SC/CPDC/371-24
● The novel is a denunciation full of irony and humor against the large publishing houses that use Artificial Intelligence to create stories that sell millions of copies; follows the life of Rosa de la Huerta, a middle-aged woman who is hired to impersonate an intelligent machine.
● Gabriel Santander pays tribute to cats, recounting characters who are full of fear of mediocrity, confronted with what is politically correct and the demands of the “ought to be” of contemporary society.
With a critique full of humor and irony against the big publishing houses and contemporary society, it was presented at the Estanquillo Museum Carlos Monsiváis Collectionsan enclosure belonging to the Cultural Secretariat of Mexico Citythe novel The cat madhouseby the Mexican writer Gabriel Santander, which tells the life of Rosa de la Huerta, who after a series of job failures, an important publishing consortium offers her to pose as the author of books created with Artificial Intelligence.
The work is about a middle-aged woman, who goes from job to job, but who likes to write and goes to a large publishing house to leave her diaries when, surprisingly, they offer to hire her to replace an intelligent machine that sells millions. of copies worldwide, so it has to be presented at conferences, interviews and before the public.
“The narrative support of the novel is an impersonation of an author, that a large Spanish publisher hires this woman, who almost goes around to be this writer who does not exist, because she is a product of Artificial Intelligence, but what happens “It’s that the public needs to see someone,” said Santander, who was accompanied by the poet and essayist Luis Felipe Fabre and the writer Alma Columba, who read a few words on behalf of the author and theater director Roxana Elvridge-Thomas.
This novel takes place in Mexico City and shows with humor and wit the threat of madness and alcohol; pays homage to cats and describes characters full of fear of mediocrity and faced with the demands of contemporary society of “should be”, in addition, it confronts marchist and heteropatriarchal narratives.
Elvridge-Thomas considers that Santander’s work is a novel of denunciation that amuses and makes the reader laugh by talking about issues of daily life in contemporary society, such as drug addiction, homosexuality, the refusal to be a selfless woman, fear of aging and the immorality and deception of large corporations in order to generate million-dollar sales.
“The money-hungry and lying publishers, the prestigious and yet plagiarist authors, the supposedly good writers who do not even exist and are fabricated, the use of Artificial Intelligence to create supposedly good literature for the bad taste of the reading masses who “They indulge themselves with predictable plots, that is something that Gabriel denounces in the plot of this delirious novel and he does it with so much irony that when it happens it fills us with indignation, here it leads us to burst out laughing,” he explained.
Finally, Santander mentioned that it is important to leave politically incorrect things aside when writing.
“When you write, it’s not about thinking who you’re going to please and who you’re not going to please, you have to write in the way your talent dictates, and well that’s my case, I was writing as it came out, without thinking about whether I was going to please or not. not to someone and that’s because if you make comments that could seem politically incorrect in this era, now everything is politically incorrect,” he declared.
It should be noted that Gabriel Santander was born in Mexico City and studied sociology at UNAM. He has written seven books, including fiction, poetry and novels, among which stands out The revenge of the chachaswhich won the 2011 Casa de las Américas award. In addition, he coordinates literary creation workshops at various institutions.
He has also worked as a cultural journalist and producer on more than half a dozen television series and directed several art documentaries.
To know all the activities of the capital’s Ministry of Culture, you can consult the Mexico City Billboard (https://cartelera.cdmx.gob.mx/) and the Secretariat’s social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
-o0o-
