The novel is composed of three sections, each written in a distinct narrative voice and style.

In Part One, we are introduced to Wybrany College, an isolated boarding school cut off from an increasingly chaotic, violent world in decay. Short, fragmented sections alternate between the first person narration of Celia, a fifteen year old “Special,” or scholarship student, and a third person omniscient voice who frequently narrates from the perspective of Ignacio, a younger boy of twelve.

Part Two takes the form of 56 diary entries written by Isidro Bedregare, a newly-arrived substitute teacher who is taking the place of the absent profesor GarcĂ­a Medrano.

The epilogue, entitled “Heroes and Mercenaries: The Papers of García Medrano,” is composed, in effect, of García Medrano’s personal papers, which have come into the hands of the substitute Bedregare. Comprised of short sections—usually just several paragraphs long—depicting life in the “City,” García Medrano’s papers also reveal answers to the mysteries suggested in the elliptical first two parts of the novel.

In the original Spanish, the prose is marked by suggestion, insinuation, and a sense of unease, as well as allusions to some kind of event or shift in the outside world, a world like our own but existing in its own literary reality. The epilogue, in particular, feels allegorical or fable-like.

Mesa is engaged in literary world-building, too, as I should note that the city of Cárdenas appears in almost all the rest of Mesa’s work, including several of the stories in the collection Mala letra. And her first novel, An Invisible Fire, relates the last days of the city of Vado, which has become uninhabited and is referenced in the present novel.

Part One

Never More Than Two Hundred

CELIA

The contour of the landscape bends, yellows, and descends before dissolving in the distance. We are there, at the end, paused and panting under the motionless sky. It’s February and still cold. The air cuts off our breath, attacks Teeny’s lungs. She’s been sick for weeks.

We’ve never made it this far. Our sneakers are soaked from walking in the muddy grass, avoiding the roads.

We wait for Teeny to catch up and then convene a meeting.

“Should we eat breakfast now?” Valen asks.

Her chubby cheeks tremble. Valen is always hungry. The rest of us protest. It’s not time to eat. We’ve only stopped to decide where to continue on from here, from now. There is no time to waste; we’ll eat later, while we walk. Or we won’t eat at all.

We have two options: climb the hill until we reach the highway or follow the slope down and try to find the river. River is probably an exaggeration. Memory summons a groove, painted brown: a creek, at best. And memory doesn’t reveal its exact location, either. No one has been by here in years.

“I say we head for the highway. Then we can hitchhike wherever someone will take us.” Marina talks bravely but is chicken when it’s time for action. We’re not convinced.

I speak up. “Hitchhike? Are you crazy? They would bring us right back.”

“The river is safer,” Cristi says.

“But we don’t know where it is!” says Marina.

Cristi shrugs. Valen tries again, reaching for her backpack. “We could eat while we decide.”

“What do you think, Teeny?” I ask.

She looks up. Squints. The lenses of her glasses are fogged over. She coughs again. She coughs and blinks endlessly. Her nose runs. She’s full of fluid, Teeny is. I don’t even wait for her to respond. I speak for her: “Teeny doesn’t care what we do as long as we do it quick. Sitting around in this cold is going to kill her.”

“I think she should eat something,” Valen says.

“Shut up, you greasy fat ass,” Cristi says.

They fight. First, with insults. Then they throw themselves on the wet ground and roll around, theatrically, half-heartedly. Marina goads them. It’s not clear whose side she’s on. Teeny and I wait. She thinks about nothing and I try to think of everything.

It doesn’t matter. I see them coming in the 4×4, up the narrow, dusty path. They’re coming toward us and there we are, stopped, as stopped as time. A stirring of pride: thinking about being told off by the Booty or punished by the Head makes me feel better.

A quail chirps in the distance. Valen and Cristi get up, brush off their clothes, and look me in the eye. Neither one speaks, but I know they blame me.

IGNACIO

Wybrany College, seven in the evening. Ten or twelve boys in gym clothes hang around to see what’s happening. Silence has formed in the courtyard at the school’s entrance. Night is falling and HĂ©ctor walks escorted by his parents, the Head, and the Advisor. He walks by the boys. As he passes, he lifts his eyes and looks at Ignacio. At him, just him. The look is unmistakable, direct.

Ignacio shivers. The crunch of steps on the gravel lingers in his ears. He observes him from behind, the head of full, blonde hair, the smooth nape of his neck.

Only when he’s shaken roughly does he realize that they’ve been grumbling in his ear the whole time, and he hasn’t heard a thing.

“I’m talking to you, man, can’t you hear me?

Ignacio nods, craning his neck slightly toward the door through which the New Kid has disappeared.

The mother—or the woman he assumes is the mother—is outside, closing her umbrella. She has slender calves and iridescent stockings dotted with droplets of drizzle. Lux watches her, too, his head cocked and back arched, ready to flee at the slightest movement.

It’s November 1^st. Ignacio’s birthday: twelve years old and finally the prospect of a friend to protect him.

“I said, what do you think of him?” the other boy insists.

“What do I know? I just saw him, is all.”

“But he looks queer, right?”

“Yeah, queer.”

Ignacio senses that the light is different, more yellow, or hazy. He can’t watch and listen at the same time, but they keep at him and their insistence has the echo of a command.

“Why queer?” the other boy presses.

“What do you mean, why? You said it.”

“Yeah, but why? Why did you say it, too? What do you know about that?”

A sad smile dawns on Ignacio’s face. Trapped again, he thinks, but what does it matter now that he will finally have a friend to protect him. The New Kid is tall, he’s strong, and out of all the faces on display there in the courtyard, he chose to look at him.

The girls’ laughter comes from the other side of the wall, a restless laughter, musical. He yearns for girls, but only as classmates.

“Because he laughs like a girl.”

“And you’ve heard him laugh, have you?”

“Before, when he arrived.”

“Before, where?”

He frees himself from the arm that grabs him.

“Before. Let me go, I have to go to class.”

“Class? What class? Classes are over.”

“Let me go,” he begs.

“Sissy, fag, fucking cripple,” the other boy says, releasing him.

Ignacio hobbles away, in his big shoe with the lift. Laughter screeches at his back.

Real or imagined, Ignacio hears it all the time.

HECTOR’S ORIGINS

But the New Kid’s origins go back to before, weeks before, days before; not that time matters much in this place, where the days so resemble one another. They accumulate, pile up, build on each other, creating an impression of continuity, of movement, or evolution of something.

It’s important to note, perhaps, that HĂ©ctor isn’t present on this occasion. Just the mother, or the woman that looks like the mother, and the father—him, for sure—in the Head’s office. They are joined by the assistant head of school, AKA the Booty.

The office doesn’t look like an office. It’s like a magnificent living room, with its crystal chandeliers and perfectly-worn Persian rugs—so vulgar, if too new—and gleaming floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass spotless, free of flies.

Seated in leather armchairs around a low table, they speak for a long time with the particular stiffness to which they are accustomed.

The Booty—who was, in another time, very beautiful—discreetly keeps her distance. Only when necessary does she add an opportune fact, blinking before she speaks. In general, such facts relate to fees, services, and requirements, the details of which the Head is ignorant, given that he delegates this minutia to her.

The tone of the conversation is sickly-sweet, good taste gone off a bit.

The office smells of cologne. Which cologne? Impossible to say. A mix of various scents: those worn by the people now present, and by all those who are absent, too. Those who sat where they are now, finalizing the details of their progeny’s matriculation.

The scent of the select, one could say, if it weren’t an oversimplification, because that’s not exactly how it is. Though one couldn’t claim the opposite, either.

“You realize we’re making an exception . . .”

“We know, we know,” HĂ©ctor’s father says.

He moves his hands, accentuating his words, like he did when he was a government minister. A rhetorical underscore, unnecessary.

“It will be more expensive—due to the exception, as you can imagine—still, you do insist?”

“Yes, we insist, we insist. It’s absolutely necessary.”

“Although it won’t be easy for us, getting rid of the boy,” the woman adds.

“Getting rid of isn’t the right expression,” he says. His eyes flash. He looks at his wife and she goes quiet.

The Booty smiles at them both. They shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, she says. Language betrays us all. Parents undeniably feel a sense of relief when they enroll their children at the college; it happens to everyone. Bringing up a child is a complicated act of responsibility that demands extreme dedication. There’s nothing wrong with leaving a piece of it in the hands of experts.

“HĂ©ctor is a brilliant boy,” the woman continues, speaking cautiously now. “Very intelligent, headstrong, a bit mischievous, maybe. He always finds a way to make his uniform a little bit different: a patch, a hole, a button pinned somewhere. As you know, he needs to do things his way.”

“Ah, but that’s good,” the Head says. “That’s very good. It speaks of character, strength of character, manliness. We don’t go overboard on rules here. Strict on the fundamentals, flexible on incidentals. Our educational methods are liberal, they’re based in absolute freedom. Will you have some . . .” He stares at Lux, who has just slipped through the bars on the window, “. . . coffee?”

They drink from little porcelain cups, served with biscuits that they barely nibble. Then they settle everything else: the registration, monthly payments, additional installments. The visitors express their surprise that rooms are shared, but nod sensibly at the explanation.

“Boys on their own, at this age, are hard to control,” says the Booty. “This way they keep an eye on each other. Spending their free time alone is not to their benefit.”

“Obviously some boarding schools make private rooms a mainstay of their appeal,” the Head continues, “precisely because they have nothing else to offer. Special menus, all the latest technology, professional sports facilities, blah, blah, blah . . . They’re only focused on the functional aspects of the issue. We guarantee a sufficient level of material comfort. Not excellent, perhaps, but sufficient. But we also guarantee an extraordinarily high-quality education, which goes far beyond academics. We do not impose discipline: the children impose it on themselves. Rigorous, not rigid. Firm, not harsh. Personalities are sculpted, polished until they shine. The country’s best have passed through here. We know how to shape the best.”

He carefully cleans his beard with a napkin and waits for a reaction. The couple smiles. They are notably, visibly relaxed.

An agreement has been reached.

As I mentioned in that same post, over the course of this month, I’m going to look at books from Spanish authors in all four commonly spoken languages: Spanish (Castilian), Catalan, Galician, and Basque. Already have two more interviews in the works and some other surprises, but as a bridge between the interview with Katie Whittemore and the publication of her excerpt from Sara Mesa’sÌęFour by FourÌę(coming Thursday!), I wanted to zero in on the most popular Spanish language—Spanish!

Going back five years (to when Hispabooks arrived on the scene), here are the publishers who have translated the most works of Castilian fiction.

This is . . . weird. Nevsky Books? Four commercial presses? And a press leading the way that, according to all rumors and online evidence, seems to have shut down permanently. (I haven’t reached out to Hispabooks for comment, and as such, they haven’t had opportunity to reply, so if I’m totally wrong about this, I apologize. But I’m keeping my joke from the year-end post no matter what the truth is! And besides, the fact that their last tweet was August 8,Ìę2017 is not encouraging.)

Not to overstate the potential impact of this, but Hispabooks accounted for 22.9% of all Spanish-language books from Spain published in translation over the past five years. That’s a remarkable resource to just suddenly lose . . .

I know 2019 is Chad’s Year of Living Optimistically (or, as Brian likes to call it, “Being Sweet Chad Instead of Salty Chad”), but the fact Hispabooks struggled isn’t necessarily that surprising. They were based in Madrid, trying to sell their books into the U.S. market without a strong marketing presence here. And although they got a solid amount of love from the usual bookselling/reviewing suspects—the Mark Habers and Veronica Espositos—and worked with truly top-notch translators—Lisa Dillman, Sophie Hughes, Peter Bush, Nick Caistor, Margaret Jull Costa, on and on and on—I’m curious as to how many of their titlesÌęyou heard of.

I could be wrong, but I suspectÌę±ÊČč°ùŸ±ČőÌęby Marcos Giralt Torrente, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, is the book that got the most play here in the States. Torrente was also published by McSweeney’s the year beforeÌę±ÊČč°ùŸ±ČőÌęcame out, and in a translation by Katie Silver, which likely made a difference.

By contrast, most all of you own one of the Javier MarĂ­as books that Knopf did. And some of ND’s Enrique Vila-Matas titles.

New year, same refrain: It’s hard to get attention and sales for a book if you don’t have a number of things working for the titleÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęthe press. One of the things that will forever bug me re being on panels with commercial presses is their almost flippant way of declaring how easy it is to sell translations. I’m sure it is . . . for them. But if we want to talk about promoting international literature in an honest way, we have to acknowledge the privilege that commercial presses don’t even notice that they benefit from. (I won’t draw that parallel any more, since I don’tÌę°ù±đČč±ô±ôČâÌęwant to conflate it with far more important social issues, but the way these advantages are obfuscated or ignored by the Big Five isn’t dissimilar from the way certain groups don’t acknowledge the advantages they have because of society’s shitty history and shittier power structures. #EndPoliticalRant)

The main point is that it’s 100% impossible to believe that the cream naturally rises to the top when it comes to literature. Doing the best booksÌęŸ±ČőČÔ’łÙÌęenough. Which brings me to the two books that I want to write about this week:Ì곧łŠČč°ùÌęby Sara Mesa ČčČÔ»ćÌęOut in the OpenÌęby JesĂșs Carrasco.

Ìęby Sara Mesa, translated from the Spanish by Adriana Nodal-Tarafa (Dalkey Archive Press)Ìę

This was—hands down, no qualifiers necessary—one of the three best books I read in 2018. It came out back in 2017 and had been pitched to us a couple years before that (ČčČÔ»ćÌętwo yearsÌęafter we were pitched Four by Four, and this is a moment to reiterate that publishing is haphazard and serendipitous and inefficient and based in personal encounters), but had totally slipped by my radar until Katie Whittemore recommended Mesa’s work at Bread Loaf.

This is also—guaranteed, no doubts in my mind—a book that will become a cult favorite among the international fiction set. Possibly because this post will spark the right six people to read it and recommend it to every customer ever (not actually very likely), or because Dalkey will figure out how well this book speaks to the current #MeToo moment and have the right person in place to get that message out there (also fairly unlikely?), or becauseÌęFour by FourÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęCara de panÌęwill take off and people will seek out her backlist (most likely option, I think).

To back up option one a bit: Rodrigo FresĂĄn is a fan of hers and emailed me congratulations the day after we signed her on. That carries a lot of weight for some of us.

Here’s a quick summary of the book: A young woman working a dead-end job gets involved with an online literary community. Following a rather depressing in-person meet-up that she goes to, she starts getting a lot of personal messages from Knut (named after the fascistly famous Nobel-Prize winner, Knut Hamsun), a guy about her same age who excels at shoplifting. He starts sending Sonia books, a sort of one-on-one crash course in the classics. Then he starts encouraging her to write her own stories. That’s followed by more intimate gifts—from perfume to bras to shoes to a hideous, expensive jacket.

Although Knut never asks for anything sexual in return for his gifts (just the cost of posting them), the power dynamic evident in their relationship is wicked fucked up. Privy only to Sonia’s perspective, we get to see her struggling with all of this—trying to break things off at times, enjoying it fully at others, hiding the gifts from her husband, struggling with what it all means and what to really do.

The way in which Mesa lets Sonia be a participant, complicit in this increasingly toxic relationship adds so much depth to the book as a whole, something that’s definitely reflected in the melancholic ending . . .

One thing that I particularly loved though—beyond the increasing tension of their interactions and the attraction toward and repulsion of the two of them becoming a couple, which, now that I’m typing it, is maybe another level of complicitness in this novel, a level in which the reader, working with all the typical “will they, won’t they” schemas, struggles to know how they want the book to resolve itself—was the way the book invokes a number of time loops. Chapter “Zero” is basically the climax, with chapter “One” taking place “Seven Years Before.” Almost every chapter contains a header placing it in a timeline: “Four Months Later,” “One Year Before,” “Three Months Before,” “Three Years Before.” By giving us glimpses into the future—such as when Knut calls Sonia when she’s in bed with her husband, causing her to flip out on him—the book creates a unique sort of narrative momentum. Most of the jumps forward in time have a sort of bleakness to them, a feeling of regret, a sense of dismissing the import of this relationship, etc. And then when we go back, we can’t immediately see how things progress from A to B. It’s a rather masterful way of building suspense and interest. This is far more of a page-turner than you might expect.

*

So why did this book sell (this is an estimate, and I will try and get the BookScan numbers), approximately 1/20th of the number of copies ofÌęOut in the Open by JesĂșs Carrasco, a totallyÌęfineÌębook, but not nearly as powerful or approachable or emotionally charged or fascinating as Mesa’s? Why don’t the best books float to the top?

*

Initially, I was going to name this post “Why Are Offseason.” I had the idea—which I haven’t given up on—of titling every one of these weekly posts “Why Are XXXX” and using whatever crazy shit is on my mind that week as the comic relief most of these posts need.

A.K.A., I can’t stay serious for a whole post. I spend like three hours when I should be in bed having a few beers while writing these, and if I don’t have at leastÌęsomethingÌęto make the posts weird, funny, or uniquely framed, then I get really bored. If it isn’t baseball, my attention span is garbage.

So, offseasons. They suck! The second the World Series ended, all I wanted was for spring training to begin so that I could believe in my team again, and see how everyone progresses, while downloading new Fangraphs leader boards on the daily and trying to figure out what team strategies are being successfully employed.

And the second the longlists for the 2018 National Book Awards for Translation were announced I couldn’t wait for the 2019 ones to be available. This is similar to how I play sports games on the PS4: As soon as I realize my team lost, I want to fast-forward to the year in which I can experience success. If you don’t have a book on the longlist, or a team in the World Series, then just hit “Simulate the Offseason” and get this shit going again.

Yes, I know my anxiety about age and time should make me want every offseason to go super-slow—how many do I actually have left? twenty? twenty-five?Ìęnever enough—but I also desperately want that rush of the magic, special, victory-laden season. Sports are dumb, but they’re helpful in giving you something out of your control that you can emote with. The St. Louis Cardinals will never listen to my ideas about pitcher deployment (keep Reyes and Wainwright and C-Mart in the bullpen, and unleash them with Andrew Miller—the pitcher my 2016 Twitter bio is secretly referencing and who is now a Cardinal #swoon—and Hicks to shorten games and strike out everyone. Also, don’t sign Bryce Harper. He’s a 4 WAR player max and will be an albatross come year six of his dumb contract.), but when they win, I personally feel like the day is a little bit brighter.

Right now, I’m just in a holding pattern . . . I know we all need an offseason to process and develop and produce, but it would be so much better if it were suddenly March 27th, AWP was in full swing, and the Cards were facing off against the Brewers.

Ìęby JesĂșs Carrasco, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Riverhead)

Quick summary: A young boy has run away from home, probably because the bailiff in his struggling town—this is set in a near-future unnamed Spain that’s crippled by drought, with all farmland becoming an abandoned, dangerous place—has been sexually abusing him and other boys. The future is violent and hard to endure. He meets an old goatherd who helps him evade those who are chasing the boy. The goatherd dies, but not before killing the bailiff and all his minions.

It’s a bleak book, written in a style that’s both sparse and sometimes overly formal. It’s like MarĂ­as doingÌęThe Road.Ìę(There’s a log line for you.) But in the end . . . the tension is artificial, there’s not enough about the social-climate collapse to make the world-building work, and it’s 195% predictable. (What percentage is the number that’s finallyÌętoo far? 250%? 400%?)

It’s a second-rate version of MercĂš Rodoreda’sÌęWar, So Much War.ÌęThe biggest difference is that Rodoreda’s novel is in the first person “I lost my way and didn’t know which direction to take, until a carriage road jumped out in front of me, so to speak, and I followed it” and involves a mysterious war; Carrasco employs a mysterious collapse of all rural spaces and the third-person “He was heading north in the middle of the night, trying to avoid any existing paths.” One is emotional, one is stylized in a way that creates a sterile distance from the characters.

One is a masterpiece; one is a contemporary book that’s entertaining, and may or may not be remembered in fifteen years.

*

Instead of comparing Carrasco to a LEGEND, let’s compare him + MJC to Mesa + Nodal-Tarafa:

Sonia interprets his reaction as jealousy. She understands it but feels attacked. So, she attacks in return. She resents lessons on independence from someone who lives with his parents, who doesn’t work, who doesn’t do anything. She resents him accusing her of being opportunistic because what she feels for VerdĂș is authentic. She resents that he trivializes the antiwar protests when hundreds of innocent people are dying. Or is he in favor of war? Does he not care about the killing of children? The images of their small bodies, completely ravaged, appear in the news every day. How can he be insensitive to that?

Knut’s perfectly organized, point-by-point response follows.

And then, Carrasco:

“Be very wary of the people in the village.” Each time the donkey stumbled, the boy would wake, pondering the old man’s words with a mixture of disquiet and satisfaction. He didn’t know if the goatherd had said this because his own life depended on him returning with the water or simply out of a desire to protect him. Then his neck would droop and his head would once again fall onto his chest and he would again become lost in the magma of his thoughts and memories. The hole he had dug, the palm tree, the poultice, the goatherd’s penis, the arrow slip, the bailiff’s cigarette ends.

Both of these passages were chosen at random (admission of how much I suck at structuring my arguments for these posts), but point toward why I like the Mesa much much more. The ending of Carrasco’s paragraph is supposed to provide a series of images from earlier in the book to serve as “momentous” call-backs for the reader. But in the third person, and in such a direct way, they are simply that. They’reÌęwritten for the audience.Ìę

Whereas with Mesa, that paragraph advances from emotion to emotion in a way that (I assume) we’ve all experienced. We come much closer to the characters and the text and feel less manipulated and more in contact with something pure.

I will always choose raw over too-carefully-crafted.

*

At this moment, on Amazon.com, here are the sales ranks for these two titles:

Out in the Open: 935, 970 (hardcover), 1,520,731 (paperback)

Scar: 1,972, 621 (paperback)

Ouch. OUCH.

Quick: What do you think the 100th best-selling book at 10:39 EST on 1/7/19 is?

. . .

. . .

. . .

Give yourself a pat on the back if you picked Ìęby Tui T. Sutherland.

The world’s great. Books are great. The best ones rise to the top . . . over time. Moby-Dick. Just remember Moby-Dick.Ìę

*

Why did Out in the Open outsellÌęScar? A RANKED LIST.

ScarÌęwasn’t really available in the U.S.

This is the sort of “Dalkey dig” that might get my ass in trouble (again), but I wasÌęliterallyÌęjust texting with Jeremy Garber of Powells in Portland aboutÌęhow fucking excellentÌęthis book is and he told me their orders for it never arrived. And it’s available in one library in Oregon—that doesn’t do interlibrary loans.

 

Jacket copy might actually matter.Ìę

Would you buy this?

Sonia meets Knut in an online literary forum and begins a long-distance relationship with him that gradually turns to obsession. Though Sonia needs to create distance when Knut becomes too absorbing, she also yearns for a less predictable existence. Alternately attracted to and repulsed by Knut, Sonia begins a secret double life of theft and betrayal in which she will ultimately be trapped for years.

Me neither. I can’t write about literature at all, but my description above is more selling.

 

No one knows Dalkey anymore.

Again, running risks here, but after my last post, and after conversations at MLA, and after the rumor that the main employee at Dalkey has stepped down, it’s hard to pretend that this incredible press is still part of book culture. I know people who are working at very prominent presses, who are keyed in and brilliant, and have never read a Dalkey title. This is an issue. And if Dalkey actually has an active board, you should call me at my home phone so that we can talk about the future, instead of getting all pissed because I’m right.

Fuck both covers.

Happy 2019 Chad or not, these covers are dumb. Please no more color mosaics. And given how much I hate my shitty Apple computer, I totally don’t want to see it on the cover of a book.ÌęHey, here’s a novel about how my spacebar rarely works!Ìę

MJC is aÌęknown quantity.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Adriana Nodal-Tarafa’s translation. Her intro isn’t 247%, but it’s OK. A little too Dalkey-indebted and I never like when a translator says that they took out “inappropriate” phrases and word choices. That makes me anxious. Too often they confuse the character for the author, and that reminds me that students don’t actually read anymore.

That all said, there are at least 25 people who buy books based on the translator and not the book itself. Giving Carrasco an advantage.

Blurbs bum me out.

This list got weird, and I apologize for that. But seriously, every review ofÌęOut in the OpenÌęhas the tone and insight of someone who’s read four books from Spain . . . ever. Hyperbole is only useful if you can legit back it up. But then again, this is America, and .

Also, I won’t quote examples publicly because I want all those places/people to say insanely over-the-top things about our books. But if you want to slide into my DMs . . .

 

Why don’t we read more books by women?

Again, not really an objective criticism, but given all the #ReadWomen and #WITMonth stuff PLUS PLUS PLUS the fact that there aren’t many books in translation written by women, readers should be allÌęoverÌęthese titles. But, I can assure you, that, aside from Rodoreda (and mainly just the one title), our books by men sell way better than the ones by women, and in general, receive more attention. I have no explanation for this that doesn’t make me want to shoot myself and/or remind everyone to read Kathy Acker.

Things’ll be different in 2019! ALL POSITIVITY ALL DAY. And Ha Seong-nan. Who. Just wait. Open Letter has so many gems up its sleeve. Or, in my parlance, new pitches to debut that will induce a lot of missed bats. Or swing plane adjustments to hit more dongers? Whatever. Those metaphors . . . Is it baseball season yet?

Chad W. Post: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into literary translation?

Lara Moreno, Aroa Moreno DurĂĄn, and Katie Whittemore

Katie Whittemore: Well, I’ve been interested in literary translation for about ten years, but have been trying to start in earnest for almost exactly a year. I’ve always been a reader and studied literature both as an undergrad and then as an M.Phil student in Latin American Studies. Back then I expected that I would continue on a doctoral track and study comparative lit with a focus on Latin America,Ìębut I decided to first commit to really acquiring Spanish fluency. I did the MA in Spanish program at Middlebury (their summer language school in VT and then the academic year in Madrid) during which time I took a few translation courses—general, legal/political/business/etc. In the “general” translation course we were given different samples of literature to translate, just paragraphs: the opening sections of Te tratarĂ© como una reina by Rosa Montero and the short story “Paseo del Wagram” by Juan GarcĂ­a Hortelano. I LOVED it. I found it really fun, combining reading deeply and carefully and playing with language. Finding solutions and solving problems. It feels a bit like a game, really. I enjoyed the process and got a lot of creative satisfaction from it, but didn’t consider translating literature as a career option at the time.

But, ten years and a few jobs and two kids later, I was still admitting when pressed that “translating books” would be my dream job, but dismissing it as silly, or unrealistic. Until one day I was like, “Well, wait, someone does this. I am going to try.” I applied to the Bread Loaf Literary Translators Conference for June 2018, and started working on some stories that winter. Yes, so last year.

CWP: It as at Translation Bread Loaf (which I’ll always refer to as TranslationLoaf) where we met and where you presented a short story by Sara Mesa that you’d been working on. What drew you to her work? And, on a separate note, what did you think of TranslationLoaf?

KW: I started Mesa’s collection of short stories Mala letra (Anagrama 2016) when I decided to dedicate myself to reading more contemporary works in Spanish, with the intention of finding a few writers who I liked and who hadn’t been widely translated in English. Sara’s stories are so compelling. Her work can be really disconcerting, suggestive, elliptical, but I found her use of language to be clear and sharp, and accessible from a style perspective, which is fun to read and translate. In that collection, I’m really drawn to her depiction of childhood and adolescence as sites of both oppression and transgression, particularly for girls and young women. She captures that period in life so poignantly, but in a way but that’s raw, painful, often (usually, ok maybe always) uncomfortable orÌędark.

And Bread Loaf—I loved it. It was a great experience. The setting is so idyllic and beautiful. It’s like being on vacation. But aside from the R&R element, I learned so much. I had the privilege of working with Sora Kim-Russell in workshop, and she was wonderful—insightful comments, calm presence, letting the participants guide a lot of what we highlighted or discussed. The critiques of other translators, not just on my piece, but everyone’s, were so valuable. We went over my translation on the last day, but after each workshop I was already revising, based on the comments people had made about other translations. It really helped to see my own work differently. Very productive. Of course—and this is Ìęinvaluable for someone totally new to the translation/lit/publishing scene—we had the chance to meet editors and publishers from literary magazines and publishers interested in translation and hear from them, ask questions, get advice, as well as try to work in a bit of your own stuff. So yes, applications for the 2019 Bread Loaf Literary Translators’ Workshop are open and rolling until February 15th!

CWP: Sticking with Mesa for a minute–you’re currently working on Four by Four for Open Letter (we’ll run an excerpt next week). How would you describe this book?

KW: Four by Four is Mesa’s second novel. It was published in 2012 (Anagrama), and it was a finalist for the Herralde Prize. The novel has three sections, each written in a distinct narrative voice and style.

The first part introduces us to Wybrany College, an isolated Spanish boarding school cut off from anÌęincreasingly chaotic, violent world. I guess it’s sort of speculative in this way, in that the world is in decline, becoming unlivable, and this school is supposed to be a refuge for the country’s elites, and the “Specials,” or scholarship students that are taken in from the city. Something is definitely not right at this place—there’s a lot of suggestion, insinuation, unease. The sections are short and fragmented and alternate between the voice a fifteen year-old female scholarship student, and a third-person narrator. In Part Two, the narration takes the form of 56 diary entries of a newly arrived substitute taking the place of a teacher who has gone missing, GarcĂ­a Medrano. The epilogue is made up of the GarcĂ­a Medrano’s personal papers that depict life in the “City” and also reveal the nefarious mystery of what’s really happening at the school. The book explores power and oppression, sex, the individual vs. the system. Good stuff.

CWP: I’m pretty sure that based on that description, everyone’s going to get exactly why I’ve been so excited about this book. (And why it reminds me a bit of Rodoreda.) What about her other works? We’re doing Cara de Pan as well (in Megan McDowell’s translation), but is there anything you have to say about how she’s developed as a writer over the course of her career? Or themes that she’s concerned with?

KW: Mesa’s first novel, Un encendio invisible/An Invisible Fire can be read with Four by Four as a sort of precursor or companion piece. They take place in the same “world” and to me read as more allegorical, more dystopian—there’s a shift to more realistic, intimate storytelling in Scar, the stories in Mala letra, and Cara de pan. But in all her work, there’s a common thematic concern (obsession?) with power and its forms and manifestations. In the first two novels, it seems that “the system” is the primary focus of her interrogation and criticism, and the characters serve that end. But in her stories and Scar and Cara de pan, she’s exploring the dynamics of power (and freedom, imposition, constraint, pain, rebellion) within close relationships and in the individual’s relationship to society, on a smaller, more personal scale. Regular people, strange people, Ìęimperfect lives.

As for how she’s developing as a writer: I’m not a literary critic or a Mesa scholar so I hesitate to draw conclusions, but as a close reader I can say that I see an evolution or maturity in her writing that has allowed her to treat her characters and their circumstances with more compassion. These are still people who are often messed-up, different, and in some cases unlikable or discomfiting. I don’t know how to put it other than to say that she seems to be treating her characters with more tenderness, more nuance. I think this starts to become apparent in Scar, especially at the end, and is absolutely present in her treatment of the friendship/relationship between the 13-year-old Casi and the 54-year-old Viejo in Cara de pan.

CWP: In addition to Roberto Bolaño (who you’ve written a thesis on, right?), which other Spanish-language authors are you into?Ìę

KW: I worked on Bolaño twelve years ago now when I wrote a master’s thesis on 2666 and Amulet. It was really exciting to dive into his work at that time. I don’t know when the English translations started coming out, but then I was just reading him in Spanish, and like so many, was really into him. I’d actually like to re-read 2666 this year. Back then—this was 2006—I was reading mostly contemporary Latin American writers, and mostly men: Bolaño, Rodrigo FresĂĄn, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, from Guatemala, who I loved, Horacio Castellaños Moya, Juan Gabriel VĂĄzquez, Edmundo Paz SoldĂĄn, etc. Of course, they have all been translated now, but at the time, translation wasn’t on my radar. I lived for a couple of years in Spain after that, and married a Spaniard (we live here now, in Valencia), so my focus has shifted to writers in Spain, and right now I’m particularly interested in reading women, honestly. I love Mesa’s work, and I’m also into the novels and short stories by Lara Moreno, Pilar AdĂłn, Nuria Labari (who has a new novel in Spanish coming out soon) and Aroa Moreno DurĂĄn, whose first novel La hija del comunista won last year’s Ojo CrĂ­tico prize, which Mesa won in 2015 for Scar (published in English by Dalkey).

CWP: So jealous that you live in Valencia. I visited last year and absolutely fell in love with the city. But rather than talk about Valencia CF’s disappointing season, I’ll try and keep us on topic: Are there any trends in contemporary Spanish literature that you’ve noticed?Ìę

KW: Hmm. I can talk a little about one of the novels I’ve done a sample of. Lara Moreno’s Por si se va la luz/In Case We Lose Power is considered an example of what Spanish critics have termed “neoruralism,” a trend in contemporary Spanish literature that—speaking very broadly—is concerned with a rural or “natural” setting and how the characters interact with and within that space. In the case of Moreno’s novel, “lo rural” provides a context in which the characters can choose to abandon the decadence of the contemporary urban world in search of something essential. Lara’s book came out the same year (2013) as JesĂșs Carrasco’s Intemperie, which is probably the best known example of this trend (and was translated by Margaret Jull Costa and published as Out in the Open by Riverhead). A few other authors whose work has been associated with neoruralism would be Pilar AdĂłn, IvĂĄn Repila, Manuel Astur. And others. Also really interesting is Sergio del Molino’s narrative essay/non-fiction book called La España vacĂ­a which explores, among other things, cultural issues and questions related to rural Spain and its “emptying”: the depopulation of rural areas that was, and continues to be, a population trend in Spain that also had social and artistic implications. At the same time, you have these young writers who are concerned with a return to those spaces, though not necessarily an idealization of them. It’s really interesting.

There’s also an urban dystopian element in both Intemperie and Por si se va luz/In Case We Lose Power Ìęthat brings to mind Sara Mesa’s earlier novels, Un incendio invisible and, of course, Four by Four. Un incendio invisible tells the story of the last days of the city of Vado, and the few people who remain behind in the city. This is the same “world” in which Four by Four is set, and the depopulation of Vado is referenced as an event that is possibly related to the founding of the school, etc.

CWP: Without having read any of those books in full (yet!), this might be an ignorant follow-up question, but it seems like there’s some overlap between neoruralism and eco-fiction. Is that accurate? I’m specifically thinking of Aroa Moreno Durán’s “Gravity.”

KW: “Gravity” is a great story. It was originally published in a Spanish anthology of climate fiction entitled ·ĄČőłÙĂ­ŽÇ/ł§łÜłŸłŸ±đ°ù (Episkaia 2018). I do think there is some overlap with eco-fiction or “cli-fi” in the concern with (and to some degree, rejection of) what is happening to our world, the forces under which we feel powerless, and then how to imagine that, write that. There’s speculation in both of these trends, and fear, anxiety, preoccupation. But hope, too, right? In some of them. And at least in Aroa’s Moreno’s “Gravity” and Lara’s work, there’s also a turning inward, away from the world, to examine in the personal, the intimate, in very close detail. It’s interesting to me how these writers take the suggestion of disaster, apocalypse, collapse, corruption and use it as a pretext to delve into individual relationships and the interior, human experience.

The neoruralism in In Case We Lose Power is really about an escape, a return to something or someplace we’ve never actually been, but a return nonetheless. There’s both hope and nostalgia to be found there. It’s like, one eye on the future, and another on the past. In that novel, allusions are made to disasters both climatic and economic. The fact that the Spanish economy underwent such collapse in the years prior to the emergence of this trend, and that writers like Lara are part of a generation of young people that saw youth unemployment at over 50 percent, people being forced from their homes, squatters taking over and occupying buildings—real economic devastation and instability in a country that was finally beginning to feel like it had caught up—absolutely plays into this imagining of how we could sustain ourselves outside of the neoliberal system. The neoliberal framework for development is obviously (right? Or I guess this is still a question for some people?) Ìęlinked to environmental degradation and exploitation of natural resources and the resulting climate change (again, still a question???) so in short, yes, I believe there is overlap in how writers approach these questions.

CWP: Has living in Spain helped you connect with more writers?

KW: Absolutely. And it has been great for getting the chance to meet the writers I’m working on in person, spend a little time with them and get to know them. The first weekend after we arrived in September, I met Lara Moreno and Aroa Moreno Durán in a tiny Aragonese village to hear Lara speak about ruralism, actually. She kind of randomly threw it out to me, to see if I wanted to come, and I think was a little surprised when I actually showed up in the town hall (late). After the talk the three of us went for lunch in another small village in the middle of nowhere and talked for hours over roasted of leg of lamb (which still makes me laugh a little)—about books, about our lives, their work. I know your question is about another type of “connecting” in the professional sense—and I’ll talk about that, too—but honestly being able to connect in a personal way with some of these authors has been important for me. As an emerging translator trying to break in, every project you choose to work on is a “passion project,” or so far it’s been that way for me. Why? Because it takes an enormous investment of time and energy to read books and produce samples, write reports, figure out where to pitch them, waiting and hoping that an editor somewhere is going to see what you see in the book. I mean, eventually the hope is that projects come to you, that you’re sought out, or develop a relationship with a press, but right now, in the beginning, it’s kind of a labor of love. And in that sense, a connection with not only the work but also the writer, personally, has added a dimension to the projects I’m attempting to advance. In a more strictly professional or networking sense, being here absolutely helps, too. I can go to festivals, conferences, readings, etc. and meet authors in person, be introduced to new works, stay up to date on the cultural and review pages of the Spanish papers (although of course you can do this from anywhere now).

CWP: Which other authors are you interested in translating? What samples do you have available, if say, a publisher wanted to check out more of your work?

Nuria Labari, Aroa Moreno DurĂĄn, Katie Whittemore, and Lara Moreno

KW: Ha, what a dream. As you know, I’ve done quite a few of Mesa’s stories from Mala letra, and I would like to do Un incendio invisible/An Invisible Fire, as well. I’m also working closely with Lara Moreno and have completed samples of her two novels, In Case We Lose Power and Wolfskin, as well as several of her short stories (two of which are forthcoming in theÌęArkansas International and Gulf Coast). The same for Aroa Moreno DurĂĄn: I’ve done a sample of The Communist’s Daughter, in addition to “Gravity.” I think The Communist’s Daughter could really find a readership in English. Spanning the years 1956-1992, it’s the story of the daughter of Spanish communists exiled in East Germany after Spanish Civil War: her life as a child post-WWII, when Berlin is divided in two and the wall built; when she flees Berlin for West Germany, abandoning her life and family for the man she’s fallen in love with, from the other side; and then the life that she lives in the West, her marriage, motherhood, her regret and bitterness, the fall of the wall, the truth about her family and the consequences of her betrayal. I’m also very interested in working on Pilar AdĂłn’s The Mayflies and anxiously awaiting Nuria Labari’s new novel. I’ve translated some of Soledad PuĂ©rtola’s stories, and I’d like to work on her 1989 novel Queda la noche, which won that year’s Premio Planeta and has been translated quite a few other languages but not English. PuĂ©rtolas is an important writer in Spain and holds a permanent seat on the Royal Academy—the official language institution— and is just the fifth woman to do so. I would like to promote her work in English.

Though I’m pretty much choosing to work exclusively on women writers at the moment, I am also working on novels by Pablo GutiĂ©rrez, who was one of Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists in 2010 and whose work is social and political and very much “of the moment”—he writes in sharp, critical, sometimes funny ways about issues of culture and economy and politics that I find really compelling. Like Mesa, there’s a real concern with the marginal and marginalized—places, people—that I’m continually drawn to. I have a full sample of his second novel Nada es crucial (Lengua de Trapo 2010)— another Ojo CrĂ­tico winner!—and I plan to work up a sample of at one or two more this winter.

CWP: What has been the most intimidating aspect of getting your start as a literary translator? What’s been the most helpful? Any advice for others out there looking to break into the field?

KW: This might sound silly and I don’t even want to reveal it, but what I find most intimidating is the success of others! I think it’s easy, when you’re starting anything new, but especially something which is creative, to compare yourself to others—what they’ve achieved, and when, and how—and worry that it won’t happen for you. That can be demoralizing and paralyzing, especially because it’s not like it’s big business, literary translation. Is there theoretically room for new translators, new authors? Of course, but it’s hard. I’ve been very lucky as an emerging translator and now need to focus on keeping up momentum and trying to read as much as possible and really get a sense of what I like, who is good, who is up and coming, etc. There’s a pressure there.

In terms of advice, I think it helped to inform myself early on about the logistics of the business—permissions, rights, agents, foreign presses, etc. That piece can be overwhelming if you don’t have experience in publishing. I am very active about reaching out to the agents and publishers of writers I’m interested in working on to see the status of rights as well as just sort of getting my name out there. Things have come from this, so I would advise other young or emerging translators to do that, if they aren’t. Another piece of advice that we heard a lot at Bread Loaf is to work on submitting stories early on, to start to build up a body of published translations, which can help “legitimize” you (I guess that’s the word) you when you start to pitch book-length projects, and again, gets your name out there and associated with an author. I’m really excited to have translations of two stories coming out this spring: “Screech Owl” by Sara Mesa will be in Two Lines, and Lara Moreno’s “Save Yourselves” in the Arkansas International, so that advice rings true for me.

– Merdardo Fraile, Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, Spain
Pushkin Press