“Crumbs no longer feed us/we want the whole loaf” are verses from the song Tot explota pel cap o per la pota from the album A Alcoi (1974), by Ovidi Montllor, which has become an anti-capitalist anthem. They mean that simple people, the humiliated and offended of yesteryear, want everything. But do they want everything? It doesn’t seem clear to me at all. If there are still people who want the whole loaf, they want it served sliced. Years ago we lived much less than now; there were more road accidents, overdoses, and incurable diseases. When you could have something, you wanted it now. But now? First, there’s too much of everything. Second: people live many years, and the thing increasingly consists of filling them. It’s not enough to say: bring it to me, I can’t be without it. Everyone has long trajectories that go through many stages: today you have this, tomorrow you lack that. And increasingly, you have to learn to live a sliced life.
Read more Rodoreda lysergic
All this philosophy is relevant given the disarray of Sant Jordi. Taking advantage of the popularity of writing schools, one could be set up to teach writers how to manage their own work, in line with the ever-increasing life expectancy. If you start writing at twenty and publish – let’s say – until seventy, that’s fifty years of turning the crank. It’s not just with writers. Before, Jimmy Connors or John McEnroe would win a few championships, celebrate wildly, repeat a couple of times, and then good riddance. It’s not like that anymore. You start at seventeen and at forty you’re still playing with the ball. When you have to retire because your knees are gone, you feel like you can still put up a fight. James Hunt won a World Championship, Johan Cruyff has three European Cups. Are they worse than someone who has seven? I love the articles that Josep M. de Sagarra wrote in the magazine Mirador – the famous aperitius–. He started on January 31, 1929, and finished on July 2, 1936, fifteen days before the start of the civil war. Seven and a half years, with weeks when L’Aperitiu didn’t come out because Sagarra was in Port de la Selva writing a play. I, who am a fool, have had a fixed section for twenty years (and it must be said that I haven’t lost the desire to write always different things).
Read more The life of the party
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I think writers should prepare better for longevity
I think writers should prepare better for longevity. Not burning out our world quickly as soon as we emerge from the egg. Having more resources and more themes, being more varied, living more and working better. Understanding that there are great examples of prolific writers – Simenon – and also many corintellados and marcialslafuentesstefanias disguised as serious authors, who keep hammering away, with books that are hard to distinguish from one another. A collection of novel slices is not a loaf of bread.
Read more Sunset at the Nobel hotel
