Mexico has always been a violent place, says David Toscana

The issue of violence is a challenge that is imposed on Mexican authors, although there are those who have resulted in it for a long time and resolve it very finely. There are different ways to treat it and not necessarily bulletssays the writer David Toscana back in the country to present a reddish story Distance (Era), April 15.

The narrator, in an interview with The dayHe mentioned that Mexico has always been a violent place, what did not exist was the level of organized crime. “Women said ‘enough!’ And that’s why we see it much clearer now, but we come from a very violent tradition against them.

“There was a time when it was not even a crime to kill your wife if I had cheated you, if I was with another. I have read old minutes of courts and things like a woman say: ‘My daughter was raped by the Lord Talo, I demand that she fulfills as a man and married her!’ What mother wants the daughter to marry her rapist!

Tuscana (Monterrey, 1961) said that in his search in hemerobies he has found many crimes, although without the presence of organized bands. The man who killed the woman, the brother who killed the other, who released a bullet to another because he did not like how he saw him. Reading newspapers from the 50s I see that we have not changed so much.

At present, the author adds, this situation challenges writers and there are those who solve it very fine; For example, Luis Jorge Boone, in his novel All loneliness of the center of the earth, speaks more than violence and bullets, of the consequence, of the places that are being empty, of the life that is no longer what it was.

The writer said that his colleague Eduardo Antonio Parra compiled North: an anthology “Without the need to say: ‘I will make an anthology about violence’. From the story ‘La Fiesta de las Balas’, for example, and everything that happens in the Mexican Revolution. There the only good and sympathetic is Alfonso Reyes, but almost everyone else handles a dose of violence that is left short, because we said we lived in a quiet place and now what happens happens.”

The novelist said he did not review the text of Distance For this new edition because there was a risk of changing many things and prefers Respect Tuscany 28 years ago and not think that the Tuscany now is wiser or best writer.

He expressed his distrust in the short literary workshops and the schools that give the title of writer; Instead, believe in Literary groups or activities that can also be called workshops, but in which long seasons work. Eduardo Antonio Parra has a group of writers and work for years and continue together. That does work.

Literature, the 2017 Xavier Villaurrutia Award continued, unlike other arts, it has the advantage that what teachers have to teach are found. They already wrote and you have to learn from their reading.

Adoption of literary heroes

The author shared the Greek Longino Council, 2,000 years ago: Adopt your literary heroes and try to emulate themalthough that does not mean copying them, but authentically recognizing that something from them was learned.

“For me this has been fundamental: I write a phrase and I have Onetti behind me telling me ‘Boludo!’ And then I tell myself ‘this would not happen by Onetti’.

David Toscana recalled that Distance He was born from a challenge in Parra, who told him that since he did not drink alcohol he could not write a canteen story. I wrote the story (the first one that appears there in the book) and I saw something missing; Then, I wrote a second and I kept missing, because I have a novelist’s spirit. I ended up spinning a series of stories that although they can vaguely be read as a novel, it is a succession of related stories.

The text appeared first in Joaquín Mortiz and now brought it to editions was, that It has always been an editorial where we are all tempted to publish, because we have educated reading all Mexican literature and one feels a little orphan if it is not there. We are making plans for more editions.

Toscana said there are times when The book dies because it no longer has the performance it had and you have to take it elsewhere to give it blood again and you have to be moving them. Right now I have several dead books; Although someone has already won an award or has been well considered by critics, as long as the readers do not continue giving it a commercial battery, the editor decides not to publish it again.

These stories appeared after December error From 1994, Tuscany said, “it affected almost all and circulated this sense of lost dreams and failure, which appears mostly in this book because it was the mood of that moment.

“I hardly write books about my experience, imagination or conversations with others. Now I like those in which I must investigate a world and create a different one, that’s why the novel OLEGAROY It has to do with a character who lives in Russian literature. I like to spend years reading with a purpose. ”

The novel Gospel It treats the possibility that José and María had been born a girl instead of a boy, for her I had a happy one reading the Bible, Theology, History, Archeology and others. To write and maintain the enthusiasm of something during the years it takes, to get into a world that is not mine, that is what excites me.

Distance It is presented today at the International Book Fair of the University of Guanajuato and on the 11th of the same month at the Mar in the inside, in Veracruz. In Mexico City will feature the comments of the author and Eduardo Antonio Parra on April 15 at 7 pm at the house of editions (Mérida 4, Colonia Roma Norte).