Fotele, which is Uclés

I've only seen David Uclés once, on the day of this year's Nadal Prize ceremony. When he gave his acceptance speech, I found that he spoke like no one I've ever heard anyone speak, that he expressed himself in a way as singular as his attire. Something unusual in our field: we're all quite original. When I was young, I used to say that I only wanted to be a "normal" writer, until, after meeting many colleagues, I realized that "normal" writers don't exist. There are mediocre ones, of course: the efficient mercenaries of the written word who churn out a book every year and produce novels like they're churning out sausages. I don't consider these writers—you'll have to forgive my professional purism, but I say this more as a reader than a writer. When I read, I want access to a consciousness, a world, a perspective on life, and an artistic work created with words and with the pieces and mechanisms inherent to literature. If I want to be entertained by stories told in a flat, soulless style, I already have afternoon soap operas. Anyway, I don't want to talk about books, since I haven't read either of the two novels Uclés has published; I want to talk about writers, the press, and all that part of the work we usually call "promotion."

Being a writer is living in a kind of schizophrenia: you spend months, maybe years, locked in a world that doesn't exist, full of characters you've created yourself, posing and resolving conflicts and situations that only you have in your head. You finish the work, hand it in, and, if you're lucky, it ends up materializing as a book that publishers edit, distributors distribute, and booksellers come to buy. And if a miracle happens, readers might even buy it. Many people participate in the creation of a book, but only one person, the author, gets either the glory or the criticism.

For many years, perhaps since forever, it has been taken for granted that among the duties of someone who publishes a book (the author) is to publicize what they have written through the media. Specifically, through interviews granted to journalists in the culture section. If they're lucky, because there are also many media outlets where the same person who has had to read your three hundred pages then has to cover the local football team's match or the city council meeting. In any case, the "promotion" of books leads to this space of encounter and exchange between journalists and writers, formally called an "interview." They are usually pleasant and enriching because there is someone who receives what you have done and asks you questions about something to which you may have dedicated a good number of months or years of your life. Sometimes they can be uncomfortable (for example, when there is interest in topics that don't appear in the books and that you might not feel like answering, or when painful events are discussed). It's a dance, a negotiation, and it almost always takes place with a pact of cordiality because the journalist is doing their job, but the writer is also giving their time and their very being to the person they're interviewing. It's a cordial understanding, so to speak. That's why I find the virulence with which David Uclés has been attacked in recent weeks so surprising. And that's only from what's been reported in the newspapers, not from Twitter. Even if some of his statements seem completely wrong to me, I still don't quite understand the animosity they generate. Especially when what he's criticized for isn't the quality of his writing, but what's on his mind or how he speaks. It's then that the defense of freedom of expression isn't just about ideas and opinions, but about each person's own style. Which may be more or less pleasing, but has every right in the world to exist as it is.