The writer and columnist Lorenzo Silva, winner of literary prizes such as the Nadal or Planeta and known above all for his talent in detective novels, today publishes “Afanes sin profitable”, a surprising volume of stories written in recent years. … forty years From start to finish, the journey of a writer is woven, from who he was to who he is, with whom today we talk about sins.
—I forgive you a sin.
-Laziness.
— He didn’t think about it for a second.
-Nothing. I identified with it very much because it’s what I’ve fought against all my life.
— Isn’t that even a guilty pleasure? Is there a fight there?
— Yes, yes, of course. I fight with him all the time, because he would stop me from being who I am.
—As a writer, and I think there are few things more laborious than writing a book, I don’t know how it’s possible to reconcile that with laziness.
— Inventing is very laborious, it’s true, and I’ve done it several times. But it’s also when we start from a true story. It’s very, very laborious work, yes. Right now Robe Iniesta has just left us, I think he said it very well when he said he “will not stop fighting the enemy that lives with me until he makes him give up”.
—The good thing about your cardinal sin being laziness is that by practicing it, you won’t commit the rest of the sins.
-Yes yes. Especially because you have to invest too much energy to engage them. This would overcome laziness. Yet I am not exempt from any of the others. I’m not going to be preachy now either. But clearly, the one that focuses my days is laziness.
“I have very long books, I suffered from logorrhea. But now, being able to write 800 pages, I prefer to stick to around 300.
—And what would be the sin that you identify as capital in your profession?
-Logorrhea.
-Tell me.
— There is a passage from Don Quixote in which Cervantes asks that he be given credit for not having written as much as he could have written. It was not so much because of what he had written but rather because of what, when he could write, he refrained from writing.
— So an important part of your job is sorting. Almost confinement.
— Yes, and more and more. I have very long books, I suffered from logorrhea. But now, being able to write 800 pages, I prefer to stick to around 300. And what I write covers a whole and very eventful life. But I prefer to look for the essential and follow Stendhal a little and go into the details, where the truth is. I’m looking for the details that contain the truth and the rest you can save.
— What is important in a story?
—For me, in a story, it seems to me that the iceberg effect is very valuable. Everything that is there but we don’t see, what the narrator knows but doesn’t come out, what supports the story. I always assume that the reader is always intelligent and, potentially, much smarter than me. And this work that you let him do, he does. And he does it for the sake of the book.
“I always assume that the reader is always intelligent and, potentially, much smarter than me”
— It seems like a game that you pose to someone you don’t know and who, on the other side of the page, takes up the challenge.
— Only, it’s a game in which I am at stake, it’s my life.
— Well, at least the bread.
— And life, and life. I’ve been playing for 45 years. I bet big.
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