coincidences of life, This year, 2024, saw the light of two very similar novels about somewhat unusual spies, whose authors are two greats of our current literature.. One is “Three enigmas for the Organization”, by the great Eduardo Mendoza, and the other is that of the author who came to Toledo this Monday to present his book.
Rafael Reig (Cangas de Onís, 1963) went to the Taiga Bookstore in the capital Toledo to publicize his new novel, “Anything Small” (Tusquets), a fast-paced story of spies in a fictional tax haven at the end of the Cold Warin the purest style of Graham Greene, to which is added his irony and his genius in the use of language as a trademark of the house.
– “Anything would be worth my life this afternoon. “Any little thing, or nothing.” What do they say to you and why did these lines from the poem “Adiós”, by Claudio Rodríguez, attract you to title your novel?
-Claudio Rodríguez is one of my indispensable poets. I knew the depth and beauty of his work from a very young age and I still don’t know why he appeals to me. Valéry said that poetry is a prolonged oscillation between sound and meaning, and I believe it. In itself, the meaning of a poem is not important, nor the quality of its sound to the ear: the mystery begins by causing this oscillation between the one and the other.
-In fact, the story you tell is about small things, but which then have their meaning. In fact, at the end of the novel there is a reflection that Ginés Loyola (leader of the spy group that plays in it) says and summarizes the leitmotif from the title: “Whatever happens, we always find a solution, even without looking for it, which should already have made us suspicious of our solutions, which are limited to replacing one problem with another, often more vast.” Besides finding problems, don’t you think that we are often more likely to receive solutions than to find them ourselves if we look at how the world works today?
-It often happens to me that people tell me their problems so that I can offer them solutions and thus be able to refute them one after the other, which apparently produces great satisfaction. As a game, it’s not bad, but it gets boring after a while, so I always end up thinking that the problems aren’t fixed, but rather dissolved. The same thing happens to us all, we dissolve without having resolved ourselves.
-Although the black Recently dressed in action and thriller novels, you are clearly committed to the conventions of the noir genre with a personal touch and a sense of humor typical of the classics of Hispanic literature. Is variety the key or do you think there are too many broadcast standards in this genre?
-As my friend Javier Azpeitia says, if the first two books in the world appeared, one would be an imitation of the other, and only the second, the one that copies, would be literature. Without established tradition, there is no possibility of original creation. This is why we must know the tradition as best we can, so as not to fall into irritable banality.
-You owe a lot to the classics, as evidenced by your work and, in particular, your novels “Manual of Literature for Caníbales” and “Señales de humo”. What vision do the authors of the past offer you that those of today do not offer you?
-I also read a lot of living people and even those I know or have met and with whom I have drunk a lot of wine, like with Claudio Rodríguez. But it seems to me more difficult to appreciate Claudio’s poetry without having read Saint John of the Cross or Eliot, whom he knew intimately. The problem is that literature only acquires meaning and intensity within literature. We can discover the Mediterranean, but it is more joyful to discover it after reading Homer. Without reading it, it’s nothing more than a joke, as funny as it is. Chirigotas are very good and very holy, but they do not exclude forms of entertainment that require more effort and offer more pleasure.
Cover of “Anything Small”
-The context of the novel is the shooting assassination of a presidential candidate on the imaginary island of Dragonera, an Atlantic tax haven and non-aligned country in the difficult years of the Cold War, more precisely in 1979. Those responsible Four almost retired detectives, led by Ginés Loyola, a retired soldier burned by life, investigate the death. Are current events and reality so boring that it is better to fictionalize a distant and imaginary past?
-Well, I dispute the question, if you allow me. An example: the novel 1984 by George Orwell, what is it about today? Certainly not from 1984, the year I was twenty and knew much better than Orwell. Doesn’t it refer more to the present day of 1948, its year of publication, which Orwell knew much better than me? But the most interesting thing is that it works both ways: why can’t I read the Coplas de la panadera or the poetry of the March of Ausiàs as if they had been published yesterday and were current affairs? Of course I can, and it works. And even more difficult to observe: the couplets and Marche being contemporary (mid-15th century), do they deal with the same news? Not even for the lining! As is also the case with many works of our time. So, what we call “news” does not exist, it is nothing other than what appears in the press, on television or on the Internet. I have always argued that we should read in self-defense, so that the news that interests the powerful is not imposed on us. As everyone knows, nothing makes us freer than reading in secret from our parents or our teachers, from the press and television, and from those who tell us what we should read.
-What this era of the novel and the current era have in common are the same values: corruption, greed, thirst for power,…, even if there is always a place for humanity well understood. Where does the balance of your perception between good and evil tend more?
-My scale, if I have it, tends towards Cicero: between good and evil, there is a line, and what matters is on which side of the line we are, not how far away. By discussing the distance of the lesser evil, green businesses and humanitarian politicians begin.
-We also see in your novel that your characters drink and eat, I don’t know if very well, but a lot. What inspired you to present this rich gastronomic offer to us?
-The liquid is original, let’s say autobiographical. Solid is a recreation of what I loved and hated in my childhood.
-Let’s hope the spies aren’t as pathetic as those in “Anything Small” or those in Eduardo Mendoza’s “Three Riddles for the Organization.” Is it a coincidence or not to find two similar novels in the same year?
– Definitely a coincidence. Given the publication dates, it is impossible for us to have read it. Not being religious, I accept coincidences, and do not attribute them to an unknown or mysterious order, even less to conspiracies.
-You who have touched almost all literary genres, where are the directions, never better said, of your next creations? Perhaps to recover his detective Carlos Clot or by other means?
-I don’t know. I write and I write. Things in one notebook, others in another, and so on. Sometimes I try to put together two or three notebooks in the same story and it almost never works, other times the umpteenth notebook arrives and works, other times I’m fed up with all these notebooks, I start some a new one and the novel comes out on its own, but not without effort. As I don’t know how to think (and I’m not used to it), I need to write too much in order to think and for a little thing, anything, to come out.
