Río Negro, August 7, 2005

“Muses whisper me incomprehensible words. They must be Finnish”

By Claudio Andrade

- Why to envy a writer like Federico Andahazi?

- I don’t believe that I have a merit to be envied. As a matter of fact, It bothers me those people who think to be someone else’s envy.

- Will you write an e-book someday?

- It is impossible to write an e-book. You should not confuse format with content. All classic Literature is digitalized. Books written with pen are also electronic today. I write novels, the format is a question that matter to the publishers.

- Have you read Harry Potter?

- If I’m correct, that’s a book for children. I have to say that I am a bit old for that kind of literature.

- If you wouldn’t have been a writer…

- Well, before being a writer I was a psychoanalyst.

- Is the woman the great literary mystery?

- Yes, of course.

- Can the author of The merciful women tell me how he write hate?

- The same way I would write love. There is a literary genre called “love novel” because of a convention but it could be called “hate novel”. 

- Can the author of The anatomist tell me how he writes love?

- (That question is answered in the previous one)

- Was William Shakespeare real or was he a group of writers, as it’s said?

- He existed and he was, in addition, a great actor.

- Could you find a definition for the word “classic"?

Classic is someone who overcomes time, someone who is all the time getting ahead history.

- It is true, as they say at television that everything goes better with Coca-Cola?

- Yes, especially if you have to loosen an oxidized bolt.

- We are at a jingle and advertisement era. For you, is there any art in a slogan?

- Absolutely not.

- What suggests to you a model?

- I do not have the privilege of being suggested by a model. Till now, no model has proposed anything to me.

- Have you ever get drunk for love?

- No.

- Have you a heart related with Borges or with tango?

- Those are not excluding categories, on the contrary. But I would say that I have a celedoniofloriano heart.

- What do your Finnish fans tell you?

- Incomprehensible things.

- And the Russians?

- A little less incomprehensible things, because I have some Russian ancestor.

- Why sex still generates such a controversy?

- That ´s the essence of human sexuality. Imagine if our sexuality was as foreseeable as the turtle’s one.

- Do you take notes when you are on an airplane?

- After The anatomist, I have written most of my latest books on different airplanes.

- After all, do you prefer to travel or the solitude of your house?

- I think that we travel to be able to return.

- In which kind of place do you spend some time?

- I am from The Pampa and I like the flat geography, expanded and without frights as it is in Buenos Aires. Mountain gives us back the echo of our own thoughts; however, the horizon allows us to escape from those ghosts.

- Do you see any novel at television?

- No.

- What it´s a coffee chat?

- Half of my life.

- What did you learn among the tables of the bars?

- Half than I know.

- Can a writer be trained?

- No.

- What books are you reading?

- “San Agustín Confessions”, thinking on the novel I’m trying to finish by these days.

- Do you read you own novels?

- Never.

- Do your characters speak to you in dreams?

- No. Sometimes I dream arguments and I wake up thinking for certain that I have conceived a genius idea; after having the first “mate” I understand that idea was in fact silliness.

- What has to do a good writer with a magician?

- A lot. Writer job is to lie but without deceiving. Thaws magic too.

- How would you, a writer, define to a bad writer? 

- A bad writer is that one who don’t recognize literary influences/parents. The pretentious one, the one that believe that he is himself, the owner of some revelation, the one who believe he is better than the other mortals.

- What is or how would you explain a best seller?

- It´s a book that, by difficult to define circumstances, is sold more than the tolerable for a literary critic.

- Would you write a rock star history?

- Several have been written already.

- Federico Andahazi is closer to the Rolling Stones or to the Vienna Quartet of Cords?
- Well, I believe that even the members of the Vienna Quartet of cords would prefer the Stones to themselves.

- Would you mind recommending me a good red wine?

- A Tempranillo is a real good wine.

- And a good film?

- Apocalypse now.

- A good book…

- “I’m not Stiller”, by Max Frisch.

- Does friendship between men and women exist?

- Of course.

- Do the ghosts as the ones Alexander Amenábar portrayed in “The Others”, exist?

- Yes, of course.

- Have you the habit of reading the newspapers by internet?

- Yes, I spend all morning long reading them, online.

- What does the muses whisper you? 

- Incomprehensible things. They must be Finnish.

- If a woman gives you her telephone number… what does it mean?

 - That she is very confused.

- Chaos and luck of living are the same thing?

- The chaos nor the cosmos exist: they are categories created by the people who have the luck of living, if to live could be luck.  

- Tell me, if you want, at least three ideas for your three future books.

- A book is not done by ideas; the idea is a synthesis we can make when the book is ready. Imagine this idea: a guy that becomes crazy and leaves his town to fight against those ghosts created by his own madness. It would sound a bit stupid; nevertheless, that’s the idea of the Quixote.

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