“Let’s talk about Three novels about old age. Rather, in times of political correction, of older adults. ”The journalist presented this Thursday Natalia Ginzburg which happened in the CLARIN CULTURAL space / Ñ and crossed to Three young contemporary authors who wrote novels whose protagonists were women over seventy.
Luciana de Luca (1978), author of Other things to cry (Tusquets), who told Carolina’s story, a woman who has been alone and begins a slow cognitive deterioration product of her advanced age; Natalia Rozenblum (1984), which in Ladies bath (Tusquets) narrated the life of Ana Inés, a widow, retired, who spends the days in a neighborhood club along with her friends and fights with her fifties daughter who is installed at her home and Adriana Riva who in Ruth (Seix neighborhood) pergeña a character inspired by his mother, octogenarian, who enjoys going to art galleries, does zoom courses and remains active. He desire, friendship, sexuality –Aight youth heritage – were some of the topics that crossed this conversation.
“These works question us, they move us,” Ginzburg described while throwing his first question: how did the idea or need to write about old age appear? De Luca took the post: “There is something of the search for a voice that reviews all his life as if he were at the rest of a ladder,” he confessed. He also added that spending a lot of time with a character “requires an important commitment” and that the writing of this novel – his debut in adult literature since he had previously published youth stories – took him almost three years of work.
Rozenblum said that the idea arose in a scenario similar to that of the novel: “I had twenty, I was in a club costume and when I saw a naked lady I thought: she has shell. So far, I had not thought about it. I started telling the life of one of these older women from a young look Until I realized that I was more interested how she perceived. I was interested in common points among old and young, ”he confessed.
Riva revealed that inspiration arose from his mother: “I wanted to write about her. I was inspired by a novel by the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Ackerman. I read the first paragraph and I thought: she is my mother. Then I turned in his voice many things that I also think,” he revealed.
Ginzburg asked them a question more linked to narrative procedures: why did some choose the first and others the third person to tell? While Riva and Luca chose the first, because His stories were well testimonialRozenblum said he chose the third because “I tried to write in Primera, I would have loved to have done it, but it was a delirium. I was afraid to fall into ridicuration. Then I added dialogues.” Riva added that many moments “stole” his mother. “He had annotations in the first person of things she said,” he said.
About the lives they narrated, Riva commented on how Ruth, its protagonist, “although nothing happens, lives a lot of small swimming.” His routine is filled with “cultural life” now that he has a lot of time: Assists of museums, opera concerts and takes art classes by Zoom (something that, he revealed, also his own mother).
-“I’m interested in the desanant people”Rozenblum emphasized when talking about Ana Inés, the ladies bathroom protagonist. He added: “Desire goes far beyond age. The daughter does not record the life that the mother leads. For this woman, the ladies’ bathroom ends her space. I saw that in those areas older women felt not ashamed. Instead I, at twenty, did feel it. That fascinated me,” he explained.
The woman she built of Luca is greater than the protagonists of the other two novels. “It is from another era, ”he described – stayed at homeHe did not know some empowerment and discovered that there was nothing more there. His illness, his cognitive deterioration, becomes a kind of rebellion. Because he gets angry and in that anger there is desire. It is vital, ”he said.
Ginzburg asked a little more about the small universes of these women. Ruth’s is crossed by visual arts. Riva revealed that this choice had to do with a personal challenge: “I was interested in investigating a world that was more foreign to me. I wanted to introduce small texts about art that could be a parate for the reader. I wanted them to be brief because sometimes the texts of the museums expel me, they are too elitist or snobs,” he exclaimed. Rozenblum, whose protagonist Share literaturein Ginzburg’s words, almost like “an open secret” with her friends, she said that she thought this as “something that is reserved for her and shares beyond what is supposed to be correct.”
About friendship, De Luca added that “I really enjoy the intimacy that is generated in the friendship between women. Among men is something else. “” Aging with friends seems fundamental to me, “said Riva.
About the end, Ginzburg asked them about the reception of these works, which have had a lot of circulation between readers and critics. Riva was the first to take the microphone to emphasize how much they had circulated: “They come to show something that was not in literature” –Realted- “There are a lot of books to the father, the mother or the son but I do not know if there is so much about the elderly. The three are achieved in the planet’s stand. The goat passed,” he concluded between laughs.
“Mine is very old,” Rozenblum added – his novel is 2020 – and stressed that “the best of his writing came later: They called me from many ladies reading groups, I talked about Zoom with them and they told me everything. I confirmed that there is sexuality in the elderly and there is also modesty, ”he said.
“One has sexuality associated with youth and that is a bias on the market,” added Luca And he laughed a little about his own novel: “Mine is a downturn. I shit this poor lady,” he said referring to his character’s drama. Then, he concluded: “I am interested in this idea of the range of possibilities of an elderly person. The possibility that life will continue until life ends.”
