With The Journey of Man, his debut novel and winner of the Bibliotheca Brief Award, Benjamin J. Rosado (Avila, 1985) A fantasy world with a story characterized by travel, disappearance, and identity revelation. After years spent in journalism, he decided to pack his bags and write without them … There are no plans or network, allowing the narrative to guide him from the Chilean icebreaker to Montreal. Today, with the book already in bookstores, Rosado reflects on the creative process that brought it out of the drawer four years later, the influence of his craft in constructing the plot, the ghosts that run through his characters, and the realities and fictions of our time. Today his work is on display in the regional library.
“The Journey of Man” is your first novel. What was the creative process like even today when it can already be purchased in bookstores?
-Journalism sucks you out, so I had to pack my bags so I could write. I didn’t have any plans, I simply gave myself time to flip through the pages while traveling across America. The novel begins on board a Chilean Navy icebreaker, and at some point reaches Montreal. When I finished it I didn’t know what to do with it. I put the draft in a drawer, and after four years, I felt it was time to face the judges’ ruling. The novel was submitted for the Library Shortlisted Prize like someone throwing a message in a bottle: hoping that someone will read it, but without much hope.
– Travel, love, life… Why are these pillars in your novel?
Someone said that “The Journey of Man” is a novel about ghosts and disappearances, and I completely agree with him. The book intersects, from beginning to end, two great love stories that have one element in common: the sudden discovery of the identity of the people we think we know best. Hence the constant travel and flight of the hero and the need to start a new life through the game of masks and impersonation.
The protagonist, Diego Marin, also writes and publishes novels. How much of Benjamin is the main character in your novel?
– I want to think that it is nothing or very little, perhaps a somewhat naive way of being in places. The main difference is that he was willing to do anything to see his name on the cover of the book and I delayed that moment as long as possible. It is true that Diego won an award for his first novel, but this parallel was of course beyond my control.
– It deals with the power of imagination to change the plot, even in life. Currently, do you consider that there is an illusion in the truth that political institutions reveal to public opinion?
Politics is an imagination born from the need to tell ourselves. Those of us who work in the media know all too well how much words help negotiate reality. The problem is that, in a very short time, we have moved from democratic consensus to selective stories and alternative versions of what were once facts.
– As a journalist, you point out that there are stories worth telling at any cost, and in other cases silence prevails to save lives. How much press is there in your novel?
Journalism taught me not to lose focus on the topics I want to address, and allowed me to manipulate the reader’s curiosity, which is the true driving force of a novel in which chance imposes its law, sometimes on the verge of the absurd, but without ceasing to be credible. Some figures emerged from a filing cabinet filled with newspaper clippings.
– You certainly have new publishing projects in the near future, and even with the good taste of this shortlisted library award from Seix Barral Publishing, where do you think your literary career will go?
—At the moment, I am writing the second novel and the libretto for a chamber opera as part of the BBVA Foundation’s Leonardo Scholarship Programme. I think if I stopped thinking about where I was going, I wouldn’t know how to take the next step. Everything that is not related to work and quarantine hours is noise and distraction.
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