"I already know that I'm not discovering anything new if I say that perseverance is one of the necessary virtues to be a writer. If you sink into melancholy, if you give up at the first failure, it's impossible for you to develop a literary career." Ignacio Martínez de Pisón knows exactly what he's talking about. More than four decades ago, in 1984, he debuted with the award-winning La ternura del dragón (The Tenderness of the Dragon), the first title of a fertile career that elevates him as one of the most interesting and followed voices in the current national literary scene.
"One of the pieces of advice Javier Marías gave me, back in the 80s, was that each new book had to show something about the author that wasn't in any of his previous works. Each new book has to be a step forward and, as far as possible, better than the previous one," he continues, placidly seated on the terrace of the Bar while enjoying, at sunset, a blonde beer in homage to the Czech Bohumil Hrabal: "one of the writers I like the most, and who I would have gotten along with best if I had met him. Also, a great beer drinker, which makes him even more likable to me."
He lights a small cigar, a reminiscence of the black and blonde tobacco smoker he once was ---"now I try not to inhale the smoke"--- and takes a moment, a break after the frantic promotion of his latest work, Ropa de casa (House Clothes) (Seix Barral), "a kind of youth memoir that has kept me busy for months." Now he is already working on his next novel which, he warns, "has some connection with the previous one, Castillos de fuego (Castles of Fire)."
He smiles. "I was a boy who wanted to be a writer and who managed to fulfill his dream very early, at twenty-three years old, when he couldn't even imagine that he was going to end up dedicating himself professionally to literature." He sips a mouthful of beer. It seems that, accompanied by this reflection, it tastes even more glorious. "What more can you ask of life than to live from what you love? The truth is that I can't complain. Life has been generous with me." Life, yes, has rewarded perseverance. Overcoming fears, vertigo, and unease to keep taking those steps forward. A path that translates into a corpus of twenty-four works including novels, short stories, and essays.
The biennium in which everything changed
Upon finishing his Philology degree in his native Zaragoza, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón decided to give himself "a two-year extension to prove to myself that I could become a writer." Thus, instead of starting to teach or prepare for civil service exams, "as my classmates did," he convinced his mother to finance two more years of university studies in Barcelona. This is how he ended up in the city, forty-three years ago, as a student of Italian Philology at the University of Barcelona.
After that period ---"and just as the deadline was running out"---- he won the Casino de Mieres literary prize with his first novel, and decided to look for a publisher for some short stories he had written, which Anagrama published shortly after in the volume Alguien te observa en secreto. It was the starting gun: he never looked back, towards a life whose coordinates were not guided by that desire to tell increasingly better, different, singular stories. His own and, at the same time, universal.
Time has continued to prove him right. Author of works of the transcendence of Carreteras secundarias, Fin de temporada, La buena reputación or the masterful El día de mañana, the writer has translations into several languages and distinctions such as the National Narrative Prize, the Ciutat de Barcelona, the Torrente Ballester, the Dulce Chacón or his status as Favorite Son of Zaragoza.
The echoes of the boom
Although he confesses that he has never entered the Sagrada Familia, "nor will I do so at this point," the parishioner has spent two-thirds of his life in Barcelona. "Unlike those born in Barcelona, I am so by choice, which perhaps means something. At the same time, I do not cease to be from Zaragoza for that reason. I confirm what Max Aub said, that one is from the place where one studied high school."
The Barcelona of 1982 he arrived in was a different city, "one where absurd businesses like all those mobile phone case shops didn't proliferate." That city "still preserved the aroma of the South American boom, of which it had been the world capital for a few years and which I didn't experience," although he did have time to meet several times with Vargas Llosa, "with whom I had a certain friendship, until Isabel Preysler entered his life." He had no relationship with García Márquez, "but I can say that I coincided with him on his last trip to Barcelona, on a strange night when I was at the Giardinetto with some foreign translators and, suddenly, we saw him come down the stairs arm in arm with Carlos Fuentes. For everyone, that was like a supernatural apparition, although my contact with García Márquez was limited to an exchange of greetings and kind comments," he recalls, finishing his beer.
--- What is also supernatural is the gastronomic offer of this Bar, it's already dinner time and perhaps we can tempt you with some tapas, a menu, a combined dish.
Ignacio Martínez de Pisón shrugs. "To tell you the truth, I'm not very refined with food ---he replies---. I like restaurants because they facilitate interesting conversations and, more than the food, I care that the place is pleasant."
--- But then, you're not going to have dinner?
And the writer remains silent, smiling enigmatically, while from inside the Bar the notes of Duke Ellington's version of Harlem Nocturne escape into the street.