Photography: Guillermo Aguirre, Facebook profile.
William Aguirre He is from Bilbao but lives in Madrid and works as a literary critic, as well as being a columnist for Ámbito Cultural and coordinator of courses at Hotel Kafka. In this extensive interview He talk to us about A certain Crab, his latest novel, and much more. I thank you very much for dedicating your time, kindness and attention to me.
Guillermo Aguirre — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled a certain crab. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?
William Aguirre: It is the story of a group of adolescents, from 12 to 18 years old, and in Bilbao at the end of the nineties, although the central plot works mainly through one of them: Cangrejo. They are, all of them, boys who drop out of school and take to the streets. We have failure in equal parts: sentimental failure, failure of education at home and formal education and finally the failure of violence as a way to achieve things. They have said that it is a novel harsh, uncompromising, violent and also with a certain sense of humor.
The intention was to be able to explain better to those adolescents who are out of the pot, their passions, their motivations, their way of thinking, of suffering, and at the same time place the reader a little in the place of society: what do we do with them? Do we save them, do we condemn them? Where do we put them? The idea itself is not so much that the sky, rather was. By was I mean that I was a bit of a teenager of those, and when you live certain experiences, it seems obligatory to tell them if you have the opportunity.
In the novel I create a fictional plot around a series of violence and crimes that did not happen, or at least not to me, but the final intention is to unfold from behind aspects that I do know firsthand, and that enliven the work, that can speak face to face with a teenager with problems, a parent with a teenager with problems, or any citizen who is curious about this type of case and B-side adolescence, so to speak. Of those who walk on the wild side of life.
- AL: Can you go back to that first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
GA: I think it was about The wind in the willows, or perhaps of Peter Pan. At least those were the first books I read without help or without company, and that were not full of pictures. I don't remember my age exactly, but I remember reading them in another room different from mine, my grandfather's, to sleep closer to my mother's room (I was afraid at night). I believe that from that fear of the night and the inability to fall asleep was where much of the appetite for reading arose.
Around that time I must have also read a book called The Pal Street boys, by Ferenc Molnár, a title less known than the previous ones, about kids who at the beginning of the XNUMXth years fight over a vacant lot in the neighborhood with stones. I love it. Maybe that also has something to do with a certain crab: The fascination for the dark, for the violent, for the antihero is something that leads Crab to get together with the bad guys on duty. So be careful with those things that are literary, because both save and condemn.
In any case, attending to the other question, the first story that I began to write was on my grandfather's typewriter, with the half pages of the greyhound. It was a story full of misspellings in which three people descend into a well and there they find a new civilization in which animals talk and live like us, and in which men act as pets. Of course I never finished it, nor could I say how it ends, because I would have about nine years, or so, but he's still at home. Sometimes I find her in a childhood folder, so I know that she exists, or that she did exist.
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
GA: I think there are too many times to have a leading writer in each of them. If you want I will tell you some books from different periods that more or less marked me: the golden ass, of Apuleius. the guide, El Adolphe by Benjamin Constant, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn o Moby Dick… With the wanderer, by Colette, we would already enter the XNUMXth century, and there things begin to multiply too much in relation to authors and authors that I like or interest: Forster, Evelyn waugh, Duras, Margaret Yourcenar, all the Roths and, for some time now Annie Ernaux or Vivian Gornik…there are too many in the XNUMXth century.
Head writers: Lawrence Durrell, Le Carré and Terry Pratchett. They are nothing alike except in the English, and not even in that, because Durrell spent his whole life trying to scare away the British based on exotic Mediterranean thugs, but hey. They are among my favorite writers: the first for their language, the second for their stories, the third for their humor.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
GA: To a certain extent, it is complex to answer this without returning to the previous answers: who would not have wanted to create Peter Pan? Or the fantastic hilarious Toad from The wind in the willows? My mother named me after a character from children's books: Guillermo Brown, or the Naughty, created by Richmal Crompton. Who wouldn't have wanted to create William Brown?
Me, if I have to meet someone, I prefer any of the characters from my childhood readings to Madame Bovary or I don't know, than to Holden Caulfield, for example, the one with The catcher in the rye… I pass that rock. It must be very magical to create something that gets into a child's head so much. And already put, why meet them? What I would like is to be able to be those characters for a fee.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
GA: I write half standing, because I'm very nervous and I smoke a lot. I also read half standing, in the corridors and so on. Sometimes I blaspheme when I write, or throw insults at nothing. Relax your mind, that.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
GA: Well, when I was young I thought it was very good to write at night, a vile half-drunk kind of thing. He looked pretty, but he didn't write a damn thing. Many years ago I changed the schedule. I write only in the morning (if I write, because I procrastinate a lot), and if possible taking coffee stained milk. Yeah, if that, in the afternoon I read. Or not.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
GA: Sure. I don't even know very well what gender it belongs to a certain crab, for example, since although it has a lot of street novels and some kinky stuff and a bit of dirty realism, it also has a lot of fantasy, because the main character (Crab) reprints mythology on the reality of Bilbao in the nineties of his own imagination, and thus he sees the school as a medieval castle, or his presence in the parks protecting his own as if he were in ancient Rome and were an official of Caesar. I like them some historical novelsas I, Claudio, and in that direction.
I also like the costumbrista gothic fantasy, Shirley Jackson roll. I also like, as seen before by Le Carré, the spy genre, (I recommend The top). Somewhat less war novel, but one must read at least once The naked and the dead, from Mailer.
I really liked it at one time stories of pirates or the seaAnd I also read a lot. Western (I recommend Oakley Hall and McCarthy). For example, in my last novel, The sky that you have promised us, I tried to bring the Western genre to the Spain of the eighties, and in another previous novel, Leonardo, there was in the middle of a couple's infidelity today a pirate story. Anyway, I like to play with different genres when writing too. It's something we do for fun, those of us who don't make any money at this soap opera.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
GA: too many things at once, because I open many books, I read in a crazy, messy, chaotic way. Now I have in reading the great wave, by Albert Pijuan, Pennsylvania, by Juan Aparicio Belmonte, You brought the wind with you, by Natalia Garcia Freire, the rest is air, by Juan Gómez Bárcena and In the cell there was a firefly, by Julia Viejo.
It is understood that with all that I am reading, plus the promo of a certain crab, right now i'm not writing anything. I'm in the process of letting ideas settle, but I'm toying with going back to the modern western, this time working with the figure of the Redneck but in Castilla y León (they exist), or a story of mileurista spies, friends, love and crazy jealousy of partner. Will have to see.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is and what decided you to try to publish?
GA: Well, when you write you want to be read. So everyone who writes wants to publish, it's not so much that they decide or not for it. Come on, you want to publish no matter what the publishing landscape is like. In addition, it is said that it has always been in crisis, but the publishing scene does not have to be a thing of the authors, I think, or at least not in excess. Every little owl to his olive tree. From the publishing panorama that the publishers worry, the writers to write.
- 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?
GA: At the moment of crisis, the publishing scene happens a bit, right? Since 2008 that we have been going from one to another, it seems that the crisis has always been there, come on. I often say that the writer is a bit of a witness to the world. He has not come to fix it, rather to look at it and narrate it as he can., so in problems there is always bait for writing. But there is also a certain contradiction: for writing, conflict and lack are usually a good thing, but when they are over and one writes from a distance, one already has a way of putting food on the table and warming up one's pinreles.