A turbulent flow of cars, thousands of cars, countless cars tangled together, tries to escape Madrid on a Friday afternoon when it rains hard and people leave their jobs. That hunk of metal sticks around malls, cranes, residential areas, open fields, or that famous nightclub where the taxi driver claims he once saw the football player Gotti. This is the city, this tangle of people, desires and minerals, this chaos organized enough to be called civilization.
The discourse is relevant because Martin Caparros (Buenos Aires, 68 years old), writer and journalist, publishes a book about the city of Buenos Aires – his city – and about cities in general. It’s titled amazing (Random House) is a strange artifact that mixes phrases stuck in the wind with the lives of some people Citizens (no Citizens), reflections on this enormous chaos that we call the city and a plot about a house in which the rise and fall of an Argentine family of Italian origin takes place during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. “A soft-spoken symphony of people, sounds, situations and stories that can give a sense of the wonderful chaos of a city,” according to the author.
After an hour and a half of hitting the road, you reach Torrelodones, which is not known whether it is countryside or town, but where you can see green if it is not already dark. There, in his wheelchair and behind his distinctive moustache, Caparros receives guests into his garden and the darkness of his computer. He is accompanied by his tiger-skinned cat, Tita. On the shelf is a framed title, too Customizedrecognizes him as “the illustrious citizen of Buenos Aires.” In other words, he knows what he’s talking about.
“I, who have traveled a lot, always thought the really difficult thing was to count the blocks in my house, because that’s where you have to learn to look at everyday life,” he says in a serious, sweet Argentine voice. “Now there are 5,000 blocks in my city.” The city and its opportunities, those that interest the author so much, and which, in his opinion, have made human beings build all sorts of religions, superstitions and cosmic orders, to feel that things do not happen by themselves, although they often do. “Opportunity lurks,” he repeats Leitmotif From the book.
Much of Caparros’s work consists of ambitious, comprehensive books that attempt to explain almost the entire world: the world then Trying to figure out the present from the future, in The story It tells the story of an invented civilization, in all of Latin America Americaglobal hunger in Hunger…And now the city, the whole city too. “I find it difficult to leave things out… Maybe it’s anxiety,” he says. “I envy people who can focus on, I don’t know, a cockroach, but I didn’t have that.”
Caparros lived in many cities, but one day he decided he wanted to live somewhere more rural. It was when he was coming from Zambia, stopped in Johannesburg, and stayed at a Greek couple’s house in the suburbs. He wanted something like this and found it in Torrelodones, where he has been staying for about eight years. “The city is a very crowded place: we live with people above our heads and under our feet, we look out the window and there are more people, it’s a bit annoying if you think about it, although we are used to it,” notes the writer.
Moreover, cities became something else. “Cities, iconic cities that people want to live in, are turning into places that look a lot like Rome or Barcelona. That means people can’t live in those cities,” he says.
And in one of his novels. EndlessCaparros invented virtual reality technology with which it is possible to travel without leaving the bathroom: perhaps this is the solution to the problem of mass tourism that is destroying cities, at least living cities, as Caparros tells Buenos Aires: “Now people travel to see something completely different and find something worse than the supermarket next door.”
Lately, Caparros has been speaking often, and with great courage, about his illness, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which makes him lose control of his body, and of that vital euphoria (just as another writer, Juan José Melas, was speaking of the journey of old age and near-death). “I don’t feel tired if I can help others affected by this extremely rare disease about which nothing can be done. In recent weeks, I had to talk about the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis law, which is not enforced. But I also like to talk about all the things I have done in my life: having ALS is not my greatest advantage,” he joked.
Sometimes the future seems like a strange thing: “It’s strange to think that in a few years, with luck, I won’t exist anymore, I won’t exist.” It is rare for someone to have this much passion for what is happening in the world. “I know at least one thing about the future: the next day there will be an obituary,” he jokes.
Cruel man
Javier Miley, an anarcho-capitalist and rocker, has once again won the Argentine legislative elections. Explanations? The journalist says: “He is a cruel man. I have no explanations. I think that Argentina, which considers itself a country of solidarity, is not the country we think it is.” “Those who ruled before were disastrous, and something different was needed. The question is why, unfortunately, Miley was the new one.” To his credit, Caparrós has the digital and interactive narrative behind him Life of GMis loosely based on Javier Maile’s childhood.
The crisis of democracy, in the author’s opinion, is due to the fact that several generations have witnessed how this system has failed to meet their legitimate expectations. The solution: for politicians to stop insulting each other and getting into judicial mazes, as Caparros describes Spanish politics, and to talk to the people. “Zahran Mamdani has spoken to workers, to marginalized people, to women, to immigrants, to young people. Why does he miss that they voted for him for mayor of New York? Sometimes old political habits are useful. Trust must be restored.”
We said that amazing It is a rare artifact, hybrid, poetic and fragmented. It’s not just about what matters, but how you tell it; Not just what he expresses, but what he tries to feel. “We have come to believe that literature is limited to telling a story,” he explains. It is believed that after the avant-garde attempts in the twentieth century, writing returned to what it was years ago. He says: “Other arts have moved on: music is no longer like Liszt or Chopin, and no one paints like Delacroix. But we continue to write as Balzac, Hugo or Baudelaire wrote, we are anchored in what was 200 years ago.”
Caparros argues that literature must go beyond plot and seek new formal paths, an idea that contradicts the debate over the recent Planeta Awards (the Argentine won the Latin American version in 2004) and the defense of Juan del Val, the last winner (one million euros), of the literature of the people against the literature of the elites. “It seems to me that it would be very nice for him to win an award for making churro using paper, but we are not talking about literature,” he says.
Caparrós is a prolific writer. He has about 50 books to his credit (not counting his daily journalistic activity) and an impressive collection of awards, honors and doctoral degrees. A proud reasonAlthough what gives him more pleasure than just confession is “finishing the sentence well.” Recently launched The real life of Jose Hernandez (Random House) with his friend the painter, which becomes the story of the author of the Argentine national poem, Martin Fierronarrated in verse by Martin Fierro himself. Another strange thing.
He does not stop: he is an essay (also strange) about this era, which he wants to call the Western era, in which everyone is dominated by a small part of the world, from political ideas to music or clothes, and in which people are killed, in its dark opposite, as never before in history. “Even if the Eastern era comes, it will be led by the Chinese Communist Party, which is based on the idea of communism created in the West,” Caparros says. He has “five or six” unpublished books that he wants to publish. He concludes, “I don’t feel particularly productive. Right now my health doesn’t allow me to do many things like tour or travel a lot, but there are few things I love more than writing, and I’m lucky that I can continue to do that.” Outside, in the distance, the city lurks, full of coincidence.
About The Author
