Juan Manuel García-Junco, better known in the Mexican cultural world as H. Pascal, died surrounded by ten thousand books, surrounded by the smell of tobacco and, ultimately, sick with literature. And now his daughter, the writer Aura García-Junco, has written a hybrid novel in which she establishes a dialogue with that master of science fiction.
In this Making Of, Aura García-Junco explains the hidden story behind the pages of God strike down whoever writes about me (Sixth floor).
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This book has the characteristic that it reports its own writing process. It is an emotional investigation with the insides outside. Much of what she put together can be traced back to page three, when the narrator declares why she is going to write: because she is stuck in the gray days of unspoken grief. Hybrid books make these intersections possible between narrating a life, an emotionality and a process at the same time.. They are a great notebook, painstakingly edited and shaped to seem both spontaneous and definitive.
But it all started a little before. Since my dad died I knew I was going to have to write about him. For me, literature is a tool to learn about the world and explore emotions and ideas, so I never had a doubt that I would get there. I inherited it from him, a complete Vilamatean literature patient. And yet, at first writing was impossible for me. I made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to explore loss through fiction. I wanted a full-fledged tribute. I wanted a book about dragons and replicants, to honor his reading memory and the books he gave me as a child, but every time I sat down to write not a word came out. Months after his death, his books still adorned my living room without me even touching them.. A part of me knew that this was symbolic, it spoke of something that I couldn’t quite accept. I decided then to do an essay that would start from the most material thing I had: those books and that would open a door for the most emotional, little by little. I also realized that a simple tribute wasn’t going to work because I still had my belly hanging out. There were a series of very hard emotions to purge.
“The research proved to be quite a challenge because it involved the always risky task of talking to more people. Asking specific things about my dad, not knowing if the answers were going to break my face.“
And so, with the books in front of me, I decided to begin the process of dusting off a library and a history. The first texts were so full of pain and bitterness that when I took them to the workshop I clearly saw how my classmates’ faces were frowning.. Those never made it into the book, we first had to do some intense emotional vomiting to get to a slightly more malleable material. From that I decided to do thematic essays that had a particular book as a trigger. An essay, a book, a chapter. That didn’t last too long either. The essays overflowed with themes and snuck into new chapters. What I needed was to tell a story.
The research proved to be quite a challenge because it involved the always risky task of talking to more people. Asking specific things about my dad, not knowing if the answers were going to break my face.. Read, listen. Explore your library little by little and based on intuition. Then record everything in the faltering book in progress.
“After all, it was the question I had been asking myself for years: why did my dad leave everything and not finish consolidating his great dream even though everything seemed set for him to achieve it?“
As I progressed I began to realize that the book should have an arc. And there was already one that could be glimpsed, which was that of the duel itself in real time. I just had to find a structure for this to work better as a book and not just as catharsis.. I arranged chapters, decided emphasis for those that were missing, moved fragments from here to there. And finally I got to thinking about a central concern that I had temporarily put aside because I had not yet tamed the tone and direction. It was time to think about the center of tension. For me the essential question at this point is why should anyone keep reading? Where is the enigma and the magnet that will pull reading? It was not difficult to answer that question since, in addition to the tone and rhythm, there was a gap in the narrative that would serve to raise a common question throughout the text. After all, it was the question I had been asking myself for years: why did my dad leave everything and not finish consolidating his great dream even though everything seemed set for him to achieve it? When, how and why did something break in it?
With all those elements ready, I finished the ten-month draft and was able to leave the book in a drawer for a whole year. When I opened it, I had much more clarity to repeat the last stage of the writing process, but this time focused on editing.. Many people intervened at each stage giving me feedback and in this finale it was especially important to have full body readings, from my editor, my partner and also from admired friends. The rest was recorded in this book, diary, confession, perdition, tribute, crying, detachment.
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Author: Aura García-Junco. Qualification: God strike down whoever writes about me. Editorial: Sixth floor. Sale: All your books.
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