Juan Diego Madueño
Updated Friday, April 5, 2024-21:52
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Interview Ottessa Moshfegh: "Sometimes I feel that something dictates what I write from above"
"Leaves you wanting more. A very good novel. Original proposal in which the narrated events go back in time. New novel by
Martin Amis
. Anagrama presents us with its new catalog for this year's
rentrée
. Forgive me in advance for the joke what I'm going to spend on them," writes
Rafael Castillo
about
Time's Arrow
in
Asterisk Magazine
in 1991.
"The debutante Lola Beccaria makes her debut in literature with her new novel,
The Debutante
, and, if she does not write better sentences, the reviewer Guillermo Talavera will soon be fired from the newspaper where he works, I fear," writes
Guille Talavera
in
The chronicle of Murcia
in 1996.
"For some time now
there has been a certain joke
, with a certain amount of sarcasm about my supposed relapse into cocaine [...] Well, more than one person would like to be in my place now, because I very much doubt that someone would be timid about Diosa Blanca can enjoy this new novel by the American
enfant
terrible as much, as much, as I have enjoyed it," reviews Lino Valverde
Glamorama
, by Bret Easton Ellis, in 1998, in Information 16.
To know more
Literature.
Bret Easton Ellis: "What I hate most about this time is the generalized anger against everything"
Editor: ANTONIO LUCAS Madrid
Bret Easton Ellis: "What I hate most about this time is the generalized anger against everything"
Literature.
Blackwater Fever, the dark serial novel from half a century ago that is bursting into bookstores: "It had been unjustly forgotten"
Editor: DANIEL ARJONA Madrid
Blackwater Fever, the dark serial novel from half a century ago that is bursting into bookstores: "It had been unjustly forgotten"
The names of literary critics have undergone modifications. Same as the headers. They are pseudonyms that hide journalists and newspapers. The only real thing are the quotation marks, the reviews chosen by the philologist
Miguel Alcázar
in
Literary criticism in the nineties
(Ediciones la uña rota). The anthology serves as a porthole for the reader.
At a glance you can see the lost world of brutal honesty, literary scores, and the adolescence of the sector
. Everything that has been lost in the transition between the analog plain of then and the contemporary digital sphere.
Alcázar has put a mask on the handful of insolent, ill-educated, brilliant, cynical, dipsomaniacs, cocaine addicts, hesitant, talented and dishonorable men and women distributed throughout the literary pages of the newspapers, magazines and supplements of the 90s, when the reader was still just a reader. Alcázar prefers not to look great. "I don't have a strong opinion. My objective was to do philological work, compilation and anthology.
You realize the sociological change that has occurred. What was once considered politically correct is no longer so. The figure of the critic had more power
. Now, with the Internet, criticism has been democratized. Everyone has something to say. Before, critics were cultural totems. They gave their opinion. They felt legitimized to tell their lives. It was interesting to know what they thought about extra-literary issues."
Now everything is more predictable. "The authors are careful with the literature that is published. It is less wild and transgressive. At this time, both the press and the writers take care of the forms to the point of self-censorship.
These aspects are taken with great care
," adds the author. Miguel Alcázar first tested the possible success of the book on Twitter. Through @critica_lit_90s he has shared the findings. "Many people are interested in it. I think there is a feeling that before we could express ourselves more freely. The 90s are my homeland. I started going back to the novels of that decade, like
Nobody Knows Anyone
or
Kronen Stories
,
and I became interested in the criticism of that time".
The anthology reveals the dissolution of literary criticism. Alcázar has been motivated, among other impulses, by nostalgia. It is not that the anthology aimed to catch those who maintain a relationship of collusion with the publishers by the chest, but by showing the comments from that time, the comparison is inevitable.
"The freshness that we associate with the 90s has been lost
," a time considered by some of the selected critics as "revanchist." Alcázar teaches at a university in Scotland. "It may be a consequence of missing Spain. I have recently had a couple of children. I remember my childhood. It is the perfect breeding ground. The result may be a tribute to that decade. Before there was criticism of sensitivity, in which the technical arguments were not exposed.
Boyero is the last exponent
."
"The freshness has been lost. Before there was criticism of sensitivity. Now everything is agreed"
Miguel Alcázar, author of 'Literary criticism in the nineties'
Anything you write can be used against our own section. Acid literary criticism has simply disappeared with the passage of time. A phenomenon by which newspapers have been domesticated, since there is the feeling that no book is so important,
no matter how poorly written, to throw it into the pool of public opinion.
"Criticism is very important because it is the way to validate the importance of what we are criticizing," Alcázar defends the position of his critics. "Criticism makes publishing news important. If in philology it is important to read classics, literary criticism reminds us that it is important to publish literature
and if it matters, we must be honest and realistic and talk about the positive and the negative
," he elaborates.
The maid's daughters: the failed serial of Sonsoles Ónega and the self-immolation of the Planeta Prize was
Halley's
comet
of corrosive criticism. "It may be coming back, even if only superficially.
The novels that are published are very conventional, all very commercial.
Here in the United Kingdom such criticism is impossible. It is striking how everything is agreed upon with the publishers. Everything "It's discounted. It's always positive. In Spain we have ended up imitating the Anglo-Saxon world."
He changed the names of the journalists and the media outlets to avoid a judicial problem. "
It was difficult to get all the copyrights. It's a huge job. It would have been great to have them, but we couldn't have them.
The publisher can't afford it."
Literary criticism in the nineties
passed through the offices of one of the two large publishing groups in the country. "They were about to publish it. They backed out at the last moment out of fear.
There was pressure to withdraw reviews from in-house authors, which were not beneficial, even though more than 30 years have passed
."
"Nightmarish, absurd, confusing, disturbing, surreal, sinister, disturbing, paranoid, crazy, creepy work [...] Come on, like that night at the newspaper's Christmas dinner where the
bitch
editor-in-chief threw me out psychotropics in the
vat
of
rum
,
"
wrote
In which an analogy is made between jazz musicians and literary critics, delving into the legend, the myth about the dissolute lives that converged in the newspapers. That conception of the newsroom as an after-hours with computers and not an office with a printing press. "It's a good summary of the book as a whole. It was an opinion column,
but I think it's a good summary of the book."
Miguel Alcázar's only intervention is found in the first pages. He writes about the houses of the 90s, he remembers the place where his parents kept the newspaper clippings, the drawers where some magazines were found.
"It was such characteristic furniture. All that has disappeared
. "
Like the reviews, homes are not the same either. "In this 21st century, everything has become homogenized. We have lost the sounds, the noises of the interior patios." The exercise of nostalgia is sometimes exhausting. "It's not passive," he clarifies. "It encourages us to change the present. Looking at the past shapes the future. Maybe by going back to the criticisms of now and comparing them with those of the 90s, someone will think of changing them."
That the book was published in the media would round out the proposal.
"I would be flattered."