{"id":9267,"date":"2011-05-04T13:25:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T12:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/dublin\/?p=9267"},"modified":"2013-06-29T13:29:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:29:52","slug":"virtual-interview-with-laura-freixas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cervantes.es\/dublin\/virtual-interview-with-laura-freixas\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual interview with Laura Freixas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Interview with Laura Freixas, Instituto Cervantes Dublin Library, 3rd May 2011<\/a>. Translated by Emer Cassidy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Laura<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nLaura, which title would you recommend to the foreign reader as a good introduction to Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite\u2019s work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/strong><\/span>
\n\u201cEl cuarto de atr\u00e1s\u201d(translated into English under the title \u201cThe Back Room\u201d).<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nHow does Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite\u2019s work vary from that of peers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nIn many ways\u2026 For example: she had a great capacity for analysis, reflection, and introspection.<\/p>\n

Also: her ability to mix popular culture and daily life with high culture, and to do so in a very natural way.<\/p>\n

Also: the great richness and plasticity of her language (which, similarly to the references she made, even geographical \u2013 New York with a town in Galicia -, flowed seamlessly between popular and high culture).<\/p>\n

Another characteristic very much her own, and perhaps the most obvious difference between her work and that of her peers, whether male or female, is the variety of genres in which she worked: novels, short stories, plays, essays, daily newspapers, autobiography etc.<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nKafka\u2019s influence in Mart\u00edn Gaite\u2019s first novel, El balneario, is evident, as the writer herself agreed. Which other influences could we glean from her bibliography? Are any of them women?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nGood question\u2026I hadn\u2019t thought about that. I think she was influenced by the novelists of the nineteenth century \u2013 Gald\u00f3s, Balzac, Flaubert\u2026-, also by Proust\u2026and I\u2019m not sure who else\u2026 I think like all good (male\/female) writers, she was a voracious reader, and that means that there is no one single influence in her work; she drew from many wells.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nIgnacio Aldecoa introduced Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite to his circle of friends upon her arrival in Madrid: there she met Medardo Fraile, and Rafael S\u00e1nchez Ferlosio, with whom she later became romantically-involved until 1970. How important was this circle to her training as a novelist? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nWithout a doubt he gave her support, and security, two things which are hard to find in the case of female writers, given that they are normally more isolated than male writers. Both formal groups (academies) and more informal groups (literary gatherings), where writers exchange opinions and ideas etc., tend to be male-dominated.<\/p>\n

The entire group took on quite a similar aesthetic approach, a realistic and critical portrait of Spanish society at that time, in contrast to later generations who opted for more experimental literature.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nCarmen Mart\u00edn Gaite spoke on the television programme A Fondo, in and around 1981, of a before and an after in her writing style brought on by a refinement of her style crucial to the writing of her essay on Macanaz. Is her work previous to this still valid? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nHow interesting, I didn\u2019t know that. But, of course, her previous work is still valid, to my eyes Entre visillos shows she had already acquired a definite personal style. I read it just a few years ago and I still think it\u2019s wonderful, and the same goes for Retahilas, for example.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nSome years after the aforementioned TV programme, Carmen lost her only daughter. Did this tragic loss also affect the style and subject matter of her writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s a good question, but I don\u2019t know\u2026 In any case, don\u2019t forget that she had already lost a son, who died just a few months after having been born. That provided the autobiographical basis for her short story \u201cLo que queda enterrado\u201d, although, oddly enough, the protagonist in the story loses a baby girl, not a baby boy.<\/p>\n

(I think the reason for that change is that the death of the baby girl in the story takes on a greater meaning: it represents the death of the little girl in the narrator, of her hopes and dreams).<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nYou have mentioned before that very few women\u2019s issues, such as pregnancy, are ever examined in literature. Which women\u2019s issues did Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite explore in her work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nLots of them: mother-daughter relationships, the profile of a housewife, feminine introspection, women\u2019s various roles (comparing women who work outside the home, and those who don\u2019t, for example), the creation of female characters rarely or never dealt with in literature (the \u201cweird\u201d girl, the artist etc.), the critical analysis of gender roles, inequality, the relationship between power and the lack of communication between the sexes\u2026<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nWhat other subjects do you think still remain difficult to write about simply because they are never discussed in literature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nI think there are still subjects which are scandalously absent from literature because they are difficult to deal with, or could cause a backlash, and\/or because they are associated with sub-culture (they are viewed as \u201cwomen\u2019s magazine\u201d topics, and aren\u2019t considered \u201cserious\u201d). For example, pregnancy, abortion, or the negative aspects of motherhood.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nAre Ana Karenina, Madame Bovary, and La Regenta \u201creal\u201d women, or are they transvestite men who have tried unsuccessfully to reflect the interior world of women?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nAh, what a good question! When I read those novels, I had the feeling there was something the authors hadn\u2019t quite captured, or weren\u2019t aware of, something they didn\u2019t manage to fully reflect. I didn\u2019t feel they were able to construct characters as convincing or as complex as those by Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite, Virginia Woolf or Annie Ernaux.<\/p>\n

But the difference is so subtle that it would be very difficult to pinpoint exactly. Perhaps it\u2019s for the same reason that I never fully believe historic novels. If I\u2019m interested in learning more about the 17th century, I would be more inclined to read Madame de S\u00e9vign\u00e9, for example.<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nHow is the young Spanish woman from the \u201850s, the protagonist in \u201cEntre Visillos\u201d, different to the young woman from the \u201870s, the protagonist in \u201cAdolescencia en Barcelona hacia 1970\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe protagonist in Adolescencia\u2026 has had two or three times the luck of the young woman in Entre Visillos, to have been born in a more modern Spain (in terms of the era and the region, Catalonia), in a more cosmopolitan family, and to have studied in the French Lyc\u00e9e. All of those influences give her self-confidence, freedom, the ability to view things with a critical eye, and a clear ambition. She is more enterprising and more self-assured.<\/p>\n

But what she does have in common with the protagonist in Entre visillos is a certain feeling of disorientation, that something isn\u2019t right, but she can\u2019t quite put her finger on what exactly.<\/p>\n

(If truth be told, to answer the question properly I\u2019d need to reread both books, because it\u2019s not something I had ever thought of before. Thank you LMart\u00edn, for giving me so many ideas\u2026)<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nThe back cover of that same book reads:\u00a0 \u2026an education ruled by the maxim \u201cYou must be ladies\u201d. Are today\u2019s young women in Spain still under pressure to be ladies, or have things become even more difficult for them, in that nothing is expected of young women any more, nor of young people in general?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know, to tell you the truth, because the only young woman I know well is my daughter, and I, along with her father, and her school (the French Lyc\u00e9e, cela va sans dire!), expect a great deal from her.<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nIs the biographical component also an important element in your other three novels \u201c\u00daltimo domingo en Londres\u201d,\u201dAmor o lo que sea\u201d and \u201cEntre amigas\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/strong><\/span>
\nYes, absolutely. All my novels have an autobiographical core. I used to feel uncomfortable about that at the beginning, but not any more, for the following reasons:<\/p>\n

1-Autobiographers are accused of having a lack of imagination, but I think I have proved that\u2019s not the case with my books of short stories. Besides, it is possible to be a wonderful writer while not displaying much imagination (as with Proust, or Pla).<\/p>\n

2- In revealing my life, I\u2019m not revealing anything most people couldn\u2019t relate to. My life is very similar to that of any other woman born in circumstances (generational, geographical, social etc.) similar to my own.<\/p>\n

3- The autobiographical element is only the jumping-off point. It\u2019s like the fabric from which I make a dress: first I have to cut out the pattern, sow it, add other materials and accessories, and so on. Multiple stories can be weaved from the one biography.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nWhat happened with your first novel, \u201c\u00daltimo domingo en Londres\u201d? Why was it such \u201can ordeal\u201d to get published, given that you had already published your first book of short stories? Were you not able to convince Anagrama? I imagine they were your first choice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/strong><\/span>
\nThat\u2019s exactly it. I think it was a very ambitious (or complicated) novel for the little literary experience (or complete lack of, if we are talking specifically about novels) I had at the time.<\/p>\n

Aside from that, I think that gender was something of a double-edged sword in the case of my initial success (Anagrama having published my first novel, given that I was unknown and that it was a book of short stories), in that, young women have a certain charisma and that affords them lots of opportunities\u2026 but then, when they are no longer so shiny and new, they are treated as \u201cmore of the same\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence that so many female writers\u2019 careers (I would interested in finding out if the same thing happened in other eras, and if it continues to happen in other fields, such as in politics, or painting) take off very early and with apparent ease, and then lose speed, or disappear completely, only to reappear (in some cases) years later, as the very same Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite, Carmen Laforet, Ana Mar\u00eda Matute, Luisa Forrellad\u2026<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\nRegarding \u201cLadrona de rosas\u201d, isn\u2019t it a luxury to throw yourself into writing and publishing the biography of a Brazilian author who isn\u2019t particularly well-known in Spain? How did the need, or the idea, to write this book come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nIt was all thanks to a happy coincidence. An editor (Mar\u00eda Borr\u00e1s, from La Esfera publishing house) contacted me to ask if I would be interested in writing an autobiography, which gave me the opportunity study a writer who had always intrigued and fascinated me, through her life as much as her work.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nIs \u201cLadrona de rosas\u201d to Laura Freixas what \u201cMacanaz\u201d was to Mart\u00edn Gaite? Did the writing of this book change the way in which you approach your literary work?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nI haven\u2019t thought about that, but it has changed my approach to life, or rather, it has reaffirmed one thing, namely: for years I thought being a (part-time) housewife was a good way of being able to devote oneself to writing, without the pressures inherent in having to make a living from a career (be that literature or not).<\/p>\n

Now, through my own experience, and also because I have seen it as clear as day in the case of Lispector, I think that is a very dangerous was of thinking, and which comes at a high price. Through her letters, we see that when she was living abroad, disconnected from what was happening in literary circles in her country, she was so distressed and depressed she had great difficulty writing. And she wrote her best works when she divorced, returned to Brazil and had to earn a living. Of course there are lots of factors at work there, but that doesn\u2019t stop it being a fact.<\/p>\n

LMart\u00edn<\/strong>
\n\u201cA glass ceiling prevents many women from being published\u201d, those are your words. What can we do to break through this glass ceiling?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe first thing we can do is be aware of it, talk about it, analyse it, research the figures, to try to understand why and how it occurs\u2026 In my association \u201cCl\u00e1sicas y Modernas\u201d, that\u2019s precisely what we do.<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nIn 2009, you relayed some striking facts produced by the Spanish Ministry of Culture: \u201cwomen read more than men, the number of men and women who write literature is equal \u2013 8% of the population \u2013 however, only 20% of literature published in Spain is by women\u201d. Has anything changed since then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nUnfortunately not. And neither have I observed a greater awareness of the situation\u2026 except in the case of those involved: female writers, painters, composers, film directors\u2026 as evidenced by the creation of various associations of women within the world of the arts in recent years, such as CIMA (association of women in film and audiovisual industries), MAV (Women in the Visual Arts) and Cl\u00e1sicas y Modernas (association for gender equality in the arts).<\/p>\n

DCarri\u00f3n<\/strong>
\nYour mother\u2019s passion for reading was, as far as I\u2019m aware, what led you to read and to write, \u201cto turn yourself into a book\u201d so that your mother would pay more attention to you. What did you read at that age? Which was the book that seeded your love of literature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nMy love of literature began even before I could read. Oddly, I don\u2019t remember a particular title which marked me greatly until the great discovery I made at 19: Proust.<\/p>\n

Patricia<\/strong>
\nYou were recently selected as one of the most representative authors of contemporary Spanish fantastic narrative. Proof of that is the inclusion of your short story \u201cFinal Absurdo\u201d in the anthology of contemporary Spanish fantastic short stories \u201cPerturbaciones, Antolog\u00eda del relato fant\u00e1stico espa\u00f1ol actual\u201d (Salto de P\u00e1gina, 2009). <\/strong><\/p>\n

What is your relationship with the fantastic genre? What is it that attracts you to it? How would you define today\u2019s fantastic literature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nWell, I should confess that it\u2019s a genre which interested me when I was younger, mainly as an influence of the Latin American boom, and now it doesn\u2019t interest me so much\u2026<\/p>\n

Pavel<\/strong>
\nLaura, I think men are more group-oriented than women, making it much more difficult for women to achieve important positions within society. I don\u2019t understand why it is like that. What is your view on the subject?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nYou\u2019re right, women are more fragmented, living their lives at home, not making as much use of public spaces, and tending to spend their time with family and friends more so than with colleagues or competitors.<\/p>\n

That has to do with power: men play power games much more than we do, and that happens through men tending to relate mostly with other men, through negotiations and exchanges. As for women, I\u2019m not sure whether it\u2019s that we don\u2019t know how to play those games, we\u2019re not able to, or we don\u2019t want to. And I think being excluded from that interplay, whatever the reason may be (which I honestly don\u2019t know), is a price we pay dearly.<\/p>\n

Joe<\/strong>
\nDo you think men and women write about different subjects in their work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nAlthough it may be rather brash of me to make sweeping generalisations, I do think there are certain areas which are dealt with more by male writers (for example, war) and others which are more common among female writers (for example, relationships between women: friends, mothers and daughters, sisters etc.).<\/p>\n

I also think that female writers tend to construct female characters which are varied and complex, with interests and ambitions not solely focused on love, whereas male writers are inclined to present female characters purely as the lover, mother, or wife of the male character, rather than the protagonist of her own life.<\/p>\n

Joe<\/strong>
\nLaura, a few months ago you were interviewed on the radio for the classical music programme \u201cJuegos con espejo\u201d, in which the person being interviewed picks their favourite music. You chose only foreign composers. Why were there no Spanish composers among your selection? Thank you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/strong><\/span>
\nThank you for pointing that out, I hadn\u2019t noticed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s purely down to my musical ignorance. The little musical knowledge I have has been almost entirely handed down from my parents, who were both great fans of classical music. As far back as I can remember they would listen to Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert\u2026 I added more modern composers (Janacek, R. Strauss\u2026), and apart from that, my friends influenced me as a teenager, by introducing me to Janis Joplin, for example.<\/p>\n

Although, if truth be told, now that you mention it, I think that like many of my generation, I had certain anti-Spanish prejudices in my formative years, which carried over to my tastes in literature (I started to get out of that mind-set quite late, in the \u201890s, when I began reading the Spanish classics, of my own accord), and I suppose also in music.<\/p>\n

Colm<\/strong>
\nDo you think that men and women\u2019s roles in society are the same in every country? Thank you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/strong><\/span>
\nNot in the slightest. Fortunately so, for those of us who live in the West, which proves that gender roles are a social fabrication and may be modified.<\/p>\n

Vicky<\/strong>
\nGood afternoon, Laura. What does Carmen Mart\u00edn Gaite\u2019s \u201cCaperucita en Manhattan\u201d represent to you? Thank you very much.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura Freixas<\/span><\/strong>
\nYikes, that\u2019s one of the very few, perhaps the only, of her books I haven\u2019t read\u2026 I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019ll make sure to read it.<\/p>\n

Thank you to all of you for taking part.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Related links:<\/strong><\/p>\n