remarkable thing, because, then, from the literary point of view, I did not exist and did not look more than twenty six or twenty seven years Throughout three or four months the recordings became stacked in heavy piles (imagine a Philips Recorder in 1970, now imagine each sessions tape the size of a refigerator). After the recordings, I ran to my house to trade machines. The refrigerator recordings were typed out on a 1960 Remington Rapid-Riter. To borrow a soccer term, transpirando la camiseta. The book slowly formed. Pity that, when the book was concluded, the publishing house was also concluded there was none to shock into praise, no silent accountant to tear me a check.. So it happened that I had only an original and had to begin the odyssey of looking for an editor (Have you ever spent hours looking for a tool to a job that took thirty minutes?). I am happy to omit the many misfortunes that happened until the book was finally published by Brown House in 1973. For many, many years, I was desentendí of himthen in 1996, the Athenian published a new edition, and I took advantage to improve a large amount of explanatory notes.
With Bioy the relation was different, because we knew eachother before and already we had a warm and friendly relation. So, in 1988, it happened that I propose the work to him and we did it very easily. Later, that damned year: 1989, came, one of the Alfonsinian Hyperinflation years, (N of the R: for the non-Argentine: Alfonsian refers to the government of president Raul) and I had neither time nor spirit to look for a publisher. So the book was meant to be made-- there was a certain amount of the interview to discard, but most was not discardable-- I did not have desire to discard it. In 1992, I was speaking of other things with Luis Chitarroni, when I commented to him on the existence of the book. He requested to see what I had, liked it, and asked which part of South America would I like it published in first. With that promise, and the desgrabé casetes that lacked, the book was published in 1992, later that same year.
QD: How were your relations with both writers in the course of the interviews?
FS: It was very different. In the case of Borges, I was only, maybe, twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. I was a novice and timid, he granted confidence in me, the same one that I continue having.* And Borges was the great Borges! Was the idol of my readings, the man whose works I read and reread and there I had the opportunity to ask so many things to him that interested to me So that Borges spoke and I watched him embobado , in a luck of literary enamoration. Borges had seventy or more years and, like before and later, he unfolded the spectacle of that extraordinary intelligence, that talent without limits.
*Era inexperto y tímido, aunque con infinita confianza en mí mismo, la misma que sigo teniendo.
However, with Bioy the differences were not so capital. Bioy had been twenty-eight years to me of age, already we knew eachother. I had published enough and, in addition, the personality of Bioy was not so "intellectual" as the one of Borges. Bioy was a worldly person, to whom, in addition to Literature, he liked many other things, specially the women (a taste that I applaud and share). Often he said to me: "This that I am going to tell to you not you put it in the book". And he told-- with full names to me-- some of his galantes histories. Of course, I respected his order, and those anecdotes were not published.
QD: For some authors, when a work is published, there is no long change due, no eating and no edits. In your case, you published a second edition of Sanitarios centenaries (100 year Toilets) in 2000, very reconstructed *. Why that reconstruction? You did not feel, as it happens other writers, a danger in touching something that already had its own life?
{* reelaborada}
FS: No, I do not have that superstition. If I can correct a story ten minutes after it is written, why I am not going to be able to correct it ten years later? What difference is it? One learns all of life: After I spent four or five years on the first edition of Toilets, I, reread it, found an appreciable amount of things that I did not like. Then, when the opportunity appeared for South American to reedited the book, I took advantage to improve those erroneous things-- resolved: bad situations, excesses of emphasis, overpopulation of adjectives and adverbs, in short, errors that could be eliminated were eliminated. Why leave them? I believe that I did very well, because the new edition seems infinitely better to me than the previous one, and do not believe that now I can return to change anything more.
QD: You also write Childrens Literature. How did you begin? What prompted you to change from Fantasy Literature?
FS: I began due to a species of pride attacks, that ground to illustrate with verses of my idol, Martín Iron, in order to make well certain things, "more than the saber and that the lance/usually serves the confidence/that the man has in itself". I knew lady infatuadas, who had written I do not know what booklets of Childrens Literature and they appeared airs of great personage, as if they had written, I dont know-- the Quijote or the Divine Comedy or the Hamlet. Taken by certain malignant spirit that sometimes posses me, I happened to read the most successful of those childrens books, and said to myself: "If this is considered good, I can write things quite better than this book ". And, in effect, very quickly wrote Stories of the Mentiroso, that was published in Extreme Extra (Plus Ultra) in 1978. It became a species of "classic", reedited incessantly, even today.
What I like of Childrens Literature is, exactly, that that you say I changed. The fantasy is always there; call it Fantasy Literature or Childrens Literature-- the freedom to be a little delirious, to play with the laws of the time and the space, to make jokes, et cetera, et cetera lingüísticas. The fact is that, although it is not what interests me more, I write with taste, Literature for boys and (according the crude data of good sales) those books have good welcome. I cannot complain.
QD: You say that throughout your career you wrote very little, what are your
work habits?
FS: My work habits are nonexistent. I can spend months and years without writing; absolutely nothing. I do not have nor do I want discipline. If, a good day happens, and subjects me to write a story, very well-- I need feeling and treatment to write it. But, if the subject resists me, if the story does not leave fluidly, I say, "This is not for me" and I leave it. For these reason I write so little: by a mixture of laziness, lack of
contracción for the work, and the idea that I do not have to write to write. The counterpart of this is that, although I wrote very little, I had the luck to practically publish everything that I wrote. Now the only thing I have unpublished us a story book for adults, and suppose that I will not spend too much time if I cannot publish it (I did not put myself in a campaign with the necessary energy).
QD: Do you feel more comfortable writing stories or novels, fiction or interviews, adult or Childrens Literature"?
FS: What I like most is to write stories. To begin a history and to finish it in a relatively short lapse. On the other hand, I realize which subjects wont work for me to write novels, subjects that reach after the extension of a novel. The exception was Sanitary Centenaries, that, in reality, is a succession of humorous chapters, with the thematic unity of {only} the narrative voice in the first person.
Also I like to write tests and articles on subjects of Literature, or problems of linguistics, objectionable curiosities of translations badly done, expressions, et cetera. {Note: Sooner or later Sorrentino will see this page, perhaps I should send it to him; the more articles I see on shoddy translations, the more fear seems like he had it right when he just knocked on Borges door without knowing better.}
In other words -- I feel comfortable in everything that I write, if it gave discomfort to me, would I write it? I do not do what I do not like to do.
QD: How you see the present and future panorama of Argentine Fantasy
Literature?
FS: By some spiritual perversion, I prefer and tend to read the authors
who have more years than I, so that I know little or nothing of the producing people of my age or people younger than me.
QD: Although you kindly gestured to authorize the publication of two of your stories in Liter Fantastic Area, I would like that you to describe your position about authorizing publication on Internet sites. I ask it because many famous authors refuse to do it unless their rights are paid.
FS: Good, I do not know. In principle, not even I created that problem. But I believe that, if the publication in Internet does not obstruct the sales of the book itself, it is not objectionable. Now, if it competes with this one, it would be another one to sing. But the certain thing is that I do not know if is detrimental or beneficial. While elucida east mystery, I do not have any disadvantage that some stories mine are in the network.
{Original Spanish: Bueno, no sé. En principio, ni siquiera me planteé ese problema. Pero creo que, si la publicación en Internet no obstruye las ventas del libro propiamente dicho, no es objetable. Ahora, si compite con éste, sería otro cantar. Pero lo cierto es que no sé si es perjudicial o benéfico. Mientras se elucida este misterio, no tengo ningún inconveniente que algunos cuentos míos estén en la red. } {Quotations of the English is expressly barred. This is not an academic paper. This page represents an amateurs hobby. This page has no legal function. This translation is declared erroneous by its creator. Reprints, quotations and/or any transciption method, known, or subsequently invented (including audio, code, et al.) is subject to prosecution. The function of this thread, document, listing is a one-time, non-transferable, non-referable entertainment unit.}
QD: You manage yourself with a literary agent, it seems to you
necessary or useful to have one?
FS: No, I do not manage myself with any literary agent. I dont even know any.
QD: You are a published Argentine author living in Argentina. Was it difficult or easy to publish here? How does it differ at the present time?
FS: I was also published in Spain. My second storybook, Empires and servitudes, was published in Barcelona by Seix Barral in 1972. I was then a "promissory young person" of hardly twenty-nine years. Paradoxically, it was much more easy for me to publish before, when nobody knew me, than now, when I have a good amount of published books. Let us say that, in the decades of the 70s and the 80s, I had only to write a book and publish it. As of the 90s, the editorials have become extreme and crudely commercial, and they publish almost nothing that is not assured an immediate and profitable sale. There are {of course} the nastinesses that are usually published, destined to the coarse public, the reading people of newspapers and magazines in the present.
QD: Some authors assure that they would never work by order of an editorial, having had to fit themselves to guidelines of time, delivery, extension, and subject. Others do not have these disadvantages and there are even those that feel most comfortable with absolute freedom. How is your case?
FS: Working by order has the stimulus of the cuasiseguridad of the publication of the book. I have written and published by order and without order. And neither of the two situations took me to the brink of madness, not to paradise, nor to suicide. But, in general terms, I rather have an artistic concept of Literature, the idea that I must write in a way that gives me desire and take the time needed so that the reader also desires.
QD: What opinions of so-called electronic books, as distributing alternative, do you have? Would you adopt this method?
FS: I moan to answer that I do not have the smallest idea on the matter. I am not informed on this subject.
QD: Which of your stories or novels is "more beloved to you" than the
others? Why?
FS: I consider -- and I am not going to say the reasons -- that the best
thing that I have written in all my life are the three stories -- two
lengthy and one relatively brief one -- that form the book El rigor de las desdichas (The Rigor of the Misfortunes), that was published in 1994.
QD: So this serves as a literary factory?
FS: I imagine that, mainly {because I have,} learned to avoid the errors.
QD: What are your future literary projects?
FS: I do not have writing projects. My volume of writing happens like an accident. When I have enough pages to form a book, I attempt to publish it. Whether I obtains this is another subject.
