Third lap the podcast with Alejandro Gaviría and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast from
the locutorio shoots the locutorio of that self that I go hunting for bookstores of
old found. Probably relatives, no, but old, valuable books with very
beautiful and very personal dedications that one would think of relatives. Whoever wants to
treasure it, but it' s not a bit. The effects that do
not last forever are recorded at some point in the book and that one would
imagine, because those moments of the signature are one or two hours, one
signing and everything happens in thirty seconds. The meeting with each reader is about
five minutes maximum, say, can last a meeting with a reader and then
reappear twenty years later. That book is very particular as if it had been
do do do, do even longer that encounter. Hi, Ricardo Hi,
Alejandro. Good to meet you back here in the lobby booth. Yes,
it' s very rich to come in an intimate place from a keyboard to
one side, a round table, simply clear that we' ve never been
told who uses it or who knows how to play it. I want to
propose a topic to you, but I' m going to start with an
image. It' s a Saturday afternoon, four- and- a-
half in the afternoon there' s a virna and pertinent ovisna falling. People
are looking for water anywhere. There are desperate families looking for lost children.
Everybody' s got bags. Many waited two or three hours to get in
and it' s supposed to be a happy place. Sounds like apocalypse to
you. The fair is very clear the portrait that today. In addition,
you have to add fairs, doll parties, that there is a chuqui,
a granddaddy and Tsuki who is doing very well. There' s another one
that' s the old guy from the APP movie. Well, this became
a mall. In the commercial is the cellars. There are many books of
good books also very good. It' s like everything, because it has
a bookstore. It' s a literary festival. At the same time,
this academic event, because they meet at universities in another sector. It is
a kind of total fair, that plurality where you have sophisticated academic events,
where there are three or four professors series and one hundred discuss your arcane discipline.
Incomprehensible, yes, but one walks in four steps. He' s
in a mall. It is in a mall where they sell toys really and
where they paint caricatures of people who go around, but then at the exit
there are strawberries with chocolate and beyond restaurants. It' s really a total
fair that I think is very particular in the world. The book fairs of
other countries are bookshops, with small festival, or business halls, with display
of what the publishers are doing and let' s say offices to discuss who
is going to buy from which author they are very different. This, on
the other hand, all at the same time, of course, we are
talking about a little centralism, perhaps the ferrida of the book of Bogotá.
At the same time that this is happening, there are many people who,
perhaps like us, who like books, with an existential dilemma of why to
buy another book? There are infinite unread books perhaps from past book fairs,
accumulated still wrapped in plastic. In plastic. Yes, that is a type
of person, the people who go to the Bogotá fair, but also to
the other fairs that are getting bigger in Colombia and more supported and more interesting.
I' m going through this in a tug shop. Yes, yes,
tell us, they are a kind of cultural journey and they are getting
stronger, interesting and always appear attractive and the conversations are good and in all
there are those kinds of people the reader who loves to be there, who
does not care if it rains and if everything is full, who finds pleasure
in listening to the lectures. It' s hard for me to understand that
pleasure, because I, as an audience at half an hour, start thinking
about something else. Usually you do start to think that tomorrow you have to
pay for such a thing or that you have to do the next day,
that permanent anxiety. Permanent anxiety. Instead, there are people who are totally
present there enjoy the display of books, lectures and buy more books with the
tranquility that buying is not the same as reading, but they are making a
better collection. That being said, this is an interesting thing about plurality.
Too many books, as Mexican intellectual Gabriel Sait said, and celebrities are very
different. The world learned about the existence of youtubers at a book fair in
Bogotá six or seven years ago. Yeah, when an almost threatening crowd came
in for a youtuber that was a presentation. There no one had understood that
cultural phenomenon and there it had a clear manifestation of something that was happening at
least out there, already in the back of the world, of culture.
Totally me, on the famous day we discovered the youtubers and the ones we
didn' t know, because a lot of people already knew. Those who
didn' t know what didn' t know what was happening to you.
Yeah, yeah, I wasn' t there, but my wife, Carolina,
who' s an editor, was there and saw how she collapsed all
that. He was a Chilean youtuber, a Chilean youtubt named Germán Garmendia.
Yesterday, on language day, the book fair in Bogotá closed its doors to
visitors. After noon, the reason. Germán Garmendia I am German, a
Chilean youtuber who presented his book Chupa to the dog that he himself was responsible
for promoting on YouTube. People who wanted to participate in the fair could not
enter because the fifty zero ballots that are made available daily to visitors were sold
to see Germán. We arrived at about 3 p m yesterday. We lined
up for half an hour and when we were already arriving, because at the
entrance of Las Sacas, which is already a lojisic opera, he told us
that the fair was already closed, which is called hello. I' m
a German or something like that was the channel that Daniel later stopped in Ola.
I' m Dani, who' s his great San Pedro Pina and
the San But Espina stopped him. But that day the fair collapsed and it
was the first collapse of many, because from that year two thousand sixteen it
began to be common that every time they were influencers or youtubers, from amy
Rodriguez, because to street and poche the whole fair was stopped. One goes
to the book fair today and there are always queues people lying down for three
hours waiting for their favorites to arrive and it is touching and at the same
time, it is another world. It is another world because it is that
digital world that is in principle separated in the world from books, but that
here they come together and the publishers are in use. There was a good
business opportunity to bring in that audience that was over there on the exact Internet,
but so were the books. What do you think of this idea of
the writer as a celebrity beyond the youtubers and so on, because it seems
to me that the idea of the celebrity of the writer is becoming more and
more firm and has several levels. There' s one thing that' s
certain there, and it' s that, before the networks, the writer
was a minor celebrity. He was totally someone who, if they recognized him
in the bookstores, or that is, no one in Karulle was going to
grab Enrique Serrano or Jorge Franco and harass them. There was a small,
small YouTube and an audience as equal respect for readers who recognized it and could
talk to the writer. But from the networks there is a voice in greater
voice and if there is more direct contact with the writer, we have talked
about it other times, but somehow it returns us to earlier times, even
previous centuries, when writers met face to face with readers in the 19th century,
in the streets, readers could claim from the writers that was going on
with their books or ask them to recite the last poem to them. Today
you can do that in the networks. Readers can ask the writer what he
' s up to when he' s going to get something to tell him.
I liked this paragraph. It' s a new era that I think
is healthy on that side and it' s a reminder that writer and reader
are the same. There' s a face to face, which is that
it' s good, but there' s another side, which is the
celebrity side that seems a little ridiculous to me. Yeah, you can make
a little bit of an ananizing about this. It has its farandulesque side but
it is also the way to attract people to books. He' s got
like everything in life, a troubled lake. We could do that and something
like that, the Ricardo book signing, how you feel about it, that
' s an effort. Last year I had published even months before this book
about Stephane Bake, which was a hidden book, a little before two months
earlier. That coincided a little with my departure from government and I made a
presentation. I remember he accompanied me to Carolina Sannin and touched me next to
General Zapateiro. We both got out of two different presentations of the topic,
one side in time I signed on the other were the presentation of the time
and it was the signature next door and I went out and said well,
who' s going to win here. He was the one who ran a
competition. No yes, I find it hard not to think that the general,
before signing, wrote to play, to play victory. While he was
writing to play. I was very close to the two rows. Even those
in line of mine said we' re not recruiting people for this one to
win. Now this and it turned into a show, a little bit,
which is that it' s a little tough, but I have to say
I won no. This is a pride, a pride for all of us
zero is a mistake. It is the modest terrain, not rich could have
been no indication. No doubt I was touched last year by Walterrizo' s
side. I think he won, but by a little bit, by a
little bit. I feel that more than the celebrity thing one does, in
these years it has gained direct contact with its readers in this and readers alike
go there and they will greet it. One is not. There' s
nothing affected or anything false about that encounter. It' s a mini conversation
usually twenty seconds, three seconds. I' m trying to customize the messages.
Many times that' s impossible, but it' s nice. It
' s nice. Many times people come with a gift, with a note.
There are people you see again and you' re turning back. Well,
folks, in the distance, it' s hard sometimes to remember the
names. That' s very hard. There are times when you saw someone
three years or two years ago and you are ashamed not to have that memory
to know all the names. Many times they help you and ask you a
good question, for who is this book there are strategies to not make a
fool of yourself and not make anyone feel like it is not important, because
it is. I remember Jorge Luis Borger once said that he had signed so
many books that his books if in signing, would be valued. It has
always impressed me because, well, already more than twenty years, twenty-
eight years of going to book fairs and signing, because it has impressed me
how it has become more and more successful. That there were times when at
the beginning year two thousand and three that I had to end Marco Mario Mendoza,
sometimes next door or with Germán Castro Caicedo. First already Mario Mendoza and
Castro Caicedo were, because a celebrities r then put one to sign with them
was very funny, because people assumed that one was the son of some or
an assistant of some who does this guy with these two. Castro, who
had signed with Flue Master so it wouldn' t hurt his hand, because
that' s one of the writers who got rows and rows and explained and
tried to comfort one by saying it calmly, that yours is literature, when
I saw one that nobody wanted to sign that industrialization of the firm. It
happened to me. When I go to old- time bookstores, I find
a book signed by me that Grandpa already gave you, I hadn' t
cultured you that it' s okay, that' s okay. It'
s funny, but I' m one of them not signed. I found
myself in someone we mentioned last time,Álvaro Castillo, his librarian bookstore,
had published a book with pieces of column and more or less long essays called
uribenomex and others for two yes. That was over there in the year two
thousand nine, of two thousand ten, already a long time ago, The
time spent inexorable and in the back had a phrase that said I love you
no moro. I don' t know what I miss aboutÁlvaro Castillo and
I didn' t want to buy it. Ju he Estao has been very
sorry. Of course, there are love and lovelessness in life that are woven
into me. They were doing other things, you know.Álvaro el Castillo,
with a lot of sense of friendship, called me a very worried day
because a book of mine came to him, so old twenty- five years
old, I don' t know how much worried because I had a dedication
that I had made to a girlfriend of mine from the University and which means
that she had sold it toÁlvaro Castillo to sell it. And of course
it was a humor, it was a album, it was an iht log
yu with expiration date. Let' s say from the time of college,
but it was amazing that I sold it. It was scandalous. Then he
told me to come and I' m going to give it to you and
you do whatever you want with it, because you with that personal dedication of
college time, because I don' t want to have it. There'
s my signature and the whole dedication was very embarrassing. I think you tell
me the book soon hear anecdotes even from writers. Of that, a writer
who signs to another writer with a paragraph thought the best way and then the
other finds that they are an old bookstore as if it were terrible anything.
I think that' s unrecommendable. If someone signs a book for you,
keep it, so be it in a warehouse, give it away or resell
it. That always goes wrong. I come back to go hunting for old
man' s bookstores found, probably relatives, no, but valuable old books
with very beautiful and very personal dedications that one would think relatives who want to
treasure it, but not sure how rare it is a little. The effects
that do not last forever are recorded at some point in the book and that
one would imagine us, because those moments of the signature are one or two
hobbies, one signing and everything happens in thirty seconds. The meeting with each
reader is about five minutes. Maximum, say, can last a meeting with
a reader and then reappear twenty years later that book. It is very particular
as if it had been even longer that encounter. Those signatures are all so
curious when it' s in a bookstore, when it' s at the
fair, for example. Maybe the most delirious thing that ever touched me was
once I didn' t know why it gave them that in Carrefur it was
going to be a good place to sign that carrer Furt. Then it became
jumbo, I think, but at that moment it was carrefurt when we signed,
like the year of two thousand five and it touched me next to Mario
Mendoza, next to the ranks of the carts of the market, of the
metals, marked out on a table. Of course, many people thought that
we were some information gentlemen, Mario Mendoza, with that vocation that has to
help and serve that is absolutely genuine. He is a truly and very valuable
kind of gifted and here we have always loved him very much in our podcast.
But with that vocation of truth he began to know that there were gondolas
of the market, that is, if he came to ask us for a
time or where the tomato sauce is, he said the gondo the four,
because it was such an absolute situation that he passed from a writer what is
called a uzador booster. Yeah, it all counts exactly and he did it
very quietly. He was a well- known writer in the two thousand five
already but, however, in that market, because no one knew who we
were, neither he nor much less me and we took him with great tranquility,
because because that of the signatures sometimes goes very well, sometimes it goes
very badly. Sometimes I go and there are two scenarios. The scenario that
nobody goes is the scenario that many people go and the two seem a little
scared to me. The humiliation of one sitting there is harsh. Not everyone
tries to tell you an easier one. You don' t do it to
people, and you talk to one about this thing that the world has to
like. The world becomes indifferent, exact, complicated, no yes, but
also a very long tail that one firm firm firm and the tail is infinite.
It' s complicated. Another thing that happened to me, Ricardo.
Usually, in the book fair there are all kinds of auditoriums, but the
most common one is auditorium style cellar Yes, a rectangle, there are chairs,
can be two or three hundred and there are other auditoriums next door.
Yeah, this happening simultaneously. You' re talking, but you hear the
echoes bouncing all over each other, three or four gigs laughing, applause,
and it' s very hard to concentrate, very difficult and you have to
talk and you know if people are paying attention. It has a complicated element,
but well, it' s the fair, this fair. One is
mentally aware that this is the environment, but it is still distressing. I
have had to present some books in those auditoriums that are like spells really as
they are chos, they are transitory, they are mounted there. Meanwhile,
and it has happened to me, for example, in the presentation of one
of Antonio Caballero' s column book compilation columns a long time ago, two
thousand seventeen or something. He talked too much. He spoke little step in
general and didn' t want to talk in general. Even I always wrote
that down with some people between their voice and their vehemence. There was a
distance. No one is the contradiction between form and substance. He was a
very dear guy, after you deciphered him, but he was very shy,
I felt very self- absorbed and with a very weak, very fragile voice.
Nobody understood. You didn' t understand shit, you didn' t
hear anything. There was an echo that made it impossible for me to ask
him the question myself, understand the answer and I don' t know how
we ended that. People were watching, they didn' t understand anything.
It was a disaster from beginning to end that we went out, because everyone
almost resigned. You don' t come out defeated at all because you know
that' s the fair and you can' t ask. It can'
t be a great presentation either. He never gets completely defeated. Ricardo,
because, despite the rain, the tumult of a little this about commercialization,
being there is a human encounter. Yeah, and if they do a survey
on the way out, everyone' s gonna say I was totally happy.
And then comes the nostalgia that even those difficult moments beautify them even more fully.
And we' re protesting about the book fair somehow. But we'
ll be there already, we' ll be moderately happy, that we wanted
to be the best state that can have human being with affection with an appreciation
of readers and with gratitude it' s also a place that you want and
that you accept, as is the description you said at the beginning. It
seems to me that it is very clear that raining all the time, one
goes like between tents so as not to get wet. In April I used
to rain in Bogotán, I used to rain at the fair. Now,
apparently, not so much. Now, apparently, we already have civic days
and everything to rain. But the sky doesn' t know. He has
let go, the sky does not know the sails, the human being exactly.
But in any case, rich thinking of readers, there is like a
triple act that should take us about gratitude, buying the book. Yeah,
that' s lining up and waiting a while. Yes and then read,
even if it' s some page. In a world where attention is becoming
more and more difficult to fully thank. I don' t know if it
' s because, because you' re getting older whatever, or because or
or how you' re looking older in your mouth. Yes it can be
because I' ve been with my children lately and then I' m worried
that they won' t separate me and then I find it very overwhelming and
in the last three years it seems to me that you can' t move.
But yes, you have to recognize you can' t die out there.
But if you have to recognize that people are happy, that they like
to be there, that they enjoy their fair, that the fair makes enormous
efforts. He' s had some great programmers. Over the past 20 years,
it' s been super consistent. No more thinking about Adriana Martínez,
for example, or now Pilar Londoño, who is doing that with so much
affection. I don' t know. There are some people there who work
all year to make that work and it works for them and that brings some
writers that people are fascinated by. The same. Mario Mendoza fills the hall
jos Asunción Silva, which is the largest all the times that they pass there
and that beyond neurosis, or that yes it overwhelms me or whatever. Yeah,
that trainer, but it' s trial, yes, and at the
fair, that' s people and that hopeful, that people like that and
that people are there to fascine and worship their writers. That' s much
better. That' s what everything else is. In the background, when
one leaves the house that day, one Saturday afternoon and arrives there he is
making a kind of pilgrimage. Yes, yes, he wants to find in
books, in the world of culture, in the world of what human beings
have thought and written, something that will be better, not silly, at
least, something he will find. See you at Ricardo' s book fair.
There' s now your strong brother, a hug. It' s
clear we can all write. It is clear that we can all, with
luck and vocation, devote ourselves to the craft of writing. But lately I
think we can' t just write, we should write. Writing is the
best therapy we have at hand. Welcome to fictionary, an audio course on
how and why to write. Take the audiocourse of fictional writing in the locutorio
com slash fictionario with Ricardo Silva Romero. Always choose a good time, always
choose a good conversation. Third round the podcast subscribe now and listen to it
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