Today I speak with Javier Alonso Garcia-Pozuelo, Madrid writer with whom I share roots from La Mancha. His first novel, The snuff box, published last year, has been a success here and abroad for some time. I read it at the time and I liked the mix of historical novel very well documented and set in XNUMXth century Madrid and its police plot starring the Inspector José María Benítez, a kind of Sherlock Holmes or a traditional Vidocq. A doctor by profession, García-Pozuelo kindly answers me some questions and from here thank you.
Who is Javier Alonso García-Pozuelo
Doctor, teacher and writer from Madrid, is graduate in medicine and surgery by the Autonomous University of Madrid, and Diploma in International Cooperation by the Complutense University. He has practiced for more than a decade as Professor of Biostatistics and Public Health besides working as writer, proofreader and editor of scientific texts.
He currently combines his position as academic and editorial director for Latin America from the medical training school AMIR with his literary activity. For a few years he has directed and edited Appointment in the Glorieta, a collaborative history and literature blog, and directs the Black Week in the Glorieta, literary festival dedicated to the black and police genre.
Interview
What does literature mean to you? What does it give you and why do you think it is so necessary?
Reading is as essential in my life as friendship, love, good cooking or music. I am who I am thanks, in large part, to what I have read. Books are an essential part of my days. I work with books and in my free time, I often continue with them. I am very sociable and I really like to go out with friends for a drink and chat (not always about books, for the record), but I have to admit that I also really enjoy being alone, with a steaming coffee on the table and a good book between hands.
You have studied medicine, you have dedicated yourself to international cooperation. Since when has literature?
Must have fifteen or sixteen years old when I wrote the first pages of what was supposed to be a novel. Of course, I didn't get past the first chapter. Shortly before or shortly after, I don't remember, I wrote a song whose theme, the unhappy housewife because of a selfish, macho and insensitive husband, was the same as that of the novel.
In the song there is a young man who is in love with that woman. I have it recorded on a cassette. Marilú it was called. The song, I mean, not the woman I was inspired by when writing it. What memories! Since then I have not stopped writing. Songs, stories, novels, and articles. What changed a few years ago is that I started to spend more time writing and I did it with the goal of publishing.
Let's go to your childhood for a moment. Do you come from reading roots? What did you use to read? What did you ask the Three Wise Men?
In a working class family With a moonlighting father from Monday to Saturday and a mother with three children to raise, it is not easy for your parents to find free time to read, although at home there were always many books. Despite having books around me, I was not a very precocious reader and, of course, I do not remember ever asking the Three Kings for a book.
However, there was a childhood reading that marked me deeply. I couldn't explain what her reading caused me as a child, but The Little Princeby Antoine de Saint-ExupéryIt is one of the books that has left the greatest mark on my imagination. Whenever my life is saturated with figures and adult concerns, I read it again.
For those who have not read it yet, how do you consider The snuff box? A historical novel with a detective plot or a detective novel with a historical background?
Creo contains elements of Both genresAlthough, from my point of view, it fits more with the scheme of a detective novel than with that of a historical one. When writing it, I took the conventions of the noir genre quite loosely and paid a lot of importance to the historical dimension, but the axis of the novel is the resolution of a crime and its protagonist, an investigator.
I worked with the period setting and the political context as rigorously as the plot and documentation of police actions, so, labels aside, I would like to think that neither historical novel readers nor detective novel fans are going to see their expectations disappointed when reading it. Hopefully most readers agree with me.
And what do you think they have that we like so much novels in which a charismatic inspector must unravel a crime?
All literature, not just the police or mystery literature, feeds our desire to know. We are curious beings who would like to be able to know, like that cocky devil from Vélez de Guevara, what happens under the roofs of our neighbors' houses. Literature tells us about characters with whom we can identify or who we can detest, but who for some reason arouse our interest.
The detective novel also allows us to play at guessing those intimacies at the same time as the researcher. And that character must be charismatic. That is one of the great challenges of today's detective novel writer: to ensure that, after hundreds of brilliant investigators in the history of the black genre, your readers feel like accompanying yours in their investigations.
In the crime novel the charisma of the protagonist is, at least, as important as the plot. The days that we are reading the novel we spend a lot of hours by his side. We have something to do with that police officer, detective, judge or lawyer to dedicate our time to him.
Benítez is that good and humble policeman who fights against evil, a man with values. Is it based on a historical character who inspired you? And what are you trying to tell us with him?
Benitez it is not inspired by any historical figure specifically, but his career path does resemble that of some policemen from Madrid from 1861, year in which the novel is developed. And despite his many defects, he has a virtue that is the one that I would highlight the most about the character: the integrity.
I admire people who do not put aside their moral principles as the circumstances are unfavorable, for example, when your job is in danger. I suppose that is what I wanted to have with this character, that there are people who fight for a just cause even if they put their status and even their personal safety at risk.
Can there be a second part or saga with Inspector Benítez?
Many of my readers ask me and it has been suggested by my editor, so, although I have several literary projects in mind, I think I will have to put them aside for the moment and prioritize the next novel of Inspector Benítez.
And what authors or books are among your favorites or do you consider that they have been able to influence your career?
There have been many authors of those who mark a stage of your life with fire. Come to mind Stendhal, Dostoevski, Baroja, Carmen Laforet, Vázquez Montalbán, Kundera, Philip Roth. It would be very difficult for me to choose an author. Choose a single book, impossible.
What do you think about the development of the detective novel in Spain and around the world? Who are your favorite authors of the genre?
I think that the current success of the detective novel and the historical novel has a simple explanation: people like to entertain themselves by reading and these two genres have an immediate playful component. The entertainment is not incompatible with the fact that the novel is of great literary quality. Comes to mind Eduardo Mendoza, last Cervantes award, although there are many examples.
Talking about favorite authors is very difficult. I cannot speak of the magnificent authors of current crime novels because, no matter how much I mentioned, it would leave me more than half of those I admire. Yes, I would like to mention, because they are the ones that I have reread the most in recent years, three deceased authors: Hammett, Simenon y Vazquez Montalban.
With the success of this first novel, how do you consider your future as a writer?
The literary world, at least in Spain, has more of quicksand than solid ground. Better not set expectations. Whatever will sound. For the moment, the only thing that matters to me is that the second case of Inspector Benítez is as well received as this one. I have participated in several international reading clubs and it has been a very pleasant surprise to see that people from other countries connected with a novel that, at least in terms of setting, is so local, so Madrilenian.
And lastly, sIf you had to stay with just one of your passions, what would it be?
The word. Don't ask me to put a corset on her, please.