Pilar Martin |
Madrid (EFE).- The Leonese writer Julio Llamazares says that the best phrase of “Vagalume”, his new novel, is “between sorrow and nothingness I choose sorrow” by William Faulkner, the leitmotiv of his characters, those with those that pay homage to the profession of writing and that move to the rhythm of a question: what have I done with my life?
At the age of 68, Llamazares presents what is his seventh novel, “Vagalume”, the name by which fireflies are called in Galician, a noun that is assumed not only by the author, but also by the mysterious protagonist of this book (Alfaguara) with the which, as in his previous fictions, answers a vital question.
“In this one -he told EFE- I try to answer what have I done with my life? I only have one, like everyone else, and I have dedicated it to something that is very strange for the rest of the people: locking myself in a place under the light of the lamp and telling stories to, through those stories, discover the truth. , bear the truth, try to understand it better.”
The great question that hangs over these pages starring César, a journalist and writer trained in a provincial newspaper, who returns to that indefinite city -at the whim of the author- to attend the funeral of Manolo Castro, his teacher, a man who left his passion for writing novels.
A decision that after his death César discovers that it was not the case, because he receives a book manuscript from an anonymous person, one of many others that the Castro family will discover stored in the office of the deceased. And that mystery, which turns the life of his surroundings upside down, is the one that César will solve.
Tribute to the writer’s trade
That is why “Vagalume” is not only a tribute to the fact of betting on living, but to the writer’s trade.
“It is a reflection on the passion to write, on the need to write, on why some of us choose to become, like characters in the novel, fireflies that in the dark of night turn on a light to tell stories”, he stated about the essence of his character, his father and himself.
Because the novel also reflects on how there have been various types of writers in life, those that Llamazares admires, those who worked under pseudonyms to wage political repression and thus earn some money; and those who write for the sheer pleasure of creating stories.
“We are people -he added- who choose to be fond of reality to spend our lives, because we find ourselves more comfortable in that world of fantasy than in the real world. It is, as Pessoa said, our way of being alone (…) Writing is like having a virus”.
On this occasion, according to his words, whoever thinks that this book has overtones of a thriller is not mistaken.
“This, which is still a kind of metaliterary essay, is articulated with a suspense novel packaging, that is to say, that the two mysteries overlap, the one that the narrator is looking for around the figure of his teacher and the of all the characters around him”, he asserted.
With literature as a foothold for survival, Llamazares returns to that land in which he lives out of “necessity” and in which he navigates with a “compass” and starting from “an initial emotion” which in this case was knowing the history from his first editor Mario Lacruz, whom he found out when he died that he had been a writer and had stopped writing when he entered the world of publishing.
“After half a year, when he died, I received a call from one of his sons and he told me that they had opened a closet in the house and that they had found a dozen novels, and this son decided to recover all those books that his father had written without anyone knowing it at night”, he recalled.
A discovery that leads him to conclude: “a writer is one who would continue writing even if they were not read to him, and I am of that caste. Novels are like emotional tumors that arise from your life experiences and there is a moment in life that explodes.