The author of the Bevilacqua and Chamorro saga of the vigilante enjoys reading the novels of Verne and Dumas to his daughter in bed. He doesn’t watch series because they take time away from books: “It’s like swapping caviar for canned foie gras”
Lorenzo Silva (Madrid, 1966) is a copy of Bevilacqua, the first part of the contractor that has been cherished for years – 13 episodes are already – the saga that best illustrates the ‘picolicia’ in the Spanish novel. Neat and formal, in the power of a prose that penetrates into the soul of man, but that has an eye for what is happening around us, because all times have their worries and those of us who go through life are children of our circumstances. As happens to his protagonist, he knows firsthand what it is like to “dedicate himself to things where he seldom waits for a prize” after that half hour that he reserves every night, and which he squeezes with relish, and in which he reads to his daughter of 9 – “in the original version, no adaptations”, he specifies – the novels of Jules Verne or Alexandre Dumas. And it is that this man, with hardly any social life and with a concept of friendship where “15 people barely fit”, lives by and for books. And like everything that doesn’t add up subtracts, he categorically says he doesn’t even watch series anymore. “It would be like swapping caviar for canned foie gras.”
6.30 am in the morning. My cell phone wakes me up, but without a shrill sound. A quick shower, a glance at the papers and the day’s appointments, and breakfast: two eggs – of which I only eat the whites – a long coffee latte and a squeezed juice. When I take the girl to school, I have time to read; if my wife does, I’ll be on my way at a quarter past eight.
8.45. hour. I live in Getafe, but I work in Illescas (Toledo), in a house where we spend weekends, holidays, vacations. It seems like a full-fledged journey, but it’s twenty minutes in the ‘Volvo’ – he has two – which I’ve always felt as opposed to heavy traffic. I, who have had four children and even traveled on the subway and wrote standing up, now discover that with silence you surrender much more.
10:00 am. My day to day is quite monastic and the method is unchanging. I have the map in my head before I start writing, which doesn’t mean I don’t make changes right away. There is no cork for all the characters being developed or the stages they have to go through. I don’t even take notes. In my previous life – he was an accountant, tax consultant and lawyer for 12 years – I fought the traffic jams in Madrid in this way and formed stories in my head that I later put on paper when I had some free time, which was little. I have kept the habit and since I am old it is a mental gymnastics that I recommend to everyone.
2:15 pm I stop to exercise. When I lived in Barcelona I took my bike and went to the beach which was 8 kilometers from home, crossing Llobregat Park. Just 10 minutes watching the waves was enough to recharge the batteries. Being in the Meseta now I have no sea and the climate here is much more hostile, I changed it for something much sadder but more effective: the elliptical.
03:00. I’m not a cook at all, I leave the bragging rights to my wife, who embroiders the fish. I don’t eat much or complicate my life: I make a salad and some turkey, or I go to Mercadona and buy a tray of sushi. Only then, with that mixture of sobriety and movement, can I work four hours in the afternoon, but if I am in a particularly fruitful moment or the novel requires a certain immersion, I extend it until ten o’clock in the evening and stay there to sleep.
9:30 pm Today there was no need for excesses. I come home and find the best time of the day, which is when I put Nùria to bed and we read for half an hour. Now we are with ‘The Viscount Bragelonne’, having completed ‘The Three Musketeers’ and ‘Twenty Years Later’. But the original, mind you, it’s 1500 pages, no edits. We took the habit during the pandemic and she has gained more reading comprehension and her performance in school has skyrocketed. ‘White tooth’, ‘20,000 leagues under the sea’… I didn’t do it with my other children – who are older, one has become independent and the others live with their mother – and now I regret it.
12.00. I do a lot of advertising for ‘La llama de Focea’ and today I have to go to the Frankfurt stock exchange. When I read the most is when I travel, if the flight or train takes three hours I can get a 400 page book. My agent is waiting for me, let’s go for a walk and eat.
10:30 pm I’m finishing a beautiful book without translating it into Spanish thanks to our unique publishing ecosystem. ‘Khatyn’ by Ales Adamovich tells of the massacres of Nazi liquidator groups in Belarus in 1943, a terrible story about the horrors of war and why these Slavs are so harsh.
6.30 am in the morning. I check the news as soon as I get up. The political climate is becoming increasingly scarce. I think the problem is that there is no community of interest and solidarity is not being worked on, and a society that does not practice this with its members has at least a reserved prognosis. For example, the renovation of the judiciary that has been standing still for years, what does that say about us as a society? Well, we are ruled by somewhat unscrupulous people; that we have two so-called state parties incapable of changing anything that discredits the country does not speak well of them.
12.00. My works are about the end of terrorism, our presence in Afghanistan, the drama of the Straits, the Catalan independence movement… Paul Preston says mine is starting to resemble the National Episodes, making me blush very much because it would’ doesn’t even occur to me to compare my results with Galdós’s. But it is true that there is a literature that, as it delves into the human soul, pays attention to what is happening around us. I think that was Galdós’s look and of course I try to make it mine.
1:00 pm. Back to Spain. In this society, only the headlines make the headlines and the analysis stands out for its absence. Without stopping we jump from treetop to treetop and thus we lose all the forest below. A society in which forms matter less and less, which is often a symptom of the loss of soil.
10:00 am I watch very few series. My wife and I, who are both devoted to writing, came to the conclusion that we were wasting time reading. Come on, we traded caviar for canned foie gras. Lately, we’ve made an exception for “Better call Saul,” the prequel to “Breaking Bad,” which doesn’t insult my intelligence with tricks.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
