>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: I'm Gwen
Kirkpatrick from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
at Georgetown University; it's actual Spanish and
Portuguese and Catalan. And I'm honored to participate in
the National Book Festival hosted by the Library of Congress
throughout its 16 years of existence. And I'd also like to give a special
thanks to the Hispanic Reading Room of the Library of Congress and its
amazing staff and a long history. We also want to thank the
co-chairman of the festival, David Rubenstein and the many
National Book Festival sponsors, who made this event possible. We also especially want to thank
the Embassy of Spain and Spain Arts and Culture, who have a
beautiful house on 16th Street with many wonderful events. You, too, can support the
festival with a gift of a donation. Just check your program,
and on the app. The festival would not be
possible without the support of sponsors and book lovers. Just to ask you a favor,
if you have a cell phone, make sure it's turned off. We'll have a question and answer
after the author's presentation, so you can save your
questions until then. And please be aware
that your questions and answers will be
filmed and conserved. Carlos will also be available
for book signing from 2:30 to 3:30 on the lower level. Okay, from the size of the
audience, I see you know who Carlos Ruiz Zafon
is, but I'm going to go through my little paragraph anyway. Carol Ruiz Zafon originally
from Barcelona, is an internationally
acclaimed author, whose works have been translated
into more than 50 languages. More importantly, he is one of
the world's most read novelists. His literary career began in
1993 with the Prince of Mist, which was followed by The Midnight
Palace and September Lights. Those three are available
as the Mist Trilogy, and then The Haunting Maria. In 2001, he published his first
novel for adults; the others were for young adults like me. I love Marina. The Shadow of the Wind, which
soon became an international literary phenomenon. With the Angel's Game of 2008,
he returned to the universe of The Cemetery of Lost
Books, which grew further with the Prisoner of Heaven, 2011. And this November, I understand,
he will publish another volume of this group called Labyrinth
of the Spirits, but in Spanish. [Applause] >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
And as you know, his works have won many prizes;
and he has millions of readers. Okay, so now. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
That's my exemplary life. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Right. A question, all readers and critics
have praised your story-telling abilities, the strong plots and
the strong characterizations. Why is it that the world still needs
stories and needs stories in series? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well,
I think story telling is one of our natural instincts. We communicate through
stories, through sequences. The human brain can only
absorb, that can be structure as a sequence of events of ideas. And naturally at some point
because this is how we think, this is the software of our
brain, at some point the instinct to tell stories, to take that
and transform it so to speak, into an art, and trying
to understand ourselves, our experiences, the world, the
world we inhabit to communicate through fiction, through creations, through ideas, through
symbols evolved. And it has existed in
every single culture. It has reached many
different mediums, and no matter how many
technological changes, cultural changes we go through, the
need to communicate and the need to create, generate stories that
can be stories about the real world, can be narratives, persists. So in way, literature, what it
is, is trying to take that and try to create an art of storytelling,
trying to work with language in a way which is not
merely functional, but allows us to explore all these
classic themes in human nature, in our history, in our world
and try to create a narrative for our imaginary world, characters
that speaks and engages us. And I think it's one of our natural,
most natural and direct instincts that will always exist
in some way or another. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: And so much of the world's literature
exists as oral stories. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
That's how we began, uh-huh. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
Huge, huge amounts, still many parts of the world. You talked about continuing the 19th
century gothic genre in some novels or modifications of it, I think
it's, with its mysteries, monsters, and dark palaces or mansions. We have a lot of mysterious
monsters in contemporary television and films often set in remote times. Why is this so appealing
to the public, especially to the young public? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well, I think
that the narrative of the fantastic, the monsters, imaginary worlds, all these elements are just
elements in storytelling. I think it's only recently through
the 20th century that the marketing of storytelling has forced us
to consider different niches or different segments and to
create genres for the purpose of marketing them differently. Now we pull something fantasy
in science fiction and horror and mystery and literary fiction;
whatever the hell that means. So we have in all this
different labels that make sense from a marketing point of view, but
from a story telling point of view, all these elements have
been combined together since the early stages of
storytelling from oral storytelling to the written words, audio-visual
storytelling and they exist. And what I think is appealing
about these elements for instance, elements in the Gothic, the
sense that you can transform and take elements of the fantastic
or the atmosphere of many things and give them a new meaning,
give them, use the symbols and empower them to provide a
dramatic function inside the plot, inside the story that may not
have if we were to treat them from a purely pluralistic
point of view. And I think this is what makes
them so powerful and also so hard to use well because they're
like big weapons that can easily if they're not managed well,
they can fire back at you. But if they're well used, I
think this is why the tradition of the fantastic that goes back
centuries, you know, if you, for instance you take an example that everybody knows,
William Shakespeare. The plays of Shakespeare are
filled with monsters, with ghosts, with the prodigious, with mysteries,
with elements; and he combines all that stuff because it
it's a ghost story. Hamlet is a ghost story, not
necessarily, it's a tragedy. It's a great story about human
nature about the human condition, but he uses all of these elements
as devices to tell the story, to give a specific
power to symbolism. And I think this is
why if these devices of the fantastic are well used, they
continue to resonate with audiences because there's a point of them,
not because the audience believes that these things are real. Yeah, they're, you know, right
here in the mold, dragons and elves and things like that. No, but if we use this kind of
elements, vampires or ghosts, the stories, or haunted
houses or whatever, these things I think allow us to
tell more and tell more intensely and reach into the topic elements
that are in the minds of readers or in the audience and
this is where why they're so interesting and so rich. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: But
your monsters are not, we have a lot of block-buster movies
where the monsters or like robots; they're highly technological. And a lot of your monsters are... >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah,
they don't run on batteries. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: They
don't run on batteries, they're incredibly physical. Could you just talk, I was
thinking about that in Marina. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah, Marina. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: The
monsters, they have, they're wood and secret and plants and vines. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah, one of
the things I've been trying to do for now, I was very
intrigued by the storytelling and especially the Gothic
novels of the 19th century, the great tradition of the great
novelists of the 19th century. And ever since I was a
child, I tried to figure out how these narratives were built. And in a way so to speak, to
reverse engineer them and say, "How, how do they do this?" And what I was interested
is in trying to get this grand tradition
all these fantastic writers from Wilkie Collins Dickens
to all the great writers of the 19th century and say, "Would
it be possible to take this model of storytelling, which is the
birth of modern story telling; most of the early grammar of film
comes from 19th century novels, the structural way, the use of time,
the use of plots and sub-plots, everything comes from there. But at the time of course
the readers, the audience, for instance the audience
of Dickens, Dickens was an immensely
popular writer in his day... >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Newspapers. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: It was
published in installments in magazines, in newspapers. He was making it up as he went. The versions of Dickens
we read today are kind of laboring when he finished. The famous 3-tong novel was
something that he had to go back and try to match things up
because they never matches. They had been published
originally because he was making up these huge stories
week after week. And so eventually... >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
With a deadline. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Oh,
yeah, with a deadline. But this created this kind
of serialized storytelling, the way of trying to hold
your audience' interest. I think there was very
interesting to me in this model. And what I've been trying to do
for many years, and I started doing that in Marina, is could it be
possible to deconstruct this model, this type of storytelling
and rebuild it as if it were a new engine, but incorporating all
the things we've learned through the 20th century, interest
of storytelling, which are many. Through the 20th century,
both story tellers and audiences have become
extremely sophisticated. In a way it's like we could speak
about a technology of storytelling in the way that technology has
evolved, what we've learned about how people absorb codes, how they can interpret
different languages, how they can be stimulated
in many different ways. And we've learned this
through movies and television, through advertising, through
graphic design, through comic books, through literature, through
many different genres, through modernist fiction,
through genre fiction to mystery, from Noir, from all these things. We've learned many, many different
things about the technology, the technique of how
can we tell a story in a more efficient and intense way. So what I wanted to do is see
would it be possible for me to try to take all these things, all
these devices, all these techniques and recombine them in trying to
bring back the classic tradition of storytelling from
the 19th century novels, which is about the classical themes
of literature of old time and try to re-invent this in a way that
stimulated modern readers in all of these different de-coders
that now we have in our brains because we've grown up
watching TV, watching movies, reading comic books, reading
different types of fiction, seeing journalists, and
seeing many different things. So we have built in
without even realizing from childhood all these
little decoders in our brains that a reader of Dickens never had. A reader of Dickens had never
seen a movie, had seen TV, barely had seen any theater,
barely had been exposed to many forms of storytelling. Now days in our world, we are just, we don't even realize how
sophisticated we are as audiences. So I thought, could it be possible
to bridge this thing for an audience that can be simulated from
many different angles and try to use the classical themes of
literature that we've learned. And this was something that
I've been trying to do, move in that direction
for a long time. Marina was the first
attempt to try to do this. And then the quartet of
the World of The World of, Cemetery of Forgotten Books,
The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, so forth, is
what I've been really trying to implement this, trying to do this
attempt to get closer to this ideal. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: We're
smarter than we know. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: You
didn't know about that. While you're looking into the
kitchen, this what happens when you step into the kitchen, say, "I didn't know you put this
crap into what I'm eating." Say, "Well, if you step into the
kitchen, you're going to find out too much information, so you
either stay there in the dining room and you don't know
what you're eating. It tastes good, don't ask. But if you want to know
what goes into the pot, hey, it's your choice, so now you know." >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Okay. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: I know
it sounds very pretentious and very laborious and like it's a
laboratory, and then the technology of the 19th century, sounds like
some kind of steam punk stuff. And, you know, it's
just storytelling. I think it's the job of a
novelist, of a story teller to figure these things out and then
to present them in a seamless way in which when you're reading,
you're just flowing through the text to see what are, you're
immersing yourself in the imagery of the characters in
the world you're telling and you are not seeing
all the technicalities; things like when you cross
the Golden Gate Bridge, you don't think about mathematics. But it's about mathematics, that's
why it's a glorious engineering... >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
We hope they knew. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Or the
Cathedral of Cologne, you know, that thing centuries ago, you know,
it was designed so when you walk in, people would go in and say, "Oh,
my God, this is the House of God," and they would be humbled
by that monumental structure and that's how they
thought in emotional terms. But the Cathedral of Cologne, it's
about mathematics and engineering and is a prestigious feat that
even to this day is so impressive, imagine that in the 13th century. So I'm putting this parallel
between engineering or technicality of architecture and literature
because I think they're very close. You build something that in
nature is very technical, but the reader should
never realize about it. It should fell easy, simple,
something that you enjoy and you are not aware
of how it was done. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: One of your main characters
wants to be an architect. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah,
there's one in Marina and one of, there's a parallel
in which he wants, he dreams of becoming an architect,
and by the end of the book, he inherits this mission in which
Marina was trying to write a book that she will be never able to. So he takes it upon
himself to finish the task. So he was dreaming of
becoming an architect, and he will be an architect,
but an architect of story that Marina leaves in his hands. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Okay. Your first four novels were
called young adult novels, but there are similarities
with some of the later novels. Some of the same things reappeared,
young orphans or young people who might as well be orphaned. They're alone in the world
unanchored, particular attention to old people, I think, really
moving portraits of older people, older than I am, mystery,
and the presence of the real evil in the world. And I suppose a question
why for young adult novels? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well, the
ugly truth, it was an accident. I never meant to write
for young adults. I was hoping to at some point, I
always knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to make a
living writing stories, writing books, and
that was my calling. And when I was four years
old if you asked me, kids want to be an astronaut,
a soccer star, or psychopath, or something, I would say,
"No, I want to be an author. I want to be a writer." And for me it was very clear, the only thing was how
do I convince the world that this is such a clear thing? And it took me a few years, so until
I was maybe in my mid-20s or so, I had to make a living doing
other things that had a lot to do with storytelling,
but were not novels. But at some point I managed
to do that and I became when I was 20-something
a full-time writer and that's what I've been
doing for my entire adult life. And the thing is why that? I had written a number of
novels that I didn't publish. There's some monstrous
things that you have to write to learn your craft and nobody
should ever read, should be burned. But I think, I always
thought that you had to earn your right, you know. Time is limited, so if you have
the enormously pretentious sense that you deserve other
people's time, if what you write is worth other
people's time, you should work as hard as you can to provide the
best you can to them because say, "You know, I'm going
to take a few hours out of your life, so
I better earn it." So I wrote this novel
for young adults because at the time I thought
it was a good idea, whatever. I had written a number of novels
that I didn't want to publish, and this book that was my first
published book called The Prince of Mist [title in Spanish]. I won a big award in Spain
for young adult literature. And because of that and because
the book became quite successful and I found success in a field
that I had never expected to, and I was aware of how hard
it was to survive as a writer. You know, you see it around you
and all writers are like people, it's like an abyss and people
are hanging from a thread, like you know, in cheap movies where
you see the rope is going, like, threeep, threeep, threeep, and everybody's looking
to see who's next. And down there are the snake pit. And at some point somebody snaps and
they fall jumm, you never even it, he never hits the bottom. It's like, "Oh, my
God, I'm going next." So you become very much
aware of how hard it is just to survive as a novelist. So because I had found
success in that field, I became very conservative
and I didn't want to leave. I was scared to leave,
so I pretended to be a writer for young adults. I don't even know to
this day what that means. What is a young adult? It's an adult? It's a child? I don't know, to me
they are readers. Some of them are 8 years old,
some of them are 90 years old. I don't care, I don't ask from them for a driving license,
I don't card people. And I found 15-year-olds
were immensely more mature than people they you need
to do the carbon test, you know, where they from, so. It's like, I don't care,
I don't care about that, but at some point there's what we
were saying about marketing labels. So I wrote a few, three books
that could pass for young adults. To me they were just gothics,
super natural adventures, some kind of re-invention of
Victorian, old ghost stories. That's what I was trying to do. But then I realized that I was
kind of betraying myself, saying, "You know, I found success
and did something well, but this is not the kind
of book I want to write." So at some point I needed to, so
Mariana was a little bit of a bridge between the world of the
books I wanted to write and the books I had been writing. So it's a book in which I realized
that I could not pretend any more. I told my publisher at the
time, I'm working on something, but it's not going to be for you. He said, "What do you mean?" And by the end of Mariana I
knew that I could not go back to writing a genre, not because
there's anything wrong with it. I think it's a fantastic genre in
which it creates readers, you know, invites young people to read and to
consider the wonders of all the fun, all the pleasure, of all the
wonderful things they can find in the world of books. So these books have an importance,
you know, they have to be decent so people are engaged and
become readers for life. But I knew that I didn't really
have the stuff to do that. So I tried to veer into the,
what I felt were the kind of books I wanted to write. And the first one that was, you
know, for the first time I'm going to give myself the chance to
do what I always wanted to do and maybe I'll fail or not, but
at least I think I've earned after a few years of decent
success as a young adult novelist, and then it was Shadow of the Wind. Marina is somewhere in-between
because it was the place where I was trying to figure out
how to use my roots, my memories, my own city, Barcelona,
and try to, how to shape. At some point I think it
happens to all writers, you want to go back home in a way
and try to use all that stuff. At first you need some distance,
and I put some distance, my first three novels happened while
I was in the south of the coast of England during World War II
[inaudible] and Calcutta, you know. And the third one could
have happened in the moon, it just happened in
Normandy, in France, places that were kind of far away. So for the fourth one, say, you
know, the time has come for me to go back home and try
to figure out this thing. And I started using
Barcelona in trying to use it as a character, not as a backdrop. I tried to create a
character out of the city that to me represented what its
soul of the city and the whole city with many secrets with
a dramatic history. And I came out with this kind of
Gothic, Noirish, Barcelona with, has many secrets and old
palaces and all that stuff. I tried to create a character. It's not the real Barcelona
even though if you go there, you can see it, you can find it. And I was interested
in drowning it in fact. Most of the structures
I'm mentioning and everything, usually it's rel. It's there. You can go there and touch
the stones or these places, but the whole thing
is heavily stylized. It's seen through its stage in a way that gives them this
additional atmosphere. So it was a little bit, the
journey I had from writing books in which I had found success,
but were not my kind of material to just, you know, try
to be myself as a writer, which at some point you just
find what is your voice; what is your register? And that was with I
think part with Marina. And then it allowed me in a
way I felt that I was able then to tackle the kind of work I wanted
to do, which began with Shadow of the Wind, and the cycle of
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Well, you
took my Barcelona question, so I'll go to another one. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Always do that. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: In 2008, I
read an interview in which you said that 99 percent of the
best writing was being done for television and film. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well, that has
to be, that comes from an interview that was heavily doctored. These were not the words. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Oh. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Yeah, sometimes it happens that when you do print interviews,
usually if you say something on TV or on the radio, it's your words,
nobody can put words in your mouth. Sometimes if you do
a print interview, sometimes either there's
a mistake in the, or something maliciously
somebody puts you because it sounds very
provocative and it's going to sound like you're saying, "Everybody
is an idiot, ha, ha, ha." And they put that in the headline
and you're are never said that. Why would I say something
as stupid as that? What I said about this, and
I'm sorry about becoming because I've been hearing crap
about that interview for ages because people say, "Do
you really believe that?" And I say, "I never said that." Why would anybody say that? It's just idiocy. What I said that in
the last few years, a lot of the best storytelling,
not the best literature, a lot of the best storytelling
had been seen in mediums where maybe 20 years ago
we were not looking for. And mainly it was television
and cable television. And to this day I think
people, not 99 percent, I think that over the last 10, 15 years in which mostly cable
outlets have granted the power of creative control to
writers, we've seen a wealth of TV series that are extraordinary. And I think even though
I'm in the book business, I have to acknowledge that. You know, a lot of the best
storytelling today, not all of it, but a lot of the best
storytelling is done by very talented dramatists working
very hard and creating TV series. For how long, this will
depend if the economic model that has it made possible,
it's viable, it will continue. If not, it will disappear, so. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: You,
yourself are a script writer. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: I was. I bought my freedom though. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
You bought your freedom? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah,
I'm like those Roman slaves that they bought their
freedom after working for their master for a while. I used to work as a screen
writer many years ago. It lasted for a few years, it was
spectacularly and successful career in which I wrote things
or mostly rewrote things that never were produced, which is
what happens to most screen writers. You get hired to write something
that will never get done, and usually you're rewriting
somebody else at some point. You get fired, somebody
rewrites you. And you make some money and you
see there at some point you say, "What the hell I'm
doing with my life?" So you learn many things
about, along the way, some things about storytelling;
other things about the nature of the film business and about human
nature, which you could do without. But, you know, I guess it's useful
information that at some point if you're going to join organized
crime, now you know how it works. And so I worked for a while. And around the time I started
working on Shadow of the Wind, I was working on a rewrite, I
don't know, a certain project for a producer and I
asked him to fire me. I said, "You know, you and me know
you're going to fire me eventually, why don't you fire
me now, pay me off? You'll do me a great favor." And he said, "Whatever, you go write
your art book or whatever it is, get it out of your system,
and then you come back." I'll say, "I'll do that." Luckily Shadow of the Wind
did very well and so I kind of bought my freedom not to have
to be a screen writer anymore, which is not to put down
the labor of screen writers because there are fantastic
writers and dramatists working as screen writers, and a lot of
them got the chance to finally to show their jobs on TV because now
they were granted creative control by the film industry. You have serial creative
control as a writer. You're just a hired hand
and you're a chewing pawn and spit through the other door. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Were you
joined a very exclusive club in being an unhappy script
writer in California? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Yeah,
they're very few in California. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
William Faulkner and Francesca Fitzgerald were
big flops as screen writers. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well, Frances
Fitzgerald drank himself to death. Most known Frank around
Hollywood Boulevard, and William Faulkner
had this very fond thing in which years ago I became very
interested in William Faulkner, his adventures in Hollywood,
so what [inaudible] them? And he had an affair with
Howard Hawks' secretary. He used, lives in Oxford,
Mississippi and he was writing his fiction
there and his sales were very weak, so he couldn't feed his
family with his fiction. And so every once and a while,
because Howard Hawks like him, he gave him an assignment. He say, "Why don't you come
to Hollywood for a few months, make some money and then you go
back to write your art shit?" And he would go gladly. So in all these trips, he
started having an affair with Howard Hawks' secretary, which
was then later made a caricature. I don't know if you know the movie
Barton Fink by the Coen brothers. There's an illusion,
there's a sub-plot in which you find a character that
seems like an alcoholic novelist that is working as a, and they, he
has an affair with the secretary of big film maker or whatever. And they were having
their meetings in a hotel, which is the Knickerbocker
Hotel, which is just north of Hollywood Boulevard in an area
where now everything is owned by the Church of Scientology. The world has changed. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
The world has changed. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
The aliens landed. And nowadays that is a residency
for old people, very old people. And it's a ghostly twilight
world, and in there, you know, William Faulkner had this
love affair with this lady and everything he wrote,
barely anything of what he wrote got produced. And I don't think he ever
understood the business. There's this, an addict dote
in which Howard Hawks takes him and Clark Gable on a hunting
trip with a lot of big guns and big men with big guns. They're shooting things that move
and Clark Gable approaches Faulkner, who was kind of a short gentleman,
very dapper, very well-dressed, always with a [inaudible]
thing, and he goes, "And Mr. Faulkner,
what is that you do?" And he said, "Well, I'm a writer. And Mr. Gable what is that you do? "And so, he never got it;
he never got Hollywood, but he made some money that allowed
him to write some of his books that became very popular
and that hopefully to this day we can enjoy
which is a wonder thing. So you know, Hollywood
can be good in that sense. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Good. Well, I was going to ask you
about your work as a musician and composer, but we need to open
the time for questions and answers. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: We don't
need to scare people with that. We already heard enough
horrendous stuff. Say, "Don't let this guy make music. Give me a break." Don't worry. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: So please
use the microphones in the aisle. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
People already escaping when you mentioned the music. That's right, let's
run away from here. We need to get out of here. >> I do have a question. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Alright,
how about the first question. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: I hope
they survive the trauma. I'm so sorry. >> On the theme of Hollywood,
Shadow of the Wind seems like a very visual movie. Can we hope that someone
has an option on that? Will it be made into a movie? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well, for
many years many people have wanted to do Shadow of the Wind and some
of the other books into movies and you know, to cut a very long
story short, I've always said, 'No, I don't want to transform
it to a movie.' I turn everybody down
now because I didn't, the people I most respect I know in
the film industry wanted to do this out of good faith and
believed in the project. I told them, "Thank you very
much, but to me this whole cycle of books is," and this
may sound a bit naive because I could make a lot more
money and make them more popular if I sold the rights or make
them into a movie or TV series, but to me these are books
about readers, about writers, about the written word,
about literature, about the world of books. And I think it would be a
betrayal of their nature. And that's they mean to me and
that's how for me the version that I want all of you to experience
of these stories is already there. It has been projected in
the theatre of your mind in the way exactly I want it. [Applause] >> Hello. Since I'm
fond of the name Marina, I'd like to know how you chose it
for your book title and character. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: How
do I choose the book title? >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Marina. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Well, Marina is the name of a girl who's the central
character in this novel. This is a story of Oscar and
Marina and they're in the '70s in a very twilight Barcelona. And this is the story, it's
narrated by Oscar when he's an adult and he remembers what happened,
his coming of age story and what he remembers about Marina. So it's mostly about his sense
of what happened and this kind of magical character
that he discovers and that's the name, Marina. It's not about a yatzee
club of something. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Over here? >> Hi, my name's Catherine. Thank you so much for coming
out today and doing this. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Thank you. >> Catherine: I was first introduced to your literature a few years
ago reading The Shadow of Wind and the other two in the
Forgotten Book Series. The writing is just so
beautiful and engaging. And I have the chance to go
to Barcelona and see some of the places you were
talking about, and every time I read these
books I always worried that I'm losing something
in translation. How do you ensure when your books
are translated across the globe into so many beautiful
languages that the essence of what you're saying isn't lost
so that those of us who read them in whatever language is
still getting what you wrote? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Well, I try to work with the best possible translators. In the case of English, I work with
Lucia Graves, who we work together for a long time and we have
a particular way of working in which Lucia starts working
on a very rough first draft. She sends this to me, I start
reworking it and rewriting it. It goes back to her, she looks
at it and we go back and forth. And then I do a final edit
to make sure that a reader in English doesn't need anything;
that each dynamic, it's the music of each sentence, the pacing, everything that is exactly a
replication of what you get. In other languages, if I have
some knowledge of that language, I can work more closely or
not with the translator. And there are cases in which I
cannot help them unless I get a query from, I don't know,
from my Korean translator and she comes up with a problem. And I say, "Baby, you're
on your own." So in those cases,
yeah, you trust them because they're good
and they do their best. And one day maybe one day I show up
in Soule, a hundred people waiting for me in the airport
to throw tomatoes. Say, "What is this piece of crap?" And it's never happened. I think I've always
been very fortunate in finding great translators in
over 40-plus languages or so. But there are in some
instances you can't tell; in some instances you
can because you know. And there are some languages,
English, for instance. From Spanish to English
it's pretty easy to travel, and then there are a few dangers
along the way, but if you're aware of them, I think you can match
them almost, like, 99.9 percent. And most of romantic languages from
Spanish to French to Portuguese to Italian to many of these
romantic languages you can always be seamless. Then there are other, for instance,
Dutch in which the structure of the language grammatically has
some requirements or structure. You need to sometimes
break a sentence in two that in Spanish may be longer. You need to decide where
units of meaning would go and sometimes it's
trickier in some languages. But, you know, it's one at
a time and hopefully if, in the case of English,
which probably concerns most of you fellows today, I can vouch,
you know, every single thing in there, it doesn't go to print until I've redone it
a million times, so I can say this is
the book I wrote. And then in some cases
rewrote just for the English to make sure an English
reader doesn't lose anything. >> Catherine: That's
phenomenal, thank you very much. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: This gentleman. >> Good afternoon. So I'd like to return to something
you said earlier in your talk about how elements of the fantastic
have been in storytelling ever since we could tell stories from
Greek tragedies to, you know, Renaissance and how there's
a tendency in these days, we're so sophisticated, we're
almost hyper-sophisticated into labeling things that have these
fantastic elements into different. So I suppose my question
as a writer who may want to incorporate fantastic
elements, but not be labeled; is that unavoidable in order to get
published, in order to get marketed? >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
It depends, you know, it's a very interesting question. I remember the great
American writer, Gene Wolfe, which is one of the greatest
fantasy writers, one... >> The Book of the New Sun, yeah. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: They asked
him, "What is magical realism?" And he said magical
realism is fantasy written by people with Spanish names. So, and I think it's the best
definition I have for it. And it's true, you know, a lot
of these things are publishers and books sellers and distributors,
they need to find a place. When you walk into a book store,
there's a section that says, Fiction; and there's a section
that says, Mystery Thriller; another one says, Fantasy; and
say, Science-Fiction, Horror. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Literature. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Literature, you mean what? The rest is crap then? Or it means that this is so boring
and pretentious that just avoid it and go to the Mystery section. What does it mean? So it doesn't mean anything. It's just labels, it's marketing. So depending I think if your use of
the fantastic, it's more integrated into a more naturalistic way. I think it's about the
sensibility, how you use. If you really go for the genre
traps, if you really want to write a sword and sorcery novel, then you're going to
be labeled that. But then again, you
have interesting case in which they're writers
who're always borderline. Ursula Le Guin, she hates to be
classified away because she feels that she's being cut off from
an audience and she's right, but it's going to happen. I think one or two years ago the
English novelist Cakuto Shekuro wrote what would be called, you
know, a sword and sorcery novel. And he of course was so concerned
that nobody labeled it and say, "No, no, it's literary fiction." He came so estranged the whole
thing, say, "Dude, you wrote a story about the swords and giants
and dragons and castles and fairies," So this is it." And say, "No, no, no that's not it." I think he was concerned about this
labeling, about this thing about, you know, not being taken seriously. I think at some point,
you know, we as readers, we have the criteria
to decide what's what. And, you know, there's fantastic
material published as fantasy, as horror, as Noir, as mystery,
as literary fiction, as whatever. So, you know, you as a
reader, you just enjoy, and it's not about what's the label. The quality of a work of fiction
is defined by the use of language, by the storytelling, by
the characterization, by the world you create, how you engage the reader,
what the things you do. If it's a mystery novel, if there
are detectives, if people wear guns, if there's a spaceship, if
there's a monster or not, it's just people walking around in
room in Brooklyn in the '50s talking about the meaningless of
existence, whatever, you know, if it's good, it's not about that. Books are about storytelling
and what defines them, it's the storytelling, the
language, and the craft. What they're about, but
general they can be labeled. That it's just marketing
device, if you start believing in these things, you
fall into a trap. And if you're a writer and you're
trying to work in-between the seams and you're trying to incorporate, you're going to be
labeled in some way. And sometimes for reasons
that are pretty absurd. And end you may get your box of
books and you may find a dwarf with a sword and a monster
behind in the cover, and you say, "Oh, my God, why?" And, you know, somebody marketing
thought it was the best way to market your book or not. Or they may find something
very mysterious because it's literary fiction, so
we don't really know what it is, and then you cannot talk. But there's a dwarf in the book and he has a sword
and he kills monsters. Shh, shut-up, it's not about that. And so, you know, all
of this preconceptions and prejudices are a bit silly, but
are part of the industry or part of the business and you just have to navigate them in
the best way you can. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: One
final and brief question. >> Shadow in the Wind and so many
of your books are ode to books and stories and literary lovers
and so I was just wondering if you could name a couple titles
or authors that you love or serve as a source of inspiration to you. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Well,
there's a writer I admire profoundly who I had the chance
to meet today and talk to [inaudible] Joyce Carol Oates. Joyce Carol Oates I
think is a genius, is one of the greatest
living writers today and she's one of my
favorite authors. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
She's about [inaudible]. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: She's just
incredible about how she manages to be so prolific and
produce this level of quality. This is an example of, I have a very
wide range of interests and tastes. I for instance I think
one of the best writers of the last 50 years is John
le Carre just for his work in the language and
characterization as a storyteller. And say, "Well, it's
because," and I don't see him as a spy novelist or
something like that. He's a novelist, he's
a prestigious writer. He just happens to tell stories
in which sometimes there are spies and international intrigue. There are many, I'm very
interested in the work of some of the 19th century
writers that we mentioned, Dickens, Dumas, and company. I'm also very interested in a lot
of Noir writers from the Golden Age of Noir, Raymond Chandler,
Ross Macdonald, all of that to many
contemporary Noir writers, which I think are doing
tremendous job, the generation of the Dennis Lehane, George
Bellacontus, people like that. I love Stephen King, which today was
here blessing us with his presence, which I think is one of the
greatest storytellers of all time. I think he's a modern day Dickens
and he's also a prestigious writer. You know, there are a lot
of very different things. I try to read without prejudice, without paying attention
what things are labeled, if this is because
this is commercial or this is not commercial. I find a lot of these labels
downright silly, if not perverse at some point to try to
discriminate certain things. And, you know, what I do my
test, is I pick up something and I read half a page or the
first page or a page at random. You know right there
if you're in the hands of somebody who knows their craft. You know, if the language works,
if there's something there it's in the texture of the work. If something is well done, I don't care what's the
genre, what it's about. That's not what I'm going to enjoy. What I'm going to enjoy
is good work. And then I'm going to
be taken on a ride. I don't know, you tell me
the story, whatever that is and take me to another world. And I think that's the most to me
the best way to approach anything. So, you know, I could go on
and on about writers and things that I'm interested
in, and I'm hoping to continue discovering
new writers, you know. There are a lot of people out there
working hard, creating great things, so keep an open mind and go for it. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick: Thank
you, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
Thank you so much. >> Gwen Kirkpatrick:
A real pleasure. >> Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Thank you. [Applause] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at llc.gov.
