Clara Obligado: “Borges taught me to read in the margins”

Clara Obligado (Buenos Aires, 1950) started writing because “I needed to build a bridge with language”. It was almost 50 years ago. She arrived in Madrid in 1978 as a political exile from the military dictatorship. He had just finished his literature studies in his country and believed that “everything he had lost could be recovered through fiction”. Today, with the perspective that time gives him, he thinks that it has been “a good system”, although every time he finishes a book, he believes that this time it will be the last: “C It’s very tiring and economically unprofitable. “, he says of his work. Although this thought does not last long. “I think that the way I think about the world is linked to writing,” he explains. A few days ago, she was in Valladolid to participate in a book club about her latest book, “Three Ways to Say Goodbye” (Páginas de Espuma, 2024) and we took the opportunity to chat with her about this work and the way she designs the writing exercise. “I believe that writing is not forged when you write but when you correct”, says someone who was a student of the Argentine poet and writer Jorge Luis Borges. He says he has. learned to read in a different way and this is what he tries to convey in the writing workshops and reading clubs in which he frequently participates “Borges was a very reading writer, very close to what is. a workshop he taught me to read in the margins This is perhaps the most important thing I learned from him: there is a literature that is obvious, but which must also be read from the side. . This is something I will always be grateful for. Borges is not mentioned in the acknowledgments chapter of “Three Ways to Say Goodbye”, but she is mentioned by Alice Munro, who she says inspired her in her early days. The last book by Clara Obligado The first, a widow, says goodbye to her partner. The second features this same woman, a 75-year-old writer in a relationship with an older man. In the last one, the protagonist is the granddaughter of the previous one, a 20-year-old girl who experiences young love with a boy who does not suit her. He explains that he chose this format, long stories linked to each other, “because there was something romantic about it”. “In each book I look for a different proposal and I try to learn how to do something that I didn’t know how to do. In this case, a 50 page story, which is what Poe recommended. He said that was the maximum length a story could be to read it in one sitting and have a full effect. In all his books there is a story that is linked to the same act of writing, but he says that is not the case. intend them to be autobiographical: “Being yourself is quite boring.” However, on this occasion, she attributes to one of the protagonists a phrase that has sometimes come out of her mouth: “I postponed my old age until 80”. Regarding aging, the author believes that “now we are starting to age in a different way,” she says. In fact, he insists: “I don’t feel that way. I am totally active, full of projects… It’s a very interesting stage of life, at least as I live it. You decide for yourself what stage of life you are at. There are young people who are also old.” Associated report Yes The day Segovia wrote the chapter that changed history Henar Díaz Exceptional witness to the crucial start of the reign of Isabel the Catholic, the city will return next week to 15th century to commemorate and recreate his proclamation with an intense program of activities Regarding future projects, he announces that he is writing a book with the biologist Raúl de Tapia which will be called “A company tree”. , “very similar” to his other essays – “A Home Away from Home” and “Everything That Grows” – it is, he says, “a search for a common writing between the sciences and. humanities” because he considers that “it is very necessary to break this barrier”. At the same time, he continues to give workshops and participate in reading clubs like the one that brought him last week to Valladolid, meetings which bring him “a lot of things”. The first thing, “a vital enthusiasm because there is a sort of cliché according to which people do not read, do not think, and when we travel we go. realize that this is not true (…) In Spain there are great readers, adorable people engaged in a culture that deserves to be supported. Then, too, because “for me it’s strength” and “you always meet someone who tells you something you hadn’t thought of”. He therefore concludes: “These meetings are small gifts. »

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