{"id":14115,"date":"2017-12-13T16:52:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T22:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=14115"},"modified":"2017-12-13T16:55:10","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T22:55:10","slug":"to-be-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14115","title":{"rendered":"To be or not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below are the first three chapters of Xurxo Borraz\u00e1s’ novel Ser ou non (Galaxia, 2004) translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers.<\/em><\/p>\n

1<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No one pays a writer any mind. I know it all too well, I\u2019m not demanding blind faith and technically I\u2019m not a writer. I\u2019m just asking for a little attention, maybe four hours. The true stories do the telling themselves. I also know that not everyone enjoys telling a story, what\u2019s pleasing is to listen to one. If we could be characters, literature wouldn\u2019t exist and neither would readers or writers. Putting one\u2019s life at risk is what\u2019s truly intense.<\/p>\n

And narrating life isn\u2019t the same as living it, that\u2019s why no one pays a writer any mind.<\/p>\n

My name doesn\u2019t matter, seriously. I always speak seriously.<\/p>\n

I came to A Pena because they told me there would be no one here, simple as that. There are a thousand places one could go, the vast majority surely more practical and interesting, I suppose that\u2019s why everyone chooses them. Charming places, just a step away. They don\u2019t work for me, period.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m alone, the house is large and cars don\u2019t go by.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re reading isn\u2019t the first thing I\u2019ve written. The first paragraphs disappeared beneath a whirlwind of furious ink that soaked through the sheet. It was hard for me to destroy them because the lack of space is spurring me on, paper is becoming scarce, and all that formal experimentation was suicide. I\u2019d better limit myself to explaining what happened as if it hadn\u2019t happened to me, coldly, as if a knife were pressed up against my throat. A writer who feels self-important is like a soul in purgatory, deserving of neither heaven\u2019s glory nor hell\u2019s inferno. Anyone who feels self-important is stupid, whether they\u2019re a writer or not. But anyway, I\u2019m not used to dealing with people, so I might be mistaken about that.<\/p>\n

A b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it, the entire history of literature fits in those twenty-six letters; in seven notes, that of music, in seven colors, that of painting. Literature is action, muscle, tack tack tack, without anabolic-steroid theories, swollen sea foam, or miracle all-purpose silicone. Nowadays any maintenance worker who shows up at the house seems like a Chicago thug, doesn\u2019t matter whether they\u2019re a carpenter or an electrician, a plumber or a plasterer. Within their toolbelt arsenal what always stands out is a silicone gun. At some point they get up off the floor or step down from the ladder and say: I\u2019m going to the car for a minute to get more ammunition, that is, more silicone. It\u2019s the same with writers.<\/p>\n

\n

Despite living in the city I\u2019ve always been uncouth, wild, aloof, a lone wolf. Not some heroic figure touched by the solitude of mystics and geniuses, or the pride of a martyr. If anything I\u2019m the lunatic forgotten in a moldy, flaky-walled asylum, or the cross-eyed, slobbery traitor abandoned by his payers and left by the wayside. Not literally, of course, but you get the idea. There\u2019ll be plenty of people who think I\u2019m crazy, but that\u2019s their issue, not mine. In a populated setting, by way of careful study and painstaking restraint, I\u2019m able to talk the talk without attracting any attention and so I get by, or so I think, but that\u2019ll never be my setting. I\u2019m not talking just for the sake of talking. What I feel could be termed \u201cspecies aversion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m aware of it, now that I\u2019ve recovered from the gorings and suffocating prejudices of youth, now that I\u2019ve spent more time among people and become more conscious of my own image, more systematic in the analysis of what I feel as well as what I do, now I see myself as a true curmudgeon, without friends or girlfriends, why in hell would I hide it? Would it be better for me to walk around self-satisfied and grotesque like a junky, so mistaken about his appearance that he thinks he\u2019s capable of walking gloriously unnoticed through a playground, a normal guy, when in reality he\u2019s more conspicuous than Marilyn Monroe naked at an assembly of bishops? It never pays to be a junky. I have no relationships because when you have girlfriends and friends you have to talk to them, listen to them cry, make them presents, smell them, forgive them, defend them, step into their shoes, keep them updated. Honestly, I prefer to read. Or knit.<\/p>\n

For the record, it\u2019s not my fault. At my First Communion they dressed me as a monk. After mass my mom took me by the hand and we dodged around flashes, princesses, admirals, and groups of family getting together for the festivities. At home she took the rented robe off of me and hung it over the back of an armchair. While she knitted and my grandmother snored with her carrot in hand and her mustache blanketed by crumbs, I sat staring at it for two hours. \u201cShroud of Turin, O sacred shroud, X-rayed face of Christ<\/em>,\u201d I prayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two kinds of priests,\u201d said mom, \u201cthe soccer ones and the ping-pong ones. You got stuck with a ping-pong one, which is also a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never understood my mother. In the afternoon I continued staring at the starched robe and, hidden among the blinds, I watched the other children jump around and make a ruckus in the street with their new toys. I spit onto the glass and kicked at the baseboard a few times; I\u2019d lost an opportunity there. Mom didn\u2019t notice and sent me to bed, before it\u2019d even gotten dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I have to pray?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

At night I woke up with a fever, put on the robe and went back to sleep folding myself up in it. At that point I still hadn\u2019t learned how to jerk off and recited an Our Father, spoke with God and he said, with some authority, that he\u2019d never abandon me. Childish things. Then he took off like the rest of them.<\/p>\n

If all it was were just reading out loud, I\u2019d have an extensive social life. You tell me if there\u2019s anything more beautiful than reading someone a novel at dusk on the beach, some poems in bed or on the grass. Better yet: listening, having someone read to us. Be honest. I\u2019ve never tried but I\u2019m sure of it. It also wasn\u2019t my fault that I never did, seriously<\/p>\n

Ever since I was a kid I had enough of everything except for books, books…and now the Internet. But I\u2019m not a \u201cman of my time,\u201d I\u2019m not really sure what that is. Modern technology is a magnificent waste of time and all I salvage from the Internet is its daily usage value, without chic or yuppie \u201cgadgets\u201d or the mythologizing of a postmodern jumping bean. Drawing deep philosophical conclusions about the connection of some cables is something I consider utterly excessive. I\u2019m not contradicting myself if I say that the condition I put forth for renting the house was a phone that made internet connection possible, via satellite, or however: the price and speed made no difference to me. I wanted everything to be plain and empty, just the world and myself, but no landscape hides as many surprises as a desert, or a village.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

The tiny hamlet of A Pena, at the edge of Galicia, Asturias and Le\u00f3n, comprises two dozen structures on the hillsides of a boulder-capped mountain. \u201cI\u2019ll fall any day now,\u201d the rock threatens. \u201cWhen its least expected I\u2019ll slip, and whoosh, go fuck yourselves!\u201d The houses are thrown together one on top of another and, except for mine, they\u2019re ivy-covered ruins arranged irregularly in two imperfect concentric circles, perhaps a badly done spiral, in the vein of a defensive fort. At one point it must\u2019ve been, and looked at from afar the village retains a certain appearance of warding off enemies, or at least being suspicious of outsiders. Nowadays I\u2019m the only inhabitant and it\u2019s captivating to imagine that along these streets and alleys hundreds of people used to circulate daily: life was teeming with large families, there were children prancing about\u2014red faces and chubby bodies, tanned hands and toothless mouths\u2014couples hurriedly making love in the shrubs, ox-drawn carts loaded with mowed grass, fresh cow dung fuming, bagpipes and tambourines livening up the long summer evenings. It\u2019s captivating because now all of that has disappeared.<\/p>\n

The man who rented me the home is probably trying to buy the whole village from the emigres in Barcelona. His parents were from here, and more than for profit, he does it out of a kind of Cainism or oedipal compensation. According to the man himself, with what I pay him for a month he already has enough to buy an Asturias-style granary of good-quality, and a certain Liberto\u2019s pigpen to boot. This Liberto is a taxi-driver in Esplugues de Llobregat; he married an Extremaduran and built a villa in the Montseny Mountains. \u201cFor him, getting rid of a pigpen in the village is like clearing his memory, brightening up the past, and making some money on top of that,\u201d according to my landlord.<\/p>\n

He sees himself as the emigrant who got rich in South America and came back to build a school, but at this rate it\u2019ll all shortly be his: he\u2019ll have to think about what to do afterwards. Maybe even restore it with public subsidies and fill it up with tourists dressed like soldiers driving SUVs, bringing rifles with them to hunt country deer or pregnant boars. They\u2019ll thunder through the amphitheater of the valleys and sow the creeks and passageways with lead, poisoning mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and other birds while they\u2019re passing through. If this were to happen I\u2019d never return. It\u2019s a figure of speech, I probably won\u2019t ever come back, whether they build a Buddhist temple or a casino, a zoo, a brothel, or an arms factory. If on my way to another place I might have to go through A Pena, I\u2019d make a long roundabout in order to avoid it, not for any particular reason, I just know that\u2019s what I\u2019d do. When you\u2019re done reading these pages you\u2019ll understand me better, you\u2019d do the same. Just listen for now. I\u2019m trusting that you won\u2019t repeat this to anyone afterwards.<\/p>\n

\n

I love the Internet for the pornography; the rest of it\u2019s only good for those who like the fuckery of cheap ostentation or pretending to be hip, the bullshit of the idle. The things that interest me are very few, I\u2019m not fond of word games or ambiguities which drive me to worthless interpretations, to abstract assessments, and I like wasting time even less, such as with romanticism or eroticism. I warned you, I\u2019m a real curmudgeon. As long as I don\u2019t get into anyone else\u2019s business I don\u2019t have to give explanations anyway\u2014holy shit!\u2014and it\u2019s clear to me that there are worse people out there. I\u2019m like Nietzsche, a vitalist with a grey life.<\/p>\n

One night I went to an X-rated theater downtown and had to buy my ticket, clean my seat, smell the stale semen for an hour and half, be unable to get up or smoke, listen to donkey moans in every corner of the room, step on streams of spit or something more viscous, and be the object of more than one romantic, erotic, sarcastic, and undesired proposition. Upon departing from that hell, before the lights of the theater came on, I must\u2019ve withstood a barrage of kisses and at least one green loogie launched in the dark which hit me right in the ear, and which I had to clean off with the bottom of my shirt. Outside the buses had stopped running and I had to pay for a cab to get back home. Never again. I\u2019d even chosen a weekday and the movie was in German, without subtitles. It must be like death on the weekends.<\/p>\n

Either I was oversensitive that fateful night or at least I thought I could hear how my cab driver sniffed to the left and right, seeming to imply: \u201cWhat the hell is that smell? How do you have the nerve to get into my cab like that? What, do you want to ruin my job, you asshole? Do you think this impeccable public service is the bathroom at a whorehouse, or what? You, of course, since you don\u2019t have any mouths to feed. What the fuck do you have!\u201d It was taxi 419 and any of his cab-driving colleagues would\u2019ve done the same, I don\u2019t blame him. It just surprised me that he could detect the smell of semen like police dogs can with cocaine.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarballo, hey, where are you Carballo?\u201d They were calling him over the radio taxi.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing up on As Travesas,\u201d he answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould ya pick up a girl at Toys\u2019R\u2019Us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHooker?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNegative, bud,\u201d declined the cab driver. \u201cI\u2019ve had enough for tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been three years now and every time I see a cab I lower my head, look at the number, and my heart leaps out of my chest.<\/p>\n

That night, I grabbed a bottle of soda water as soon as I got home and swallowed most of it in one gulp. In critical situations, in order to escape alcohol, I abuse carbonated drinks. I fill myself with bubbles until my eyes inflame and tear up. Soda water makes my ass burn instantaneously and without fail, so I already knew what was in store for me. I did it for exactly that reason, more than a half liter. I could feel the sugar penetrating into the fissures of my gums and burped three times. I drank the rest of the bottle and spit into the sink. The drink had shot up my nose and I shook my head to the left and right. The burning came within the matter of a minute. I washed myself in the bidet with warm water and took one of Mom\u2019s anti-inflammatories. It was my way of punishing myself, my path to sainthood: soda water.<\/p>\n

Luckily, and thanks in part to computers, fetishisms aside, I\u2019m done with those pointless rovings, which doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ve gotten them out of my mind. Looked at from a different angle, that night in the theater was a pity. The movie was really good, I mean…the women, these things only look proper on the big screen, there\u2019s no comparison. In the flick, like almost every one in the genre, there was an excess of blowjobs and half-hard cocks. This type of film appeals to whom it appeals, there\u2019s no need for us to pretend. The actors themselves say they don\u2019t feel anything, that they do their job and that\u2019s it. It\u2019s not nothing and that\u2019s not it! If they don\u2019t get turned on, how the hell am I going to get turned on? Who are they trying to con? How could they hold a curvy, butt-naked woman in their hands like someone who mechanically stamps packages at the post office? And what about the women? It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if they were playing the same game and hiding it better, but I forgive them for it. I\u2019ve even heard that when some painters are copying from a photo they place the model upside-down, that way the reality depicted doesn\u2019t prevent them from concentrating on the lines and colors. And what about the human factor? Huh? Well now it looks like I\u2019m going to have an attack of sentimentality. Me, of all people! If I were a pornographer, I\u2019d make movies where the take was repeated until the coming was authentic and there were no cocks or men to be seen. I\u2019d compensate for the extra expense on film by saving on actors. Going back to the movie from that night, and in spite of everything, I recognize that sex in German gets me horny, and an erect nipple in close-up, of which there are plenty, becomes a volcano.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

My background in science is no obstacle to my love for literature, although for some kinds of literature it is. And yet what could be more poetic than the story of the great discoveries in physics, or more scientific than the best literature, that of encyclopedias.<\/p>\n

I love books like I love myself. They\u2019re fleeting loves because I rarely buy or possess them. If I had money, I would. Maybe now. The length of our relationship lasts equally as long as the time spent voraciously reading or that of the library borrowing period. Then we bid each other farewell like two lovers who lost consciousness during the night and committed every kind of excess but at dawn get dressed in silence and go their separate ways without asking for numbers or trying to convince themselves that what happened could\u2019ve simply been a dream.<\/p>\n

In the library there are basically just students going over notes and elderly people reading one newspaper after another, hiding the ABC<\/em> behind O Faro<\/em> so that no one deprives them of another dozen drab columns. The librarians themselves\u2014a woman of around fifty years old with an imitation pearl necklace, and a dark-skinned boy with hair gel and Ralph Lauren polos\u2014look me over from head to toes every time I check out a book. With the old people they permit everything and yet they censor me with a disdainful superiority, as if I weren\u2019t going to return the borrowed book and they wanted to have a description ready for the police archives. They look at me as if I were picking up the weekly copy of my subscription to a pedophilia magazine.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they try to scare me off with successive repetitions of \u201cit\u2019s checked out.\u201d I obstinately seethe at the catalog and choose another title, a classic second-rate philosopher, the history of our provincial government by way of its presidents, the biography of an obscure soldier. People whine about poor reading habits but then we go and treat someone who reads like they\u2019re a monster. Society carries the contradiction within itself: put-together at the face and unraveled at the ass. Some libraries are the ass.<\/p>\n

This outright disdain, these setbacks that books and I find ourselves forced to overcome in order to arrange our semi-clandestine meetings, only make our love grow stronger. They display their affection just as much as I do, and as a result, on top of reading them I\u2019ve also written one, for the moment. I sent the novel to Barcelona, for the prize, to torment myself within defeat, within the sulfuric contempt of the pundits and the sweet death of public indifference. It turned out that I won, an unknown debutante in a commercial macro-competition known for being rigged and a text of just one-hundred and seventy pages. Shouting to the world what one writes, being heard, is equivalent to opening Pandora\u2019s Box. In moments of sleepiness and idealism we picture the Ark of the Covenant, but in the end it turns out to be that same old can of worms, make no mistake.<\/p>\n

The verdict resulted in a bombshell from which I\u2019m not even somewhat recovered. Sometimes I think I am but it\u2019s precisely the lightheadedness derived from success that makes me think so. I came here to get over the shock and supposedly to write another novel. What I really wanted was to win more prizes, to receive a phone call that would make me tremble, and to believe that all my repressed sadistic impulses could finally enjoy their objective correlative. The experiences between pleasure and pain are the truly pleasurable ones, and we all like to repeat them. Hush, hush, I don\u2019t want to put you on the spot, you don\u2019t have to say a single word.<\/p>\n

I also came to escape from the Galician nationalists who decry me for writing in Spanish. I always speak Galician because I don\u2019t speak much at home, but the language should disappear just as much as I should. When one takes an interest in extinct species one becomes familiar with the beauty contained in knowing oneself to be endangered, a lynx, an eagle, a gigantic blue whale, or a miniscule invertebrate at the mercy of imperceptible variations in climate or imbalances in the food chain. To be one of the last would fill our lives with meaning. That\u2019s why I speak in Galician and don\u2019t write in it, because of the smell of latent extinction. I\u2019ll write in it one day when we\u2019re fewer. If you\u2019re wondering why what you\u2019re reading is in Galician, it\u2019s because it\u2019s not writing, it\u2019s merely speech. Any outside hand on these pages would act as an explosive laboratory catalyst, would turn them into a posthumous work.<\/p>\n

Those who keep piling up adjectives in order to condemn my choice of language are wasting their time, and they disappointed me by responding to my provocation talking like politicians instead of insulting and threatening me. They, with their historical allegories, their moral misery disguised as nostalgia, and their eternal urban-rural conflict. Good manners and hypocrisy are enemies of intelligence, and a good index by which to certify societal paralysis. I call you all idiots and you respond with an academic paper. Sucks for y\u2019all<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I also came to get lost in this middle of nowhere to free myself from the press which ever since reading my novel has hailed me for the \u201ccourage\u201d not to write in Galician. And might that not have something to do with the bestowal of the prize, even just a bit? A newspaper with a huge readership has already offered me a weekly spot on their last page; it\u2019d be impossible for me to do it worse than others, a column that\u2019s well-paid and without any preconditions. Doric, Ionic or Corinthian: the artist chooses the style, joked the guy from the paper.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all settled. I would write about bars, \u201cthe question of gender on bathroom doors,\u201d a new place every day. Men with frock-coats and top hats, or maybe canes, women with parasols and belle \u00e9poque dresses. That\u2019s what was masculine and feminine. The mustache of a French worker at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century and a pair of sensual lips. A blazer and \u201ccigarette\u201d pants along with Mary Quant\u2019s miniskirt. A mannekin-pis with his parabolic squirt and a baby girl with blonde braids and a straw hat. I had neither top hat nor mustache nor \u201ccigarette\u201d pants, nor did I urinate in fountains. My thing was literature, letters: H. M. There it is: homes e mulleres<\/em>. Men and women. And, out of all the letters in the alphabet, the masculine is symbolized by the most arbitrary, H, the one that\u2019s mute, empty, which existed as a whim or as a basis for illegitimate authority, an injustice. I had a list of bars made up and that series would give me something to blabber about in my newspaper column for a few months, until the readers got tired of my bathrooms and flushed them down the toilet. You can\u2019t make everyone happy, it\u2019s good enough for someone to accept us even if we ourselves hate them.<\/p>\n

Newspapers don\u2019t come to A Pena, and literary disputes as well as nuclear tests seem like useless chitchat or nonsense, byzantine theological debates. Nevertheless, at the end of this month everything\u2019s going to get tangled up again: news, family, routine, my recently released public persona.<\/p>\n

Alongside the reactions of surprise at the winner\u2019s identity\u2014for many a symptom of the contest\u2019s well-known rottenness, and therefore of the much desired decline of the huge publisher\u2014illustrious pen names appeared unmasked in the national newspapers, names that had participated in the contest by taking old projects out of the closet, reviving them, and dressing up their unnamed cadavers, directly encouraged by the very publisher which now ignored them all because of some nobody. A bitter and melodramatic controversy took hold, and even some of the judges who didn\u2019t vote in my favor got involved. I didn\u2019t intervene\u2014what was I going to say?\u2014and my silence was interpreted a million different ways: taciturn, wise, mysterious, fraudulent, Galician. That\u2019s the power silence has.<\/p>\n

I ultimately came to the village because of the issue with the critters, ashamed of myself. Maybe that was the only reason, the definitive one. One can\u2019t get rid of oneself very easily, but the mirrors can always be turned around. What\u2019s most similar to this is to flee, because to flee is always to flee from mirrors. Shame is especially associated with the landscapes which engender it.<\/p>\n

Although unwittingly, I also came to settle accounts, to get what I deserved. And boy did I get it<\/p>\n

In my thinking literature simply constitutes a way of delaying pain, a sedative for the disheartened. At one point I saw it as a drug and then I started to hate it like a medicine: its function was prophylactic and I, bitterly disappointed. Now I see it as a medicine I can\u2019t go without. I remind myself that I have to obey the doctor, that it\u2019s an obligation, but I know it\u2019s become an addiction. As a child I faked colds and headaches so that Mom would give me a spoonful of codeine. It might not have been a drug, but it was more than a medicine: just smelling it, I became entranced. It\u2019s the same with writing.<\/p>\n

I know I have no literary talent at all, I was neither born for it nor will I die an artist. I have no idea, fucking hell. Between the media uproar, the applauding, and shaking of hands I was out of it for a few days, but the nervous frigidity of my personality knew how to negotiate that downpour. In the novel I wrote, actually a series of stories I linked in order to present them for the prize, I limit myself to narrating some bits badly chosen and pulled from my grotesque, undesirable toerag\u2019s life. I did it all wrong. I thought people wanted heroes and happy stories but in this world there\u2019s more shit than some of us smell, and that\u2019s good for me. The recycling of failures is constantly more complex, more useless. The boundaries constantly have to be moved because there\u2019s just more trash and failure. Some people aspire to this mortal heaven and meanwhile it doesn\u2019t come they vomit on the street corners. I\u2019m waiting for that moment leaning back with a bunch of grapes in hand. For me writing a happy and made-up story would be as pointless as writing about the legends of Samoa or the applied mathematics of interplanetary rocket propulsion. On the other hand, the macabre and the pathetic go a long way when there\u2019s a thick barrier of protection between them and us, whether it\u2019s the barrier of the pages of a book, the barrier of language, of the rules of a story, or all of them together. For some members of the jury\u2014based on the aforementioned controversy I deduce that they\u2019re the ones closest to the organizing publisher\u2014even the stereotypical settings within this land of fog, witches, lunatics, enigmas, and apparitions, should\u2019ve been held as a layer of protection and mystery. Outside of that string of topics I don\u2019t know what commercial value they could\u2019ve seen in me, maybe that of the Entroido Carnival\u2019s king?<\/p>\n

They spoke of Torrente Ballester and Camilo Jose Cela, of Cunqueiro and Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez, of Valle-Incl\u00e1n, of \u201cmagical and parallel worlds, of a language rooted in the earth, of the multi-faceted structure, of the breakdown of the barriers between fiction and reality with a personal aesthetic which overcame the vacuity of postmodern hybridizations.\u201d I didn\u2019t understand it and as such I said nothing. I also heard the dialogue was very realistic\u2014what realism and what a load of shit, if I don\u2019t have a dialogue with a single fucking person! I\u2019ll say it again: what I narrate there is my life, as long as I don\u2019t have another, I\u2019m not sure what the hell else I could tell. Make up another story? Just like that, out of nothing? That would be absurd. In order to write something original, one should first invent their own language, a new and exclusive language. The rest are combinations, commercial transactions, word games repeated a thousand times. I don\u2019t have my own language and I\u2019m not original. I didn\u2019t even suffer a childhood which could be considered miserable and upon which I could lean, unlike the majority of true artists. I simply feel that I lacked a childhood, which is impossible, obviously. What does that mean, anyway?<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a strange guy,\u201d said the literary critic. \u201cBut on the other hand…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should all vote how you want,\u201d placated the representative from Editorial Universo. \u201cThe company trusted you to make a thoughtful decision. In fact there you have it, the little novel made it through the filter. For us the easiest thing would\u2019ve been to block its path early on, then there would\u2019ve been no issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s winner leaned forward in her chair and rested her elbows on the table:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what needs to be done is to compare it with the rest. The other nine are proper novels, and there are three that I like quite a bit. I had a good time reading them and went on with my life. I can\u2019t say the same about this one, I didn\u2019t exactly \u201chave a good time,\u201d but it\u2019s definitely the one that left me least indifferent. It\u2019s ironic, literarily as well as…I\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guy\u2019s invented a fiction in order to conquer reality, it\u2019s the spirit of an alchemist. Haven\u2019t you all asked yourselves if this novel didn\u2019t exist previously?\u201d commented the university professor, \u201cif it\u2019d been presented for the prize some years ago without winning, and now he wants to take his revenge within fiction?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this metaliterary bullshit,\u201d interrupted the veteran writer, the man of the house, \u201cfucks with me a little bit, sorry, honey.\u201d He gestured towards the lady who\u2019d won the year before. \u201cI\u2019ve been on this jury for seventeen years and there\u2019s always some pipsqueak who wants to give me lessons about literature. They should write a novel like yours, goddamnit, with its story, a careful use of language, and above all characters one can empathize with, not this repulsive pest…how did he himself say it? A toerag. The discussions are unnecessary with a good novel, aren\u2019t they? It validates itself and that\u2019s that. Last year the decision was firm before we\u2019d even finished our coffee; I\u2019m not saying it to flatter you, sweetheart.\u201d He turned towards the professor and asked: \u201cthat\u2019s the right word, isn\u2019t it, metaliterary?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe at the firm don\u2019t want you all to feel like there are conditions. Each year the jury is different and hearing each authoritative opinion will only increase the prize\u2019s grandeur. You\u2019re well aware of our publishing tendencies and we\u2019re hardly going to decide on a winner at this stage. I\u2019m seeing that there\u2019s some confusion; how about you all take a break and continue after lunchtime\u2014at the restaurant, as you know, you can have whatever suits you, for food and drink. If we have to get you all together nine times, we\u2019ll do it. By the way, none of you said anything about the fountain pen: in my view where there is gold all other metals are irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA gem,\u201d interjected the university professor. \u201cI barely know how to use a pen anymore, not to mention a fountain pen, but it\u2019s undeniably a gem.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

XURXO BORRAZ\u00c1S & JACOB ROGERS<\/a><\/h6>\n
<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below are the first three chapters of Xurxo Borraz\u00e1s’ novel Ser ou non (Galaxia, 2004) translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers. 1 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No one pays a writer any mind. I know it all too well, I\u2019m not demanding blind faith and technically I\u2019m not a writer. I\u2019m just asking for a little attention, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[54],"tags":[36],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3FF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14115"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14119,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14115\/revisions\/14119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}