"The evil is with us and we inherit" | Fernanda Gar …

"What are you doing copulating with Grandma's piano?" My girlfriend was not. Or yes. It was written. Dad did not read it, "says the author who played in the first story of The purest torment (Emecé), another strange, unclbadifiable and beautiful narrative jewel of Fernanda García Lao, in which the real and the nightmare mix and disintegrate at once, the luminous nature and its darker cliffs, the abnormal experiences of madness, absurd and ferocious laughter, for there is a sneaky comic ferocity in what writes the most rare and original narrator of contemporary Argentine literature. The most radical for his way to auscultate and get out the traps in the sun of the miseries of the family, to question and make fun of the role of mothers, to delve into the troubled waters of the country. discomfort and come back to the surface to write as perplexed, crippled and shattered by a small find, a lucidity that hurts, as one story indicates.

Fernanda – an enemy of any convention of poet, playwright and narrator – remembers in the interview of Page / 12 It was not an obedient girl. Even in his phonetic eclecticism, there is something that is not apprehended: a distant and almost imperceptible accent of Mendoza, the city where he was born in 1966, and the pronunciation of Spanish zeta during his years of exile in Spain, between 1976 and 1993. His father, journalist Ambrosio García Lao, died in exile.

– "A family, that's it. A team that annihilates, "says in the story that gives the title to the book. "The family is a horror that does not deserve continuity," reads another story. Why does the family appear with such a negative charge?

–All stories could be called The purest torment Because the family is that. Happy families do not write, they enjoy themselves; The first terrors and the first tests of power and humiliation occur in the family. The majority of femicide victims are in the hands of parents. In the family, there is a permit for so-called freedom, non-interference and control, which reproduces the same violence that exists outside but behind closed doors. The family is in darkness and I did not invent it. I just watched. On the other hand, the family is the first castration organization and this is not an invention to me either. I can only write it. I have neighbors "processors", that's what we call them because of their past in 1976, which is seemingly charming when they open the door to their home; But what I hear through the wall, is something else. This has to do with a pessimistic view and also one of the first anarchists of my life. Perhaps because my family was an intellectual, the "B side" of life was present from the first moment, forced not to question all orders – because I do not know if there were any orders at home – but all types of obedience. I was not an obedient girl and I did not trust adults either. Although there was a lot of explanation as to why some things needed to be done, I did not agree. I loved running to the limit and seeing what had happened, to see if it was true that there was a threat or prejudice. As a mother, I was very careful not to pbad on my beliefs to my daughters. "Are we making holes in the ear so that we know that she is a woman?" No, I do not want them to have any marks. I do not want society to brand my daughters as cattle. It may be extremist, but it seems to me that it has to do with something between politics and staff. As in everything I do, ideological and physical convictions are filtered. I like disorganized families, quirky, capricious; Family Inventions I have two daughters of different parents, I could not have a litter with a man. I think it's weird (laughs).

– One of the stories that relate to the death of a father, told by a teenager. It's one of the most autobiographical stories of the book, is not it?

– Yes, what happens is that I'm not literal. When I write father and dead, I obviously have a mark. My father died when I was sixteen and this death surprised me because it was not when it happened. When I arrived home, I fought a duel with people I did not know or who I did not remember or did not expect to find. The wake appeared to be an event surrounded by absurdity, in addition to the discomfort of death. My old lady (María del Amor González) pbaded away in May, while I was correcting this book, which is why it is dedicated to her. The same thing was an expected death, not in the sense that we are all mortal; He was 84 years old and he had been falling for two years. One of my sisters asked me if I told her that I had dedicated the book to her. I thought it was a minor fact. Who cares? Where is this information going? His death was the purest torture, like the title of the book. Why this word? He appeared alone, I knew when I wrote it in the first story that it was the title. Then I read that the torture was a torture to confess. The writing is the purest torture. What's going on, is that you do not confess what you think about confessing. This is the reason why I have a certain distance with the writings "yoicas", because it seems to me that they replace the unconscious and the darkness. We are at a time when the imagination is almost subversive; reality takes up so much space and is so much of a lie that I believe more in fiction. Fiction is more pure. Live there is no need for sensitivity or intelligence in this world; Survive the less sensitive. I feel connected to some knowledge when I write and live much more stupidly. Poetry allows me to turn away, to find other ways. I believe a lot in my intuition, my nightmares. If I consider my nightmares as an object of study, they must resemble those of many. There is something interesting to put your head in the ground, to search and to go out. I knew I did not want to write more novels if this storybook had not come out. If a project that I have in my writing is not to crystallize in any genre; do not badume that the earth is won, but put it in check all the time. Go against the convention of what is a story. I love more the exceptions, the unusual, the fugitive, the incomprehensible. I prefer that to a cover. I am not convinced by those who suppose to know; the decals and all these shits and recipes. For me, writing stories, it's hugging the rope and crossing the limits, like when I wondered when I was little girl: can not you turn alone around the apple? Let's see why …

–In "Fragility", the two year old boy who puts a viper in his mouth ends up reproducing the excessive violence of the mother, as if the story told: "the violence is at home and we inherit it" …

– The perversity is with us and we inherit it. When we talk about what your parents leave you, it seems that objects, talents, diseases, but also vices are inherited. There is no greater harm than we do, there is no animal with a level of perversion as demonstrated by a human being at some point in his life. The story is born from the fact that there are many mothers very obsessed with education and the fear of doing something to their child, without recognizing the harm and destructive power they have. It was fun to play with this misunderstanding about the fact that the child was fragile and that the snake was the danger. Also, I think he had read similar news about a boy being taken to the hospital because a snake bit him and the blood he got came from the snake and not from the child .

– About inheritance, there is a hairpiece that is also inherited from one of the stories and men who rub it die. This area of ​​inheritance seems to work from the point of view of the unusual crossed by fear, terror and some fantastic ones too, right?

–When my aunt died, I saw a hairpiece in a small box with tongs and I did not take it with me. But I took a bag and that bag, every time I put it, it hurt my neck and shoulders. Since I'm half-extremist and come from the theater, I thought, "I'm going to tame the bag" (laughs). Now I sleep with my mother's nightgown; These are tests that I wear not only for writing but for me. I test myself also in life; It is not that I write these things and that I grow daisies. I have a garden in my house and I see how a series of dreadful things happen. What happens is that we do not see them because it's a miniature terror. If we are atrocious, why will nature not equate our atrocity? Just as some insects become strong at repeated poison. This concrete poison is a human invention; This is not something natural. We are very far from nature, more and more. I am a Mendoza and as a girl, I heard the name of the zonda wind or water that came down from the mountain. I have seen there a certain control and a madness consented too. When we went to Spain in 1976, in my aunt's house, that of the little sack, our old belongings were buried by the earthquake that took place in 86. It's something of that fury that build me. There are writings that cure this horror. Not that I'm looking for horror; In horror, I try to find beauty. I do not know if it shows. I think every word understands its opposite. I can only see one part: I see the word and the shadow of the word. In poetry and in the short story, I am wilder than in the field of the novel.

– Why does history allow you to be "wilder"?

–The story is a rabid dog, rabid, a dog who has little time. If I stretch anger, he loses power. Rabies works in the moment, it does not give time to organize a speech.

– And your novels?

– I write fake novels. I did not write any linear novel; They are all broken and I work as if each part was a self-concluding nucleus. In fact, what bothers me are the links. That's why there are a lot of suspension points. When I write a novel, I cut almost as if I were editing a movie, concentrating as much power as possible at that time.

Other legacies resonate in the air. Fernanda's two daughters have lived in Prague since 2018. "Juliet chose a country where abortion has been legalized since the last century and is atheist; He searched for certain coordinates that were vital to her. I think that being irrelevant should be almost mandatory at some point. What happens is that it's good to leave when you feel like it and not to rush or be violent in a country. One also builds with these pains and sometimes staying is counterproductive ", explains the writer who admits that she is" a first absolute orphan "with ambivalences. "It's as if my mother was dying in different parts of my body that were stressed. but I also feel a kind of fantastic permission not to have any responsibility. If I ever had to leave them. "

– Are you responsible to your mother?

– No. She already knew who I was. We had a very conflictual relationship because I inherited from my two parents different words, two speeches and two very different libraries. My mother wrote poetry and theater too. In fact, he always wrote the same job, which he rewrote and edited, which was his school and also mine. She has published poetry and has won numerous awards. Upon our return from Spain, he had here a highly-watched radio show at the time, a night show. My father was more conventional, more American, more (Ernest) Hemingway, (William) Faulkner; instead my old wife was more "French". Jean Genet is out of his hand, but also (Samuel) Beckett and (Eugene) Ionesco. My mother's death was like a very dramatic dramatic performance. I have everything written, written, recorded, taken photos. My father's death failed me, but I had to be alone the day of my mother's death. I've always thought that I was the strongest of my two sisters or I took this place and found that no … My mother was talking as if she was writing. Now, my mother is one of my stories. That's the way I had to understand. I threw everything I filmed later; I could not see him. But I started writing the story with a sentence that she said to me: "Is this empty?" I have finished writing there two weeks ago. If I did not finish it, I would go crazy. The only way to heal was to say it. When I do not understand something, I write it.

Tab

Fernanda García Lao was born in Mendoza in 1966 and exiled in Spain between 1976 and 1993, where he studied piano, ballet, theater and journalism. He has written and directed plays in several countries of Latin America and has published novels hungry (2005) The perfect other thing (2007) The homeless (2011) Hard skin (2011) Out of the cage (2014) and Country of the vaccine (2017); and the storybook How to use a knife (2013). In 2015, he published Inverted love and in 2018 Those who come from the night, both co-authors with Guillermo Saccomanno. Among his poetry books stand out Carnivorous (2016) and Painful (2017). In 2011, she was selected by the International Book Fair of Guadalajara (FIL) as one of the "best kept secrets of Latin American literature". He collaborated Babelia, Chimera Magazine, Free Letters and The Buensalvaje, among other publications. Some of his texts have been translated into Portuguese, English, Swedish and Greek for digital and paper magazines. Since 2010, he coordinates writing workshops.