António Lobo Antunes: "I screw up in the Nobel. Prizes don't improve books"

The great Portuguese writer receives in August in his double floor of Lisbon quilted with books. The next month is published in Spain Of the nature of the gods (Random Hou-se), which is the only thing that does not speak. He does not believe in talent, admires Marsé, Ferlosio and Marías and has a hard time talking about his time in the war. Just want to write

Do you write every day? I start at eight and until one. Then, from two, two and a half until eight. And after dinner, an hour. He said that before publishing the first he had already written four. I started writing with 13 or 14 years but threw everything in the trash. With the first book, all publishers rejected me for more than three years. It was published by a very small publisher. I was 36 years old. Then I received a letter from a well-known American agent who had many South American authors that I did not know, for example Cabrera Infante, Ernesto Sábato ... Many, almost all. I thought it was a joke and I didn't answer the letter he sent me. And he wrote a second. I thought it was chic to have an agent in New York and we signed. One day he told me to go there, they wanted to meet me at Random House. I was very impressed because it was very large, with many publishers, many people. I asked what my editor was going to be "did you like the book?", "No, I have not read it", "and if you have not read it, why will you publish it?", "If the book is bad , I don't buy any more books from this agent ». There I met many people. I became very close with Reynaldo Arenas. One day he called me to say "António, I'm going to kill myself." I thought it was a joke because he was a very theatrical man. "Kill yourself." And he killed himself. There was a very curious Argentine, Ernesto Sabato, I don't know if it is still read. It was unbearable, always complaining about the world. And we had the New York Times , the Washington Post , the Chicago Tribune ... If you have this you have the world. Since then, the countries that had rejected me loved me very much. The first editorial that answered me in Spain was Siruela, who was directed by Jacobo [Fitz-James Stuart]. He was here two days ago with his wife. We became very friends. Keep editing books [in Atalanta] very good, very good. And so I started to know everyone and made friends in Spain, like Juanito Marsé and Javier Marías. In my opinion they are very good writers. I was amazed by Sánchez Ferlosio, who nobody talks about in Portugal. It was very funny what he said about his wife, who was a widow with the dead at home. I think that in Spain it is not given the importance that I think it has. He is a difficult author. You are also difficult. Do you now have more Ferlosio readers? Yes. Now he has published the complete works and an anthology of texts about animals. Ignacio [Echevarría]. Yes. Ignacio is very talented, intelligent and humorous and is a good critic. Sorry, my Castilian, I didn't speak it long ago ... I was in Mexico recently. I don't know if Javier [Marías] has many readers in Spain. And Juan [Marsé] too? It is wonderful to admire. They are not envious, they have never told me badly about other writers, nothing. Ferlosio is not easy, like you. I don't know what it is to be a difficult writer. Of course you don't have to read it. Did he become a doctor for his father? I was the oldest son of a university professor, a neuropathologist doctor of the nervous system. His teacher was Ramón y Cajal, who wrote beautifully. Most of the doctors were men who read a lot, they were much more than technicians. However, that I wrote for my father was very difficult to accept. "It's wonderful that there are quevedos , but not in the family." My father read a lot. When I was 15, he lent me a first edition of Céline. You sent a letter to Céline. Yes, and he answered me. But I lost her. I was a child. Did he become a psychiatrist to understand others? No, no. Psychiatrists ... Most are crazy without love. I was kidding. I wanted to be an employee of a bookstore to read. It was good for me to enter university with 16 years. I didn't know anything about life. It suited me very well. Then I wrote pretentious things. I understood that I had a lot to learn. And then the war came. I had finished studying. All people went to war. At first I thought of fleeing Portugal, as many did, but I was certain that the dictatorship was eternal and could not return. On the part of my mother I am Portuguese, but on my father's side I am German and Brazilian. I could not imagine my life in another city at that time. In order not to go to war, he had to flee and make the revolution in the cafés of Paris. I spent almost four years in the Army and from that time more than 27 months in the war. I was always in bad places, with many wounded, a lot of death, a lot of blood. Did a soldier die in his hand, on the operating table? In the war he dies. What does this have to do with literature? Partly yes, because you knew the horror of war and then wrote it. And the horror of marriage, which can be a war too and sometimes it is? I don't know, war is something I don't like talking to someone who doesn't have the experience of killing and dying. The immense cruelty of all wars and my infinite misunderstanding ... It was important for me, it changed my life but at a very high price. The soldiers were admirable. I don't complain about the army. There is a wonderful thing, the camaraderie. The soldiers were children, they were 20 years old, we were all 20 years old. I was a little older, 26 or so. It is admirable courage, courage. We, the Iberians, can be very violent physically, and we are. Look what happened in the Civil War in Spain. It is the same town. But at the same time there is a compassion, a real love. The soldiers were very poor. What is strange in Portugal is that many of them had never seen the sea. I remember that we were traveling on a train to embark for Africa and we were looking at the sea. And a soldier asked me: «My lieutenant, what river is this with so much water?». This made my eyes full of tears ... Because, as a poet said, this country is what the sea has not wanted. Children ... children who were four years old because they had to work. The dictatorship has been a horrible violence, the social classes were very marked. I was horrified because those boys had a lot of courage in combat. It is difficult to accept the death of a partner. He was dying too much. It is impossible to talk about war with those who have not had that experience. There is also much modesty, for the respect of the dead. The problem is that you never forget. Every year as with my combat company and the impression I have is that they continue to live in war. A meal with those who are still alive, or they may be dead but they don't know it. For me it is very good because there I have the feeling that I am understood, and I think they do too. I feel like a cigarette. I thought I didn't smoke anymore, that doctors don't smoke anymore. It gives me pleasure ... I've always been treated well in Spain. I had a translator, Mario Merlino. He suffered a lot with the dictatorship in Argentina ... He wrote poetry, a tragic poetry, very violent, almost masochistic. In Spain there are very beautiful women. Have you not written poetry? I have no talent. If I could write like the Golden Age poets. Spain has extraordinary poets. I remember that when I was young I had a book by Castellet, the Nine new , with a preface. It was very important to me. He was very friendly with some of them, with Anita Moix. My death hurt a lot. And from his brother [Terenci]. I also met Montalbán. And Pere [Gimferrer]. Pere has read everything. In that book I had a poem, Ode to Venice in the sea of ​​theaters, which was very very good. And made by a child. Pere has read everything, has understood everything. A very weird man, right? I like it. Keep writing? Marsé had a very difficult life, has had much value. A man full of humor. I love him so much. He has a pugilistic face that ... I like Spain for many reasons, for the beauty of women, and because they have shown me friendship ... I was born in a family that had resources and had a Galician who cared from me as a child, he filled my childhood with love. The prize that has reached me the most has been the Rosalía de Castro, which I received in the cathedral, with Fraga. I dedicated it to her. I like the poetry of Rosalia: « When I think you are going away / black shadow that astonishes me / or even two of my heads / turns making fun of me ». It's good that I can talk about Rosalia. Spain has always had great, great poets. Do you know what Cervantes said about the Spanish language? He said he was Portuguese with bones. It is much stronger. This country is a country of bridges, but poets do not have many. On this peninsula, Quevedo and his teacher Camoens reach all languages. And in the twentieth century, Lorca and Cernuda. It is not necessary to have them both. « Ay Federico García, / call the Civil Guard, / and my waist has broken / like a corn cane ». When you are here, do you not feel at home? It is the same people. It makes no sense to me that there are two different countries. I think he likes 'Pedro Páramo' a lot. You don't like it? I was writing The mountain range but made so many versions ... What that man has suffered. Because Pedro Páramo published it with 34 years. What other novels interest you? I'm interested in everything. You learn much more with bad books than with good ones. If one wants to write, better read bad books. In Latin America there are writers that I like very much. It is necessary to love writers, love them, read them, because the poor suffer so much, and it is so difficult to write. It is obvious to me that two men are condemned to understand each other. There are feelings that I don't understand; Envy, for example. It is so good to admire. There was a nineteenth-century French writer, Gautier. Some French friends took him to the Prado to see Las Meninas . He stood in front of the painting without saying anything, an hour passed, more time. The only comment he made was a question: "But where is the canvas?" This is the best compliment an artist can make. I would love to be asked "but where is the book?" If they asked you, you can be sure that your book is good. Perhaps, in writing, you have tried to understand the human condition, perhaps that is your search. I do not think about that. When I am with a book I only think about doing it. Now I am working on one that I will call the language of flowers . Maybe it's the last one. I am very happy with him and that never happens to me [he laughs]. Can you tell me something about the book? If you could tell it, why would you give me the job of writing it? [Laughs] .What can you say about the nature of the gods ? Have you read it? It is a title of Lucretius. Is the translation good? Very good, like the book. If I wrote it, it has to be good. I was kidding. Writing is a matter of work. There is no line that a beginner cannot make. There is no talent. Like bulls, you have to mmmmm [ramming your head]. And you make one version and another version and another version and another version. You have to be humble because it's just a matter of work. For example, poor Rulfo worked like a dog in Pedro Páramo. The best are the ones who work the most and are not happy with the first version. The first version may not be good. It is a profession of patience. And a little bit of courage to endure the times of discouragement, which are so frequent. Because you feel things very intensely and when you're going to look at what you've left on paper, there's such a great distance ... It's not romantic. Sánchez Ferlosio said of his wife that she was a widow who had the deceased at home. Because you hardly have time for anything else. Horacio, the Latin poet, said that the poet had to work 10 hours a day, one to write and the others to correct. Being spontaneous costs you a lot of work and the reader cannot feel that you have worked hard, it has to seem like fffffffff has been done ... Like this. Do you write by hand? Yes. In the same way I make love without a condom. And then I give the manuscript to the publishing house so that it is cuchucuchucuchucuchu, and then it is easier to correct. A book is never finished, it can be definitely unfinished. It is always possible to improve it. Do you like being a journalist? Yes, and literature. That pays dearly ... Now with these things - he says pointing to my cell phone - there are much fewer people reading, right? Always with that. My agent in Spain is Carmen Balcells and now the whole work is coming out in Arabic, in Chinese, I don't know what. I am very surprised with this. In Arabic there are 260 million readers. You are the first Portuguese author to publish in La Pléiade. Yes. For me it is a great honor, of course. It is better than the awards, which have given me so many. There are only two writers alive in La Pléiade. The other is Mario Vargas Llosa, I think, he has some books that I like very much, The Green House , Conversation in The Cathedral ... Pantaleón I like a lot too. Knows? To the writers you can only say thank you very much. For what they have given me. You suffer a lot to write. The doubts ... What time is it? Do you have enough? What I say is not very interesting. You also like football, and played. I think he’s from Atlético de Madrid. As a student, at the University. Look, football is not what it used to be. Now I don't like it, whoever has money wins. When I was 12 I saw Di Stéfano play, Gento ... remember? Yes, but they are all from Real Madrid. Atlético has now signed a kid, Joao Felix, 19, for 126 million. good. They are shit mercenaries, I'm not interested anymore. When I was little I felt the love for the club, not now, now they are professionals. Then the players cried if they didn't win, now they screw up for the love of the club. I preferred Atlético because, like Benfica, it had been done by poor people. I'm not interested either, as I'm not interested in Cristiano Ronaldo. I don't suffer like that. In this book, nothing seems what it is. The protagonist ... Let me see. "It's not midnight who wants" -read the phrase as a book window. Antonio Sanz Delgado -the name of the translator-. Do not know him. Maria da Piedade - to whom the novel is dedicated. She is my editor here. He rejected the first book. Did the man do a good job? Translating is impossible, whatever it is. Pedro Páramo is impossible to translate. I'm not going to talk about my work, about my book, it's not me who has to talk about it. Of course I have my idea of ​​what I have done, and its quality. Of course I'm vain, I don't show it but I am. I try not to be. I'm going to smoke one last ... What's that fififi's name? Cigarette lighter? In Portuguese, he is a sparkler. It is good to smoke. The protagonist of the book is a tyrant, a man who marries a 16-year-old girl who is the daughter of a man to whom he owes money. Does it criticize the vanity of money? It is a concrete case. During the dictatorship Portugal was a country without middle class, there were a small number of important families and the rest lived very badly. It has Proust, Beckett, García Márquez ... There are books everywhere. And I stay there. Borges said that Quevedo was not a writer, that it was a literature. I don't like Borges, a shit fascist. He doesn't like Pessoa either. No, I don't like him. It ends up being much more rational than emotional. I don't love it, no. Like Borges, who does he reread? Faulkner gives me pleasure, Saint-Simon, Proust ... What book do you prefer, 'Exhortation to crocodiles'? I haven't read any after publishing them, I worked so hard on them that I ended up fed up. Do you want to talk about the Nobel? I always screwed up on that. It's very good because every year it comes with my name and I don't even think about it anymore. For me it was more important La Pléiade, but now that it has come it doesn't matter anymore. Books don't stay better with that, whatever the prize. Literary prizes are nice when they come with a lot of money. Have you got what you dreamed of as a teenager? In what sense, if I am happy with my work? Do you want a modest or sincere response? Sincere, I'm not vain but I think I changed the literature. But how important is it, I'm going to die. Then you have to relativize all this. Perhaps success is nothing more than a failure that comes later. I don't know, it doesn't worry me. Life does not matter. They are only books. « Ay Antoñito el Camborio, / worthy of an Empress! / Remember the Virgin / because you are going to die ».

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