Federico Falco [Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists]

As we mentioned last Friday, we’re going to spend the next 20 days highlighting all of the authors selected for Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” special issue. All past and future posts related to this issue can be found by clicking here..

Today we have a special interview with Federico Falco, whose new story “In Utah There Are Mountains Too” appears in this issue.

Emily Davis: What does it mean to you to have been named by Granta one of the Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists?

Federico Falco: First of all, a recognition of this caliber is a great joy, it means opportunity for my work and my career, something that I value very highly. At the same time, it is a sign that I am heading in the right direction, that I ought to continue on that path and also, of course, it is a great responsibility. One has to try not to disappoint the expectations that come of a recognition like this one.

ED: Where did the desire to be a writer come from?

FF: When I was small I lived in a village where there were no bookstores and the only libraries were not very well stocked. Fortunately, in my home and in the home of one my aunts, there were a lot of books. I grew up watching my parents read—something that not all the adults I knew did—and they always gave me a lot of freedom to rummage through the bookcases and pick out the books that interested me. As a form of entertainment but also of escape, my infancy and adolescence were marked by reading. Maybe because of that, the desire to start writing my own stories developed naturally. When I was ten or eleven I had already started and abandoned several novels and I couldn’t wait to get to high school because I figured that there they would teach me to write better.

ED: What writers have influenced you?

FF: Tons. Chekhov, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, Carver, Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Eugenio Montale, Natalia Ginzburg. Among Argentines, Juan José Saer, Antonio Di Benedetto, Manuel Puig, Daniel Moyano, Andrés Rivera, and many more.

ED: Do you have a favorite writer among the others on the new Granta list?

FF: I haven’t read all of the authors. There are several that I didn’t know before they appeared on the Granta list and, up until now, I’ve hardly read what they published in this issue of the magazine. Also, some of their books are hard to come by outside the country where they were initially published, so it would be difficult for me to respond to this question without being partial and unfair. Of course, among those I know and have read, there are many that I like a lot.

ED: You were born in a small city in the interior of Argentina. Does that experience figure into your stories? I am thinking for example of Villa Carlos Paz in “In Utah There Are Mountains Too,” your new story published in this issue of Granta. Is there perhaps some resonance there?

FF: Villa Carlos Paz is a fairly large city or, at least, medium-sized. Besides, it is a touristic city, and that makes it very peculiar, the social ties among neighbors are different, there are people arriving and departing all the time. General Cabrera, the village where I was born and lived until I was 18, doesn’t have any of that and so, I don’t know how much my village experience resonates with this text in particular. But certainly in many of my earlier stories the village appears as a geographic space, the pampas plain as the landscape, General Cabrera itself, a little mythologized, but barely transformed.

ED: Where did the idea for “In Utah There Are Mountains Too” come from?

FF: This text was part of a novel that I am writing, but it took on a life of its own, gained autonomy and, for structural reasons, ended up outside the original plan and became an independent story. The novel takes the form of a biography, I am writing a semifictional and novelized biography of a poet from my city and she, in her adolescence, fell in love with a Mormon missionary who couldn’t reciprocate. That was the initial anecdote that gave rise to the story.

ED: What are you working on now?

FF: On two projects at the same time, both novels. One is a false biography of Cuqui, a poet and performer from Córdoba who is my age. The other text is still in a more embryonic state, the premise is that it takes place in the sierras of Córdoba, a place that I conceive of as mythical: it’s where people flee to from the big cities, in search of peace, tranquility and contact with nature. It is also a place of hope and second chances, the characters will attempt to create a new life there, among the mountains and skies of Córdoba.

And don’t forget, Granta has a special offer for all readers of Three Percent: if you subscribe now you’ll receive this special issue featuring the “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” for free

Up next: Carlos Labbe.