She has just won the Nadal with her first novel. He was a finalist on the Planet with 'Joy', in which he tells the love story between them.
Manuel Vilas: His 'integral nude' that is almost worth the Planet Award
Couples rule in Spanish literature. There are Luis García Montero (61 years old), director of the Cervantes Institute, and Almudena Grandes (59), National Narrative Prize. And, above all, the marriage formed by Elvira Lindo (57) and Antonio Muñoz Molina (64). He, a language scholar and recognized with the Prince of Asturias de las Letras 2013. She, author of the successful children's saga Manolito Gafotas and columnist of El País . In common, an apartment in New York and the applause of literary circles, which has placed them in an unattainable literary elite for other couples of authors in our country .
However, his reign seems to be in danger. The concession of the Nadal Prize (endowed with 18,000 euros) to Ana Merino (48) this week for her first novel, The map of affections , has finished configuring the new fashion lovers of Spanish letters: the one that forms her and Manuel Vilas (57).
Less than three months ago, Vilas became a finalist of the Planeta Prize ( 150,000 euros earned him the second, behind Javier Cercas ) with Alegría , a novel that is in a way the continuation of Ordesa , the great publishing phenomenon of 2018 In that biographical book, Vilas adjusted accounts with his past. Especially with his parents, whom he identified in those pages with two names of composers -Bach and Wagner- and with whom he always had a difficult relationship. An exercise of love for people who never knew very well how to love. And also a confession of Vilas' own miseries, which include crude descriptions of his alcoholism and a traumatic divorce that increased his descent into hell.
Joy draws the opposite path: the one that goes from the bottom of the well to that feeling of which the title speaks, that he does not want to equate with happiness, "because joy is better than happiness." And that's where Merino's presence is a constant in the 357 pages . Vilas calls her Mo , by Mozart, and spares no intimacies of both. The bad body left by Ordesa is transformed into a string of reflections by Vilas about life and the lived.
Both have many things in common. The main one: having started in poetry and ending up making the leap to the narrative . Ana is the daughter of José María Merino (78), a Leonese writer installed in Madrid since shortly before her birth. Ana graduated in Modern and Contemporary History from the Autonomous University of Madrid and shortly afterwards she won the Adonáis Award for her first poems, Preparations for a trip . On those dates he made his first trip to the United States to complete a master's degree. In the end, he would end up settling in North America, where he lives and teaches at various universities, such as Iowa, for 25 years .
"The love story with Mo occurs in the United States," says Vilas in Alegría . "I think we were happy there, and we did it quite simply. What we did most was to go from hotel to hotel. We both like hotels. On the other hand, we both got out of a divorce ." He was 51 when he met her. And 52 when they decided to live together. They would end up getting married soon after, in Iowa. "I kept a private accounting . I did my calculations. She is ten years younger than me, that placed me in a very different time space from my first marriage," he confesses in other pages of the book.
"We agree on many things: for example, we both live in disorder. We pile clothes and books and papers. However, she always finds the paper she is looking for. I never find it. How is that possible, I wonder."
At the moment, Merino does not make so many confessions about her husband. Just point out that he and his father are his trusted readers. José María says he has inherited curiosity about the multiple formats, which has led him, for example, to become a comic book expert.
Another interesting chapter of Joy is that of the couple's American wedding. There was no alcohol. "That Mo does not drink was crucial for me to stop drinking," Vilas says in a moment. "It would have been impossible to quit without her. It's been more than four and a half years since I stopped drinking , and I think about what my life would have been like if I had quit before, long before."
You can "change the past in the imagination, suspend possibilities for a couple of minutes, until we realize the banality of those mental exercises, which end in leisure that hurts. We can not change anything, and those exercises come from our immaturity. We must accept where we have come in life , wherever we are. We must accept the responsibilities, "says the Aragonese alcohol.
When they met, "a thousand confessions" were made, Vilas continues describing their relationship. "Among others, all the boyfriends and girlfriends we had. At that time that had its strength, its eroticism, its morbidity. Now, a few years later, those truths confessed in the past sometimes hinder us. They bother us. And it has its grace that what at first was an erotic game related to glare and courtship then becomes a knife. "
Vilas sees all this "as a prodigy of human nature . I see it as joy." " Mo always gives me advice, because he expresses love through advice," he adds in a moment of tenderness. "Expressing love has its complexity. It is not enough to say 'I love you.' The transmission of love needs materiality. Life, maturity, is knowing how to distinguish how people manifest their love. Not everyone does it. way, that meant. It's a long repertoire. To understand that repertoire is to live with others. "
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