With El año del Búfalo (The Year of the Buffalo), Javier Pérez Andújar (Sant Adrià de Besòs, 1965) has written the book he had been thinking about for 25 years, and the pandemic gave him the excuse to do it. His new novel explains how a writer loses control of a work when he finishes it or, rather, is subjected to a full-blown narrative coup d'état. Those who immerse themselves in its reading will find themselves trapped in a garage, confined as Pérez Andújar likes to repeat to record the moment he wrote it, with three characters who are there because they want to, so as not to lose their human condition.
They will also see how the author of that story, Folke Ingo, is disavowed from the footnotes by any interlocutor who believes they have something to say, from the Ministry of Humanities that is editing it, his own mother, his translator, the parents of the confined, to the Club de Amigos de Gregorio Morán and a film club in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. A bit like life itself, which is why even that very current reaction of being offended by everything is reflected, with heated discussions over any trifle, which are revealed as insurmountable differences.
As if that weren't enough, all this is intertwined with historical episodes, presented in the form of EVP (electronic voice phenomena), with Franco, Mussolini, Agostinho Neto, Lumumba, Gaddafi, or Joselito as real characters, whom Pérez Andújar has chosen due to an emotional connection, recalling the news he read in newspapers or saw on TV when he was a kid. "The book experiences the same thing it tells. It talks about coups d'état, guerrillas... All are marginal paths of the main trunk of politics, which is parliamentary politics. And a marginal writer writes it, doing so in a marginal language, because he is Finnish but writes in Swedish, and talks about people who live in a marginal neighborhood, Suburbia. Everything is written around the margins," explains Pérez Andújar in an interview with The New Barcelona Post.
With a poorly defined physical space, with constant jumps from one country to another, "like an atlas," and a single mention of that Suburbia where there is a garage with three confined people, the temporal framework is clearer. 1973 stands as the point to which the different episodes recur. "It wasn't very difficult for me to choose that year, my mind went there," he points out. The oil crisis, the collapse of countries that had managed to decolonize and become independent in the sixties, the attack on Carrero Blanco... "The world changes, all the optimism that existed in the hippie era and in May '68 is the last glimmer, then comes the disappointment," he explains. Javier Pérez Andújar wanted to draw "a world that hasn't been lost, it exists, but in a different way, the response and the actors are different, but the wound is there and it's the same: poverty and the exploitation of some countries over others." 1973 was the year of the buffalo, according to the Chinese horoscope, as was 2021, the year in which his eponymous book served him to win the Herralde Novel Prize, awarded by the Anagrama publishing house. "It was a coincidence," he assures.
Against reading morally
Tired of hearing it, the writer flatly rejects that this novel can be labeled as strange. It can be said that it is not a usual read, but that does not mean that it does not follow the literary tradition. "Rare books do not exist," he states.A book can be fun, entertaining, funny, long... But they are not strange. Why do we now say that things are strange? Because we are the ones becoming strange, we are incapable of assuming movement and difference. Everything that deviates from the picture or from what is preconceived we label as strange, but that is our problem, not the thing's," he argues.He gives examples. Julio Cortázar's Rayuela, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, or Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote, do they seem strange to us? "Most interesting books are strange from today's perspective," he remarks. "In El Quijote, suddenly, halfway through chapter ten of the first part, Cervantes tells you that this is a manuscript he found while going through the Toledo flea market and interrupts the action, just when a character is about to hit Don Quixote with a stick, the Basque. Cervantes cuts and says "No, no, these are papers I found" and, then, the stick falls. That is pure cinematography," he explains.
That is why he condemns "reading morally" and advocates for "reading normally again," that is, "taking a book, starting to read it, taking its side, following what it says and forgetting about yourself and being with the book." He distrusts those who expect a book to give them something. "Your godmother will give you something on your birthday when she gives you 100 pesetas or a euro... You don't have to go to the book looking for information, you have to go looking for reading," he defends. "Books are not a pill you take and it makes you feel good or bad, and you've already learned. The book is like walking or being in the sea, it's what happens, it's immense and, in the end, you drown," he adds.
The atlas of Javier Pérez Andújar
IfThe Year of the Buffaloportrays many countries, near and far, at the time when pessimism arrived, Pérez Andújar's atlas is more limited.From her home in El Clot, she walks everywhere and does so in two directions.Or towards the center of Barcelona or towards Sant Adrià de Besòs, when he goes to see his mother and his friends. "My border is Plaza Universidad, my world ends there. On the other side, the border with Badalona, from there it is also unknown territory for me. From Bogatell street in Sant Adrià to Plaza Universidad. The rest is abroad. That is, I don't care if I go to Moscow or Badalona. It's very far," he explains.Pérez Andújar's physical framework is confined from Bogatell street in Sant Adrià to Plaza Universidad: "The rest is abroad"The Besòs river, "now it's called the river walk," and Sant Adrià beach are among his main routes. "I love the beach, but in winter, not for sunbathing and swimming, that's great for people to use, but I like it when there's no one there and maybe there are cormorants in the bunkers," a sign that shows the recovery the river has experienced, as well as the presence of grey herons, egrets, or ducks.
That's what Pérez Andújar ends up talking about in his books. "I write with what's mine and what's mine is what I've read, what I've seen, the people I know and the streets I walk," he says. For the friends he introduces in his stories, he doesn't hesitate to create fan clubs, like Gregorio Morán's in El año del Búfalo, who ends up playing a very prominent role in the main plot, although the Santa Coloma film club may end up refuting it. But, probably, that's the least of it.