Photography: Ignacio del Valle, author's website.
Ignatius of the Valley already has a long and very successful literary career, including film adaptations of some of his works, and is one of the most recognized names in crime novels, also framed within historical suspense. The series of him stars Arturo Andrade He already has 6 titles with the latter, When the dead turn. In this interview He tells us about her and several other topics. So he I really appreciate your time and kindness to assist me.
Ignacio del Valle — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest published novel is from the Captain Arturo Andrade series and is titled When the dead turn. What can you tell us about her and where did the idea for her come from?
IGNACIO DEL VALLE: I had finished the novel. Coronado, and I was mentally leaving the XNUMXth century, but I hadn't just left Mexico. He wanted to write another novel by Arturo Andrade, the sixth of the series, so I began to investigate to find a connection. To my surprise, I found a perfect episode: the “cultural expeditions”. As told in the novel, between 1949 and 1950, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pulls out of its hat a series of Poetic recitals in various countries of Latin America in order to create bridges with a Francoist Spain that was ignored. People like Leopoldo Panero, Luis Rosales, Antonio de Zubiaurre, Agustín de Foxá were recruited... In some places they receive them with eggs and in others they applaud them. It was the perfect anecdote to invent Félix Arcadia, a Spanish diplomat and writer embarked on a similar adventure in 1950, protected by Arturo Andrade and his comrade Manolete. And a kidnapping it was the appropriate catharsis to begin the novel.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And your first writing?
IDV: The first readings were juvenile classics, Julio Verne, Salgari, Poe, etc. Without forget The five or the novels of Sherlock Holmes. My first writing was possibly a story three pages, very bad, in the gothic line of Poe, The man who was alone.
- AL: A leading author? You can choose more than one and from all periods.
IDV: There are many, and some they change with the times (There was one in which I liked Onetti a lot, but, except for the stories, I lost my taste). Of course, there was a before and after reading The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald, as with rebellious man, of Camus, with the novels of Mishima, or later with the blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. In the way of understanding the descriptions it influenced me a lot Ivan Bunin, and there was a change in the way of understanding crime novels after Mystic River, , by Dennis Lehanne, or after the novels of Robert Stone. And the authors who continue in my saint list are EL Doctorow, charles baxter,John Steinbeck, James Salter, Norman Mailer, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lawrence Durrell… Lately I've been really into it Hillary coat y Oakley Hall. And of course, the classics They always accompany me: Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus...
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
IDV: If it is know, I would have liked a cane with Bernal Diaz del Castillo. If it's about can bring to life, Jay Gatsby, definitely.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
IDV: I could write upside down on the space station. I just need a computer, a glass of water and silence. Up there, silence is sure to spare me.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
IDV: In me office. From eight to twelve in the morning.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
IDV: I am voracious, I read everything. Even English garden manuals, ha ha. In my office I have 24 towers of books, each one with a genre, ranging from philosophy to cinema, going through anything you can imagine. I am changing, it causes a constant flow of information in my head, and creative sparks are regular. There is no blank page, and if there is, it is because you are not working hard enough.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
IDV: My latest discovery has been tim gatreaux. Besides, I'm going from tower to tower (separate press): Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates; the History of the idea of time, from Bergson; I am finishing the fourth volume of Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, and I will shortly pass to the speeches of Demosthenes; a John Conolly noir; I reread Hemingway's stories; the great indian novel, by Shashi Tharoor; the Slow man of Coetzee; another Dacia Maraini novel; an essay on the terrible situation of women in Africa and another on the global trade in raw materials, etc.
As for writing, I'm finishing my new novel and preparing the documentation of the following. I have the tempos of my projects very structured.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is and what decided you to try to publish?
IDV: I think the paradox is that now it is easier to publish than when I started, but careers are more expendable, more fragile. The sausage-making machine of the publishing industry has accelerated and books don't last, books are becoming more and more trivial, and there is a suicidal rotation that is detrimental to the author and literature itself. This wheel should be stopped before the business implodes. On the other hand, an ecosystem of very interesting craft editorials, but which are also subject to system pressure. Everything is very complex.
I fought a lot before being published, and It's not really a decision, it's a necessity.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to keep something positive for future stories?
IDV: Literature is always in crisis, it's nothing new. Here it is about resisting. It's like a merry-go-round, you can be sitting in the front line of the horses, in the second or in the third, and throughout your career, you will surely change your visibility, but the essential thing is never to get off the merry-go-round.