Photography: Esteban González Pons. Twitter profile.
Yes, Esteban Gonzalez Pons He is more than known for his political career, but it is in his literary side where he says he feels most comfortable. His first novel is They, where it goes off the hook with a love story. Wants thank you very sincerely your time and great kindness in granting me this interview where he tells us more about that facet of lyrics and more intimate.
ESTEBAN GONZÁLEZ PONS - INTERVIEW
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: What does your novel tell us, They, and why a love story?
ESTEBAN GONZALEZ PONS: They count one love story between a girl and a boy born in the 60s. It is a generational novel, about those of us who were born when Franco was still living or had just died, Teens of the Transition. The story is set, in part, in the Valencia of the America's Cup, that city that shone and laughed, and in Valencia after the brick crisis, in part as well. Two contradictory cities located in the same place on the map.
- AL: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
EGP: My first book was The Gold Bug by Poe, in a youth edition. Although I must mention a collection of novels transferred to comic, called Youth Literary Jewelry, with which a good part of the adventure novels of the XNUMXth century were put at my height as a teenager, from Ivanhoe but also Michael Strogoff o Sandokan, for example. I still get excited when I remember them.
Before that, the first-first books that I read, they were not mine, but on loan from my uncle Guillermo, they were albums of Mortadelo and Filemon. Hence I defend that they give the Princess of Asturias of the Arts to F. Ibañez, because I am sure that the next Nobel Prize in Spanish literature will also have had his childhood readings in Mortadelo and Filemón.
I write since I can remember. At first, Horror stories influenced by Poe and also stories of the War of Independence imitating the first series of National Episodes and the biography of Napoleon by Emil Ludwig. Then the girls became my only subject and I started writing really bad poetry.
- AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
EGP: When you start reading all the books you are shocked. The one that perhaps most obsessed me as a young man was The Lord of the Rings, many years before the movies made him hugely famous. It bothers me when the cinema appropriates books that I like and popularizes its plot as if it could be separated from its literature. Tolkien came to have me so possessed that he wrote poems in "elvish" for girls, and neither wanted to be my girlfriend, of course. I think Tolkien made me a geek.
- AL: Who is your favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
EGP: When you love literature it is almost impossible to mention a favorite writer because almost everyone has something that fascinates you. I will quote Bécquer, the one of Legends, because I resort to him a lot to make something stick to me. And because I would like to be a romantic, even though I know I can't. Also to Delibes, This unfortunatly and Threshold, which I read and reread to learn Spanish. And to Valle-Inclán, the one I have on my nightstand right now.
Among the poets, Luis Cernuda, Angel González and Antonio Colinas, so different, are among my favorites. Let's also put Joan Margarita that we just died. Among those who are publishing right now, without intending to be exhaustive, I read everything they publish Manuel Vilas, Victor of the Tree, Lawrence Silva, Jose Zoilo or Santiago Castellanos, for example.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
EGP: The crazy protagonist of The mystery of the haunted crypt by Eduardo Mendoza. It seems insurmountable in the tradition of the Spanish rogue. Although it may seem silly to you, I think that what is not picaresque is not a Spanish novel.
- AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?
EGP: When I was young I wrote at night, now in the morning. The earlier I get up the fresher my imagination. And the best ideas come to mind in the shower. When I get out of the shower I forget almost all of them.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
EGP: Dare I say it? I like to write in bed. Waking up at six, for example, taking a coffee and computer to bed and not getting out of there until I have at least two pages written. Unfortunately I can only afford that on weekends. They I wrote it on airplanes and trains and waiting rooms. Traveling for work from here to there.
- AL: Other genres that you like?
EGP: Poetry. I am not a poet, my father and son are, I am a reader of poetry, and I am honored.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
EGP: I'm done Father's son by Víctor del Arbol and I really recommend it. And I start with How to do nothing by Jenny Odell and 1794 from Natt och Dag, I'll tell you how. Y I'm writing my next novel, a scary story which I hope to deliver to the publisher in September.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or can you keep something positive that will serve you for future fictional stories?
EGP: I am sure that the plague will come to all of us who write in all of our stories. A writer is what lives, not what counts.