José Ignacio García is getting into the good habit of approaching the capital of Burgos in recent months. In March, he arrived at Sala Polisón with his latest book of stories‘The memory of chrysanthemumsand last September he taught at the San Juan Public Library ‘The call of the books’a talk that has made him tour the entire community with a suitcase full of the best recent literature from Castilla y León.
Now what I longed for a peaceful end of autumn, clear and horizontal like a summer nap, has taken the road again to present his latest work, ’26 Tin Soldiers (Castilla Ediciones)’a volume that compiles some of his best literary reviews published in recent years on ABC Castilla y León and in La Nueva Crónica de León.
This Wednesday, in the Island PalaceGarcia He will talk to Burgos readers about books -those reviewed- and about his book starting at 7:30 p.m. in a presentation that has free entry until capacity is reached.
’26 tin soldiers’ is a kind of vademecum of recently published Spanish literature. García, in a white prescriber’s coat, prescribes in these pages the titles that he has most enjoyed recently through some very personal and recognizable texts. «In recent times, several people had told me that these texts deserved to be collected in a book. That in the press they are very ephemeral and can end up being lost… And there may be an interested public, even from the teaching field, who Thanks to this edition I have a catalog of almost ninety books very selected,” indicates the author.
«I start from the basis that to be a literary critic is to be tremendously unfair and that to a certain extent there is a lot of intuition and fortune… Every month, I do a maximum of four or five reviews, but about 200 books arrive at my house. I try to review what I like the most and I try to convey to people that passion that those titles awaken in me… With my reviews I want to contribute to making literature greater,” says García and emphasizes that “I am a completely independent critic“I don’t write at anyone’s dictation and that is something very important to me.”
In the prologue, Fernando Conde Parrado asserts that the reviews of José Ignacio García «They soon become reading desiresalthough without forgetting what they simply are: literary exercises about literature […] The good thing about a good literary critic is that it saves you many hours of useless reading.
One of the features that make José Ignacio García reviews special and unique is the literary style that infuses his textswith an evangelizing desire about good narrative, including personal anecdotes, reflections and events that border on the shape of a story. «Those criticisms that technically break down the books are of little interest to me. I prefer to create a story around that book that is suggestive enough to awaken the reader’s curiosity and interest in that work. People who have already read ’26 Tin Soldiers’ were expecting a boring, very analytical book… and suddenly they find another book of literature,” he points out and explains that The title of the work pays homage to the 26 types of printing by Gutenberg. “I think the written word made this world a little better,” she laughs.
Burgos authors
The authors with the most reviews in García’s book are the Cadiz writer Antonio Tocornal and the man from Burgos, living in Segovia, José Antonio Abella, with three reviews each. «Abella’s thing is impressivehas published in the last three years three wonderful books – ‘That sea we never saw’, ‘Agnus diaboli’ and ‘The heart of the cyclops’ -, works of great quality.
Other writers from Burgos who appear in ’26 Tin Soldiers’ are Pedro Ojeda (‘The metaphor of the blackbird’), Jesus Carazo (‘The temptation’), Óscar Esquivias and Miguel Navia (‘Someone wakes up at midnight’) and Leandro Perez (‘The last night of Libertad Guerra’). García also wants to highlight other narrators who are the present and the future of the letters of Castilla y León: the Leonese Noemí Sabugal and Pablo Andrés Escapa and the people of Valladolid Mar Sancho and Jesús Salviejo.
’26 Tin Soldiers’ opens and closes with reviews of works by two very important authors in the career of José Ignacio García: the Zamorano Tomas Sanchez Santiago and the berciano Antonio Pereira. «They are two of the figures of my personal devotional and my references. To some extent, it is a tribute to them… Tomás was my teacher in life and Antonio my teacher before he died,” he concludes.
