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  • A Cake Full of Knives: An Interview with Elisa Victoria

    A Cake Full of Knives: An Interview with Elisa Victoria

    Elisa Victoria on child narrators, comics, and post-Franco Spain. Translated by Charlotte Whittle.

    PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s magazine for international and translated voices. PEN’s members are the backbone of our work, helping us to support international literature, campaign for writers at risk, and advocate for the freedom to write and read. If you are able, please consider becoming an English PEN member and joining our community of over 1,000 readers and writers. Join now.

    Elisa – thank you for talking to me. In your novel Oldladyvoice, we follow Marina, an anxious but hilariously discerning 9-year-old girl spending the summer with her grandma while silently battling life’s miscellany of demons: her mother is sick with an unspecified illness; she’s having to endure the humiliation of a late baptism; and her debilitating shyness prevents her from making friends, or kissing them. I’d like to start by asking how the character of Marina came to you.

    I wanted to portray a responsible girl, who does what she ought to but also has a strong will, who’s fun and a little bit naughty but also touching, who is in a complicated situation but finds balance through things she can rely on – comics, dolls, her relationship with her grandmother. I wanted her to have a particular idea of religion in which the Christian God served as a mediator for her worship of her mother as a higher deity; I wanted to show how communication problems occur from such a young age – how she relates to her grandmother, for example, and how she falls out with some of the children around her because she can’t grasp their social codes. My idea was to create a composite character – like a cake full of knives, or a knife stained with a red liquid that turns out to be strawberry jam – and work with these mixed feelings that exist simultaneously, because, to me, childhood is a period of extremes, with many contradictory, coexistent layers.

    Marina has such a unique voice; it is both hilarious and incredibly moving in its profundity. How did you and your translator, Charlotte Whittle, work together to capture this voice in English?

    Charlotte was very respectful, asking me about historical context and local expressions – she gave me total confidence, and I was fascinated by what her questions were. She also showed me a draft of the first chapter, to see if I thought the tone was right, and I loved it right from the beginning. I thought it was a fantastic translation, where non-literal equivalencies made for a shared effect.

    Oldladyvoice is your first book translated into English. You’ve spoken elsewhere about the satisfaction this brings you, but specifically that ‘it feels . . . as though the words have more value now that they’ve been translated by Charlotte than they did when I wrote them.’ Could I ask you to speak about this, and what you feel happened to your words in the process of translation?

    I think that has to do with it being the first time I saw myself translated, and also with prejudices around the English language. I was so used to my own words that they had lost their meaning; seeing them transformed gave them back their value. There’s also the concrete value of English, a language I’ve known since I was a child and that, for different cultural reasons, I’ve deeply respected and even idealised. It’s silly, but seeing myself translated by Charlotte made me feel like a “real writer” for the first time. My main source for finding the book’s style was the writing of John Fante, something I had discussed with Charlotte and that she had taken into account, and it was fascinating to see myself in his language.

    The story takes place over a summer in 1993, at what feels like a pivotal moment in Spain’s history: Franco’s brutal dictatorship is still a recent memory for many, but there’s a sense of hope for the future. As Marina remarks, ‘the nineties are all that stands between us and what’s next.’ You were also a child of the 1990s. In what way did coming of age in this decade influence you and your writing? And what impact does it have on Marina?

    I was interested in several aspects of the nineties, and I drew confidence from knowing first-hand and in depth what they were like, what it was like to be there. It is true that numbers have the power to influence us, and the millennium had an air of conclusion about it – an ending before the beginning of something else. In Spain in particular, there was a certain mood of triumph in the air after all the suffering the civil war and the long dictatorship brought, with the Seville Expo ’92 and the Barcelona Olympics happening around the same time. It was superficial, but it made a huge impression on children, who are so sensitive to advertising campaigns and who truly hoped for a bright future thanks to that vibe. I chose 1993 because it coincided with the hangover of these big events, which left the atmosphere of a burst bubble behind them, and a terrible drought that summer, which seemed an appropriate accompaniment to the protagonist’s psychology. And because of the re-election of Felipe González, a president beloved by many women at the time, which offered the counterpoint of a social phenomenon with a dose of humour.

    Marina is obsessed with El Víbora, a subversive cult comic for adults published in Spain between 1979 and 2004, subtitled ‘Comix for Survivors’ (in reference to those who lived through Spain’s 40-year dictatorship). There are several concurrent stories of survival in the novel: Marina’s attempt to survive childhood; her mother’s battle to survive illness; and the survival of national trauma throughout the twentieth century. In what way are these stories of survival linked?

    The characters in Marina’s comics are all transgressive in some way: they’re sex workers, addicts and troublemakers, but, to Marina, they’re ‘a formidable army backing her up’ who ‘fill her with hope’ and show her the ‘path to salvation’. Why is it that Marina is drawn to these characters and their creators? Do you yourself find comfort and courage in the outsiders of literature?

    These characters shed light on forbidden topics that tend to awaken a magnetic curiosity in children precisely because they’re issues swathed in mystery and secrecy. They’re marginal characters who face a lot of obstacles, and so Marina identifies with their difficulties, seeing them as heroic figures who can handle major (and often unfair) pressures. She also finds inspiration in the comics because of the quality of the stories and the style in which their authors present them: the idea that such a job exists – of telling complicated, beautiful, raw stories that are entertaining and spine-chilling, full of contrasts – gives her hope. It’s an artistic job to which she can aspire; it means that there are people earning a living from this work underground, earning money from telling those stories. That’s the path to salvation I ended up taking myself, the one walked by outsider creators in all disciplines, because when I could no longer stick to academic study, that path was there for me and for anyone who needed it; comics taught me a way to tell stories that I was at ease with, and taught me that there were alternatives to official career paths. Showing both the distress and enlightenment they brought to that generation was an affectionate tribute.

    I think people are often dismissive of child narrators in the same way they’re dismissive of children in real life, assuming they lack perspective on the world, a notion that Marina subverts with endearing effect. Was this a consideration for you when writing the book, and why did you choose to write from this perspective?

    The perspectives of children and young people have always interested me because they give voice to an excruciating tenderness that makes you laugh and bleed at the same time. Childhood and youth are periods so rich in nuance that I never tire of stories about these stages of life. There’s also a certain vindication of the complexity of those experiences and psychological phases, an urge to demand respect and dignity for people going through them and not being taken very seriously. I realised I was obsessed with these issues, and that I tended to write stories about younger people, so I decided to delve into that as much as I could in the novel form, where I could fully embrace the voice of a child, get it out of my system and put it into words, in case I forgot what it had been like to be a child. I wanted to take advantage of that information and leave myself a kind of handbook for the future, to prevent myself from turning into one of those adults who seem not to remember anything of youth.

    In a similar way, I think some readers may be shocked to read about a 9-year-old girl who is so compelled by sex and violence, often conflating the two in her mind and making herself the protagonist in her fantasies. I found this aspect of the book so interesting, and I feel more and more writers are exploring the complexities of children’s interior lives. Did you have any apprehension when tackling this aspect of the novel? Did the freedom required to write this story come to you easily?

    I was convinced that thoughts like these take place in the minds of many children, but I knew those passages would be somewhat troubling. I had published a couple of experimental books where I’d written with ferocious freedom, and so I had practice and confidence in addressing those themes that made it come easily. But, at times, I tried not to go so far in this book, toning things down slightly in some parts so they wouldn’t be as brutal. Even so, I know some readers find them shocking. My Spanish publisher asked me if I was sure about the passages, but I was certain that I had already toned it down quite a bit. I’m not the first to have portrayed this kind of complexity and I won’t be the last, and I’m happy to belong to that tribe.

    It feels like what Marina wants most is to be seen and understood – by her peers, but also by the adults in her life. Is there something we can learn from the novel about how we relate to and treat children?

    Well, I suppose a nice conclusion would be that it’s possible to communicate deeply with children if they’re treated considerately and spoken to naturally and with interest, taking into account their points of view, their circumstances, and the fact that they’re human beings with enormous ability for perception and reflection. We can take people seriously without being tactless.

    Marina is an impossible character to forget. Has she stayed with you since you finished writing the book, and has she changed you in any way?

    When I was writing the book, I had a huge catalogue of scenes with her at different points in her development: looking at the cutlery drawer from above and below, sitting and watching TV with her grandmother, tossing and turning in bed unable to sleep – endless reels of images that I visualised. With time, one of these has remained with particular force, and when I think of Marina, I always picture her sitting alone on the kerb, eating an ice-cream, with the slightly strained expression of someone pondering difficult matters but at the same time concentrating on enjoying the ice-cream’s flavour and refreshment. Now that you ask, I think the way she’s changed me has to do with her giving me the chance to let go of all the information I gathered from working in such depth on her character. I spent years taking notes on childhood, my own and that of others, and I stored up that information against the clock, fearing that it might get blurry as time went by. Publishing this book, and the fact that it worked as a kind of essay on childhood, has lightened my load – she has lightened my load.

    Finally, speak to me about your friend, the author Andrea Abreu. While different in tone, Abreu’s debut novel Dogs of Summer can be read as an interesting companion piece to Oldladyvoice. Do you see your and Abreu’s novels as belonging to a new literary tradition?

    I don’t know if it’s new, since we both have sources in the past that have shown us the way, many of them shared. But I do think there’s a shared spirit when it comes to our interest in exploring the raw and the beautiful, the broken and the tender in all their richness. I do feel that our works communicate in some way, and not just because they tackle similar periods in terms of the protagonists’ ages. Andrea told me, at some point, that Oldladyvoice was an inspiration to her. And for me, reading Dogs of Summer gave me back the purity of creative energy that at the time I felt had slipped through my hands. It filled me with courage and set me on the path to my next book.

    Elisa Victoria was born in Seville in 1985. She has published two books of short stories, Porn & Pains in 2013, and La sombra de los pinos in 2018, and has contributed to several anthologies. Her debut novel, Oldladyvoice, was published in Spanish in 2019 to great critical acclaim and was selected as Book of the Week by El País. It hs been translated into English, Italian and Portuguese. Her latest works are the novel El Evangelio, and El quicio, an illustrated book in collaboration with the artist Mireia Pérez, both published in 2021.

    Charlotte Whittle’s work has appeared in The Literary Review, Los Angeles Times, Guernica, BOMB, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her translations include novels by Jorge Comensal, Elisa Victoria, and Norah Lange; her most recent translation is Papyrus, the international bestseller by Irene Vallejo. She lives in England and New York.

    Interview by Zoe Sadler, English PEN.

    Photo credit: Joaquín León.

  • And when the Mexican comic emerged from the sea…

    In the latest of our PEN Atlas Mexican series, novelist Laia Jufresa muses on the fall and rise of Mexican comics

    Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott

    I remember my first lesson in narrative art: the day I learnt – or experienced – what a deus ex machina is, and why it’s not a good idea to spring one on your reader. I was at a family gathering and my aunts and uncles were reminiscing about their childhood, one populated by characters from the comic books they bought religiously every Friday: Kalimán, Los supersabios and La familia Burrón, all of them made in Mexico. One Friday, Kalimán (which was printed in sepia) ended with the hero chained to a rock, plummeting to the depths of the sea. My aunts and uncles spent hours – days – constructing elaborate theories about how he would make it out of the water. (Would he break the chains? Would he be saved by his sidekick Solín?) But when they finally got their hands on the next issue, it began like this: ‘And when Kalimán had emerged from the sea…’ The treachery! Unforgivable for the average child in the fifties, who consumed Mexican comics with the same feverish devotion with which children today demand iPhones. Even now, people born in the fifties make jokes based on those comics. In the company of my aunts and uncles, for example, you can’t show any kind of bodily disgust without them comparing you to Borola Burrón, who was horrified when she learnt she had a skeleton inside her.

    Because of all this you might think that I too was raised on a healthy diet of local comics, but I wasn’t. By the time I started to read, at the end of the eighties, the national comic book industry (which had at one point been the most productive in the world: every week, two million copies were printed of Kalimán alone) was in decline. The main publishers had decided to focus on translating material from elsewhere (much cheaper than producing their own) and the stands were filling up with imported superheroes. The country’s comic book tradition was sinking fast, chained to a rock. My generation read foreign comics. Bernardo Fernández, ‘Bef’, perhaps the main representative (and defender) of graphic novels in Mexico, learnt English by reading comics and has said he feels ‘no creative or emotional connection to the old Mexican comic strips’.

    But now the Mexican comic book is emerging from the sea, transformed into webcomics or graphic novels. Over the past four years, government-funded scholarships, national prizes, dedicated festivals and a few more publishers (Resistencia, Sexto Piso, Caligrama, Jus – still not many) are getting behind the genre. This is a new creature, more sophisticated and, inevitably, less popular. However, this creature has not simply materialised from the ether – it has materialised from the persistent efforts of its creators – and neither is it the daughter of the twentieth-century Mexican comic book alone. If anything, it is its long-lost niece, an animal with mixed blood in its veins: from manga, from pop, from French bandes desinées, and from everything else the random tides of the internet can cast ashore. And this great variety of influences leads to a great variety of voices and styles, from Edgar Clement’s complex clarity to the muted palette and painterly flourishes of Patricio Betteo, via the playful, digital figures drawn by Micro and the straightforward yet subtle watercolours of Alejandra Espino.

    It is interesting to see that Mexican history is still the most important character in the country’s comics, however far-reaching their other influences may be. This was the case in F.G. Haghenbeck’s anthology, A Mexican in Each of Your Comic Books [Un mexicano en cada comic te dio] (paraphrasing a line from the national anthem: ‘a soldier in each of your sons’), as it is in the forthcoming Moquito and the Colonial Sarcophagus [Moquito y la Momia Colonial] by Juanele (set in the colonial period) and Rafaela by Alejandra Espino (about ‘a woman in the twenties in an alternative Mexico City, an aspiring muralist who wants to paint fantastical rather than historical scenes’). In Cry of Victory [Grito de victoria], Augusto Mora explores two recent civil protest movements: the marches in 1971 and the #YoSoy132 protests. There is also Operation Bolívar [Operación Bolívar] and others by Edgar Clement, which are rooted in fiction and mythology but have clear parallels with the country’s painful contemporary reality. In a sense, the history of Mexico also stars in Uncle Bill, the new graphic novel by Bef, a virtuoso account of William Burroughs’ fateful years in the country.

    It isn’t all Mexican history, of course. The brilliant Powernap happens in the future in a place that could be anywhere in the world. Its author, Maritza Campos, began writing it in Spanish, but – like Bef, and like so many others – she has become bilingual and almost bi-national as a result of consuming and assimilating so much American culture, and she soon switched into English. Powernap takes place in a world in which people no longer sleep; it’s illustrated by Sebastián ‘Bachan’ Carrillo and you can read it online or buy it in an elegant edition that was financed by crowdfunding.

    In a country that tends – by necessity, by instinct, by way of a response to its barbaric reality – towards graphic violence, I think it’s worth celebrating the people who are producing graphic novels instead. People working hard at telling good stories. Because this – telling stories – is, I think, also a social responsibility. Storytelling with images has historically had a wider audience because of its ability to reach people who couldn’t read. This isn’t necessarily the case with contemporary graphic fiction, and yet I see in this new creature of ours a determination to go far. And I hope it does. It really deserves to.

    Find out more about Laia Jufresa at www.laiajufresa.com.

    Read English PEN’s open letter to President Enrique Peña Nieto on the occasion of his visit to the UK as part of #mxuk2015.

  • Who invented the graphic novel?

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    The concept of the graphic novel – comics printed in permanent book form – has a long history in Europe, but the term itself was originally coined in America in 1964 by the critic and dealer Richard Kyle. It was his attempt to cast off the tropes and trappings of lightweight comedy and juvenile subject matter, which have been so long associated with the word ‘comics’. Among Kyle’s inspirations, assuring him that the medium could flourish in more than ephemeral periodicals like daily newspapers or monthly comic books, were the handsome bande dessinée albums he was importing from France and Belgium at the time. He knew that the buoyant French-language market for comics in book form, often hardcover and kept in print for decades, dated back to the best-selling phenomena of Asterix in the 60s and Tintin in the 30s. Kyle published a call to arms for American creators to aspire to the same sort of lengthy, ambitious and more adult projects, inventing the phrase ‘graphic story’, and out of this, developing the notion of the graphic novel.

    Fifty years later, it’s remarkable how much has changed. In Britain, the arbiters of taste have been slow to accept modern comics as anything other than kids’ stuff. But a series of tipping points have included Posy Simmonds and Raymond Briggs being inducted into The Royal Society of Literature in 2005, Mary and Bryan Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes winning the 2012 Costa Book Award for Biography, and this summer The British Library in London hosting Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, the largest exhibition of British comics ever seen in Britain.

    Elsewhere across Europe, the graphic novel has become an increasingly popular sector of publishing and, along with children’s books, one of the few to defy the current trend for declining print sales. By far the largest producer is France, where the output of bandes dessinées has increased astonishingly over the past dozen years, topping 5,000 new titles per year and tapering off only slightly in 2013. Despite the fact that, in the term ‘bande dessinée’, literally ‘drawn strip’, the French have found a neutral, non-judgmental way to describe comics, they too have adopted the term graphic novel or ‘roman graphique’ to promote longer, more literary, serious and experimental work, and distinguish this from the more standardised genre fare in regular, often serialised 48-page albums.

    Equally rich and burgeoning are the comics scenes in other countries, spurred on by national funding, and grants for translation and printing, for example from the Flemish Literature Fund, FILI, the Finnish Literature Exchange, and the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Only ten years ago, German publishers had not decided what to call these unidentified printed objects, resolving in the end to adopt the English phrase and nurturing their own vibrant variety of authors. Now major festivals, exhibitions, dedicated centres and a network of activists support and expand local growth and international exchange as never before.

    Translating comics requires special skills beyond the purely linguistic. For a start, the space allocated to speech/ thought balloons and narrative captions both defines and confines what can be written within them. And the language of comics is not only verbal but visual, so words and images must interact smoothly. It is no coincidence that perhaps Britain’s greatest living translator of comics, Anthea Bell, famed for her dazzling work on Asterix, is the daughter of Adrian Bell, the first cryptic crossword setter for The Times. As a girl, her lateral thinking was honed every morning when her father would test his latest puzzle on her over the breakfast table.

    On May 14, four acclaimed graphic novelists from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain will read from their works, demonstrate their drawing and discuss their work with me at The British Library in a special extra event as part of European Literature Night. Books featured on the night will include the English edition of Judith Vanistendael’s When David Lost His Voice, published by SelfMadeHero, Line Hoven’s Love Looks Away, published by Blank Slate Books,and Max’s Bardin the Superrealist, published by Fantagraphics. The line-up also includes Lucie Lomova’s The Savages, which awaits translation. Their diversity of subjects, from historical documentary and tender family secrets to the loss and lessons of death from cancer, and Dalí-esque philosophical dreamworlds, is sure to fascinate and inspire. Five decades on, Kyle’s ‘graphic novel’ is firmly established, a significant medium with an exciting, innovating future ahead of it.

    About the author

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Paul Gravett is a London-based freelance journalist, curator, lecturer, writer and broadcaster, who has worked in comics publishing and promotion since 1981. His latest book is Comics Art published by Tate Publishing (2013) and Yale University Press (2014). He is currently co-curating the first exhibition on British comics for The British Library in the summer of 2014.

    His website is www.paulgravett.com.

    Find out more about European Literature Night, and the writers showcased there.

    The British Library exhibition ‘Comics Unmasked’ is open now until 19 August 2014.

    Richard Kyle was interviewed by Colville’s Clubhouse about the term ‘graphic novel’.

    Buy When David Lost his Voice, Love Looks Away and Bardin the Superrealist at Foyles.

  • Comics, cartoons and controversy

    Michele Hutchison reports from the 41st Angoulême Comics Festival, the opportunities for, and resistance to, translation, and how the irreverent form of comics still finds plenty of time for controversy

    After our enjoyable experience translating graphic novelist Brecht Evens together, fellow translator Laura Watkinson and I decided to take ourselves off to Angoulême this year. Keen to find more translation work in this genre and with a whole kit-bag of languages between us (Dutch, French, Italian, and German into English) we decided to ply our trade at the comics festival of all comics festivals. We were to discover that, although the genre has become more literary, the idea of a literary translator for comics is still rather novel.Invited to a dinner held by the Dutch Foundation for Literature who are supporting now comics, the first language we found ourselves speaking was Dutch. The great satirical artist and agent provocateur known as Willem (Bernard Willem Holtrop, 1941-) initially made his name as a Dutch cartoonist, but was charged with high treason after a 1966 caricature depicted Queen Juliana as a prostitute, and he moved to Paris and built up an illustrious career in France, combining politics with obscenity. Last year, he was awarded the Grand Prix d’Angoulême, a lifetime achievement award. It gave the Dutch the perfect opportunity to get their foot in the door.This year, Willem invited twenty comics artist from Holland to come along and produce screen-printed posters satirising French current affairs and fly-post them all over Angoulême. The project was called LA BEDE EST DANS LA RUE and was highly visible and very effective. (Do check out the posters on their weblog.)  A good deal of these artists’ books have been or will be translated into French but few are published in English. Typex’s Rembrandt was recently published by Self-Made Hero, who will also be bringing out Barbara Stok’s Vincent, translated by Laura, next month. Jan Cleijne’s Helden van de tour (Heroes of the Tour) has just been sold to Head of Zeus.As we dined with this select group of Dutch artists, attempts to ply our trade were met with incomprehension. Translators?! What are you doing here? We all translate ourselves into English. Or we write in English. Do comics need professional translators? We can’t afford them.We ended up editing Jeroen Funke’s self-translated texts at the dinner table instead. The next day when we did a tour of the stands and the rights’ centre, we encountered similar patches of resistance. One publisher translated from French himself and had an editor check it. Others used native speakers of the language being translated from rather than the other way round. Only the French, who with their thriving comics industry form an international hub and translate from many languages, were un-phased by the concept of comics translators.Unfortunately, we can’t translate into French! So it was time to relax and enjoy the show instead. Two of my favourite graphic novelists, Rutu Modan from Israel and Alison Bechdel from the US were coming to give talks, both had recent books about their family. The concept of the graphic novel as opposed to the comic was partly derived from the fact that there has been a growing trend in biographical and autobiographical works over recent years. La Cité internationale de la bande dessiné, Angoulême’s über-modern, super-fantastic comics museum bore witness to this fact too. ‘Towards the end of the twentieth century a new form arose, featuring current affairs, society, world travel. It was a way for the reporter-artist to reconfigure observed reality and offer a personal vision of the facts’.The personal is often political though and the comics genre’s history of subversion is one of its most popular characteristics (see for example Mad magazine est. 1952). Alison Bechdel, famous for the Bechdel test, said she knew how it felt to not be seen, and she wanted to render visible people on the margins of society. Her famous series Dykes to Watch Out For is a page-turning, at times hilarious lesbian soap and deliberately includes more than one black character (no token measures). The French interviewer clumsily questioned Rutu Modan on the unconventional-looking female protagonist in Exit Wounds, giving her the perfect opportunity to wonder why a woman shouldn’t be represented as very tall and not conventionally beautiful. This is what real people look like.Meanwhile, a cartoon on the front page of the local paper poked fun at the outrage from Palestinian supporters that the Israeli company Soda Stream was the official sponsor of the festival, and the Japanese ambassador had apparently denied the historical accuracy of a wonderful exhibition featuring Korean works about the enforced prostitution of ‘comfort women’ during the second world war. Check out the drawings of Tack Young-ho, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Choi In-sun and Jisue Shin if you can find them. Translation work may have been scarce but there was enough controversy to go round.About the authorMichele Hutchison worked in British publishing and in Dutch publishing for many years before becoming a full-time translator and blogger. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.  Additional informationThe Angoulême Festival website in FrenchFleurs qui ne se fanent pas – Korean exhibition on Comfort women.More information on the Sodastream controversy at the festival.Please see here for ‘Ghentish Talent‘, Michele Hutchison’s previous PEN Atlas piece for graphic novels from Flanders.