New chapter of the judicial soap opera that confronts the widow of Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003), Carolina López, with whom it was the closest circle to Carmen Pérez de Vega, the sentimental couple of the author of 2666 during his last six years of life . The defendant on this occasion was the editor and literary critic Ignacio Echevarría , whom López (and his two sons, Alexandra and Lautaro, who also sign the lawsuit) accuses of violating his right to honor and personal and family privacy in two articles appeared in El Cultural and El País . López accuses Echevarría of profiting at the expense of Bolaño and asks for 150,000 euros. After three hours of trial held yesterday behind closed doors in the City of Justice of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, the case has been seen for sentencing. The prosecutor asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit , as the defense.
"It has been a demolition process, point by point," explained a satisfied Echevarría on departure. «It seems that reason is going to break through. Everything was good that could go when you have to suffer and hear such a string of lies and ill will. The drink has been nothing pleasant but it seems that things are going well. Although not won, ”he added wisely. In two articles, Echevarría explained that López's decision to cut off relations with Anagrama - the author's lifelong editorial - had not been a strictly literary decision, but a personal one. "They talk about false facts and there are no facts here, there are opinions," argues Javier Echevarría, lawyer (and brother) of the accused.
Jorge Herralde, founder of Anagrama, who after 50 years of career and more than 4,000 published titles attended the first trial of his life as an editor, explained that he received two visits from the widow's lawyer in which he was suggested that if I wanted to keep the author of Telephone Calls in his catalog, «Carmen Pérez de Vega does not exist». "I told him not to speak, that it was ridiculous to deny an obvious and super-known thing and sent a copy of my response to Carlo Feltrinelli so that he knew the important consequences that could have." «I told the lawyer that I was part of the group of people who had the luck or the misfortune of having been presented by Bolaño to Carmen Pérez de Vega as his girlfriend, that it is not necessary to understand it in a literal sense but in an emotional sense Very close". The consequence was that López decided to break Anagrama and sign for Alfaguara.
For Herralde, «one of the enormous enigmas of this show is to affirm that Ignacio has made a profit. Reading the vast dossier, which by the way needed a vigorous editing , is 400 pages and could have remained at 50, it was alluded to a thousand euros offered by Carolina herself »after the publication of The Secret of Evil. According to Echevarría's lawyer, his defendant “does not agree with the publication of unfinished works as if they were finished works. He acquires the responsibility, because Bolaño told him so and the widow herself recognized it, to watch over her posthumous work and she feels concerned, ”he argues.
The truth is that the two witnesses summoned by Lopez did so in an awkward situation. The great American agent Andrew Wylie, known as El Chacal, who according to those present was "gentleman and content," maintains a "great friendship, if that is possible between an agent and an editor," with Herralde. Represents a dozen authors of its catalog. Yesterday, given the circumstances, the greeting between the two was discreet. Apparently, Wylie argued that criticizing a writer's widow for protecting her legacy is sexist . Pilar Reyes, editorial director of Penguin Random House (the current label of Bolaño) did not go to trial alleging a trip. Nor would it have been easy for her to testify against Echevarría, an intimate of Claudio López de Lamadrid, his predecessor in office, until his death last January. A tangle that also had some humor, like when Carolina López was repeatedly confused with "Carolina Herrera." Nobody is perfect.
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