These days, the Eterna Cadencia publishing house brings together, for the first time in the same imprint, the three books of stories by the writer Alejandra Kamiya, one of the most admired and beloved new literary voices of local letters. Owner of a deep, lyrical and austere voicetheir stories They oscillate between the everyday and the philosophical, staging topics as diverse as beauty, death, the arts, ancestors, our relationship with nature and animals. Added to this editorial novelty is the prologue to Lion teeththe posthumous novel by Kawabata (Seix Barral), and the adaptation of several of his stories to different dance and music shows. Clarín Culture spoke with the author of The Patience of Water about each stone, before its first presentation at the Book Fair within the framework of the Dialogue of Writers of Argentina.
–What kind of impact does having your three short story books together in a publishing house have for you? Did you reread them for this edition?
–Actually, I didn’t reread the books because if I did, I was going to correct them, and I didn’t want to touch them. Leonora Djament, the editor, told me that it was not necessary to read or change anything. Only we added some postcards with unpublished texts. Regarding the meeting of the three books, it gives me great satisfaction and a kind of relief that they are together, because I feel it as a continuum. In fact, when we worked on the design of the three covers, there I realized it was a trilogy, not three independent books. Of course, time inevitably passes, so you go through stages of life, but they are a continuum in style, in themes. I don’t think there will be big changes.
–Are you working on a novel now?
–Actually, I have three novels started. I was working on one when, accidentally, another one came together, and there I reconfirmed that the stories are a trilogy because the other things I’m working on are very different. There is one that I internally call “Insomnia Diary”, which They are very short texts that I wrote in the middle of the night.. Other than emerged in the pandemic, I spent it with my dad watching very old Japanese films, some silent, others unrestored. While we were watching the movie, we were talking. A dialogue of three.
–And stories, do you still write?
-Stories I will always write. And the novel – the one that was put together on its own – is also going to have stories: novel in short storiesas the Americans say, stories that will make a whole.
–How do you deal with this dispersion of projects?
–I am dispersed so very naturally. On the contrary, it would be difficult for me to concentrate on a single project.
–“The heart of writing is not in the form,” a phrase from the prologue you wrote for Kawabata’s unpublished novel, could be ascribed to your literature. What was the experience of writing this prologue like?
–Yes, I prefaced Kawabata, I made a back cover of Ango Sakaguchi and now I am going to preface the complete stories of Silvia Iparraguirre. These are things that make me happy. There are many prologues that I don’t like, especially the very academic ones or those that are pedagogical or anticipate what I am going to read. I like prologues in which there are a person behind talking, from a subjective place. Prologues are a literary genre: Borges has the book of prologues of his. I write them like I write stories. For example, regarding Kawabata’s prologue, some people took it literally when I said that “I choose to place myself alongside those who doubt his suicide,” but it is a soft, gentle, yearning “I choose to believe.” Like “I don’t know, but I would like to.”
–As someone who fuses west and east, what did you think? Perfect daysby Wim Wenders?
–I saw it, I adored it, the final scene became my final scene of the entire cinema. I thought the film was perfect, for a lot of things, but I find it interesting that it was made by a Westerner. That contributes a lot. For me it makes a good fusion, it has perspective, and it has a lot of love. When a Japanese shows his love for Japan it is not that interesting. The Western point of view opens up more options with a, for me, richer perspective. From a cinematographic point of view, the way he filmed it is very consistent with what he is saying. Wim Wenders talks about something and reflects it.
–By the way, love for characters is something that could be said about your literature. Would you agree?
–It happened to me with a character that I wanted to make unpleasant, Leiva (“The Heron”, “Herencia”), and he seduced me, I ended up liking him very much, and everyone likes Leiva. It went wrong compared to what I intended.. Or the character of the mother (in “The Rehearsals”). Yes, bad, but lovable. But I believe because they are human.
–Empathy with the human condition?
-Yes something like that. I think what does love for the character translate into? Precisely, in the construction of the character. For example, movies with bad dialogue bother me a lot. AND with bad dialogue what there is no love for the character. Making him say stupid things or in a way that people don’t talk. That is lack of love too. Wim Wenders has the love that translates into very deeply constructed characters that don’t need to talk a lot.
–The arts circulate in your literature: painting, music. These days, two adaptations of your stories to two dance works (Teresa Duggan and Miriam Gurbanov) are presented. How do you feel about these interdisciplinary proposals?
–They seem natural to me, in the sense that just as texts can be translated into other languages, they can be translated into dance or whatever art form. I write a lot from the body so it doesn’t seem strange to me that people who work with the body have felt challenged or that something comes out of their language. Now We are working with other adaptations for the Experimentation Center of the Teatro Colónand we were talking about just that: creating auditory images that are closer to the minimum, not melodies with their increscendos.
The fallen trees are also the forest, The sun moves the shadow of still things and The patience of water on each stone You can buy at the Eterna Cadencia stand at the Fair.
Alejandra Kamiya will participate in the Dialogue of Writers of Argentina this Friday, May 3 at 7 p.m. in the Domingo Faustino Sarmiento room at the table “Advice for aspiring writers: writing secrets for the construction of the perfect story” with Flavio Lo Presti, Paula Perez Alonso, Mariana Travacio.
And also in the Dialogue of Writers of Latin America on Monday, May 6 at 5:30 p.m. in “Minimal Stories. Where does the heart of a story lie? Challenges posed by the short genre” with Sérgio Rodrigues (Brazil), Virginia Mórtola (Uruguay) and María José Navia (Chile).
