Carlos Ruiz Zafón

welcome everyone to the Athenaeum theater and it's so great that you came out even on such a dark and stormy night it's lovely to see such a big crowd here I'd like to begin by respectfully acknowledging that we're meeting here on the traditional land of the Kulin nation now I'm guessing that most of you here tonight have been to Barcelona and I don't mean literally if you've read almost any of carlos ruiz the fonz novels you've been to Barcelona and what's more you've time traveled in Barcelona you've been to its cafes and eaten its cured ham you've been inside its most evil jails you've caught the trams and stood under the street lamps and wandered around the book shops and probably developed a love-hate relationship with this beautiful blood-soaked city Barcelona born la-based writer carlos rusev on writes fantastical literary thrillers packed with intrigue and adventure books that have other books at the very center of their stories he's written at least seven novels he's been published in more than 40 languages and he's been honored with numerous international awards so maybe you're one of the 15 million people who've bought and read his novel the shadow of the wind which is the first in a quartet of books that take their inspiration from writers as diverse as Enid Blyton and Alexandre Dumas so tonight we have a rare opportunity to find out how on earth he's done it the plan is that Carlos and I will talk for about 40 minutes and then we'll open the conversation up to you for your questions to put to him before we close at 9:30 and in fact when the time comes there'll be mics on either side down the aisles there so we'll ask you to actually get up from your season go to the mic rather than us trying to find you in the crowd with the mic and keep in mind that the sessions being recorded tonight there will also be opportunities for you to get your book signed by Carlos because he'll be in the foyer signing books after the sessions finished so Carlos it seems to me that at the heart of most of the stories you tell is a deep and abiding passion all books you write books about people who write and sell and love and treasure and sometimes even burn books so I wonder if you could take us back to where your own passion for books first began well I remember as a as a child I was always fascinated by by storytelling probably when I was a child to me it was it was difficult to differentiate of two separate different kinds of a storytelling to me was all part of the same it was only later that I would start kind of uh putting things together but I remember as a child was was fascinated by movies by comic books by by books by anything that could be used to tell a story I was fascinated by words by images by sounds and and all these things always wanted to remember thinking I want to figure out how it's done how it works how the engineering or the architecture of this things work and it was only later I think maybe when I was in my teens that I started to separate things and to think of books as different thing or literature and comic boots and films and theater and all these things but originally when I caught the bug so to speak and I caught it very early on to me it was all a big back of storytelling and was there you know what books the big thing in your family or was there much oral storytelling in your family not really my family was not become boobs or movies or music or anything like that I was always the odd one there was always the I'm going joked and say well you don't resemble anybody in the family there must be like they switch the babies at the hospital to this day I think that that's the true explanation either that or a Martian dropped me somewhere you know I was just too heavy to carry to the final destination so the stork as they say you know flying from Paris when they cross over the Pyrenees they say you know late that looks good and so it was Barcelona they drop me there but I was intended to somewhere else but there were never a lot of books around or I was always seeking them and trying to find them or asking my father to get me books or I would borrow them but but but in at home it was kind of there was a big TV and that was about it and so as this interest and understanding of different genres of books developed which genres were you particularly attracted to as a reader at first I would read anything a thing like most readers you read whatever is available closely and I remember I would read offers with the books that my father was buying and my father bought different kinds of books one kind was collections of that at the time I think in Spain were very fashionable or that were collections of classics like all the Nobel Prize winners and they were printed in this really theme paper in tiny microscopic type that was very hard to read and and the pages were kind of transparent so when you were reading them you could hear both one side of the page on the other which was an eight mer maybe this is what I'm wearing glasses to this day because I was trying to decipher I don't know the complete works of John Steinbeck and Somerset Maugham and Thomas Mann and there were a lot of these books that my father had bought they won't look the same I think you could buy them by meters or something you know people would do this and they look very cool say like I'm a cultured person I have books so I would read this books and on the same time I would I would read comic books my grandmother was gracious enough to buy me Marvel Comics and I love Marvel comics as a kid and then I would read also crime novels and science fiction and and then classics and I would read everything you know to me even the same way that was saying that at first I didn't differentiate things to me it was all part of the same and I was intrigued at how these things work how they were created how the technique to generate these things so it was only much later that I started to put Raymond Chandler on one side and Thomas Mann on the other side and Cervantes and another sail and the x-men on their rightful place in the beginning I had all them mixed together like Don Quixote was there with the Captain America it was kind of a mess well I mean I think that's very interesting because one of the things that's often said about your writing is that it you you are mixing and matching genres you're creating this whole kind of hybrid thing which we'll get to a little bit later but it seems to me that the heart of your probably your most famous best-selling novel shadow of the wind is a labyrinth so there's a cemetery of Forgotten books which is kind of a labyrinth but the plot itself is like a labyrinth to one in backwards and forwards in time multiple layers of storytelling different voices adding to the portrait that you're building up of this mysterious character julián Carax how do you plot a story like that I mean what are the mechanics of this well they're complicated and I always say that I'm good at complicated things and complicated things and not at simplifying I like complications I like labyrinth like I like complicated systems and I'm drawn to these things and and I find them pleasing and I think I'm challenging so I'm trying always to come up with ways of structuring things in ways that they can be complex that can lead in many different directions and the way I do it is I think about it a lot I try to design plots I design story arcs I design things in many layers and and especially I think when it doesn't matter how much you plot and design and can see things everything has to be redrawn over and over and over to me writing is essentially rewriting and and I start with a concept with an idea with a number of things and I started designing a structure surrounding what I the design also is thinking layers so that there's not just story threads or storylines but there are many different layers there overlap and in getting to each other and and this gets complicated it's like a huge clockwork mechanism so to speak you start designing this thing and you start complicating it but do you design it and then make it or do you make it as you're designing it I first I've noticed that over the years I remember when I started writing stories very early on I was improvising things when I was a child I started writing in before I was 10 years old you know and I was making up the stories as they went and then I would go back and trying to figure out what I had done what were the problems would were the structural devices in there the more the older of God the more I would start thinking about what I was gonna do before I was I was I was doing it and and now in the last over 20 years which is I've been a professional writer of making a living doing this what I do more and more is think about everything a lot for a long time and juggle every all this elements in my mind and when it gives the time to execute it I need to have everything planned out and then I change everything again and again and again and again until it does exactly what I wanted to do I think I like to think of a book as a novel as Gothic cathedral made of words and I think of course did you to do that you need to figure out all the mathematics and all the engineering before you start building anything before you lay the first brick but once you do that you realize that doesn't matter how many calculations and how many plans you have you may need to redesign and restructure and change everything until it's not perfect but at least it's as close as possible one to your original idea so the the little community of characters who joined by this cemetery of Forgotten books and who are a part of I think at least four four of your novels did you keep coming back to that community because of the characters or because of this I guess conceit of the cemetery of Forgotten books did you have this sort of series of intergenerational stories blinking all of these people or suggests you just kept the you know I liked I'm going to come back to that no actually this is an idea that came to me it from the from the beginning when I started working on shadow of the wind I had the idea for this for different stories and and the way I saw it in the beginning I remember when I was maybe 20 30 40 pages into the shadow of the wind I still thought I could do it in one book that it could be some kind of monstrous 3,000 page book something you know like a huge cube and maybe also figure yeah the the ultimate door stopper of all time but then I realize that this would be a monstrous book that you cannot sell this thing in a bookstore that people would die underneath it trying to read it you know the word reader would be in the papers reader at officiated underneath it probably the for latest book and I say no and and the thing is what I wanted to do with is I realized by then in the beginning of the book that I didn't necessarily want to create a sequential story or a saga what I wanted to create was as you say a labyrinth of his stories that had four doors of entries so there would be four different books each one of the books would have its own personality its own boys but it would be connected to the others and you could read them in any in any order you could read one two three four you could read one of them you could read two of them and depending on what door you took into the labyrinth depending on the on the road you made for yourself your experience as a reader of the story of the angles of everything would be different would be new would be constantly rearranging itself so when I saw this in the beginning I thought you know the right way to do is do it break it in four books and create them as this different entities these different parts of a clockwork mechanism that is going to be constantly twisting around it seems you do this with your hands because familias books are like a Rubik's Cube you know you have to sort of look at them from different angles to make it all make sense our Theory you know the Rubik's Cube did it did you you have a mental image of how it should be but then you start playing around with the math of it and then you lose your way and then you find it again and then you have to calculate things I like that idea and I like that idea of approaching a story which is essentially a story of this boy who has lost his mother and wants to find out what's going on in his life and then all the characters that surround him and instead of just trying to tell it like a huge 19th century sagging with you beginning here he go from the beginning to the end to just try to deconstruct all the pieces that make the storytelling and and and and assemble them and kind of kids that that the reader is gonna be able to pail play around with and this was the original idea from the beginning and it was one of the brilliant things about that structure is that you plant a whole lot of clues and questions for us in each book which make us desperate to read the next one or the last one or or whatever order in order to fill in that part of the mystery - but that spiral sort of the game of the storytelling one of the commedia central theme of this quartet of novels of the cemetery of Forgotten books is a story telling itself this is not the story of Daniel or his mother or for me nor carracks of course it's their story but essentially the books are about storytelling about how it works what it's our relationship as readers with with the writing with literature how all the devices how all the different genres work and it's to me a way to play around with all these things and to try to combine all imaginable genres into one and to blend something else and use all the tricks in the book and and some and and and play around with this and this is really the spirit behind this books this is why you find all sorts of things you find all devices all techniques all combinations everything jammed in there and everything hanging the skeleton of this kind of classic literature saga of the boy who's trying to find out meaning and redemption and so and so it's interesting because the the book is about books and a love of books but it's also it's also a book about how dangerous books are because books and the search for books and the writing of books and the loss of books leads so many of the characters into such terrible trouble there is because I want incorporate different perspectives into this you have for instance indica indicates a shadow of the wind you have the perspective of the readers somebody who falls in love with literature and with books and with words and with the beauty of it all and wants to find out about it and then in the Angels game which is the darkest part of this you go to the other side you get inside the kitchen and you're going to side the mind of a writer and in this case is a writer who is kind of doing his own descent into hell because he's losing his sanity so the whole story is the story of this man who's seen reality implode in front of him and he's trying to haul into his life on paper while he can but we see that he's starting to lose everything and that he doesn't really know anymore what's real and what's not and that story that descent into madness is articulated as one of his books as a gothic melodrama so we're trying to to to explore the form of the storytelling of noble of genre by using the circumstances of the character and going from different angles and from different perspectives and and get this yet how sometimes literature can be a gif can be something that changes our lives and fills it with beauty and with knowledge and with ideas and imagination but sometimes for some of the people who devote their lives to it like the B Martine the right in the Angels game it can become a curse and it's something that it's eating him alive he has given his life to this thing and you fall in love with literature but literature never falls in love with you back never it's like the FBI you know and and in this sense it's interesting for me to explore these different perspectives us from booksellers to publishers to writers to readers from people who love books to people who hate them and want to burn them and to find out why why why is all this stuff and and because the books are about books about literature about language so trying to explore all the different experiences and different ways of looking at it and there may be and why do people want to burn books I mean they do it they do it as fictional characters in your books but you know through history people have wanted and have actively burned books what what is that about no I think books traditionally have been the repository of beauty and knowledge also of ideas and conscience and memory and and I think the idea of memory of identity memory is what defines our identity we are what we remember what we know and and we can only absorb or we can understand the things that can bear can be articulated in a language could be a verbal language it could be the language of science of numbers of music of math but the human brain that cannot absorb or transmit or learn or do anything else that doesn't follow a storytelling sequence and and and this is why books and words and ideas are so important and this is the first things that we try to destroy when when when you see a culture it tries to destroy another one the first thing they want to destroy our culture and their language that's the first thing they do because when you destroy language you destroy identity when we the think of ourselves people think what defines them closer how they feel they belong to a group to a nation to a culture to something for most people the first call will be language this is what gives them a sense of unity and they feel closer to those who speak the same language as they do they find somebody who speaks a different language that's the other that's the foreigner that's somebody else it's not about borders or flags or even races is about language and all of that the articulation of language of ideas is in books this is why sometimes we want to destroy them because to destroy books is to destroy the mind in the prisoner of heaven your character Danielle's in Paris is to an academic friend of his you should write a secret history of Barcelona seen through its accursed writers those forbidden in the official version and that's kind of what you've done with these novels isn't it yes this is what I've ever I've tried I try to do I've tried you to tell what I feel is the real story not just of Barcelona but but the real story about many things which is never at the official story and and try to go to how things really work then and what are the motives and where are the passions that that motivate people and hatred and love and greed and envy and desire and fear and longing and generosity and all these things all these things that make human nature and make us good and bad and a mixture of all these things and try to see how they actually work rather than try to follow the official version of how things work or try to say yes this is how it is where this is how nation works so this is how a city works it rarely is the way we are being told and I'm trying to find out from the grass roots of the characters of their lives in the reality of things so I said earlier you know that at the heart of these books is a passion for books and lighting but the other deep and abiding passion that it seems to me comes out in your writing is for the city of Barcelona itself which is a place that I've visited twice and you know totally fell in love with as many people do but you offer the reader an extraordinarily vivid sense of place in these novels almost kind of very dark literary tourism what what is it you love about barceló well there's a principle there's a presumption there isn't there did you love Basilone well Barcelona is the place I was born and raised and so I always say that when I think about Barcelona Barcelona is my mother you know it's the place where I came out I'm a product of that city and there are many things about Barcelona I don't like there are many things I like there are many things in which I have conflicting feelings because I Barcelona is a city that especially over the last few years has become extremely touristic so people go there and it's a beautiful city and people go like oh oh oh no so everybody is in love with Barcelona which is I don't know what may happen to me if I go to Florence or to Venice or to Rome or to Paris you go there and you see beautiful things and you go who then and this happens to people who go to Barcelona I cannot be a tourist in my own City because I was born there I'm a product of those streets so I see it differently and I see many different layers as each one of us sees the place where we were born you know it's it's a different relationship you have so I think at some point all riders wanna counter terms with the roots with the raw regions the first three normals I polish had nothing to do with Barcelona one was set in the South of England during World War Two the second in Calcutta in the thirties in the third in Normandy in France it wasn't until the fourth book I published a novel called Medina which I there kind of go back to what's Ilana and try to start figuring out what were my feelings around the city and after that in this case when I decided that I wanted to do was rather than portrayed the city as it is which is impossible because there are as many more Solanas or as many male burns as people who know them it's what is a city is City as many different things but I decided that I wanted to create a character based on the reality and the fact on the on the on the geography and the history and tried to get to the soul to what to me is hidden in the heart of Barcelona and try to portrayed it as a character and and this is what I've been trying to do in this and this rather than using it as a backdrop trying to do what you do with characters that you write lines for them and you you create a scenes and you create costumes and makeup and you move them around the stage and you try to play around with them to tell a story and so my relationship with marcelina is is complex is you know as the place where I came from and it's the place where I still live part of the year and and I would say it has improved over the years you know I think many years ago when I was much younger I've had a need to get away from the city that I could not really understand but I needed to go away and I think in time I'm much more in peace in Barcelona I have made my peace with it and and we're fine I think we tolerate each other flying we even like you know each other a little bit that's how we know we now have a friendly relationship where you say hey how are you doing oh you're apart yes yes well are you gonna be well few months oh great wonderful so I hope it doesn't get it doesn't either ruin it or something Barcelona as with many many parts of Spain has a very dark history particularly during the period that you're writing about or that the characters that you're writing about are reflecting back upon the Civil War the lead-up to the Civil War post the Civil War and I wonder did you have to do a lot of research to recreate that time in your novels or is that is the knowledge of the kind of the level of complex violence and cruelty that you write about is that still very present in people's minds in Barcelona no I don't think it's pressing especially people who didn't live through it and and sadly most of the people who live through this terrible circumstances are have passed away or very elderly so I think most people today wouldn't even dream or think about the things that happen in this places that they inhabit or that they are having fun not that long ago but that the same could be said I think a form of Europe when you go there and imagine what was going on I don't know in 1945 and now you go to Europe and you walk around any city it's like you know are the end of the world happened here half a century ago and now it seems like it's all Benetton mega stores and coffee houses and things like that so it's an employment yeah and high unemployment so it may go back again to the loop but the thing is history has its songs mysterious ways of of disappearing apparently but stays there I I've always been very interested in history in general in the history of Europe and in the history of for of course of of Barcelona so over the years of always trying to to learn as much as I could and then again there's that thing that when you are from a place you can of absorbed the memories of the place you kind of absorb it through your family through that the common memories through through through through what the stones tell you and and to me is a combination of that I didn't do any research because what I try to do is I write about things that I know very well so I don't do a specific research or something I'm constantly doing a research about many things I don't know if I'm gonna use that I just like to learn things and because I'm interested in these things it may happen to 15 years down the line I may use 1% of what I found out about something in a story and then it's good that I know about it because I'm able then to to to use that until you that in an honest way in which you you know what you're talking about you're not frivolous on it or you're not phoning it in but I don't do a specific research especially about the city of Barcelona because I need to if I was writing about Melbourne even if I had lived here for many years I would need to really try to find and even then probably would be shy about talking about certain things because I would ask to tell myself what the hell do you know you can write about you're gonna talk about these things because you cannot understand that it's interesting that the the first few novels that you wrote were classified as young adult and then the next four were classified as adult and I wondered whether you consciously sat down to write these books for specific audiences you know young adult or adult audiences or whether that's not such a big clear division in your mind when you're writing timmy was more of an accident really the first book I published over 20 years ago one in Spain at the time a beak award for young adult literature that came with a load of cash and at the time of course I was trying to survive as a writer and and make it and I was I think it was so aware of how hard it is to survive as a writer to make a living just you need this to stay there and don't fall down the drain that the fact that I unexpectedly had found success in a field that I never thought was gonna be mine because I never planned to be a young adult writer I didn't even understand the jeredy that well to me readers were readers and and if you like to read you could be 10 years old on 90 and and I never really fully believed in the separations of genres I when I thought of myself as a young reader I thought you know when I was a kid I would never read something that was labeled young adult or for kids I would read whatever I was wanted I wanted to read and so at the time I had a conflicting feeling about it because I found this success with this first book for young adults and then the book was doing very well it has been doing very well ever since anything because of that I kind of maybe subconsciously or other artists out of trying to be very conservative and I'm very cowardly like kept on writing books for young people because I found success there and I thought that I could make a way there the problem is is the more advanced down that line the more I felt I was kind of first betraying myself and in a way betraying the readers because I felt that it wasn't really a rider for four kids so what I was trying to do was write books that could appeal hopefully for kids for young readers but for readers of all ages and I was trying to write stories filled with mystery with adventure and with Wonder and try to somehow communicate the loss of reading the excitement that that could be that could be had with a book in your hands and try to communicate that to young people because I thought that was the only value I was entitled to communicate I didn't want to preach I never wrote moralistic stories or about the issues of what goes on when you're growing up in the inner city know my stories where fantasies were adventures and there was more more of an accident really I was looking at a website today which had a list of suggestions of what you have to include in what they call a crossover novel something that's going to appeal to both young adults and adults for it to be successful added and included have at least one teenaged character and make things more complex not less it seems to me you know you've ticked both of those boxes everything well yeah this is wisdom after the fact that thing right now I think there are a lot of theories they fan out and right now young adult literature is one of the main markets and publishing around the world back then when I published my first novel that was labeled young adult even the expression young adult novelty and access they were called books for children this was before the Internet many years before Harry Potter and Twilight and hunt the Hunger Games and all this very popular and this was before this things that you find now in American bookstores that says is a huge section called paranormal team Rome where you find this kind of mysteriously sexy vampires in high school and I look at those books and I think oh my god this is the end of the world yes you don't think I must be a vampire in my expert I feel the human race has like six months it can't have any more if this is what its inverse surgeon arts you get this sense sentence but back then none of this stuff existed and and the ideas of what was young young adult literature or what you could write we're not as defined or or or market as as they are today but yes I guess if you're gonna write for young people include at least one teenager you know and try to make and thing you learn quick when writing for young people and and do your best because young readers can be the best audience you have because they're sincere they're not snobby they're not conditioned but they are merciless they won't stay with you one line more if you're not doing your job just because somebody said your book is good or because you have an award or because a review says that you have to think that that book is good they don't buy that stuff they start reading and saying okay and you're you're out of it so it it is it is a good school in a way yeah another thing that I saw in this website I pointed out that in Victorian novels youth typically ends with marriage in modern novels it often ends in disappointment and you know quite a few of your novels have ended in marriage or with restraining orders it's a it would call suburban paranormal romance yeah it ends up with I don't know with restraining orders and child molesters and things like yeah things like that well you know it seems to me that the other thing that's very much at the heart of so many of your novels is friendship and in particular in the quartet that the friendship between daniel sempre and Ferriman romero the tourist you know what a fantastic character and that is I mean that is a really really special unusual and intense friendship isn't it between those two men it is it is one of the main threat in the story is this relationship that daniel has with this character and I think the more we go into the books and the more we know about what's hidden and the story the more important the figure of fermion becomes and we need to understand what he has done with his life who was this man why he has become the man who he is and and to understand what he has done for this kid for for Daniel that apparently he meets accidentally in shadow of the wind and then we found later on that it's not really an accident of fate that there were other wheels of fate turning around and that what Furman has done it has great meaning and and and one of them one of the things in the story I think is more important there are there many mmm at the end of the day the stories are about the relationships are about the characters about what's in their hearts and there are many stories there are love stories or hate stories and their friendship stories and one of them the strongest and the most important in the fourth books is the relationship between fair mean and and Daniel because it keeps evolving at first Daniel is kind of a mentor to a child this child becomes a man and and therefore mean turns out that he's been a protector and a best friend but is the one who has been concealing a big secret that concerns them all so that the whole thing keeps complicating and their their friendship evolve over time and it's gonna last through their last thing to their life things there's also some some wonderful sort of archetypal qualities to tafero mean he times he reminds me of King Lia's fool you know he's always the guy pointing out how idiotic the guys in power are isn't he sort of the prankster the Jester he it's very much dad and one of the things and all of the character is in in this cycle of books because the books are about trying to deconstruct storytelling or reassemble it have many many roles and many meanings and and one of the things that Freeman has for meanness of courses is in a way in Amash to the picaresque tradition of literature but he is also the madman in detail is the only one allowed to say the truth because since he's mad or he sins the fool the Jester he's allowed to speak the truth when nobody else will and he's the carrier of history too is in him and he's there in all those moments it's very much the moral center of the story for me is the one that even though apparently he may be very flamboyant and over-the-top and he's a kind of a comical character so therefore you don't take him seriously but when you think about it when everybody else has lost that the thread the one that has his eyes on the ball the one who really knows what's going on the one who is never fooled and whose moral compass is really really sharp is for me and for me is the carrier of truth through the story and of honesty sometimes at a great price from himself because many of the many we see many other characters in this story that at some point the scientific to cross over to the dark side you to the surrender to not pay the price that live ones of them and to lose their honesty and become monsters while firming who's had many opportunities and and motive to do so is a man who strives to always strives to be a better person is buddy who's always staying honest and decent and he pays a huge price for that and he deals a lot of pain and a lot of hardship but that's who for meanness and that's why he's the central moral link between all the different threads and stores and characters in the saga and he's also like the standing father isn't he for Danielle because Danielle's father is almost an absent character he's so lost in this world of books and grief he's a him for me horizon and that heals lives he and we understand this finally when we read the Prisoner of heaven we finally understand what the hell was he doing there in shadow of the winner why does he pop up there in the middle of a storm as a beggar waiting for the meal and and yes he becomes first some kind of a surrogate father a protector a bodyguard a teacher a best friend a psychoanalyst and anything that he tries to do and and you see that he's trying as best as he can to do all these things and he tries to him to tell Daniel what he feels our essential truths about life which sometimes are ridiculous because he will try to instruct him in the ways of the world with his theories in some of her means series are outrageous or absurd by say about women about women especially and he will try the inn and and the DLS listening are you sure about this yes and he said this is the work the way the world and this is how women work and he said then he goes okay and he believes them but the the important thing is that while all these theories that Foreman is trying to communicate are funny and ridiculous they're always well meant he they come from his heart and he's not trying to to to fool Daniel or try to communicate a prejudice or thing it's just the way he expresses himself the way he sees them world and he's trying to do good which is what I like about firming that despite it all he is a man whose main main point is to be a decent person in a profoundly profoundly an indecent world and and that's his a struggle and that's what makes him the hero look we'd love to hear um your questions so if anyone wants to ask us a question just make your way to the mics which just popping up in the aisle there and while we wait for you to to do that cuz just coming back to this idea of a cemetery of Forgotten books and I wondered if you know what what's also going on here is the cemetery have forgotten book shops so many of your books center around a bookshop where the books are more important than the profits which is such a utopian vision for those of us who love books and who've spent many happy hours in book shops but all around the world book shops are closing and they you know they seem like an endangered species do you think we'll see the end of the bookshop the cemetery of Forgotten book shops I don't think we'll see the end their bookshelves what else's thing is unfortunately many of the bookstores that exists today will cease to exist others different bookstores will appear and and and things will all will change as they have always I think we always tend to think about our life's times or our memory as the standard as the end of history that this is it it doesn't get any better or any different it does we are just passing through and and everything that the ideas we have about modern publishing and books selling are relatively recent in the nineteenth century books were not sold or published or market or distributed in the way they are today if we go today to to a bookstore here in melbourne on collins we can find books from the nineteen century we will find Dickens and we'll find Wilkie Collins and ant all stolen and and Sola and ballsack that these books were created and published in a different environment and what we think of today as as as our bookstores are the way we find books we learn about them is a relatively recent thing it's changing it's a model that is changing is a cultural model and as a business model it's changing so we're gonna see changes we'll book survive well book store survive will the riddim worse about well that's up to us will our mind survive will we remain thinking beings or or not I don't know I hope so and I hope that in some way or another in some shape the concept of beauty of knowledge survives because I think that's what the lives is all about you know I think that there are many things in this world there are many things in in in life and there's a lot of crap but I think there are two redeeming values in life and in the world one is beauty and the other one is knowledge and this is what we find in books and in bookstores because at the place you meet books so hopefully they will transform themselves and hopefully the worldly people are still interested in thinking that have intellectual curiosity that have an appreciation for for words for language for imagination and I'm sure there will be some somehow I think they will survive it's so great to hear from someone so optimistic isn't it do we have anyone that's a little bit hard for me to say yes we do thank you very much you seem to be a bit disdainful about tourism in Barcelona and that Barcelona has become such a tourist City but also your books especially shadow of the wind has actually helped generate tourism and even a new genre of tourism with the literary walks around how do you feel about that well I'm not dismissive at all about tourism anywhere not in Barcelona in Paris and Melbourne tourism is a fact of life I'm a tourist quite often so I hope that when I visit a place that I like as a tourist I'm not bothering anybody so what I was saying is that Barcelona has become very true istic in the last few years I don't mean this is a good thing or as a bad thing it's just a fact Barcelona 30 years ago was not at statistic City as London or Paris or Venice or Rome maybe but right now it is even more so this is especially a development that started after the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 but probably over the last ten years has increased enormously to the point that as in many other cities right now tourism is one of the main businesses and livelihoods of the cities so I'm not dismissive at all I mean a lot of people make a living in Barcelona thanks to the hotel's the restaurants the stores and the visitors so that that is fine as to the the new form of tourism and kind of literary tours and and yes indeed there are a number of Tours now in Barcelona that use my books is some kind of excuse or spine to explore the city its history I think it's fine I've seen that in many other cities in different places I think it's an interesting way of getting to know a city beyond what would be the first impression I think it's like I don't know go I remember in London there used to have and I think they have many Dickens tours so if you got alone and then follow one of the stores you're gonna see the history of the city and from a different angle and you're gonna find a lot of things and learn a lot of things about London then maybe you wouldn't if you were just seeing the usual landmarks or following the usual route I think Barcelona precisely because of this great touristic explosion tends to concentrate people in a number of places which are the main touristic things and anything is interesting for many visitors and many people who are actually locals barcelonian stake these stores because it allows them to rediscover the city through different eyes and two fine things I think it's an interesting thing I have no connection or relationship to the store so if you go through our song I follow one it's certain that I'm making any money or anything like that you know there are companies who do these things are fine I'm flattered that anybody can use my books to to become interested in the history of my cities so if I'm helping or getting some are interested to find out more about what's Ilona trying to so I'm happy then that I'm able to do that and certainly have nothing against tourists because as I say quite often I am a tourist myself somewhere else but never in Barcelona that's what I mean that you cannot be a tourist in your own hometown even if you try I wish I could because Barcelona is a wonderful place for tourists but I can't help you a tourist in Barcelona another question over here good evening I know that many not sure if all of your books have been written in Spanish and then translated into English I just wondered if you felt that your stories could only be written in Spanish and if perhaps there might be other stories you could only write in English once a very interesting question I think that I think there's a writer of fiction I think most writers of fiction even though they may know different languages or may be tempting to experiment with different languages I think there's a very strong connection to the first language in which you learn to read and write which is accidental you don't choose that you were born in a place where you are educated in a language which you then choose but that first connection you established with that I think in the case of or for writer of fiction of literature is so strong it's so important that to fool around with that gives me some reservation of course I've noticed I've written things in English when I was not writing novels that were writing some other other things and you notice that the way you think and the way you play with the language is different and in my case for instance I know that when I'm writing for instance in English I have a tendency to be much more playful or to be clever or things like that because you are much more self-conscious about your relationship with the language in that language well if I'm writing in Spanish I'm not so I don't discount it the possible at some point of trying to write in English or why not but I'm sure it would be a different kind of material because it the relationship firfer that the most important thing about literature is language that's what you do you work the language that's what a writer does so if you switch the material you're using you're playing a different ballgame so I don't have the answers to the question maybe I will maybe we all try to torture you in a different language if you're patient enough I hope you don't run away and you try to learn whatever I write in different languages any more questions the audience yes we have one everything uh hi do you live in Los Angeles which is a city that's misunderstood by people who don't live it or haven't lived there it's a quiet city surprise there's a lot of people to hear that is a very safe city can you write barcelona when you're living in Los Angeles or do you write barcelona when you're in Barcelona or do you need to be away from it is that too close to you when you're actually there yes actually and I want to remark something you say that it's very true I think Los Angeles is one of the most misunderstood cities in the world certainly the most misunderstood place I know in the entire planet I think that you can only understand it if you've lived there for a while and that said essentially I try to work always in Los Angeles and I'm much more productive I concentrate better in Los Angeles and and most of my books have been really mean Angeles and most of the books I've written that used Barcelona as a character as a background have been written in Los Angeles for instance and and sometimes it's funny because people tell me well I think let's say about shot of the witness a very emblematic book of Barcelona to me shot of the witness 100% Los Angeles is a made in California book the book that I wrote mostly in in in Barcelona is the angels game and I think it shows I think the Bible you peek when you're in Barcelona or at least the one I peek or the one I peek when I'm in Los Angeles is very different and it tints the material in some ways so I've written about Barcelona in many different places and and I don't really have trouble doing so because I carry Barcelona in my own mind and essentially Barcelona I'm writing is a literary creation is a huge stylization rather than a very realistic portrayal of the city and but I tend to prefer to work in LA because for some reason it's easier for me I concentrate better and as I said most of these books that these Barcelona or 100% made in California what do you mean when you say shadow of the wind is it is a Californian oh is it because it's so cinematic no I think because of the the way it's constructed I think right now because shot of the wind and the other books became so successful and they were ever a very popular in Spain as well that they are look upon in a very different way as they were before they were polished when when shadow of the wind was gonna be published in Spain many years ago I remember that everybody in Polish told me repeatedly that this was the most honest Spanish book conceivable that it was impossible to sell such a book in Spain that nobody would read it that it had nothing to do with a Spanish literary tradition that it was that they didn't know what it was there was a review where one of the main reviewers and one of the main papers that took four years to review the book because he said that he had to read it five times because he could not understand it and he could not write a review about it all of this sounds ridiculous and comical but all this was going on at the time by now a shout of the winds is probably the most successful Spanish novel of all time so it has become a cliche to say oh yes of course it was not when it was published in which it was novel that was only accepted in Spain after it was a huge success outside of a Spain and and I never found that surprising and and because to me it had nothing to do with it it uses Anna stylization of Barcelona it uses the history of Spain but it has nothing to do with what was being done in Spain at the time has nothing to do with what is the contemporary Spanish publishing panorama and know that that is good or bad is just the way it is and and it was 100% Los Angeles in the way that it was created outside of the tradition outside of there and the connection was more to my own memories of the city to my experience as a person born and raised in that cities so it had to do with my own inner world but it was completely unlike any other book being published at the time and I think it still it has no really any connection to the same way that the others book don't have any any connection to it so this is what I mean that it's a made in Los Angeles to me it's the product of my years in Los Angeles it's not the product of my years in Barcelona I was this I decided to use elements from my own memory but it could it could be sent anywhere and and the same stylization will be made of any other place and and so it's there the books are not really about the city the city that appears in the books it's a character base in a city that exists that it's extremely a stylized but it's about something else probably time for just one more question yeah and one of the things I love and I particularly noticed in your work is that each and every character even if they're playing only a relatively minor role you know a lawyer appears for a couple of scenes you still give them their own beautiful elaborate backstories and I was wondering if that was something that we felt was really important was that each and every character got their own little personality and explanation in the story well yes I think and I think of fiction and novels the most important there are many elements and many pieces and in the board but the sensual piece that you are using to tell your story is character not plot I think sometimes people think novels are our plot plot is goes very low in in the number of priorities of what makes a novel work then character is very high and essentially what we think even as a reader when you think about it but you remember about books are not storylines our characters and moments and emotions associated with characters this is what we remember from fiction this is what makes fiction works and good plots dbl always come from from from character not the other way around I think you can sometimes very easily locate books in which it's either one way or the other you have plots that require characters and then the characters are kind of pawns to make a plot move and then you have books in which you have characters and then the plot is just an excuse to move them around okay we look unfortunately we are out of time but thank you for your questions and look it's been a real pleasure speaking with you tonight tell us calles Rousseff ons books are available in translation here in Australia published by Tex publishing I'd like to thank the wheeler Center for hosting tonight thanks to mark on sound and don't forget Carlos will be available to sign books for you in the foyer but yes above all please put your hands together for Carlos Ruiz

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 28,285

Rating: 4.9530792 out of 5

Keywords: Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Barcelona, The Wheeler Centre, Spain (Country), The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, The Shadow of the Wind (Book), The Watcher in the Shadows (Book), Sian Prior, Melbourne, United States Of America (Country), Publishing (Industry), Writer (Profession), Victoria, Los Angeles, Bookselling (Industry), Consulate of Spain, Sydney Writers' Festival, Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, City of Melbourne, Australia, Young Adult Literature (Media Genre)

Id: 6NHNhfUbxvE

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Burner_in_the_Video]

Hey there, fellow Spanish speaker! Our bad literary tropes are also worthy of attention.

DAE all our writers are Isabel Allende and Garcia Marquez?

Any fantasical elements make something magical realism?

Maybe this writing would be improved with more christ references?

[u/missmovember]

¡Buenas! I didn't know we had Spanish speakers here. Haz visto /r/libros? No es perfecto pero como se dicen en inglés «it gets the job done». Estaba pensando crear un sub solo para literatura latinoaméricana —especialmente para los cuentos, cuentos folcloricos y la poesía— pero no sé si va a ganar mucho atención. ¿Que piensas?