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Interview
1 April 2018 2.00 h

Màrius Serra

Writter

A darker Sant Jordi

La novel·la de Sant Jordi is the prolific Serra’s latest work, a crime story set around Catalonia’s annual celebration of reading, which the veteran writer says has become a mass cultural event since his first festival in 1988

sant jordi has become a sort of Octoberfest in AprilSant Jordi’s Day is now like a Champions League Final
A crime novel needs rhythm, clues to speculate on, facts and fiction... It has been a great experience to open this doorMy approach is playful. I try to introduce games into the story, with a main character based on my friend Oriol Comas i Coma
Love is in the air, theoretically, because lovers buy books and roses as gifts, but there are more feelings in the air: envy, jealousy, even rageBooksellers just used to be on the Rambla, from PLAÇA CatalUNYA to the sea, but very soon Sant Jordi colonised Rambla Catalunya and PasseiG de Gràcia
La novel·la de Sant Jordi is your first noir book, a par­ody of one of the most pop­u­lar local cel­e­bra­tions, with di­rect ref­er­ences to real life peo­ple from the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try, in­sti­tu­tions, the media... How do you ex­pect them to react or feel after read­ing your book?
I have no ex­pec­ta­tions. I as­sume some peo­ple will dis­like it, but my main aim in writ­ing this novel was to drive a noir ve­hi­cle and in­vite the reader to get in the car and have a nice trip. There is crime and hu­mour. Of course, there are also some sharp con­tra­dic­tions re­lated to the at­ti­tudes of pub­lish­ers, jour­nal­ists and au­thors. Sant Jordi is al­most a hun­dred years old and has grown so much that it is now over­whelm­ing. It is a mass cul­tural ex­pe­ri­ence based on a very mi­nor­ity ac­tiv­ity: read­ing. Sant Jordi’s Day is now like a Cham­pi­ons League Final, with in­ter­na­tional au­thors com­ing from all over. They must think we Cata­lans are great read­ers, but this is just once in a year.
The book is set in the new Cata­lan Re­pub­lic and Màrius Serra is the pro­tag­o­nist: a book within a book. How did you come up with the idea of this novel of a dif­fer­ent Sant Jordi?
My first Sant Jordi as a writer was in 1988, long ago. When I was a com­pletely un­known au­thor, peo­ple used to ask me for other au­thors’ books, be­cause they saw me stand­ing there and thought I was a book­seller. Many times, in the mid­dle of a messy Sant Jordi, I have thought: “I have to write a novel about this, and kill some­one!” When, in 2001, Javier Cer­cas pub­lished “Sol­diers of Salamis”, he started, even with­out re­al­is­ing it, a sort of 'selfie' lit­er­a­ture move­ment. Auto-fic­tion has spread in this cen­tury as a real plague based on a drug called Ego. To make an ef­fec­tive par­ody of this selfie lit­er­a­ture I was obliged to put my­self (and my self) in the novel. Com­mer­cial books and lit­er­ary auto-fic­tion were two of the first ideas for me to start writ­ing La novel·la de Sant Jordi.
For the main char­ac­ter, Màrius Serra, it is his first crime novel...for the real Màrius Serra as well. What were the main chal­lenges you faced when tak­ing on noir lit­er­a­ture ?
I am an om­niv­o­rous reader, but in the last decade I have read many noir books, and quite di­verse ones, by Manuel Vázquez Mon­talbán, An­drea Camil­leri, Pet­ros Márkaris, Hen­ning Mankell, Jo Nesbo, Pierre Lemaitre, Fred Var­gas, An­dreu Martín, Ben­jamin Black, Michael Con­nelly, Fer­ran Tor­rent... I have a hum­ble at­ti­tude to­wards the genre, be­cause I think it has very strict rules. My ap­proach is play­ful. I try to in­tro­duce games into the story, with a main char­ac­ter based on my friend Oriol Comas i Coma, who is in real life a pres­ti­gious ex­pert on games. A crime novel needs rhythm, clues to spec­u­late on, facts and fic­tion... It has been a great ex­pe­ri­ence to open a door like this.
Any sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the Màrius in fic­tion and the real one? Is self-crit­i­cism nec­es­sary to be able to crit­i­cise oth­ers as well?
The fic­tional Màrius is very sim­i­lar to me, but I have de­formed him through par­ody. To write par­ody about all the com­po­nents of the lit­er­ary world I had to start with me. I be­lieve crit­i­cal think­ing is fun­da­men­tal to avoid fa­nati­cism, so self-crit­i­cism is not just strate­gic in this novel.
You use black hu­mour and an ironic tone to talk about one of the most loved Cata­lan cel­e­bra­tions. What is liv­ing Sant Jordi like from the in­side?
Sant Jordi is an ex­cit­ing day. Book­sellers, pub­lish­ers, jour­nal­ists, au­thors and every­body gets in­volved. This is a mas­sive event through­out all Cat­alo­nia with a spe­cial focus in the cen­tre of Barcelona. Mil­lions of peo­ple cel­e­brate it. Hu­mour is a good fil­ter for ap­proach­ing com­plex sit­u­a­tions. Love is in the air, the­o­ret­i­cally, be­cause lovers buy books and roses as gifts, but there are more feel­ings in the air: envy, jeal­ousy, even rage. Fi­nally, thou­sands of peo­ple work hard for weeks to flood the streets with books and roses.
Why did you choose the mys­tery, crime novel genre to talk about Sant Jordi from the in­side?
I thought it would be a good way to show some of the con­tra­dic­tions be­tween art and com­merce, about lit­er­a­ture and books, so to speak. In a sense, I built the novel like I do when I cre­ate a cross­word. The very first sen­tence of the novel talks about a sleep­ing killer, and af­ter­wards I show six male char­ac­ters who could be the real killer: a jour­nal­ist, a pub­lisher, a busi­ness­man re­lated to books, some­one re­lated to the uni­ver­sity, a games cre­ator and a writer called Màrius Serra. It re­sem­bles a log­i­cal enigma, with crimes an­nounced be­fore they occur.
How did you get to Oriol Comas for the main char­ac­ter?
We have been friends since the eight­ies. We both love play­ing games, in my case based on lan­guage, mainly. Ten years ago we started cre­at­ing some board games and in 2015 I made this strange pro­posal: would you mind being a char­ac­ter in a novel? Of course, we es­tab­lished some con­di­tions. He is coau­thor of the novel, but I write every­thing. He reads, we dis­cuss it, and I can ask my own char­ac­ter how he would react to so and so. Writ­ing a novel is an in­tense ex­pe­ri­ence but an iso­lat­ing one, too. It has been great to share such a soli­tary ac­tiv­ity with a good friend.
Is this the first novel in a se­ries with Oriol Comas as the pro­tag­o­nist?
Yes, that’s the aim. We have al­ready started work on a sec­ond one, and my in­ten­tion is to write a cou­ple more.
You also said that this is a novel writ­ten with two hands but two brains, to­gether with Oriol Comas...what about the writ­ing process for this book?
We are both au­thors but there are only two hands on the text. I am uniquely re­spon­si­ble for the writ­ing it­self. He is the main char­ac­ter, and it’s great to have him at hand. He is a char­ac­ter in real life. He is very cre­ative, sin­gu­lar and play­ful, so it’s al­ways fun to meet him. When you cre­ate a fic­tional char­ac­ter you have to think very much about the per­son­al­ity you will give him or her. In this case, it’s easy. I just call him to have a drink and ask.
You said that you have been prepar­ing to write this novel for 30 years. How has Sant Jordi evolved since 1988, the first time you par­tic­i­pated as an au­thor?
It used to be a civic event, re­lated to Cata­lanism and lit­er­a­ture. In fact, it has a com­mer­cial ori­gin. The first Sant Jordi was held in 1926, cre­ated by a pub­lisher called Vi­cente Clavel. In the 1960s and 1970s new pub­lish­ers started to pub­lish more and more books in Cata­lan, so it be­came a day to sort of pro­mote the cul­ture. That’s what Sant Jordi was when I started to read and since then it has grown a great deal. In Barcelona, book­sellers just used to be on the Ram­bla, from plaça Catalunya to the sea, but very soon Sant Jordi colonised Ram­bla Catalunya and Pas­seig de Gràcia, apart from the other places in town and all the other Cata­lan cities. This growth caused Span­ish and in­ter­na­tional au­thors to start com­ing. Nowa­days it’s a sort of lit­er­ary Ok­to­ber­fest in April.
Does Sant Jordi re­ally pro­mote read­ing or is it just an op­por­tu­nity for book­sellers and pub­lish­ers to boost sales?
Read­ing is a very quiet ac­tiv­ity and Sant Jordi is noisy. Of course, if you are sur­rounded by books it’s easy to start read­ing, but a big fair is def­i­nitely about sales. Leonard Cohen sang “First we take Man­hat­tan, then we take Berlin”. Sant Jordi is just Man­hat­tan. Maybe we will read at Berlin.
Do you think Sant Jordi’s Day has grown too much – is it be­com­ing a vic­tim of its own suc­cess?
In my opin­ion, the evo­lu­tion of Sant Jordi’s Day obeys the logic of all com­mer­cial cam­paigns. No­body wants to admit they have sold too much. There is a con­stant de­bate on Sant Jordi, but the fact is that today no­body would be able to cre­ate some­thing like this. I love Sant Jordi. My novel is a de­c­la­ra­tion of love, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to con­cen­trate all ef­forts on a sin­gle day. Every­body in the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try knows that, and they try to ex­tend the vis­i­bil­ity of books to other pe­ri­ods. Sant Jordi is not going to be a vic­tim of its own suc­cess, but lit­er­ary pub­lish­ing could be a vic­tim of Sant Jordi. Drag­ons are lit­er­ary books.
This is the first time you have pub­lished with Am­s­ter­dam, and there is no page 155...
I work book by book. I mean, I have never signed a con­tract for three or more books, as some pub­lish­ing houses offer. I have pub­lished with Pòrtic, Columna, Empúries, Proa... all of them ab­sorbed by Grup 62 and, af­ter­wards, by Grupo Plan­eta. I had the feel­ing that this novel had to be pub­lished in an­other en­vi­ron­ment, and I must say that I am very happy to now be with Am­s­ter­dam. I feel com­fort­able with this hum­ble protest against the ig­no­min­ious ap­pli­ca­tion of 155 by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment.
Eng­lish lan­guage and cul­ture are very im­por­tant for you. Why did you de­cide to study Eng­lish philol­ogy?
I de­cided to get into the Eng­lish lan­guage and cul­ture be­cause of con­tem­po­rary music, mainly. I used to play key­boards in some music groups in my ado­les­cence. All my cul­tural land­marks were in Eng­lish, even as a reader. I was shocked after read­ing Joyce’s Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man and, after a lost year try­ing to study med­i­cine with no vo­ca­tion for it, I rec­ti­fied and stud­ied Eng­lish Philol­ogy at Barcelona Uni­ver­sity.
You are pas­sion­ate about lan­guages and lit­er­a­ture and read­ing, you are a pro­lific writer, you do cross­words, puz­zles, plays on words... how do you find the time and en­ergy for all that?
Be­cause I feel it’s a priv­i­lege to do what you love, even for a liv­ing. Of course, I work hard, but my fuel is pas­sion. Pas­sion for lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture, pas­sion for life. I feel I could be an antonym to Bartleby’s “I’m not in the mood”. I try to al­ways be in the mood. Life can be short: Ars longa, vita bre­vis.
What are your plans and pro­jects for the near fu­ture?
Just to keep on play­ing, read­ing and writ­ing while I live every day with my beloved (which in Eng­lish sounds very bom­bas­tic, but is pre­cise) and friends. From the cre­ative point of view, I would like to write a few more noir nov­els with Oriol Comas i Coma, and hope­fully in 2019 my drama ver­sion of my book “Quiet”, ti­tled “Qui ets”, will be on stage.
What are your favourite books and writ­ers (dic­tio­nar­ies in­cluded)!
I al­ways find it dif­fi­cult to es­tab­lish a list, be­cause it de­pends on time. I am very promis­cu­ous with au­thors. Today I would say Joyce, Cortázar, Rodor­eda, Perec, Sterne, Zweig, but to­mor­row I could say other names. My favourite dic­tio­nary is Joan Coromi­nas’ Dic­cionari eti­mològic i com­ple­men­tari de la llen­gua cata­lana. It’s the great­est novel ever writ­ten in Cata­lan, and every sin­gle word of our lan­guage is a char­ac­ter.
How do you feel new tech­nol­ogy is in­flu­enc­ing writ­ing and lit­er­a­ture in gen­eral?
I have never thought new tech­nol­ogy would be an enemy, but it is true that so­cial net­works re­duce read­ing habits. From the cre­ative point of view, the dig­i­tal era has changed the world, so it has a deep in­flu­ence. I still think that the In­ter­net is a place where mi­nori­ties can meet and play new roles. When I was an ado­les­cent we made fanzines and tried to spread them around our neigh­bour­hood. Today it’s pos­si­ble to de­liver them all over, even gen­er­at­ing nodal com­mu­ni­ties, with a dif­fer­ent sense of hi­er­ar­chy. But there is too much noise, too much in­tox­i­cat­ing news, too much pol­lu­tion.

in­ter­view

in­ter­view màrius serra

La novel·la de Sant Jordi

Author: Màrius Serra

Publisher: Amsterdam

Pages: 350

Synopsis: Serra’s first foray into crime fiction sees a number of authors mysteriously left dead.

A prolific writer

Author, translator, puzzle writer, crossword maker, avid reader, Màrius Serra is also a great anglophile: he studied English Philology and is also a member of the Philology Section at the Institute of Catalan Studies. He has received various literary awards, including the Ciutat de Barcelona, Serra d’Or, Lletra d’Or, Ramon Llull and Sant Jordi prizes, for works such as Mon oncle, De com s’escriu una novel·la, Farsa and Quiet. He is also the author of the games Jocs Reunits Verbàlia, Joc de l’Enigmàrius and the portable D.O. Verbàlia games.

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