“Life is how we want to tell it”: Antonio Ramos Revillas

The novel Bagdad Beach It has as its core the memory that try not to disappear or leave a last legacy, because what hope is there for these individual memories tied to time to survive if the cities that are framed in history also disappear?This is how the writer Antonio Ramos Revillas reviewed his recent text.

The story, published by Alfaguara and presented today at the El Sótano bookstore, is about the brothers Marcelo and Miguel, the latter being the narrator of the story. The former moves forward to their breakup and the latter follows their trail in Matamoros and its surroundings, while remembering the intangible things that united them during their childhood and the events that to some extent distanced them.

In an interview with The DayRamos Revillas (Monterrey, 1977) said that “both are lying memories, piecemeal. It is actually Miguel’s memory, who in the first part tells what he believes has happened to his brother and his parents, until a twist occurs. The second is the memory that he decides to tell, although it is not clear if it is real.

“We never have access to Marcelo and that is why part of it – someone reminded me a couple of days ago – talks about how memory is also a fiction, reinforcing García Márquez’s idea that life is not how we live it, but how we remember it, but I would add that life is also how we want to tell it.”

The editor and novelist commented that Marcelo is leaving clues for his brother. He recalled a Roman emperor who put his name on an Egyptian column to say that he was here. “It is a way in which this character, and like him, we all want to say: ‘we were here’, but the wind, the rain and human history will also erase that attempt.

“It is part of the human will that grows with time. When you mature, you realize that this part is the important one: leaving a trace that we were here. Although Marcelo decides to no longer be here, to leave this account of history, that is why the relationship with the cities that disappear, is still his very human last attempt to say ‘we were here’.”

What are we going to leave?

Antonio Ramos said he was fascinated by the option that the Nereid Thetis proposed to Achilles: that if he goes to war he will die, but he will be remembered permanently; on the other hand, if he does not go, he will have a full life, but when those who knew him die, their memory will also end. This dilemma is faced by all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, but it is almost the question: what are we going to leave behind?

The narrator said that his text originated on a trip with his parents to Matamoros, when upon returning the subject of disappearances came up and what he would have said to his siblings if he had lost his parents in the Tamaulipas city. That was where all the symbolism was.

When I started to investigate more about Matamoros, Puerto Bagdad came up. In the hotel where I stayed there were old maps of that place and I had it in my head. When the idea that the port had disappeared appeared, it seemed surprising to me that I was dealing with a memory that tries not to disappear and even cities disappear. All of that fed the novel and became the central core.

The author pointed out: “what gives existence to things, what allows us to appropriate them, only serves to turn all our experience into a story that we are going to pass on to someone else. The trap is Marcelo’s hope for Miguel, to tell him: ‘I am outside of history, but I still have a story and I am going to pass it on to you so that you can transmit it to the next generations.’”

He stressed that the figure of the brothers is important, because We cannot lie to them, they know where we come from, what we were like, etc. In that close relationship, there is a lot of discussion about our personalities because it is with them that we learn to be people. We know where each one of us is weak..

Ramos Revillas concluded that it is a A novel of memory, even if it doesn’t exist in the sense that there are people who say that only what you can touch exists; memory fills time, spaces too, and one feels sheltered when remembering, because one knows that one has lived and that significant things have been lived..

The novel Bagdad Beach The book will be presented today at the El Sótano bookstore (Miguel Ángel de Quevedo Avenue 209, Romero de Terreros neighborhood, Coyacán, Mexico City). In addition to Antonio Ramos Revillas, the editor Didí Gutiérrez and the narrator Eduardo Antonio Parra will be present.