Ariel Magnus: Why do youtubers take out their books? – Ramona

Upside down! As a child he wrote poetry. But very quickly I realized that it was too perfect an art for me and I gave myself over to the mud of prose. Another thing I did as a kid was write a movie script. I bought Doc Comparato’s book and used it as a guide. I also wrote a play. What I never did was an essay, I end up putting all the ideas in that sense into fiction. But I kind of encourage myself in everything that has to do with writing and producing books. It’s what I decided to dedicate my life to and for now I don’t regret it.

You published Sandra in 2005 and from then on the novels happened at the rate of one per year. How were these almost 15 years of sustained writing and what was it like before you started publishing like this?

Actually, I had been writing for a long time, every day, only I didn’t want to publish. I think he wouldn’t have been able to either, in any case nothing from that period was published later, it must not be very good, although I naturally have affection for him. To publish I had to make a change of mentality. Be less cryptic, start thinking about a possible reader. That was what has changed the most since then, at least with the books I publish, because there are many more I write than those that are published. I try to post everything though. Some things I already know as I write them that no one will be interested in and yet when I finish them I try at least once, before they end up in the unpublished box.

In 2007 you won the international novel prize “The other shore” for A Chinese on a bicycle and César Aira was part of the jury. Twelve years later, you publish “Ideario Aira”. Tell me first what you sewed the book into, and then the backstage of your relationship with Aira.

Aira only prophesies abroad, it’s true. Here closed the curtain a while ago. My idea was also to interview him, to make a book of interviews in which we talked about each of his books, a proposal that he enthusiastically rejected. As revenge I made this dictionary with his best ideas. Actually, what she wanted was to read all of his books in one sitting. And I also wanted to make a dictionary, of whatever.

As for our relationship, when I won that award, we traveled to Colombia together, me to receive it and he to give it to me, something quite bizarre, because it was from the Colombian publisher Norma. I remember that on the plane he was getting bored and Ocean’s Eleven was just showing, or maybe it was already Ocean’s Thirteen, and he asked me if I knew it and I said yes and that it was quite entertaining, because I like bank robbery movies, for as basic as they are. Aira looked at her whole and when she finished she told me that it was one of the worst pieces of garbage she had ever seen in her life. I also remember that in a meeting with the head of the publisher, the guy gave us a full explanation of why people didn’t buy books in times of crisis and Aira interrupted him to tell him that he had often lacked money, but he had never stopped buying books. His love for books is remarkable. He always gives you one when he sees you. In that and in other aspects he is a very generous guy.

As for the relationship between feminism and literature, what do you know? Do you think a quota law would be necessary as in music?

Women sell the most books, but if you look at the canon, it’s dominated by men. Obviously, the number of sales does not determine the quality, but that women do not enter the canon, or only enter the category “literature written by women”, does not seem innocent. The same would not ask for a quota in the canon, I would only hope that by conquering places of power they end up deciding it too. I think that in literature women are better off than in music, where the quota has to do with having places in the shows, that is, earning money, which is what ensures you sell (and not the canon). Let’s say that in this case the strength of the readership overcomes the editorial patriarchy.

A topic that you also wrote a lot about is soccer. Are you one of those kicks that watch it on TV or play it? What level of addiction do you have with soccer passion?

I played it as a boy, but in the position of kicking, goalkeeper. Now I haven’t played it for decades, I just watch it on TV and very occasionally I go to the court. He is a vice that I always try to cut, because of the waste of time that it implies, but I can’t. He entertains me a lot. He is the only thing I can watch on TV and one of the few meaningless things that distract me. I still intellectualize it when writing about it. I love writing about soccer. So yes, I have a pretty high level of addiction.

How do you relate to social networks, the hashtag and all those things related to self-promotion?

Appalling. I don’t have anything. Very recently I bought a phone of those who call smart, because they suck your brain, and I entered the WhatsApp world. I turned off my still working Nokia 1100, ready to revive when I ask it to. My virtual sociability is a faithful mirror of my factual sociability, which is close to zero.

Last year a book by Alan Pauls about the act of reading was published. Under the title Multitasking he reflects in this way: “Perhaps the most extemporaneous feature of reading today is its exclusivism, the demand for total dedication that it entails, incompatible with anything else”. How do you see the panorama of advanced technology and its relationship with reading?

The books bank it. They are giving battle even to the ebook. And I think they will win. Or tie. When Filloy went to the United States in the early fifties, he saw a television for the first time and predicted that this small device that forced you to watch it was doomed to failure, because people wanted to do other things while listening, from which he deduced that the radio was going to beat him. He erred fiercely, but he was right about one thing: the radio survived, and with a vengeance. I think the same is going to happen with books, even though we all have smartphones. Or why do youtubers take out their books? Just for making money? That without a doubt, but there is something about reading the book that is still attractive. Perhaps it is exactly what Pauls says, but in positive terms: the pleasure of being forced to do only one thing, to concentrate on something immobile. Like the body, the brain also asks to move, it wants exercise, even the brain of a teenager co-opted by youtube.

Going back to your prolific activity as a translator of English and German, what are the translations that challenged you the most and the ones that you liked the most? You have to keep in mind that you entered authors that were not easy at all like Walter Benjamin, to give just one example…

Benjamin was undoubtedly one of the most difficult, and I did not do any of his philosophical books. Other complexes of the German were Kleist, Peltzer and Herzog. Charles D’Ambrosio took me a long time from English, he has a very precious prose and full of references to more or less current North American culture. Sometimes the difficulty is cultural rather than linguistic. The translations with which I felt most comfortable were Defoe, Disraeli, Fassbinder… and Kafka. I don’t know why, because he is not a simple author, but with Kafka I feel that I understand him perfectly and that I know at all times how to translate what he wants to say.

And is translating useful for your task as a writer?

Much. Several fiction books that I wrote grew out of books that I translated, I find it inspiring. And vice versa too, I love knowing that there is a part of the day when I don’t have to invent anything, I sit down and copy, from one language to another. Also, I feel translation almost like social work, like a contribution to literature in Spanish. Paraphrasing Borges, I would say that others boast of what they have read, I am proud of what I have translated.

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