Anna Maria Villalonga: “I am pedroliana but I am not as fast as he was”

“It is important to spread the view on Pedrolo to more than just Mecanoscrit del segon origen and Joc brut”
“It is important to spread the view on Pedrolo to more than just Mecanoscrit del segon origen and Joc brut”
Interviews
(16/01/2018)

Anna Maria Villalonga (Barcelona, 1959), writer, film critic and lecturer at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Barcelona, was appointed commissioner for Any Pedrolo (Year of Manuel de Pedrolo). Under the supervision of the Catalan Institution for Literature and the support of Espai Pedrolo and Pedrolo Foundation, Villalonga will chair the activities that pay homage to the figure of the Catalan writer during 2018.

Manuel de Pedrolo (lʼAranyó, la Segarra, 1918 - Barcelona, 1990) is more than his work Mecanoscrit del segon origen. This author, regarded as the most prolific when it comes to the Catalan language, left more than a hundred and twenty works covering several themes, some of which have been translated to more than twenty languages. However, despite having been awarded several literature prizes such as Sant Jordiʼs novel award, in 1962, for his Balanç fins a la matinada, Pedrolo was never enough famous, according to some scholars. On the occasion of the hundred years of his birth, Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) declared 2018 Any Pedrolo (Year of Manuel de Pedrolo). The objective of this commemoration is to promote the total recognition of one of the most important figures in Catalan literature.

Anna Maria Villalonga is the author of two crime novels -La dona de gris (2014) and El somriure de Darwin (2017), from Llibres del Delicte publishing house- as well as the essay Les veus del crim (2013), from Alrevés publishing house, and two collections of female crime literature. This year she published the tale collection Contes per a les nits de lluna plena (Apostrph publishing house). She also runs three blogs: El racó de lʼAnna, on film criticism, Fil dʼAriadna II and A lʼombra del crim, on crime novels. Apart from being a lecturer in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Barcelona, Villalonga takes part in the project EnVeuAlta, a company of public reading, she runs a book club and collaborates in several roundtables and projects that are related to the crime novel, such as Dones i novel·la criminal a Espanya, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

She has recently taken part in the 2nd Terror Literature Festival “Torrebesses tremola”, where she spent a night locked in the castle of Torrebesses (Lleida), together with three other writers, with the aim of getting inspired to create a thriller.

 

“It is important to spread the view on Pedrolo to more than just Mecanoscrit del segon origen and Joc brut”
“It is important to spread the view on Pedrolo to more than just Mecanoscrit del segon origen and Joc brut”
Interviews
16/01/2018

Anna Maria Villalonga (Barcelona, 1959), writer, film critic and lecturer at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Barcelona, was appointed commissioner for Any Pedrolo (Year of Manuel de Pedrolo). Under the supervision of the Catalan Institution for Literature and the support of Espai Pedrolo and Pedrolo Foundation, Villalonga will chair the activities that pay homage to the figure of the Catalan writer during 2018.

Manuel de Pedrolo (lʼAranyó, la Segarra, 1918 - Barcelona, 1990) is more than his work Mecanoscrit del segon origen. This author, regarded as the most prolific when it comes to the Catalan language, left more than a hundred and twenty works covering several themes, some of which have been translated to more than twenty languages. However, despite having been awarded several literature prizes such as Sant Jordiʼs novel award, in 1962, for his Balanç fins a la matinada, Pedrolo was never enough famous, according to some scholars. On the occasion of the hundred years of his birth, Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) declared 2018 Any Pedrolo (Year of Manuel de Pedrolo). The objective of this commemoration is to promote the total recognition of one of the most important figures in Catalan literature.

Anna Maria Villalonga is the author of two crime novels -La dona de gris (2014) and El somriure de Darwin (2017), from Llibres del Delicte publishing house- as well as the essay Les veus del crim (2013), from Alrevés publishing house, and two collections of female crime literature. This year she published the tale collection Contes per a les nits de lluna plena (Apostrph publishing house). She also runs three blogs: El racó de lʼAnna, on film criticism, Fil dʼAriadna II and A lʼombra del crim, on crime novels. Apart from being a lecturer in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Barcelona, Villalonga takes part in the project EnVeuAlta, a company of public reading, she runs a book club and collaborates in several roundtables and projects that are related to the crime novel, such as Dones i novel·la criminal a Espanya, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

She has recently taken part in the 2nd Terror Literature Festival “Torrebesses tremola”, where she spent a night locked in the castle of Torrebesses (Lleida), together with three other writers, with the aim of getting inspired to create a thriller.

 

Now that 2018 is here, how does Any Pedrolo look?

 

Any Pedrolo aims to spread the knowledge of the work by Manuel de Pedrolo and honor his task, which he carried out within the legacy of the Catalan culture, for his figure has been only linked to Mecanoscrit del segon origen and we should know Pedrolo wrote a lot of books, covering different genres. Any Pedrolo aims to be a year for all Catalan Countries: the organizers think it is important to highlight the core of the writerʼs thoughts, he believed in the unity of the Catalan speaking countries.

 

Which activities can be found in the program?

 

The program for Any Pedrolo is focused on three main areas: literary festivals, such as Tiana Negra or BCNegra, among others; two conferences on the figure of Manuel de Pedrolo at the University of Barcelona and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and publications of some works by the writer, from several publishing houses. Also, there will be a mobile exhibition organized by Espai Pedrolo and Pedrolo Foundation, which will show a communicative journey on the career of the writer, and will be available over the year in several locations around the Catalan Countries.

Any Pedrolo will also hold activities on different themes: book clubs, shared readings, conferences, roundtables, literature award organization, literature tours, etc. We will soon have a website dedicated to this Year, offering all the information on the activities.

 

This year some works by Manuel de Pedrolo will be republished…

 

Republishing novels by Pedrolo started in 2016, when publishing houses such as Sembra Llibres, Orciny Press or Tigre de Paper started recovering his legacy. This year we expect more than ten books by the writer to be published.

An example of these publications was presented by the publishing house Comanegra last year, they republished the tale El principi de tot, illustrated by Pep Boatella, and the first volume of the tetralogy La terra prohibida, which includes the works Les portes del passat and La paraula dels botxins, published in 1977 by the publishing house Laie, and which were not published any more.

Other works by Manuel de Pedrolo will be edited, such as biographies, conversations of his, or reading reports he used to make to publishing houses to give advice on the translation of publication of books. These reports, apart from providing his view on everything he read, provide information on how much he knew about everything that got published around Europe. You can even sense how he communicated several aspects on literary theory and his general way of thinking.

This year, an unpublished work by the author dedicated to his daughter, Adelais, will be edited.

 

 

What are the objectives for this 365-day tribute?

 

It is important to spread the view on Pedrolo to more than just Mecanoscrit del segon origen and Joc brut, the two most known works by the author, which sometimes take all the credit and did not allow the spreading of his broad collection of works. Also, this task has to be presented in 2.0, adapted to technologies that make the current information channels. Therefore, we want to create online resources and others in social networks for Any Pedrolo.

The figure of Pedrolo causes excitement. He has many followers, both for his literature and the feeling of injustice due the treatment he received. Pedrolo was a good person, incorruptible, with strong ideas and loyal to his beliefs, and that makes him a respected figure.

 

Regarding the ideology that goes with the figure of Pedrolo, could there be synergies between literature and politics?

 

In the political situation we are now living is very easy to use the view of Pedrolo to make a political observation; but it would be better not to focus on this thing, since it could leave its literary magnitude on a second side. During this year, we have to promote his literature: highlight the rhetoric and text composition, on the growth of all genres, the originality and the absolute birth of his works.

Pedrolo wrote existentialist plays, visual poetry, more than seventy novels, tales, articles, etc. He was a great person with the most prolific work in the history of Catalan literature -maybe excluding Ramon Llull-, and that makes the main challenge in Any Pedrolo to get people reading more things by him.

 

Could we say Manuel de Pedrolo was a crime novel writer?

 

Pedrolo has five or six canonical novels from the thriller perspective. And there are many of his novels which are not essentially thrillers but use many resources from this genre. He was a great reader, and was convinced that the resources from the crime novel enabled him to say things he could not say with other genres. Many of his novels have features that are close to the hardboiled crime fiction: the resources they use or because the events that happen are all linked to each other.

Manuel de Pedrolo wrote a lot and covered other genres. In fact, he was quite fast, and despite this speed, some of his works are excellent. A great example is Pas de ratlla, which will be translated to Spanish next year by Navona, and which Pedrolo wrote between Christmas Day in 1958 and January 6, 1959, that is, thirteen days.

Pedrolo, apart from producing many works, gave importance to publications in Catalan. He said that if we want to normalize reading there should be a bit of everything so that any reader can read in his/her own language, and he put popular genres in the middle of literary speech.

 

Is Anna Maria Villalonga a ʻPedrolianʼ writer?

 

I am pedroliana but I am not as fast as he was. I mean, I like to write, a lot, but I am very careful when writing and submitting a text, I give it many reads until I am fully convinced it is good.