Photography. Guillermo Galván Twitter profile.
Guillermo Galvan He is a writer and journalist. Born in Valencia, and retired from journalism, practiced for many years in Cadena SER, he has devoted himself fully to literature since 2005. He signs titles such as Call me Judas or The gaze of Saturn, among others, and in 2019 the saga starring the inspector Carlos lombardi with Mowing time and took out in spring The Virgin of Bones.
I really appreciate your kindness and treatment, in addition to his time for this interview where he tells us a little about everything. From their first readings, authors and characters Favorites even how do you see the psocial and editorial anorama around.
INTERVIEW WITH GUILLERMO GALVÁN
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
GUILLERMO GALVÁN: My first reading, let's say serious, was Glasgow to Charleston, one of the minor novels of Verne, which was published in Spanish with the title of The forcing of the blockade. I still keep that copy like gold on cloth, because I won it in a contest at eight years old; I have lost others, but that, fortunately, I keep. What writer and, my first steps were comics, children's stories in which he played the role of scriptwriter and cartoonist.
In the narrative field, writing exercises that I forgot when I had the chance to get rid of them, because my academic education in the literary aspect was more traumatic than playful. I had to get to the adolescence advanced to find pleasure in the fact read and write, and at that time I got the dramaturgy, with works - naturally incomplete - that today could be described, with great generosity, as existentialists or the absurd. There is no trace of them.
- AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
GG: The most important in your life are the ones you receive in young age. At least, that's the way it was in my case, and in that sense I can't limit myself to just one work. I would have to cite several of Hesse, Kafka, Baroja, Unamuno or Dostoevsky. For being one of the first, maybe Steppe wolf of Hesse. Why? Surely because at that time I identified with a bewildered protagonist before the world, and because the way of telling it seduced me.
- AL: A favorite writer or one who has especially influenced your work? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
GG: I admire many writers, although I try not to influence me. I believe that it is the obligation of each author to seek their own voice, and influences - conscious or not - tend to impose it. That said, and leaving the classics in the pipeline: Galdós, Baroja, Marsé, Grandes, Landero, Padura, Dostoevski, Auster, McEwan, Coe...
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
GG: The professional can be ambivalent. Knowing means getting into the plot of the novel as one more character, secondary and discreet, to establish personal contact with the main character. An exciting and very literary game in itself. Seeing it like this, I would like to chat with Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. And put to can bring to life, let's continue with the fiction: Don Quixote.
- AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?
GG: The tranquility, as far as possible. As a reader I have more capacity for abstraction and I can do it with a certain noise background. More maniac, if you can call it that, I am with writing. To begin with, I need at least a couple hours in front without interruptions, if I am fully involved in the writing process or immersed in documentation. For take notes any time and situation are good, and sometimes those notes are as decisive as what I already have written in my quietest hours.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
GG: In my "mousetrap", which is how I call the room where I write, I feel at ease, although I can do it anywhere that meets the above conditions. Traditionally I've been a night owl, and in those late hours of the night most of my novels were born. With age, and especially with my retirement as a journalist, I have taken a liking to mornings. So we could say that any time is good to work if you have the will to do it.
- AL: Your favorite genres?
GG: I like good literature, regardless of genres. Within these, noir and historical novel, although I do not disdain the good fantasy or science fiction. As meticulous of documentation, I also read test, especially historical-academic.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
GG: I just finished Memories of life, autobiography of Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, although my background reading from confinement is the National Episodes of Galdós; I had read several, the most notable, but reading them in order from beginning to end offers narrative coherence and is a challenge that is proving a delight. As for writing, I have already advanced fourth installment from the saga of Carlos lombardi, which I hope to finish at the end of the year or early next year.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?
GG: Hard, if you try by the traditional way, both by the number of writers and by the situation or interests of the publishing sector. However, each time they are offered more desktop publishing possibilities through certain platforms, platforms that, paradoxically, compete with great advantage with bookstores to the point of endangering their survival.
We live moments of profound change in that field, and the omens depend on who you ask. It will be a change positive if the number of readers increases that, in short, are those who hold the sticks of the shadow. And I'm talking about male readers because female readers, fortunately, seem to grow day by day.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to stay with something positive personally and for future novels?
GG: Except for some, who are making a killing with the pandemic, a crisis of this magnitude is never positive. From a personal point of view, fortunately, I have not had to suffer losses, but professionally it has affected my novel The Virgin of Bones, the second of the Lombardi saga, which had just left when the alarm status. A slowdown to its promotion that now, by fits and starts, we are trying to overcome. It would be wrong if I take it as an offense of fate, because this same accident has suffered many other works, authors and authors.
And their own editorials they have been forced to delay your plans in at least one trimester; algunas, the most modest, have been almost fatal wounds. That is not to mention many other social sectors. So for now nothing positive I can see in this year 2020. Probably, because I am neither Boccaccio nor Camus.