She is 39 years old, Uruguayan of island descent, from Tenerife, and has written a book, ‘The rest of the world rhymes, a punch on the table of literature, as if a reincarnation of Onetti, for example, had put her in the path of metaphors that carry reality or blood inside. The plot is explained very well by the publisher on its credits page: “A fortuitous event places Andrés Lavriaga, a fugitive who has just robbed a loan branch, and Julia Bazin, a biologist who has reached a blind spot in her life. , on the same stage and with the same label: they are the only survivors of a triple traffic accident on the road”. But everything that is written, or what sounds, or what rhymes, as the title says, which comes from a book by the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is literature and, of course, not a novel with events.
This woman who has written it is Caroline Bello, has already published ‘Written at the window, Saturnino, Urquiza’ (Gutenberg Prize for European Literature in 2016), October Y A monster with a broken voice… This ‘The rest of the world rhymes’ has been selected by Random House for its Map of Languages collection, for Hispanic-American writers from 21 countries who make the leap to the global territory of Spanish. Here are some questions, and answers, from what the journalist discussed with the author.
Q. What consequence does the proximity of Latin American literature have on your literature?
R. In my childhood, literature arrived without nationality, because it was not the first thing that mattered in that girl’s mind. The stories of Julio Cortázar, the poems of Pablo Neruda or Octavio Paz passed by while I tried to find literary references in the music I was listening to at the time. For my book ‘Oktubre’ the influence of Argentine literature and popular culture was overwhelming. That book could not have existed without all the baggage acquired from Argentina. Each of the books that I have read, are transformed into deltas of all my books. I also include them as an explicit tribute, but not as a mere reference, but as part of the narrative construction, as happens in The rest of the world rhymes with the work of Argentines Roberto Arlt, Rodolfo Walsh or Sergio Bizzio, all authors who have known how to create the world, reminding us of the art of reinvention. Literature is a future where time has always been stated before us.
P. What feeling does it give you that Latin American literature is now treated with such respect in Spain?
R. Latin American literature has always deserved respect for the rest of the world, but it has been more difficult for it to find regularities that escape the so-called boom. From where Latin American literature is read is a concept to attend to and how it is decoded: from the Hispanic American concept? Or considering the heterogeneity of the continent? Writing in Spanish is a declaration of intentions and not to mention doing it with the linguistic varieties that respond to the logic of the geographies where the stories take place. Many books that come to be read in other countries opt for a neutral language, as if perhaps the marks of the words of characters that move in a certain context were a barrier to understanding. Currently I notice an openness to reading literature from the different regions of the continent and a curiosity to understand or know what is happening on this side, beyond the great exponents. From Spain there is a revaluation and a desire to understand a certain present from an after: that after that begins in the colony and that, since then, has not stopped being literary raw material on this side of the ocean. For Uruguayan writers it is even more unprecedented that our literature is read in other countries. For us it is very common to have subjects in high school or college that are ‘Spanish, Italian, French literature’, but I do not know of widespread cases in the world where Uruguayan literature is exclusively addressed. That is why it is very important that Latin American writers are being read more and more carefully in other parts of the world. I don’t think it’s due to our nationalities, but to the literary value of the works that are being written.
I write because I want to explain myself. Because ordering myself and having a perspective to make sense of the things that made me be
Q. In The rest of the world rhymes there is a feeling that you participate in disbelief at what is happening in the book itself.
R. I write because I want to explain myself. Because I’m afraid and I want to order myself and have a perspective to make sense of the things that made me be. That is why we have to look at reality with some perplexity. Reality is so amazing in itself that you have to look at it with a bit of perplexity.
P. The accident that counts is seen from all sides of a disaster…
R. In the Faculty I studied a lot the stereoscopic version, which is to observe the same fact from many perspectives, and I could never get rid of that concept. That is what Tomás Eloy Martínez does in Saint Avoid. Well, like him, I think that adding visions is enriching the story. That’s why I do it. Language also imposed on me the challenge of following the style of the poetic function in the service of seeing the ordinary. I had to work a lot on that. The other challenge was the verisimilitude of the orality of the characters. I was very interested in the language being transparent. I was interested in locating the narrator well: where is he speaking from? I wanted to make a novel that, in addition to telling something, would contribute to the discussion of how a novel is written.
Q. Why an accident?
R. That traffic accident happened in Uruguay on a route that scared me as a child because accidents always happened there. This was very popular. Many people died, including an entire family: marriage and children. And it marked me. It also happened that an Asian movie marked me, ‘Mr. Six’, with a tremendous final scene on a frozen lake and I wanted Julia to tell it as if it were a dream. That was going to be the first chapter, by the way. But then I remembered the accident and said: better to start there… I wanted it to be a lockdown novel. Hospitals terrify me and, when I had already started writing, they admitted my father and that gave me the opportunity to turn that experience of mine, caring for my father for two months, into writing.
I like to honor. Literature exists because literature exists. That’s why there are other voices that sneak into my writing
P. There are two important visitors in the book: music and foreign literature.
R. I like to honor. Literature exists because literature exists. That is why there are other voices that sneak into my writing. So, if you tell a story today you have to know what intertextuality is. I was also interested in my book being sound, yes. I wanted you to be able, through the written code, to hear things. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but at least I tried.
P. The book is about the pain and loneliness of people.
R. Yes. All the characters are very lonely people and that interested me because, as the Heroes of Silence sing, it is possible that the cold comes with age. This is a novel that I have written in my early 40s, when one begins to realize that one is born alone and will leave alone. Julia, for example, has the right to suffer, even though something very serious has not happened to her. Julia suffers from loneliness, from building a world and from being someone else. She is a character that does not fit, but why do you have to fit? Who said you always have to fit in? That also interested me to tell. The accident occurs at a time when everything in Uruguay is fragmented and, as I was saying, the space where someone grows determines their actions, and if the exterior is fragmented, your interior is fragmented.
‘The rest of the world rhymes’
Caroline Bello
Random House
224 pages | 17 euros
