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William Boyd looks back to 1968, the year Luther King was killed and so many social foundations cracked, to reflect on the secrets of human beings. «Trío» (Alfaguara) is a novel that addresses the meaning of life and how the social role influences intimacy. In the background, a question that Camus ventured: Is life worth living? I wanted to explore the hidden life. We all have one that only we know what it is. The essence of our nature is secret. In public life we are acting and we behave in one way or another depending on who we are with. But within us there is a private essence. That is our true nature. In the book, there are three people who see how, throughout ’68, public life dominates them. It is an investigation of human psychology. As Chekhov says, the interesting life is the secret one.
– Why that year?
– In 1968, I was 16 years old. As in 2020, the world changed that year and became a spooky place. People panicked, least of all in Britain. Let’s think about Vietnam; in May, in France. The same happened in Italy and Germany. Martin Luther King was killed and the most important social upheavals in the United States took place. The USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. The planet became a tumultuous place, except in England, where we took drugs, went to parties … the crazy sixties.
– Private life has disappeared today.
-People present their lives to others today. In Great Britain, in addition, they watch us in the streets, we are scrutinized, observed … that’s why we must value that the inner life is the most precious thing there is. But this also happens in autofiction, where people tell their life as if it were fiction. We do not know the limits of the truth. But there is still something inside that is only ours, which is surrounded by a wall to which no one has access. Only one knows intimate secrets. There is something essential in man that goes beyond personality, something that is private.
-Today we are concerned with showing ourselves.
–I do not participate in social networks. It gives me the feeling that these lives are an illusion of lives that are lived: How wonderful is my house, my dinner, my car … this presentation of a life to be admired is false. It is a personality that we build for others. It’s an old idea, but with social media it has gotten out of hand. I have few photos of my years in the sixties. Instead, the amount of “selfies” taken today … the more photos we take, the more insignificant one becomes. If we take five hundred photos every day, what will be the image that will say something about us? The feeling, with social networks, and perhaps exaggerating, is that they have entered a destructive dynamic. Each seems less and less valuable or important. There are already many who are withdrawing from them because many of them go against us. There was an explosion, but this has been dying. If something becomes commonplace, people will look for something more explosive. I have the feeling that the withdrawal of the networks has begun.
–No matter how many masks we wear, are there always things that are beyond our control?
–I agree with that. Luck and bad luck is a theme of the novel; how events, in a random way, cause things that we would never have predicted. Present happiness is very fragile and can be broken right away. We all walk on a layer of ice and this makes us value the present more. This makes us more aware and my book reflects how a moment of bad luck can destroy all life posed. This is part of the human condition. We should take advantage of what we are experiencing and leave the rest for tomorrow. And maybe if we did this, we would be better, because now everything is random, absurd and cruel. We have this presentation of oneself to others as a happy being that is nothing more than a mask, a dream of the masses. We all know that the human condition does not lend itself to that.
– Is literature the most effective way to get closer to the other?
-Yes. It is paradoxical, but if you really want to know who an individual is; If you want to access a person’s hidden life, you will never do it better than through a novel, because a novelist confirms who a character is. Access to the secret life in fiction is what still explains the power of the novel, which is why novels continue to be written. If a brother or friend of yours wrote a book and read it, they would understand it better. That can only be done through the novel.
– Before the cinema and literature seemed freer.
– It is true in the field of cinema, not in the novel. In 1968, you could write whatever you wanted. These arts are industries and the art form of the novel is not as dominated by industrial processes as those of the cinema. If we look at the history of cinema and look at the movies of the 60s and 70s, it seems that they were made in a golden age. Today we could not do them, not only because of the issue, but because they would be considered not very commercial and would not give profitability. Before, American studios invested in the British film industry to make these films, although many failed at the box office. But today commercialization has entered everywhere. As for the novel, the one that is good, has only been liked by a few throughout history. Despite that, they have always been able to write.
– Now does the politically correct influence?
–One is aware of what one can say or not. This acts as a self-censorship and creeps into the unconscious. Novels were written in the eighties that would not be acceptable now. One must be careful where one goes so as not to run into these agents of culture. It is more interesting to write about the past to avoid current pressures. My next novel is set in the 19th century. When you think of British society at the time, you realize that it was very repressive. There were things that artists could not do or say. It’s interesting for me to go back to a time when I don’t have to worry about what is politically correct or not.
– Nor are there ideologies like those of ’68.
-The spirit of the sixties was different, especially when it happened to the seventies. That’s when I went to college. The seventies were a more political decade, one of more commitment, more serious, than the previous one, which was only “have a good time and live.” The protests and demonstrations were to improve political manners and advance socially. There are differences between that time and the current one. Now there is an obsession to buy, to spend, that was not in the famous 60s and 70s.
– Won’t you touch current issues?
When they ask me if I would write about the pandemic, I answer that not at all. Today everything changes very fast and everything is quickly obsolete. One has to trust the facts that it tells and describes. Modern life goes too fast to be portrayed in an artistic way. Contemporary narrative, and many modern expressions, will fall into obsolescence.
– After the idealisms of the sixties, Brexit.
– I am against Brexit. It is a disaster for the UK. We are the fools who are not in that club. The EU continues to exist. Political systems are flawed, but if you look back, we see that populism is catastrophic for any country. Trump was just thinking like Hitler. He did everything Hitler did in the 1920s and 1930s: tell Americans that they are the best people in the world. But it is not a reality. It is an illusion to tell people that they are more important than the rest. When the pandemic passes, it will be seen how the United Kingdom has weakened. People have lost their minds.
–There is disappointment.
– Democracy is not the best system, but it is better than fascism. It has evolved and can be improved. We can know which messages are false and which are not. People don’t learn from history. We are condemned to repeat the same mistakes. We British have proved it by leaving. We will pay dearly for it. The fantasy that Britain can recreate the position it had in the 19th century is absurd, but people have voted for it. Then there will be a vote to re-admit us to the EU, which is the only thing that actually makes sense. You must never offer the population a destination that does not correspond to a reality. You can never offer a dream that is impossible and cannot be fulfilled. You have to bet on a debate that is serious and not crazy. Brexit does not correspond to reality. It is a British fantasy. We were misled.
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