The identity of a country is not defined by major events but by its everyday life. The small details, situations, characters and habits that are more or less anonymously reproduced in the social fabric end up forging a culture, a national being, that DNA that can broadly be perceived here, there and everywhere. Something of that repetitive habituality, which is often difficult to break down because it is so clearly in front of everyone’s eyes, is trapped with lucid and depersonalized prose in Incredible Argentina. Stories of Creole liveliness in a country of novels (Planet), the book of chronicles and stories written by journalist Emilse Pizarro. A work that seeks to capture Argentina not from tragedy, but from the daily comedy of a reality that can only be ours.
The deputy during the vote for the privatization of State Gas, Carlos Menem’s Ferrari, Firmat’s ghost hammock, the daily life of a bar in Villa Ortuzar, the nuclear mysteries of Huemul Island, the madness of Carlos Bilardo, the gang criminal activity of the singing children of the National Lottery, the Argentine World Disney that was going to be installed in San Pedro, the decree of the mayor of Cruz del Exis in the name of his son so that he passes the year despite taking three subjects: those are some of the situations and characters that between the blackmail, the scam, the trap and the fanning are part of a book that moves away from media outrage to tell with details, evidence and testimonies stories that could only have happened on this side of the world.
“I have always had the obsession or intrigue of being able to define that thing called being Argentine”Pizarro tells Page 12, about the origin of his first book. “Every time I have the opportunity to interview a musician or an artist, I ask them how they would explain to someone else what it means to be Argentine. And I always find that they rehearse the most varied responses, but many agree to do so by telling some anecdote, some situation that supposedly defines us. And I think that The Incredible Argentina goes after those stories, which I like to tell and which would make writing more pleasant and less tedious. That’s why when Juan Becerra, editor of Planeta, proposed that I tell a story that they had already defined, I counterproposed this book: I am clear that to write a book you have to love what you tell because at some point in the process you are going to hate it.” reflects the journalist who worked in different media and who is currently part of Everything happensthe series that Matías Martin hosts from Monday to Friday at 1 pm on Urbana Play.
-Argentina is usually explained from its great tragedies and achievements. However, in your book you try to describe it from smaller stories. Why did you make that decision?
-I have the feeling, perhaps wrong, that great events are made up of small things. There is a smaller background that usually causes the big event. DNA is in those everyday things, like the tack bar in Villa Ortuzar, where at first glance you think that nothing is happening and everything is happening. That chapter is one of the most important ones about being Argentine because there are fights, there is anonymity, it is a bar of ordinary people who go looking for each other without any schedule or reason, where no one knows much about the other’s life but they fight with each other. an intensity and with an endearing fervor, to the point that when someone does not appear for a few days they ask about him. The bar as a place of meeting, community, complicity, love, discussion, news, neighborhood and solidarity, even. That’s very Argentine. All the little stories that happen to us every day, when you see them together, make up a more or less close picture of what we Argentines are like. Great stories are often told. I am convinced that around the corner you always have an interesting, absurd or entertaining story. Anywhere.
-What was the selection criteria for the stories that are part of The incredible Argentina?
-One of the few things that we were clear about with the editor Juan was that the stories we were going to tell did not have to have deceased people, for example, that they should not be tragic. In other words, a fraud would not end someone’s life. The idea of the book was always that you could end each story with a grimace, with a smile.
-The sensations that come across reading are “what a shame that person is!”, or even “what a phenomenon he did…!”… Although also that we are a very difficult society…
-That’s why we are an incredible country. Creole liveliness constitutes us. We Argentines, I think, are very attentive to finding the gap. Because of this idea that the system hates us or is always against us. So, many times it happens to us that we were screwed up so many times, that when we see an opportunity to look for a shortcut, we give up. In public, perhaps, morality and good duty prevail; But we have all at some point, in private, celebrated some “not very holy” action against the system. If the banks screw us, if the painter tells me that it will take him a month to do the job and it will take three, if the companies charge me what they want… I think that Creole liveliness and scammers have been around for a long time. this country. It’s not that we became corrupt in the last century: it comes from before. The explanation should be given by some sociologist or historian, but perhaps the currents that shaped who we are have something to do with it. How much Creole liveliness is there in having to survive? What do I know? I think of my grandfather, a mattress worker, who came from a ship to Buenos Aires to fight because he was starving after a war… I don’t blame him if he did one.
-In fact, even The incredible Argentina It is a consequence of that “creole liveliness.”
-Not because?
-The editor, Becerra, contacted you to write a book about an already defined story and you ended up selling him another one.
-It’s true. I am “the painter” of Becerra. (laughs)
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The incredible Argentina compiles chronicles that could have happened in any corner of the country, and at any time. Which are even happening right now in different parts of the country. It consists of sixteen stories and one interview (with Carlos Bilardo, not to be missed), told in not very long texts. “We decided on this format,” says Pizarro, “because today books also compete for the public’s attention with other media. A book today not only competes with other books, but also with news portals, with Netflix, with Paramount, with TikTok… How much time does a person have to dedicate to leisure? And in Argentina, where we are thinking more about how to generate more money to pay for electricity than about enjoying a book? More or less short texts allow you to enter and exit reading more easily. I read fewer books than before, because my attention span is also taken by Instagram, Twitter, portals… And telling stories with not very long texts is more difficult than writing long ones. Being able to tell the story well, condense it and not lose narrative quality, is quite a challenge.”
