Interview with Víctor del Arbol, Nadal Award 2016.

We are privileged to have today on our blog with Victor of the Tree, Barcelona, ​​1968, Winner of the Nadal Award 2016 by The eve of almost everything, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for the Government of the French Republic, bestselling author such as A million drops o The sadness of the Samurai.

Víctor del Árbol makes the crime novel something more than a genre. Each of their stories is different, it starts from scratch, nothing is predictable. None of his novels prepare the next one for you. Surprising, exciting, of those writers who hook the reader, who disable him to choose between their works because each one has left a deep mark on his memory.

Actualidad Literatura: You always say that your passion for literature began in childhood, in the library of your neighborhood in Barcelona, ​​where your mother left you with your brothers while she went to work: what was that book that made you think "When I grow up I'll to be a writer"?

Victor of the Tree: At each stage there was a different one, and some of them transcended the generational moments to stay as faithful companions for the rest of my life. From those comics of classics adapted from childhood to Coetzee, books and authors such as Steinbeck, Faulkner, Fietzcherald, Dostoyevsky, Delibes, Matute, Mallarmé, Lope have penetrated me ... Camus's Stranger marked me, as would Max Aub's Raven Manuscript, One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Marquez, Hombres del Maíz by Miguel Ángel Asturias ... If there was a definitive one, I don't know. Everyone was inviting me to try. For emotional reasons I remember an important one: “Requiem for a Spanish peasant” by RJ Sender. It was the award for my first literary award (at the age of fifteen) and at a very specific moment in my adolescence I understood a lot when I discovered “De Profundis” by Oscar Wilde. I started my first steps enthusiastic about History and it was inspiring to read the books by Paul Preston and Hugh Thomas on the Spanish Civil War, or the Chronicle of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas. I had a great time with Follet's books when I hadn't yet written Los pillars de la Tierra, with Vozquez Figueroa and his Tuareg, with Marsé and his Last Afternoons with Teresa… Anyway, let's stop now. 

AL: Chevalier des Arts et des lettres in 2017. You share the award with other illustrious Spaniards such as Carmen Maura who developed part of her great professional career on the French stages, or Arturo Pérez Reverte, and with personalities of the stature of the recent novel in literature, Bob Dylan, or to name a few Maryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Shakira, Carlos Vives… Is Victor del Arbol fashionable in France, one of the largest markets for the black genre? What does this award mean in your professional career?

VDA: I don't like to think that I am a fashion writer in France because fashions pass and I suppose that all of us who dedicate ourselves to this have the will to endure. On the contrary, what makes me happy is to see that some of my works become part of what we call "background libraries" and that despite the years they continue to be read. It seems to me that it is important that a book can be read outside of the time in which it was written and still be valid. That makes them classics.

I would like to believe that being named Chevalier des Arts et lettres by the French government will make me a better writer, but I am afraid that is not the case. I accepted this recognition with great happiness, but knowing that the opinion of others and mine are not necessarily in tune. The names of my predecessors that you quote speak for themselves of a trajectory and an incidence that I am still far from reaching. But of course it is an incentive to keep trying. A small part of me that I can't stifle would like this prestigious recognition to soften the road a bit at home, but I'm not under any illusions. We have to keep going.

AL: The writers mix and centrifuge their memories and the stories they have heard to create characters and situations, your old profession, your experience in the Mossos, has it ever been an inspiration to you?

VDA: Fabulation from personal memory is the subject on which what I write is based. The root of everything is there, between the folds of the past that inspires, recreates, deforms and reinvents itself. The vital experience as Mosso is part of that magma of memories and experiences. It is there, between the pages, in a more or less obvious way, even to me. My fears, my discoveries, my disappointments and my admiration. A part of my life.

AL: Black genre, but unlike most of the authors of the genre, there is not a character that repeats itself, they do not continue, do any of you think about having to star in one of your stories again in the future or will each one start from scratch? ?

VDA: Maybe sometime there will come to stay, but so far I have not felt that need. She should be a memorable character, capable of showing all her facets and her evolution over the years, as for example Petra Delicado from my admired Alicia G. Bartlett can do.

AL: Many great moments that drive and cement your professional career such as the success in France of The Sadness of the Samurai, or the Nadal Award for The eve of almost everything. For you, as a writer and as a person, what are the special moments of your professional career? Those that you will tell your grandchildren.

VDA: The first time I saw a novel of mine in bookstores ("El Peso de los Muertos"), the cover of La Vanguardia in Sant Jordi in which it appeared together with Juan Marsé, one of my reference authors, the cigarette that I smoked from early morning in the Plaza after the Nadal ceremony and being left alone thinking about my childhood, my brothers. But above all, I think I will tell my grandchildren that the best is yet to come, and it will be true.

AL: Your latest book, Above the Rain, published in 2017, is there already a next project? Are you one of those who begins the next novel as soon as the previous one ends, or do you need a time for creative regeneration?

VDA: I let time pass, although ideas don't come in or come out automatically. It's a creative process and I don't always control it. Sometimes as I write there are forays into other territories that inspire me, I take some notes and save them to mature later. Sometimes I write a few pages to see if I feel comfortable, if it works. If not, abandon.

I am working on a new story, in the documentation process and putting together the structural skeleton, the characters… It will be a long process before I actually start writing.

AL: You have a written and unpublished novel, The Abyss of Dreams, which was a Finalist for the 2008 Fernando Lara Award. What happened? We know it is a detective novel. You have no place in this competitive market, or are you the one who no longer wants to find it?

VDA: I don't think it's a good novel, although the idea is, it takes a lot of work and I don't feel like taking that step back to review it. Maybe one day.

AL: Any hobbies or habits when writing? They say that you like to sit and write on the terrace of the bar below your house… Can you still do that or does success lock you up at home?

VDA: Hahaha, yeah, I keep doing it. Sometimes a client comes up to me, greets me or asks me to sign a book, but they are kind people and respect privacy. The owners know me and don't mess with me even if I ask them for a latte every two hours. In winter it is a bit more complicated, but it is a matter of bundling up well. I like to write in open spaces, surrounded by things that happen, with my cigarettes, my notes. At any time and until I feel tired.

AL: Someone to show your work to before letting them see the light?

VDA: Lola, my former partner, used to read them. He made me see very interesting things that I was not aware of. Now I advance my editor or ask my wife to read a few individual chapters to see how the story breathes. But none of them are as critical as I am of myself. At the end of the day, I know what I am proposing and how close or far I am from achieving it.

AL: How do your novels fit in today's society? When do you write what do you want readers to remember about you? What are the topics that interest you beyond the history that covers them?

VDA: They fit in with the desire to combine content and container. An up-to-date, entertaining, direct speech to tell the same old truths, the doubts that never result and the universal themes of art, the desire to delve into what we are and the meaning of all this that we call Existence. I am interested in lost childhood, the question of cruelty and the question of good and evil.

I do not know what the readers will remember, I do not know if they will remember something, if I will go through how so many things happen without having left something worthwhile.

But I always imagine that a word, a paragraph, a book can open the doors for someone to enter themselves and leave with a handful of personal uncertainties resolved.

AL: I'm not going to ask you to choose from among your novels, but I will ask you to open up your reader's soul to us. What are the most worn-out books in your library, the ones that go by and you always read again? Any author that you are passionate about, the kind you buy the only ones that are published?

VDA: I have read all of Delibes's work, much of what has been written and published about Camus, I have reread Last Afternoons with Teresa many times. And I read what he publishes as soon as it appears translated to Paul Auster and Coetzee. I fondly preserve an anthology of Spanish Poetry with a special place for a certain poem by Antonio Machado.

AL: Now that you've achieved every writer's dream of making a living from your job, does literary piracy hurt you?

VDA:   Not only to me, but to anyone who truly feels any creative expression as their own. There are free ways to access reading without stealing: libraries, reduced-price e-books, paperbacks, loans, peer-to-peer exchange initiatives. Still, I'm more concerned with what's behind the opaque business of illegal downloads. Today we know that behind this false altruism there are millions stolen that undermine the possibility that other authors see the light with minimal guarantees of clarity and quality. I do not know how to quantify the monetary value of a book but I know all the work behind it so that it ends up reaching the reader, writers, publishers, booksellers, cultural journalism ... There are many people who end up damaged so that a few illicitly enrich themselves. We have known it for years, we have seen it in the music market. And an ignorant can learn, but how can a fool be convinced? Because it is foolish not to want to see that in the long run this strategy is detrimental to everyone.

AL: These days when Lorenzo Silva's departure from Twitter is a trending topic, I can't help but ask you: How is your relationship with social networks? Do they help the writer to be in contact with the readers or are they a jungle that only generates distraction?

VDA: Honestly, each time a little further away. Although I am reluctant to give up because I have had great encounters and discoveries on social media. The key is to maintain respect, exactly as you would if you had that person in front of you. The networks are a means of communication and exchange that I love, but the trolls are winning the game, the narcissists, those who only seek popularity at your expense, attract attention ... It ends up being exhausting and above all, discouraging. But it's still worth it.

AL: Paper or digital format?

VDA: Paper.

AL: In closing, as always, I am going to ask you the most intimate question you can ask a writer: Why do you write?

VDA: Someday I will know. Or maybe you don't want to know. Maybe you just want to keep doing it.

Thank you Víctor del Árbol, I wish you to continue having many successes and that you continue to give us many magnificent novels.