Belladonna Have A Kid

The death of a polemicist

Today, I've been away from newspapers, radios or televisions, as news reaches me: Juan José Saer has died. The first thing I say is "Ailbe going to be sad", perhaps because she was the first reader of Saer I knew and whom he professes great respect for intellectual, while she amuses the impression caused Saer personally.

I do not know in depth the work of JJS. I read some of his essays and I jumped for his novels, but I never managed to stay in it. However, there is something fundamental in JJS, who exercised with violence and passion: the role of polemicist. It is no accident that this same Saer says Borges.

In December 1999, Saer visited Montevideo on the occasion of the publication of his book "The narrative-object" and SR and I went there to interview him. The memory I have of this interview is that it was a near disaster. Saer was angry and impatient and I had the impression that either you were doing the most idiotic questions of the world or he did not know any closest approach to politeness.
I had not read that interview until today and now I find it impossible to combine the commemoration of the interview with what I see written on the paper. The only thing that matches between what I remember and what I read is violence. Perhaps, then, the questions were not the most foolish of the world, but Juan José Saer not believe his role in this world had nothing to do with the kindness and everything to do with his own words and brutally clear. And if the young women journalists are not used, beyond them ...

This is part of what Saer said just over half an hour of interview:

"The problem is: sometimes criticism bad journalism levels, neutralizes bad things. Is a dangerous confusion between what is merely commercial production and real literature. (...) You can not judge on one page of literature, can not be judged as the same thing to Paul Celan's poetry and novels by Paulo Coelho. This critical distinction in the past but have now completely erased the boundaries. Now, the criterion is the numerical superiority of the copies sold, are commercial standards prevailing over those who complete the designs of the literary pages. Thus, a man like that was allowed when Bertelsmann bought Sudamericana, a publisher with a tradition than honorable, that no writer or River Plate of Argentina to sell less than ten or twenty thousand copies would be published by them. An opinion like that deserves, first, the complete disregard of all those dedicated to culture. At the same time, reveals a total ignorance about what was the history of literature in Latin America and the Río de la Plata. Felisberto not exist, Onetti not exist, Borges would not exist. Or Macedonian, or Antonio Di Benedetto, and I could go on indefinitely. "

" When I talk about the current best-Sellerés, I mean the way in which they re willing genres from rechewing resources, resobados. It bothers me that build their texts clearly commercial purposes and also position themselves as artists. To just give an example: the English case that individual without any talent, Mr. Pérez-Reverte. Intended to write adventure stories now cheaper mechanisms adventure novels of the nineteenth century, which at that time had been exceeded with other mechanisms of the genre much more refined. Who writes it then? "

" The genres also spent and that's fine, but if you want to write genre literature, has to be doubly creative, you have to dive into the genre until the end. For example, Stephen King, who writes that seudoliteratura of terror, not only did not invent anything, but it also uses procedures that no author of the genre-and God knows if there will be great masters of horror fiction, like Poe, and Lovecraft-never had lowered to use. Procedures fully apricots, complacent. The great authors of genre work all the time in the margins, and eventually expand its borders, introducing new elements ... Think for example in the novels now, American novels, James Ellroy, for example. Do not come down from the 600 pages. Why have so many pages? Not even he knows. (...) The old goat, as I affectionately call Agatha Christie was so trader like them, but solved the thing in 180 pages. 90% of the time were a mess, but there are six or seven novels that came out very well. "

" Today I've just had a bad moment in a radio, because not only asked me about Onetti and Felisberto, authors Uruguayans those who feel a deep admiration. I had to talk about other writers Uruguayans I will not name now and I had to speak my mind. In the most delicate way possible, but what I think. So, well, I will destroy my reputation, and is very little to destroy ... "

" From what I've seen in a few pages of Andahazi (do not know, I want to ruin anyone's career, but we are far below what literature has to be) a bit of criticism or critical reading could do with this guy "

" was the last English writer Malcolm Lowry, then there there were more writers in England. And the last English writer was Calderon de la Barca, Antonio Machado perhaps. "

Saer said it was not enough to declare an influence, he had to earn it. He also said he was tired of Borges, as he wrote critical essays on his work which indicated that Borges was confrontational rather than critical. That is precisely the thesis of 'Borges as a problem': "Much of his essays, reviews, articles and conferences are true artillery, and sometimes even mere variations of Surrealist act par excellence, consistently, as is known, go out and shoot a gun against crowd. "

Many critics have seen as the innovator of Saer Argentine letters after Borges. If, as I said Saer, genres are broken, it may also degrade the quality of the River Plate writers. Personally, I still can stay in or Saer and perhaps most surprised at his absence or death of Argentina's best debater after Borges. Y much more if I start to think that the best debater Argentina after Saer is Aira.