Short with Santiago Pajares

by Ivana Peško

Have you decided to write some imaginary words on stones in Kikinda, the same as your character did?

I don´t thinks so. I like too much to write and I would need a very very big stone to write everything I want.

The Festival has acquainted us with your anonymous characters who asked themselves about their ideal and false positions, but who were, in the same time, ready to accept reality, so we can wrangle about white melancholy and escapism. Are they detained or trying to escape from something they don’t want to watch, but are forced to see and hear all the time? Does their conciliation represent the question, the answer or the both?

Wow! It´s difficult to say. I think I have to think this question...

As I was reading your stories, I felt a kind of obsession about travels and return. Assume that there is something more than a creative element…

Maybe! Not in all of my stories there are travels, but I always thought you travel to have some place to return.

Title Conversations is accordant to idea and the form of your text. Is this a short story in the form of an interview or an interview that should induce us to and describe the whole field of problems which are hidden behind the picture of two men talking about love? Actually, I want to know what and how do you think about the form of a short story, according to your experience as a novelist? Situation in Spain with this genre?

I only write short storys when I feel sick, lonely, angry, bored... this make all my short storys are very different from my novels, which I write with my head, planning all the situations.

In short storys, I use to don´t know what I´m writing while I´m writing it. The story becomes with every word, so only when I finish it I know what I´ve wrote.

In this case, I wrote only the first two sentences of the short story at the beginning. Then I went to other place and continued at night. I liked the idea to write only the conversation, not the description of the characters or the feelings. Just the conversation.

In Spain there´s not a big market for short stories. A few writers make a compilation of short stories and publish, but not a lot off people buy it. One of my Spanish favorite writers, Ray Loriga, has a few of the most beautiful short stories I´ve ever read.

In Spain, is literature usually considered s a hobby or as a serious profession?

It´s a strange situation, because there´s not a lot of writers who can live from the money of literature. A lot of them write columns in newspapers, opinion columns. It´s sad everybody reads the same books, success books.

In other way, everybody has respect about a writer. It´s a respected figure. But a lot of us are poor like rats and have to take other jobs.