Goretti Irisarri and Jose Gil Romero. Interview with the authors of La traductora

Photography.
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Goretti Irisarri and Jose Gil Romero They have been a creative couple for more than twenty years and have published titles such as the trilogy All the dead (made of Shooting stars fall, The Mechanism of Secrets and The Enclosed City), for instance. Translator It is her latest novel and it just came out this month. I thank you very much your time and kindness to dedicate me this two-handed interview and showing that they certainly do well.

Goretti Irisarri and Jose Gil Romero — Interview 

  • LITERATURE NEWS: Translator is your new novel. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?

JOSE GIL ROMERO: The novel fables with what could happen in the eight minute delay with which the Franco's train He came to meeting with hitler in Hendaye. From that real fact we develop a love story and suspense, starring a translator, a woman who is not brave, who only wants to live in peace, and who is involved in a plot of espionage.

GORETTI IRISARRI:  We were fascinated by the idea of ​​placing the protagonist living a lot of intrigue on that speeding train, it's quite a cinematic image and we immediately thought about Hitchcock, in those movies that you start to see and they don't let you go.

  • AL: Can you go back to that first book you read? And the first story you wrote?

GI: In my case I started with Tolkien, The Hobbit, or at least it's the first book I remember. It was like discovering a drug and I never stopped.

JGR: Read probably some book of The five, which my sister would have on the shelf. But without a doubt what marked my childhood, and I would say that my life, was the man, by Carlos Giménez when we have the information And write ... surely the script of one of those comics that I drew as a teenager, which were horror stories with monsters, heavily influenced by the Aliens by James Cameron and by the special effects of David Cronenberg's movies.

  • AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras. 

JGR: Gore is more read than me (laughs). But there are so many ... García Márquez and Galdós, Horacio Quiroga and Stefan Zweig, Perez Reverte and Eduardo Mendoza, Bukowski... 

GI: I'm going to break a spear for the girls. I'd put my hand on fire for anything from SEi Shonagon, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Yourcenar, Susan Sontag or the most famous surfer, Agatha Christie... 

JGR: What?

GI: Seriously, Agatha was a surf pioneerThere are some really cool pictures of her with the board catching waves.

  • AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?

JGR: I would have loved to meet the alien what are you looking for Gurb

GI: What a good question! Well I would have loved create at very ambiguous governess of Another twist. And as for knowing ... to captain nemo, and that he took me for a little tour of the bottom of the Vigo estuary, which apparently was there.

  • AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?

IG: Before typing search for images. To get to a new scene I need to see images put me in context, funny costume ideas, some particular face. 

JGR: To read, nothing comes to mind now ... and look, I'm a maniac! Oh yeah, look: I usually buy a lot of second hand, Well, I can't bear to find someone else's underlining in a book. My eyes go to those paragraphs that another found interesting and it distracts me, it distracts me. I said, a maniac (laughs).

  • AL: And that preferred place and time to do it?

JGR: To read, no doubt before sleep, In bed.  

GI: I have a twisted taste for reading where there is a lot of noise, like the subway. I love the concentration it forces me to, I immerse myself much more.

  • AL: Are there other genres that you like?

GI: I really like what is called literature of genre, for both reading and writing. To write it is great that there is rules that lock you up, limitations such as those that define a genre. Creatively it works much better. There is a documentary by Lars von Trier, Five conditions, which explains it very well: Von Trier challenges the author of a short film to shoot five remakes of its short, and every time it will be putting a tougher, more impossible condition. But the really scary thing is when Lars Von Trier tells him that this time he does not put any conditions on it: he leaves the poor author unprotected before an abyss, that of total freedom. 

JGR: Many and varied genres, but… yes, another hobby: I hardly read literature that is not Spanish. It makes me nervous to think that the translation I am reading will not be perfect and that this is going to spoil my reading. It's a very neurotic thought, I know, and I had a lot of fun attributing it to a character from Translator, which says something like "I distrust the quality of the translation that I will find."

  • AL: What are you reading now? And writing?

GI: I'm reading The emotional Route of Madrid, Career, republished by La Felguera. Emilio Carrere, the author of The seven hunchbacks's tower, He was a very peculiar character, a decadent and bohemian poet, who after the war embraced the Franco regime. He is one of those writers whose ideology is not easy to label. On Translator he comes out reciting a poem on the radio, where he was famous. The poem is a praise to the Nazis entering Paris, Paris under the swastika.

We were very interested in showing that hotbed of the time, when everything was not as clear as now and there were intellectuals who admired Nazism. For example, there was a large exhibition at the Círculo de Bellas Artes on the German book, which also appears in the novel. Anyway, there are those photographs with large swastikas hanging on the walls of the Circle ... The story is what it is.

JGR: I am reading The hero with a thousand facesby Campbell. I really like rehearsals. I read a lot about the mechanisms of narrative and such, to see if I learn a little (laughs)

Regarding what we are writing, we just finished a novel and we are very satisfied. Hopefully we can give news about its publication, shortly.

  • AL: How do you think the publishing scene is? Do you think it is going to change or has it already done so with the new creative formats out there?

JGR: Well, I would say better than ever and I would say worse than ever. I mean it is published a lot, a lot, but in draconian conditions: exploitation times are extremely short and competition is fierce. There are many good people writing great books and the reader hardly has the time and ability to choose them. Most of the perpetrators disappear along the way or don't even make it. And it is dramatic to think about how many talented people are out there, wasted.  

GI: I also think the new approach to audiovisual fiction weighs heavily, specifically television series, which have become more literary and take more care of the development of the characters or the exploration of narratives. And they are a strong competition, because the time you spend watching chapters and chapters of a series you don't spend reading.

  • AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to keep something positive for future stories?

JGR: These are tough times. There are many people suffering or who have suffered. POn our part, we can only bring a certain relief, a small way out of that suffering. Some of that is talked about in Translator also: from the way of salvation that books suppose for people and, in that sense, the novel is a tribute to literature. Hopefully, even for a little while, our readers will get away thanks to us. That would be lovely.


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