Photography. Luis Villalon. Facebook profile.
Luis Villalon, from Barcelona from 69, is the author of several tests about ancient Greece like The Trojan War or Alexander at the end of the world. In 2009 he published hellenikon, work that won the award hislibris to the best new author of a historical novel. The last one posted is The sky over Alexander, recently selected as a finalist for the Hislibris awards, and in this interview He tells us about it and many other topics. I really appreciate your time and kindness.
Interview with Luis Villalón
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
LUIS VILLALÓN: The first exactly, no. I guess it was some required college or high school reading: the Poem by Mío Cid, La Celestina…, One of those had to be. Of reading for pleasure, that is, without school or anyone's imposition, I remember reading Roots, that best sellers by Alex Halley that became fashionable many years ago and that made a series even more famous than the book. I also remember The blue border, which also had a television series. I don't know if they were the first, but they will be there.
The first story I wrote? When I was in the sixth year of EGB I wrote (I drew, rather) a comic with various stories of a superhero that I made up. The comic also had hobbies, stories and various nonsense; I made a cover for it and stapled it like a book. In the following course the comic was continued, and in the other also. I still have them. I also liked to write poetry, rather rippy and intended to be fun. I remember that during the military I decided to write a philosophy book. I wrote about 30 or 40 pages.
- AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
LV: I think there were two: It, by Stephen King, struck me for obvious reasons: the story was terrifying, the protagonists were children who later got older ... I was young when I read it, maybe I would be 15 years old. The other was The endless story, by Michael Ende. Fantasy, Mr. Karl Konrad Koreander, Bastián Baltasar Bux, Atreyu, Fújur, Áuryn, the Infant Empress, the printing of the two-color text, a story that eats the other like Nothingness devours Fantasy ...
When I read it, logically, the many mythological references which I later learned I had, and sometimes I think of rereading it for that reason, to look for them. But I'm afraid to do it, so as not to spoil the good memory I have of the book.
- AL: Who is your favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
LV: Well, I don't know if I have any, I think not. More than writers, I would say books that I really liked. Of the classics, Oliver Twist from Dickens, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, El conde de montecristo Dumas, some Shakespearean dramas, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre from his sister Charlotte ...
By more contemporary authors, some novels by Jose Carlos Somoza, Javier Marías, Cormac McCarthy, John Williams ... I recently discovered Iris Murdock, an Irish writer who died 25 years ago. His novels are quite dense and must be read calmly, but I like: The sea, the sea, The black prince, The son of words...
I spent quite a few years reading historical novels, a genre that I really like (in fact, if I am a writer of something, it is a historical novel). I still read them, of course. I like classic authors of that genre: Robert Graves, Gisbert Haefs, Mika Waltari or Mary Renault.
But if by favorite writers is meant the ones I have read the most, then I have to go to the greek: Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes… Everything started with the Greeks.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
LV: I don't know, I would have to think about it. It occurs to me Tiglath Asshur, the protagonist of Assyrian y The blood star, novels by Nicholas Guild. OR Lario Turmo de The etruscanby Mika Waltari; or Bartleby de Bartleby, the clerkby Melville. Or also Mendel, Mendel of the booksby Stephan Zweig.
- AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?
LV: I don't consider them hobbies, but habits that help me focus. When I read or write in general i need silence, especially in terms of voices; if I hear talk, I continually lose track of myself and don't know where I'm going. There are people who are capable of reading under these conditions, but not me. Often I put on music to write (not to read), very short.
I choose previously what I want to hear, almost always instrumental music (Mike Oldfield, Michael Nyman, some soundtrack, or just a song that I like), and I put it to play over and over again, in loop, like a mantra. I once listened to infinity to the song What a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong, covered by a Hawaiian musician, to write a humorous tale of Greeks, with Socrates and Plato in the middle. I won a story contest with him.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
LV: If I could choose I would say at night, but in general I read or write When I can. On the subway platforms (despite the noise; then I have to reread what I read or review what was written), during lunch time, in the afternoon, in bed ... Everything it depends on the time you have.
- AL: What do we find in The sky over Alexander?
LV: Well, even if it seems otherwise from the title, whom we do not meet, or we meet little, is Alexander, Alexander the Great. For those who do not know who he is, Alexander was a Macedonian king who at the age of 22 went to conquer the immense Persian empire and in 10 years he owned a territory that went from the eastern Mediterranean to India and the Danube river to the Red Sea. His conquest changed the world forever. But the novel does not va of that conquest, but of the tribulations of one of the Greeks who accompanied Alexander on the expedition: a certain OnesícritusHis name was as complicated as it was complicated since he was involved in a strange plan hatched around the King of Macedonia.
It is not a historical novel to use, in the sense that, yes, there are adventures, but the typical heroic epic does not appear that usually accompanies the genre, neither the long battle scenes (although there are battles), nor the very very good or very very bad characters. In life no one is black or white, we are all gray, and that is what this novel is about, even though it is set in a setting from 2300 years ago (in fact, one of the characters is able to "see the color" of the people). I think the novel has a point of humor that I hope someone catches, y also another reflection, because the characters spend their lives reflecting on their fate.
- AL: Any other genres that you like besides the historical one?
LV: If anything the mythological, but only when what they tell me really sticks to the myths. When too many things are mixed that do not fit me, or more imagination is thrown into it than the myth itself already includes, I cannot help it and disconnect. I like to read philosophy, I suppose that because of (or thanks to) having studied that degree. Before I really liked reading superhero comics; I don't know if that counts as gender.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
LV: I'm with a essay by Luciano Canfora, an Italian historian and philologist, who is titled The crisis of utopia. Aristophanes against Plato. I like it a lot. It is one of those books that you want to underline or take notes and encourage you to read other things. As to write, I have one history of Greeks from the beginning of the XNUMXth century BC. C. that we will see if it ends well.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?
LV: There are many authors, yes, and I include myself in the package. It is difficult to publish a book, which is why it is difficult for anyone to find a job: there is a lot of supply, a lot of writers, and little demand. Publishers screen and do not risk publishing little-known names, although it is also true that some do opt for new authors or those who are just starting out; but again the problem is the overcrowding. You can write better or worse, but many times it is luck that determines that you get to find a publisher that publishes you.
La desktop publishing It is a way out of the problem: if you don't have a publisher, you self-publish and see what happens. At least, the dream of seeing your published book will have already been fulfilled. And in fact, publishers sometimes go to portals like Amazon in search of writers who have self-published and are succeeding, to sign them. Marcos Chicot, a finalist for the Planeta award a few years ago, or Javier Castillo, or David B. Gil, were that lucky.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to stay with something positive?
MF: Personally I have been lucky; In my family environment there have been no contagions of covid, and at the work level I have also handled this almost a year that we have been of a pandemic well. But it is obvious that the situation is critical, and that many are having a very bad time, both for health and work. I think that a lot of social awareness is lacking, we are again stumbling over the same stone from the beginning of the pandemic due to lack of awareness. Hospitals collapsed with patients, outpatient clinics overflowing with work ... And many still do not take the problem seriously.
If I could stay with something positive? Well, since we are talking about books, I could be happy because in 2020 I published The sky over Alexander and something else. I am, of course, but I'm afraid that fate has not chosen the best year to be.