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The mysterious Mr. Aira

not give interviews in Argentina. Not circulating in literary circles. Publishes a book every six months. And international criticism is one of the most prestigious writers of our country. He speaks here of his inventions and secrets. Narrator

indefatigable, César Aira (1949) was born in Coronel Pringles, a village in the interior of Argentina. Currently residing in his youth in Buenos Aires, has spun a more copious narrative works of contemporary American literature. In addition to his novels, many of them published in Mexico, among which include the hare, How I Became a nun, Ghosts, The Congress of literature, The Adventures of Barbaverde and the two clowns, has written critical essays on Copi and Aira

Pizarnik style has emerged personal, imaginative and full of puns successive blunders that mark as a writer, if not marginal, at least rare. That rarity, and the frenzy with which he published his novels always brief, have led to pigeonhole him as an author for true devotees. He seems to prefer to have "readers" to be "public." This conversation took place during his brief stay in Mexico City.

- Does being a public figure is a burden? A necessary evil?
"It is only in travel. In Argentina I have never dropped the curtain and there are interviews, very occasionally participated in a conference, a panel once or twice a year. And I do not any kind of public life. When I travel I do, because sometimes it is the price you pay for a ride to somewhere nice in the world, and I do it with pleasure. Talking about oneself is always comforting to the ego, especially to see that there is some interest in one.

"Rather you are a retiring figure, domestic ...
"Yes, yes. Not because my strategy is as natural to me. I still like writing, which is rare among writers. I keep writing. Take time, have mindset to write. I do not need public exposure.

"It's a common phenomenon of the writers under time goes on and consolidates the work is beginning to favor his participation in conferences ...
"What happens is that there are many people who, in their youth when they say" I want to be a writer ", in reality they want to function socially as writers, that's what they like. Take the card to be able to say, going to conferences, have a professional social figure. And they find that the problem with that is they have to write, you do not like. Then write a book every ten years, with great effort, or collected items remain in effect so that the card writer. So many times I have said, when asked about this, I do not like the writers do not write. I see that there are writers who work as writers and they really are not writers by vocation. And in my case, I have published many books, but many little ones, is anathema to me to be very prolific. A friend told me, when I said I was coming to Mexico to participate in public affairs: "carrying a gun, and when you start to talk, Put it on the table and said: The first time you say the word? Prolific?, I stick a shot. So you're going to be controlled. " For prolific now has become a derogatory term. If it is prolific, can not be good. But that is precisely all those writers who do not write and defend themselves well. What else can a writer write? That is, if what you write is published, it is because there is some interest in publishing, a publisher interested, any reader interested in reading it. So I see no reason to despise the prolific.

"It's as if he intended to" measure out the genius. "
-Right, and vice versa, is the idea that if someone writes a book every twenty years is because it must be great. There is no guarantee.

-is also the idea that the writer has to say above all, become a kind of oracle ...
"There are many who like it. The fact that escrito unos libros es la excusa para hacer esto que quieren: opinar sobre el ser nacional, como se dice en la Argentina, sobre los problemas sociales del mundo, de la vida, de la ética. Quizá no está tan mal eso, porque después de todo un escritor es un profesional de la palabra. Sabe, ha aprendido, si ha hecho bien su aprendizaje, a hacer oraciones que suenen bien...

-Sin embargo, y es a lo que quería llegar, esas opiniones, esa capacidad para interactuar con el mundo, están en su caso en sus novelas, más que en la prensa .
-Lo mío siempre va un poco para el lado de la fantasía, de la invención, hasta del disparate, el delirio, así que no me atrevería to get a say in the world.

"But do not you think that this is a way to skew or skewed world view?
"In general, writers who become pundits become pundits from the left side of common sense, from an ethics biempensante. Never tell anyone who comes out a lot, it would be so nice.

"I'd like to tell me a little about your writing process. He spoke about writing every day ... just one facet
"My novels are based on an idea of \u200b\u200bsome kind of intellectual game, something that seems promising and challenging me. See if you can not know, what I know, a man who becomes in squirrel slowly. From there I launched the adventure, to improvise every day.

- Where do you write? In your home, in your study?
"No, no. When my children were young, we lived in a very small apartment, and got used to go to a coffee, sit down and write there. Buenos Aires is a city, blessed be, which has many cozy cafes where one can stay quietly. In my case, never too much. Half an hour, an hour, I feel, mid-morning. My children grew up, went to live alone, but the custom was mine. So every morning, mid-morning, I go to coffee and do my session date: paginita write because I write very slowly. Sometimes I wondered if mine is not more like drawing and writing, in the sense that I am very fetish of pens, ink, paper good, very fine books, and I write so slowly and thinking so much. All mine has a great visual component. I'm always thinking it looks good so I am writing, in the end I think I'm doing a drawing every day.

"Sure, in his novels are very visual ...
"Yes, sometimes I realize that I exceeds that. As I want the reader to see exactly, then I pitch with adjectives, making what is and what color form. Sometimes I have to cross because I realize that the reader does not need much fixing. And if you do not see exactly what I saw, well, what does it matter?

"Despite this fixation with show, the language of his novels is quite clear, transparent.
"That I did it by intuition, but I realize that since the invention of mine is so baroque, baroque could not add a language because it would be viviparous. To serve that unbridled imagination a bit I have, you need a prose as plain and simple.

"It could be seen almost as a courtesy ...
"That I have noticed when I travel anywhere for the appearance of a book of mine. I run an advantage because often an author gets to present a book and writing tell you that you have to read it tomorrow. And it turns out a book of big, heavy, boring, full of metaphysical reflections. Well, the interviewer will go with a bad temper ... In contrast, in my case, it is a book well, seventy pages, is read in a while, more or less fun. So come with a smile and treat me well.

- So brevity is something very thought?
"When I started to write and publish, I tried to go to normal extensions published several novels and two hundred pages; I think I got a three hundred. But with an effort. And then, as publishers were more accepting of me as I am, I was going to naturally to me. I think this format about a hundred pages, sometimes little more, it's natural for me. Call it the ideal format for the type of imagination, I invent stories.

-Va writing, and suddenly feel like you already gave him the story ...
"Yes, these are insights that one acquires with the job: I realize when it comes to the good ending. My finals are not as good, I often have criticized, rightly, because they are a bit steep. And I've noticed that sometimes I get tired or want to start over history, and finished in any way. Sometimes I force myself to put a little more attention and make a good final.

"I have a feeling that his novels are always a short digression.
"Yes, there is something that, by the way of writing, improvising every day. I like that line a bit meandering. I like aesthetically, and I think we still maintain a certain unity, coherence.

"Speaking of that line of digressions and their habits as a writer, are you a writer who walks a lot? I ask for the association of the digression with the ride.
"Yes, I am a great walker. In the morning, on I'm not going to the gym, I do my walk I call sport, a long walk that I am in the morning, because I'm very day, I wake up whenever the sun rises. Later in the day, way too much, as I have no car, never had it, "walk through the neighborhood. And at night, before dinner, I make my second long walk.

- What are job related?
"Sometimes I leave my house and I begin to think fantasies completely useless, not that I think arguments of the book. An hour later, I'm opening the door to my house and everything that happened in the middle left. I saw nothing, I was moving the legs mechanically. In general I do not write if I writing, if I have the pen in his hand.

"As to the writing process, you have been very close to the literary avant-garde. I am interested in ask about the idea of \u200b\u200bputting more weight in the process of creation that the final result.
"Yes, that's one of the characteristics, including contemporary art. Nor should we exaggerate too much here because this process turns out to be navel-gazing art, look at yourself. In this I, like so many other things, like paying taxes, I'm normal and the average. Yes, I am interested in the process, leaving bare the process of writing to display, but also have some respect for the result. That is something there. I think I'm somewhere in between.

"You, however, place him as an outlaw, as an outsider, a writer for faithful but not for majority.
"That was saying yesterday to my editor here, I'm one of those writers who are never going to be public, but will always have readers, readers at large. Never go to clot in public, that is what makes the business. In my case it will be.

- And how was your relationship with publishers?
's always been good. Perhaps because of my insecurity, my shyness, I always thought they were doing me a favor, they were losing money with me; thing is real, too. But, hey, publishers, even the music, always have a niche for something they like but do not give them money, which is my case.

"I would like to talk about his role as a good translator. Maybe that one approaches a seriousness and rigor ...
-A correction on everything. I always took it to the translation as a profession in which I lived. I saw it there with all pragmatism, so much so that I majored in literature bad. Because publishers pay the same for the poor than by good, and good is much more difficult to translate. So I ended up specializing, bah, rather taking those best sellers Americans, who are the easiest to translate because they are written in prose stereotyped.

"But it has also led ...
"I've also translated good things, a little challenge to see if he could. And now that I stopped translating professionally, I do from time to time for friendship with a writer or a friend. I ventured up to Shakespeare. A read Shakespeare since childhood, and had said: "This never going to translate, if I offer to translate Shakespeare, I will never accept, because Shakespeare is pure wealth is concentrated wealth." In each verse of Shakespeare is poetry, metaphor, there is a preview of the action, characterization of the character, all together in each verse. But once a friend was preparing to editorial Norma de Colombia, a collection of Shakespeare translated by Hispanic writers, spoke to me and gave me the choice and to do something different, I chose Cymbeline, one of the latest and favorite works of mine. And I translated. Gave me a job from hell, yes there I swore "never again Shakespeare." And yet relapsed. Relapsed by the curious reason, is that years later, a publisher called me and told me they wanted to translate, I'm not sure why, I think because I had mentioned Harold Bloom, Love's Labours Lost. Then I told them that was the most ridiculous idea that they could have been because the work has no argument, a string of puns, jokes language. How do you translate that? For the same reason, said, "Well, I'll do." I praised her a lot. Although there is no question of translating, it's about ... I do not know what verb should be used, to recreate every joke, every pun. I took it as a game as a challenge to see what was leaving. But never again, now. While those "never again" always an exception.

- And Cymbeline?
-I made a decision, which was translated into prose prose explained. At each metaphor, I would not translate it explained, sometimes along five lines, which Shakespeare had said in two words. Every joke, every obscenity, which abound, I explained at length. When I gave the editor said, "It seems a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett." In fact, anyone who wants to read Shakespeare have to do a little effort, learn some English and read it, because there is nothing. The translations can serve either as a guide for someone learning the language or as an experiment and see what happens, what is passed from one language to another. Nor never interested me all the theoretical question of translation.

- And never lived as a process for its narrative? How does a transfer?
"No, no. I do believe that speaking in my work as a writer was to get used to the correction of prose. For each phrase has its syntactic structure well done, because that is what the editor asked the translator, a good prose. Good in the sense of good, readable. Ever thought that had ruined my prose, I had gotten used to over-corrected. And even tried to "salvajizarme" a little, do those things that make my younger colleagues, especially do not have verb phrases, where everything is upside down, but I do not think it's any problem.

"Speaking of younger colleagues, do not remember who said that to his contemporaries and their children one does not actually read them, but the watch. What's your relationship to his contemporaries, with the children? Do you read?
"Yes, I read. I read enough first two pages. It is rare that follow. I think the narrative, in Argentina at least, has fallen a little flat realism, almost folkloric, folkloric techno, but in the end manners. There is a flatness that (and it happens with many young people who claim to my influence to me as a model) that when I read what I write, I'm shocked. It has been very neglected the invention. There as more willing to witness these wonderful lives that we are. I think history has played a trick on the novelists, and that has solved many problems. And a novel without conflict ... These middle-class youth, who are the writers, those who go to the Faculty of Arts, these days have no problem, the story is responsible for resolving it. The sexual problem, for example, young people today do not have the problems we had. Then he invented. Or turn to the neurosis. A hypochondria. And all this psychological misery to me tired. I was like hooked on the novels of pirates, go out to sea to do something, to have adventures. This realism elegant neighborhood, Palermo Soho, does not convince me.

"Out there you said that the fact the others did, and that you were there looking at it as a spectator. I think that has to do with his commitment and his loyalty to the fable and the invention, which is at least impractical.
"Exactly. What happens is that a fable, a fairy tale, it is not serious. So, to give seriousness, do it well. And there I am afraid that these young people a bit wary of themselves. I'm not going to long to put a dwarf flying in my novel because that would have to do very well to work, then refer to the rave, which already have more controlled. Interestingly

-adventure inventive spirit is associated with risk.
"That's why I am surprised that these novels of youth, at least for the young Argentine novels seem senescence. Without building momentum.

- And how do you have felt over time?
"I have asked, I've wondered myself if there has been an evolution. I do not know. I think they are emphasizing the blues. Because to be honest, as I said Felisberto Hernández, I notice that more and write better, too bad that every time I go worse. One is improving his technique, but inevitably, if one is honest with himself, he knows that youth ended and there is a melancholy that grows. I think I have a line just to the game, with the invention, but it is coming. I do not know, I see from the outside. May end up being one of those oldies clowns.

- Containing the melancholy is a concern?
"It's not something that comes as a battle. It's something I notice. There is also some fatigue. But I'm sure I'll keep writing.

"Something that caught my attention was their short introduction to the Journal of the hepatitis. That little page ..
"Oh, yes, is a page of" I'll never write. " I think it was my time Rimbaud. Was flirting a lot with that, with abandonment. Stop writing and see what happens. But it was a flirt, a game theorist who does not lead to anything. Now I'm convinced he'll never leave. Even I have certain expectations: if I start to decline, as is normal for a man entering old age begin to lose his mental issues, what will happen with what I write? It's a feeling I'm curious and would like to experiment.

"To talk about poetry, you've been involved with great poets, has written about Pizarnik.
-I graduated in the middle of poets, and I think there is this love of mine for little books, which to me I look like jewels. And the thick books seem a bit rude, to follow the etymology. As I never wrote poetry, wrote novels that seem to change books of poetry. I think poetry is the laboratory of the literature. There are proven innovations, the most extreme games. In the story these games can serve as models for different structures ...

- the poetry that most interests you?
"Good poetry. One of the first books I read in my teens and I did discover something important was Trilce, Cesar Vallejo. That book made me realize that literature could also be enigma. When I read for the first time at fourteen or fifteen years, I understood nothing, not a single word. And that dazzled me. In fact, I think that what is now called children's literature has the defect that greatly simplifies the vocabulary. Because children love, spells the word you do not understand. Well, I happened to Trilce, which remains a favorite book of mine and he showed me how literature could be enigma, a mystery. I reread it at least once a year, I give a reinterpretation of that wonder Trilce to cool.

-I return to the writer as public figure, the writer says. There is a lightness in you that can be quite healthy. A light that corresponds to your writing ...
"That's what I feel naturally. I think that literature has an important role in society. On the other hand, I think that literature has always been, is and will remain a minority, for the few, and that has to be optional. There are many of my colleagues are preaching almost compulsory literature. Make reading to young people. I do not like. In our society everything is gradually becoming mandatory, so let's literature as an optional activity. Who wants to read. Whoever wants to read will have much happiness in your life, but if not read, can also be very happy. I'm not an evangelist for reading. Now it has become fashionable to promote reading. There are foundations that are dedicated to that. I suspect that all who do this work, and paid very good salaries to do it, do not read ever. Those who do read are not as likely to promote reading. Maybe because we have learned that freedom is the most you can do.

- do you think serious writers, intellectuals?
They do not know what they're missing. Do not know how much freedom are lost. I think, and I've said many times, it is increasingly difficult to write serious literature today. There has been a process over the last hundred years, irony, detachment. Today, writing or talking seriously seriously is placed on the edge on the ledge of the ceremony, the foolishness, the commonplace, the pathetic, lying biempensante. And perhaps a little sad that: we are obliged to joke.

"Anyway, the writer, to have a public space for an audience, have a responsibility ...
"But then you said it well: for an audience. Because if you would like to have readers, would make a joke. And say something crazy.

- Do you think your readers?
"Yes, I think all writers have a reader, someone we know or have known. Or sometimes we imagine someone with whom we are talking. Sometimes in favor, sometimes against. I finished feeling great affection especially by readers who come to tell me a scene from a novel of mine, or a character in a novel of mine. That's very nice because I feel something of what I've written incarnate. In France, a student approached me to tell me about this novel was published in that little girl, Princess Spring, which was translated into French. I said: "My favorite is Christmas Tree, I like it when you walk outside and gets so nervous." And imitated. That felt like something was coming true. These things cause a great satisfaction, rather than having academic praise, which is usually mediated by Derrida, Foucault ...

"But his work is highly sought by university departments.
"No, I have become a favorite of the academy. I've thought a lot: why so many theses written about me when they are written on writers so much better than me? I know what happens. I am serving them on a silver platter what they need. I give an example that I gave the other day about college students: In this novel of mine, The literature conference, I want to clone Carlos Fuentes, I need a cell of Carlos Fuentes and invented a mechanical wasp with a chip and instructed to go and take the cell. The wasp does exactly and it brings the cell, I get into the cloner and is a disaster. Because the wasp took a cell from natural silk tie Carlos Fuentes. This episode takes a professor of narratology and there you have it all served on a tray, where it begins and ends a body, is the social person is part of the biological person? We have all served on a platter by the structure of cartoons, comic, which I am giving it. That is, to apply the concepts of Deleuze, Kafka is to be Deleuze, to apply the concepts of Deleuze to me is easy. I think that's the point: to use these mechanisms suggestive but in terms of plebeian culture. Sure, I have well studied.

- Can you say you are not alien to the theory?
"I read a lot, because in my youth in the sixties, seventies, was very fashionable. There was a huge explosion of structuralism, poststructuralism of the reading of Barthes, Levi-Strauss, that whole world. Tel Quel magazine was my bible, then I moved away from that course. But I read a lot of psychoanalysis. Freud remains one of my favorite readings. And a lot of philosophy too. Although the philosophy around what Borges, a branch of fantastic literature.

"I wanted to ask about the centrality of the culture of Argentina.
"I went to Buenos Aires at age eighteen with the excuse studying law, which went bad liar. Argentina is a country highly centralized, everything happens in Buenos Aires and too little on the inside. Unfortunately. With the exception of the city of Rosario, which has a rich cultural life, but not Buenos Aires, it is close.

- You are concerned that centralization?
"No, no. Anyway I live in Buenos Aires, so I'm taking advantage of the center. Back two or three times a year to Pringles, my people. What I notice in the smaller towns in Pringles as elsewhere, is the complaint of people who have a cultural concern that nothing happens, there is nothing that is that all initiatives there are cultural end up failing, end up breaking up in a very pedestrian, very primitive, that do not want to follow. There's something I never do and that would take one jump to as high as you can have culture, which is read. That seems. Organized theater, music, clubs, even literature, and discuss novels Rosa Montero. Why not grab good books?

"Again the issue of compulsory culture ...
-Absolutely. Is that I think the word culture has several meanings: institutional, anthropological, and the meaning that corresponds to when you say that so is a learned man, and refers to one thing, to read books. Everything else, television, film, theater, all the good they have, do not replace the book. And the book itself makes up everything else. An educated man is a man who reads books and no other. If you do not read books, not worship, much as culture minister.

"As for the writer's relationship and power, here in Mexico there are government programs to national creators Becan ...
-In Argentina, thankfully never happened. Since there is Argentina, the writers have lived in their work. This not only gives them independence from the power, but also gives them a sense of reality, gives paw. I think that a writer is a writer subsidized washing. Not for submission to power, which also exist, but you lose the sense of reality. In Argentina, many of my colleagues are putting Mexico as an example that should continue, but I do not look so good. Not that I have anything against Mexico and the rich Mexican literature, but I find that dangerous.

- What Mexican writers among its influences, from his early readings?
-reading rather early, perhaps Payne, Azuela. The bottom was a teenager reading that I liked, there are other claw, there is strength, there is a sense of reality. My favorite novels of the revolution came to be other, more Type cartoon: They took the cannon to Bachimba, Rafael F. Muñoz, or Lightning August, Jorge Ibargüengoitia. And then, studying more, because I am a reader orderly, organic, I found my favorite Mexican writers to date, especially Gerardo Deniz, who read and reread. He is a poet enigma. Perhaps even more than Trilce of Vallejo. And Elena Garro, that I adore. I think as a writer is great, one of those that appear once every hundred years. I think is the greatest novelist of the twentieth century.

- Why your fantasy proneness?
"Yes, and for other reasons, for his biography. His life was a little too close to the work and that is dangerous, but in her case by a special alchemy that hatred, resentment, resulting in masterpieces such as Agnes and my sister Magdalena Reunion of characters or Y Matarazo not call. Jewelry, wonderful novels. Too bad he died and stopped appearing books Elena Garro. I'm expecting a good biography. I told a friend, Marcelo Uribe, and I have said also, unfortunately Mexico has no great tradition of biographies of writers. Argentina also, in that we are equal, and it is regrettable. For a biography serves as much to the reader. Sort readings, put in perspective. Countries with great tradition of reading, like England, also have a great tradition of biography. It's a shame and it is quite surprising that so many people having a scholarship in the universities, do not do such research. Even if from time to time, one in a hundred to write a biography. Can not be that great writers do not have his biography by Pablo Duarte


Mexico City