Jordi Cabré: Jordi Cabré: "The first time I died I was 20 years old"

BarcelonaTwenty-five years after his debut as a novelist with Postcard from Krypton, Jordi Cabré (Barcelona, ​​1973) publishes the reflective and delicate You with the night (Proa, 2025). The book's starting point is the transformative weeks the author spent at the Ledig House residency in the fall of 2022. Cabré, who previously He has won awards such as the Sant Jordi (Make a wish; Univers, 2019) and the City of Palma (The sadness virus(Proa, 2006), this time draws on autofiction to convey to readers the uncertainties and certainties of a man approaching fifty four years after his separation.

What was the writer like who debuted with Postcard from Krypton And what would you like to be now?

— I started publishing after losing the Enric Valor Prize, but since I was a finalist, the jury members recommended that Edicions del Bullent publish the novel. This led Isidor Cónsul, then editor at Proa, to notice me and ask if I was working on anything else, and that's how it all began. The Devil's Prayer [2003], a story about witches set in Viladrau in the 17th century. If I compare the me of now with the me of then, it's that before I dared more to let my imagination run wild, to write pure fiction, and now I have the feeling that in my books both reality and life experience carry more weight.

It's a path you began to explore openly with There is another one (Universe, 2023). To describe that novel, you said it was "life as it flows." Here we encounter that same voice again, that of a divorced man who, on this occasion, takes a month's leave to go and write in New York. In You with the night, This man recalls that at the age of 10 he already felt the need to write novels...

— I used to write ten-page books on my Olivetti typewriter, correcting my mistakes with correction fluid. I'd send them to my father's cousin, Jaume Cabré, who would tell me, "Very good, mate, keep at it." I knew Jaume was letting me off the hook because those stories were childish and lacked substance. He was very generous, encouraging me like that.

That someone like Jaume Cabré His support must have been very encouraging.

— Jaume had to detect that impulse, that compulsion I've never been able to suppress. Even now, ill, Jaume has a shelf with my books, and when I go to see him, after we spend some time together, he tells me to take them, but I tell him no, because even though I wrote them, they're his. It was also my uncle who warned me about writing: "Never forget Foix Pastry Shop." By this, he meant that I didn't have to be too proud to continue working as a lawyer, a journalist, or a politician, because JV Foix He was a great poet from Catalonia, but every day he opened the pastry shop.

You're still acting as a lawyer.

— Yes, in Gonzalo Boye's office.

But it was politics that almost ended your literary career: among After Laura (Proa, 2011) and Make a wish (Universe, 2019) almost a decade passed.

— Politics is all-consuming. You can keep writing, but more slowly, because with politics you don't have set hours; you have to be online 24/7. During those years I wrote five versions of Make a wish...until I thought I couldn't do any more work. Then I entered the Sant Jordi competition and won.

You left politics a year before the referendum of October 1, 2017. The narrator of You with the night He occasionally reflects on the current Catalan disenchantment.

— In 2017, Catalonia took a leap of faith, and in parallel, without having planned it, I also took a personal leap of faith: I separated from my husband. In both cases, it was inevitable, but it couldn't have been 100% planned. The feeling was that if I stayed in a place where things were bad, it would be bad for me and for others as well. What happened in Catalonia didn't turn out entirely well, but I think it has set a precedent, and that's important. The battle isn't lost.

In You with the nightThe protagonist, who speaks to us in the first person, has been separated for four years. Not only is he still alone, but he seeks greater solitude: he moves to New York and settles, without any acquaintances nearby, in a literary residence.

— At the beginning of a separation, you start a monologue with yourself. After some time has passed, you can try to sublimate the loneliness, as I did by going to the United States for a month: New York and the literary residency are like outer space, because you constantly have to face the unexpected, you can meet other people, and the blank page of that novel you haven't written yet is always waiting for you.

To what extent have the things that happen to the protagonist of the novel happened to you?

— There isn't a single chapter that isn't based on real events. It's just that in some, I add a little more spice, spice, or sugar to make it work. I cooked a Spanish omelet for all the writers at the residence. This happened. It didn't quite happen that I had the same conversation with Sarah while I was cooking the omelet. This happened in a way that was somewhat exaggerated. In other words, I expand on the conversation in a way that perhaps didn't quite occur.

Did your tortilla get stuck, at least?

— Yes, yes. But it was the frying pan's fault, not mine!

You with the night Is it a novel about the possibility of making friends again and even falling in love?

— Not only that, but also—and this is why there are so many references to jazz improvisations in the book—when you least expect it, love returns to your life. My character unexpectedly meets Carla during the 24 hours he spends in New York, and later, at the residence, he runs into Sarah, whose autobiographical novel he bought at the airport and hasn't yet read. I was at a point in my life without a rigid script. Everything was possible, just like in a jazz song.

The character carries a vital baggage that is sometimes painful, such as the loss of his mother or brother.

— The first time I died, I was 20. When you lose someone as close as a brother, there's a before and after. He was only 18! It was my first leap into the void. My mother died later, around 2018. By then, I had already trained myself to die.

But it would be a complicated process.

— Yes. My mother's death was unexpected. It was cancer. I've wanted to avenge my brother's death and my mother's. You know how? By living. Death is a tragedy, but it has a certain beauty and a sense of gratitude, thinking that all of this has existed. When my mother died, I felt the same way I would if my girlfriend had dumped me.

You with the night dig into solitude to escape it.

— Exactly. The novel is about learning to be alone and, at the same time, about the need to be reborn and not fall into selfishness. I could have shut myself away in the cynicism of someone who visits jazz clubs and listens to music while drinking whiskey, alone, but content enough with himself not to interact with anyone else. I could have stuck to my solos and virtuosity. I chose another path: to let my instrument converse with another.

Will you continue to work with that same narrative voice in the next book?

— That's my intention. But I need to find a different perspective, context, and plot. When I finished You with the night And I gave it to my agent, Anna Soler-Pont, and told her I felt it hadn't cost me enough, and she replied, "You're wrong. It took you 50 years." She was right. Laying myself bare as I have in these last two novels seemed necessary. I want to continue exploring the perspective of the sensitive man. I miss it in other authors, and it's a source of misunderstandings.

Because?

— It seems men are forbidden from being sensitive, that we have to limit ourselves to being practical, to not delve too deeply into ourselves, or to keep too much to ourselves. All men are sensitive, but most hide it. I want to express myself with an open heart, with the vulnerabilities but also with the certainties that have given meaning to my life.

In the novel you say: "I come from two children who gave me light, they gave me light."

— Yes. Beyond the independence of Catalonia and any wealth, what gives meaning to the universe is that my children exist.

In a more political context, you praise someone like Pau Casals for planting "not a flag but a cello at the UN."

— We Catalans are, essentially, one language, and when we travel the world we carry documents that don't define us. My passport and my national identity card are fake. If anyone is interested, they eventually find out that my identity isn't official, but secret, like Clark Kent's. We can change our sex on our ID cards without any problem, but we're not allowed to tell the truth about our nation. This probably makes us Catalans more interesting, and since we can't take flags to the UN, we plant a cello.