Who is the best literary witness of an event?

JV: In El testigo, yes, I was very interested in asking, Who is the best literary witness of an event? From a judicial point of view, there are conditions determining what one can say in a courtroom. But from a moral, psychological, and literary point of view, the subjective process that makes someone a good witness is much more complex. So El testigo is about the formation of the figure of the witness and to what extent the witness influences what he sees. I do not believe that any witness is completely passive or apathetic. Inevitably, the witness participates in the experiment of looking. But the attitude of the protagonist in El testigo is very different from the one I have when I watch soccer, which is a much noisier, celebratory, and unrestrained attitude.

RL: So, it’s a question of distance, too.

JV: Exactly. And when I write a novel in which the characters are unique and a little distanced from the reality in which they find themselves, when they’re actually uncomfortable in that reality, what I am looking for is a personal, individual voice. By contrast, in soccer I look for the voice of the tribe, the collective voice, the contemporary Greek chorus that expresses itself in a stadium.

RL: How does the relationship between the collective and the individual function in El testigo?

More at World Literature Today.

Also see The Quarterly Conversation’s translated excerpt from El Testigo and Notes on El Testigo.

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

1. Three Percent’s Politics of Translation Event If you're in Rochester . . . (maybe they'll post video for the rest of us): Next Monday (March 23), we’re hosting a roundtable discussion...
2. Didn’t Realize Juan Villoro Was This Funny If you can read Spanish, this is a pretty hilarious dialog by Mexican journalist and novelist Juan Villoro. My knowledge of Villoro has been shaped...
3. The Tunguska Event "It has also been suggested that the Tunguska explosion was the result of an experiment by Nikola Tesla at his Wardenclyffe Tower, performed during one...
4. Author Event: 4/25: Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Whether to gaze up in adoration or to nail him on the head with a tomato, you’ll have your chance to see JSF talking about...
5. Author Event: 4/12: David Thompson and Philip Lopate: American Movie Critics When it comes to film critics, David Thomson is about as big as they come. The author of the Biographical Dictionary of Film, as...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.