All kinds of writers parade across its pages. Bukowski, whom Herralde and Lali Gubern visit in California. Patricia Highsmith, with whom they dine in Madrid, along with the mayor Tierno Galván. Carlos Monsiváis, the great Sergio Pitol, Carlos Barral, whose ghost is still bowed by the shame of having rejected One Hundred Years of Solitude. Soledad Puértolas, Carmen Martín Gaite, Esther Tusquets, Belén Gopegui — probably the best four women prose writers in Spain. Not to mention a host of British, French, Italian, and American writers, as well as some Latin Americans and Catalans.
What can I say about Herralde that no one, not even Herralde, can later hold against me? I could say that his prose is elegant and ironic, like Herralde himself. But that’s not saying much. What I should really say is that once, during a trip that I made in the grips of the most extreme paranoia, when I reached my destination I discovered several faxes from Herralde at my hotel, in which he told me not to worry and offered all the means at his disposal to get me out of the country at a moment’s notice in case my paranoia should grow more acute.
I also remember another time, at his office, when — after I told him I didn’t plan to attend a party to which I had been invited because I didn’t know the order in which to use the five forks, six spoons, and four knives sure to be standing guard next to my plate — Herralde very patiently explained to me the specific use of each piece of cutlery and the pace of usage or non-usage of the objects in question. It goes without saying that as Herralde explained all this I stared at him in a mixture of confusion, awe, and rage. In this sense Herralde is a proud son of the Catalan bourgeoisie, that cultivated and in no way cowardly bourgeoisie which is vanishing by leaps and bounds.
And what else can I say about him? That literature in the Spanish language wouldn’t be the same if Anagrama had never existed, and that if I ever leave the publishing house (home to seven of my books), I’ll probably especially miss Lali Gubern, Teresa, Ana Jornet, Noemí, Emma, Marta, Izaskun, and sweet María Cortés, now retired, among all the other pretty (and smart) girls who work there, but I’ll also miss Herralde, the interminable afternoons spent arguing about advances, his brief and always pithy remarks, his devastating opinions, lunches at El Tragaluz and dinners at Il Giardinetto, more devastating opinions, more clashing memories from different perspectives — and his independence as chief of the unvanquishable Mohicans.
SPECULATIONS ON A REMARK BY BRETON
A while ago, in an interview I can’t find now, André Breton said that the time might have come for surrealism to go underground. Only there, thought Breton, could it survive and prepare itself for future challenges. He said this toward the end of his life, in the early ’60s.
The suggestion, attractive and ambiguous, was never repeated, either by Breton in the many interviews he later gave or by his surrealist disciples, busy directing terrible films or editing literary magazines that by this point had little or nothing to contribute to literature or to the revolution that Breton and his early comrades saw as something convulsive and vague, that familiar amorphous thing.
It always seemed strange to me that a veil should have been drawn over this strategic possibility, if we can call it that. It raises a number of questions, in my opinion. Did surrealism really go into hiding, and did it die there, in the sewers? Did just a part of it — the least visible part, the young people, for example — go underground while the old guard covered the retreat with exquisite corpses and found objects, thereby making it seem as if all had fallen silent when in fact a retrenchment was taking place? What did this underground branch of surrealism become after 1965, a year before Breton’s death? How involved was it, along with the situationists, in May 1968? Was there an operational underground movement during the last thirty years of the twentieth century? And if there was, how did it evolve, what did it achieve in the fields of fine arts, literature, architecture, film? What was its relationship with official surrealism, in other words the surrealism of the widows, the cinephiles, and Alain Jouffroy? Did any of these subgroups maintain contact with the surrealists in hiding? Was the area of operations of this underground surrealism limited to Europe and the United States or were there also Asian, African, Latin American branches? Could the underground surrealists have split, in time, into subgroups, first at odds with one another and then lost like wandering tribes in the desert? Might they have forgotten, in a relatively short time, that they were actually underground surrealists? And how are the new underground surrealists recruited? Who calls them at midnight and informs them that from now on they can consider themselves part of the group? And what do the people who get the calls think? That they’ve fallen prey to a joke, that the voice with the French accent is really the voice of some practical joker of a friend, that they’re hearing things? And what orders do the new underground surrealists receive? To hurry up and learn to read and speak French? To report to a place in Paris where someone will be waiting for them? Not to be afraid? Above alclass="underline" Not to be afraid? And what if that place is a cemetery, one of the many legendary cemeteries of Paris, or a church or a bourgeois house on a bourgeois street? And what if it’s a basement located in the darkest corner of the Arab quarter? Should the new underground surrealist — who on top of everything isn’t entirely sure he’s not the victim of a prank that’s gone on too long — report for duty?
It may be that no one ever will receive this call. It may be that the underground surrealists never existed or that by now they’re just a handful of old tricksters. It may be that those who receive the call never keep the appointment, because they think it’s a joke or because they can’t make it. “After centuries of philosophy, we’re still living off the poetic ideas of the first men,” wrote Breton. This sentence isn’t a reproach, as one might think, but a statement of fact on the threshhold of mystery.
AN ATTEMPT AT AN EXHAUSTIVE CATALOG OF PATRONS
I never had a patron. No one ever hooked me up with anyone so I could get a grant. No government or institution ever offered me money, no elegant gentleman ever pulled out his checkbook for me, no tremulous lady (quivering with a passion for literature) ever invited me to tea and committed herself to providing me with a meal a day. But over the years I’ve come across many patrons, in person or in books.
Most common of all is the fortyish homosexual who suddenly realizes that his life is empty and who devotes himself, belatedly, to filling it with meaning. Deep down, this kind of patron wants to be an artist with a patron of his own, a fortyish and violent patron, who in turn also has a patron, who in turn is taken up by other patrons, and so on ad infinitum. Generally the works that excite this kind of patron are faux self-portraits.
There’s also the patron with blood ties. It’s usually the brother or sister of the artist or poet in question and the relationship between the two of them is like the bond between a bird and a crag. In these circumstances desperation goes by the name of love. Defeat on all fronts is assured.
Then comes the invisible patron. His protegé will never be on first-name terms with him. In fact, in some cases he’ll never see him. The invisible patron is capable of raping a writer without the writer even noticing. The invisible patron isn’t a meek and prudent soul, as one might imagine. On the contrary: he’s usually a clever brute.