"I Don't Write Trifles, I Delve into the Darkness of the Human Being"

A Fernando Aramburu (San Sebastián, 1959) finds more satisfaction in writing short stories than novels. The author of 'Patria' compiles a disturbing collection of tales in 'Fallen Man' (Tusquets). These fictions are as entertaining as they are dark, delving into the backroom of our consciences. A woman abandons her sick parents to photograph squirrels; a man lying in the street whom passers-by cannot help, or the purchase of a second-hand teddy bear that turns into something terrible. Surprise, anguish, irony, and terror coexist in the stories of a narrator who feels "strange everywhere."

–A pleasure to greet you after your 'digital death'. Occupational hazard?

–I feared my mother would be greatly shocked, but it was just a simple anecdote.

–Isn't it a symptom of the death of truth? That nothing is reliable?

–I don't think we've killed the truth. Previously, a false death would remain in the neighbourhood. Today, the dissemination is formidable. Our privacy is aired whether or not you are relevant.

–Is literature a beautiful way to lie to tell truths like fists?

–The word lie is very unpleasant to me. It has a malicious intent. I prefer to talk about fiction, for which we are very gifted animals. The elders reveal life to us through fiction, our first learning. An exhaustive knowledge of life requires many years, conversations, experiences, travels... and fiction supplants reality while showing it.

–The stories in this book are unsettling. They chill the smile.

–When I write stories, I tend to show the less noble and darker aspects of the human species. I don't know why. Perhaps the format lends itself. It's not uncommon for me to combine cruelty with humour, death with mockery. It goes with my way of being. These are the stories I like to tell and read.

–Are they stories with a moral?

–I never write to lead readers to a lesson. They are reflections of life.

–Of lives full of twists, lies, abandonments, abuses, betrayals...

–In my stories, several stories overlap. I don't write about customs or try to portray the human being of my time, something I could do in novels. I don't feel like writing trifles. As far as my talent allows, I delve into disturbing, dark, and evil realms of the human species. The unconfessable is part of our lives.

–Is the novel perspiration and the story inspiration?

–I am reluctant to define the story in opposition to the novel. They are different creative worlds, even though both are the elaboration of a text. But those who define the story as a centripetal genre are right. It does not admit loss of attention, the exordium, or the formation of characters. They must be factory-made.

–Are you more satisfied closing a story than a novel?

–Writing stories is what I like most. I enjoy it with more intensity. The story demands instinct, flair, and intuition. The novel is planning and intensity. It requires a lot of craft, schedule, constancy, documentation... A professionalism that I handle in the best possible way.

–Chekhov, Poe, Carver, Salinger, Kafka, Rulfo, Kafka, Conrad...? Affinities?

–I have read them all actively, analysing them in the hope of stealing tricks and recipes. I wish they had influenced me. Something must have stuck. I add Ignacio Aldecoa, José María Merino, Cristina Fernández Cubas, or Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose disadvantage is not having written in English or French.

–Do you trust your characters more than your fellow humans?

–Yes. The characters think and do what I dictate. But my literature is born from the fascination with my fellow humans, which combines veneration and rejection. I don't naively think that everyone is good. Nor do I believe that everyone is bad.

–Should the reader be made uncomfortable, grabbed by the shoulders, and shaken?

–Perhaps. As a reader, I have nothing against aesthetic pleasure, nor do I lose sleep over reading texts that frighten or discomfort me. But the more complex the stew, the richer it will be.

–You have a recognised work, but you don't appear in the RAE or Cervantes pools.

–Nor is it necessary. It doesn't keep me awake, neither one nor the other. I studied philology, but I am not prepared to be an academic. It's not my thing. I couldn't regularly attend sessions. Writing is reward enough. My publisher supports me and disseminates my books very well. I would deny the education I received if I publicly exhibited grievance. There is a necessary requirement to win the Cervantes, old age, which I neither meet nor wish to meet.

–You live in Hannover. What do you feel about the ultra staircase in Germany and other countries?

–I am determined that political reality does not take up too much space in my life. It tires me. At my age, I can do little to intervene in public affairs. But I always believed that those who speak of the pendular condition of history have some reason. There is nothing definitive in human action. Now a series of hopes circulate, of drastic solutions that are disturbing because they question coexistence. And I don't like that.

–Have you ever been made to feel foreign or excluded in Germany?

–I always feel strange everywhere. Also in my homeland. Because of what I have seen and because of my way of being. There is a kind of membrane that separates me from what surrounds me. A feeling of strangeness that is good for writing. You arrive at places as an observer and must learn and interpret them. You notice things that locals don't see. But that feeling of not belonging persists, of being a little strange, different. I visit my city and see that I have stopped reading it. A large part of my childhood has disappeared, its shops, buildings have been demolished... I don't have the feeling of being assimilated into the landscape. I can't reproach Germany for treating me badly. On the contrary. I was very motivated, not like an immigrant risking his life crossing the sea. I could tell an anecdote about someone disrespecting me for speaking with an accent, but they are trifles compared to the number of friends and the good treatment received.

–In the United States, the Nazi salute proliferates, like in the twenties and thirties?

–We make the mistake of explaining the present by comparing it with the past. I don't think we are the same as in the 1930s. But it is true that the past offers a showcase of myths and models, some undesirable, that produced enormous tragedies. But that is how fragile the human being is when managing enormous collective realities without preparation, without good intentions, and with particular interests.

–In times of tension and polarisation, in the age of hatred, is humour more necessary than ever?

–Without humour, life would be unbearable. Tension is the replacement of humour and irony with anger. Whoever wants to be angry the four days we live, let him. Humour is not a choice for me. Sometimes I hold back so as not to be inappropriate. I always praise my father's humour. He enjoyed making us laugh and passed it on to me. Humour has an ingredient of elegance and an antidote against the tragic feeling of life. But not all humour is comedy. Mine does not seek laughter.

–What keeps you awake at night?

–I don't live alone. I don't like to suffer, nor to see others suffer. Nor certain collective drifts. I don't lose sight of political avatars. Germany is a country close to Ukraine, and the echo of explosions reaches more than other places. That constant presence of death, of destroyed buildings, of missiles crossing the sky, of arsenals... all of it unsettles me.

–Did the literary success and the bombshell of 'Patria' change your life for better or worse?

–Success is decided by others. It has an undeniable element of disruption. But I won't complain. It has been positive in both senses. I say it without reservation. It has given me readers and economic stability, something I had not known in my life. That means I can dedicate myself to writing whatever I want. It frees me from accepting bread-and-butter tasks.

–Have you asked artificial intelligence to write a story in the style of Aramburu?

–I will never do it. I have nothing against AI. Like any invention, it will have negative aspects and some very positive ones, such as in surgery and medicine. In the military, it makes me tremble. But I will never use it to replace me. It makes no sense. I am a layman in artificial intelligence. It caught me older.

–The good part?

–If artificial intelligence composes a fabulous symphony, I would enjoy it just the same. I have dreamed that the entire history of literature, music, and art was invented. That neither Cervantes, Shakespeare, Rubens, nor Bach existed. That everything was done by a factory, and we were made to believe that history existed. Nothing would change. I would still be fascinated by Bach's cantatas.