Diego Angelino: Several things. I had been writing poetry and had written stories and a novel. It was 1973, he was 29 years old. I learned that the National Arts Fund gave subsidies for publication. I wrote to him. They asked me, to be able to evaluate, to send them something of mine. To fulfill the procedure I sent the story “under the moon, on earth, under the night.” I did not imagine that I was going to read Victoria Ocampo, who was part of the board. And less that I wrote “I like his way of telling. Keep writing. ” It was very stimulating.
Da: I did not win the prize. There were two finalist novels of people from Neuquén. Cortázar voted for one, Onetti and Walsh for another, and recommended the publication of mine. I was already installed in my Patagonian shelter, that had been a test. The writer has to be the first critic of himself. The novel was uneven, a novel attempt. But it was a new stimulus. I had finished a storybook and presented it to another contest.
Q.: And not only won it, Borges, Bioy Casares, Mallea and Alicia Jurado rewarded him.
Da: I sent it with “Before dawn”, title of one of the stories. The first, “under the moon, on earth, under the night,” is the one that Victoria Ocampo had liked.
Q.: Is it true that Borges had liked the story about the lobizon?
Da: I do not remember that he told me and we talk a lot and everything a bit. Thinking that “before dawn” is about lobizon is a mistake. It deals with the belief that the father assumes for what is said in the town, deals with the force of the folk legend. And what the father does to save his seventh male son, so that he does not receive the rejection and fear of the people. Nothing to do with costumbrismo. My stories have origin in poetry, and they are poetic blows to reality.
Q.: Why is your first book “before dawn”?
Da: I spoke with Pezzoni, director of South American. He told me that many his friends had appeared to that award, and congratulated me. But he proposed to publish my novel, that was not what I was looking for. I had won the La Nación award. When I went to Corregidor, Pampin, the owner, was waiting for me with open arms. Change the name and appeared as “the other sun.”
Q.: Why did you transform your most famous story into a novel, with which Nicolás Sarquís made a film starring Graciela Borges?
Da: I felt that I had to expand the story “under the moon, on earth, under the night”, which I gave for more. Thus I write “About the Earth”, my first novel. Pomaire published in Spain, and is distributed in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and here. I met the character, the baroness, belonged to the German oligarchy. With her husband, after the death of the son, they came into exile. They bought a huge stay for Urquiza. He lived by alcohol, tremendously fat. I was given to claim it, give another end to his life, to shoot the mauser shouting: not here, shit.
Q.: It is considered “the great Patagonian narrator”, but most of his stories occur in Entre Ríos, in the bank of the bank …
Da: When I came to the south, I began to evoke literary force the entrerriano world and there the mythical bank field emerged. Not like the peoples created by Faulkner, Onetti or Rulfo, but from that real place imana in me a very large force. They called him that because a bank had stayed with that field. They populated Malandras, outlaws, cattle thieves, marginal. It is the world of my childhood, and my characters and their stories.
Q.: The last of that narrative cycle is “remembering the wind”, where Perón’s mother appears.
Da: In Comodoro Rivadavia I met Alba, my wife, who told me that Susana Sosa de Canosa lived there, who had been Mario Tomás Perón’s wife. Telling his story I started writing about Patagonia, the Welsh, the Boers, without abandoning the entrerriano world with “My friend, the islands, the captain and death.”
Q.: What led him to spend almost 30 years without writing?
Da: He was based in El Bolsón, he had the nursery “The Baldía Earth”, seven children, who studied in Buenos Aires, had to be yuggated and rushed. Literature was a companion of my life, nothing more and nothing less.
Q.: He returned to the letters with the Patagonian novel of a Gendarme who chases a descendant of Mapuches, after the Falklands War.
Da: “The Bumerang returns to the hunter.” It was one of the finalists of the 2014 Herralde Award, and published by space Hudson. Then I wrote “The country of wars.” I wanted to tell of Justo José de Urquiza, but it was hard for me to site the tooth, until it occurred to me to address it through a family of Extremadura, that of Félix Salamanca wanted by Urquiza to improve the cattle. So I could tell of Urquiza laterally, from common men and women. The history of the Salamanca, father, son and grandson, reaches the overthrow of Yrigoyen.
Q.: According to Juan L. Ortiz you are the best storyteller in Argentina. Others point out that its quality is Borges.
Da: The Argentine writer that I admire above all is Antonio Di Benedetto and his novel “Zama”. I am awarded to the influence of Borges. I read Borges and marveled at me, but I never found a direct influence, the most obvious is that of Horacio Quiroga.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
