1) I don't recall there being so much talk about a book that hasn't yet been published and distributed, and therefore hasn't yet been read by its potential readers. At least in Spain. The book in question is titled Hate and its author is the writer Luisgé Martín (Madrid, 1962), an author with several published novels to his credit. This title came to our attention when the media announced last week that a judge had suspended its publication for alleged interference in the right to honor, privacy, and self-image of the mother of the children murdered by their father more than a decade ago. The legal services of the publishing company itself, in turn, would be the ones to decide whether or not to respect the judges' decision. In a word, its distribution was illegal. A few days later, a court in Barcelona was considering whether to halt the publication of HateAt the time of writing this article, it is still unknown whether Hate whether it will be distributed or not, and therefore whether it can be read. The latest we know is that the publisher has suspended publication "indefinitely."
Regardless of the ethical and aesthetic texture of the book in question, I would venture to say that in this thorny and delicate matter, which sheds light on issues such as the freedom to distribute a written text on the one hand, and the irresponsible invasion of the privacy of individuals (and victims, moreover), on the other, there is not the slightest doubt that the freedom to distribute a written text, and therefore to read that text, must prevail. This, above all other considerations, however legitimate they may be, as is the case with the complaint filed before the judicial authorities by Ruth Ortiz, the mother of the murdered children. In short, there should be no disagreement on this issue; the reader must always be the last link in the creative chain. I must also say that if a judge, prosecutor, or anyone involved legally in matters of a social nature like the one at hand these days rules against its publication, I assume they'll have read the book, if only out of simple curiosity, lest the book in question a priori infringe upon anything or anyone. And if it did, as I believe it does, the book in question would still have every right to be distributed and read. Marginalized, forgotten, or scorned, all right, but never all of this without having been read first.
2) As the author himself Hate appointment In cold blood, by Truman Capote and The adversary, by Emmanuel Carrère, titles that instantly come to mind, given the concomitance of the issues they deal with with the book we are now dealing with, it should draw our attention that at the time these books did not cause the stir or media scandal that they are generating. Hate (without forgetting that the person writing this is also contributing to widening this commotion). It was always assumed that Capote wrote In cold blood, among many other reasons, so that the murderers would not be given the death penalty, which he was totally against. In the case of The adversaryI share with novelist Llúcia Ramis that this book attracted us because its central theme was not so much the murders of the criminal, but the infinite lie that his existence had become. (In the same vein, some time later, the actor José Coronado starred in a film, Nobody's life, to a man who told his family that he worked in a bank, which was a complete lie).
3) I read Luisgé Martín's book. I'm convinced it should be published. But I think it shouldn't have been written (at least not as Luisgé Martín wrote it), given the horrific nature of its subject matter. The topic was slippery and could lead to unthinkable misunderstandings. Regarding the latter, I found that the author uses the words "murder" and "crime" interchangeably, even though the two are not synonyms. Murder is a crime with malice aforethought, which is the crime committed by the murderer of his children, while "crime" is a crime without malice aforethought. This is read in several sections of the book. I'll end with a literal quote from HATE: its author confesses: "Many years ago, I was diagnosed with a similar disorder [referring to the murderer's narcissistic personality disorder], an overcompensated inferiority complex; or, to put it prosaically… When one feels unloved… the moral laws of the world disappear."
We must be very careful with the words we use, lest they reveal what we really think.
