Antonio Muñoz Molina—Fact and Fiction, Organically Related

By Carlos Rodr�guez Martorell -- Críticas, 3/15/2007

If there were a literary Hall of Fame in Spain, Antonio Muñoz Molina (b. 1956) would certainly have a prominent place in it. Twice winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Award), he is the author of 14 novels and countless essays and articles. He has been a member of Spain’s Real Academia since 1995 and director of the Instituto Cervantes in New York from 2004–2005.

Muñoz Molina (Sepharad, Alfaguara, 2001) is now based in New York again, a city he chronicled in Ventanas de Manhattan (Seix Barral, 2004) and where he wrote most of El viento de la luna (“The Wind on the Moon”), his latest novel in five years. The author takes us once again to Mágina, an impoverished rural area in Spain. There, a boy fervently follows the first mission to the Moon. The site of many of his works, Mágina recalls Úbeda, the author’s birthplace. Muñoz Molina successfully weaves autobiographical details into all of his fiction. During his last visit to New York City last month, he spoke to Críticas about his fictional memoirs, his love affair with the Big Apple, and why he’s excited about “starting over.”

Books by Muñoz Molina

How did El viento de la luna (“The Wind on the Moon”) come into being?

El viento de la luna The creative process for a novel is very slow for me, not because I spend a lot of time writing, but because it can take long for [the novel] to fully mature. I had a vague idea for a while: a teenager’s summer story at the end of the Sixties. At some point it occurred to me that it would be great to connect that to an important event of that period: the first man on the moon.

Novels and short stories generally come not from one single idea, but from a clash of two ideas, like a chemical reaction. Once I had them together, it was relatively easy to start writing.

Neither the teenage protagonist nor his father has a name. It’s easy to assume that they represent you and your own father, to whom the book is dedicated. Is that the case?

The main character and his father appear in some of my previous novels, such as El jinete polaco (Planeta, 2001). Whenever I have intended to write my memoirs, I have used my signature. I think it is important to distinguish what is fiction from what isn’t. Even though this novel is based on my life, I have modified it. It is a literary character partially based on myself. Otherwise, I would have been forced to subscribe solely to my own experience. On the other hand, who can remember a conversation they had 35 years ago? It is fiction pretending to be a personal confession.

The tribute to my father is in my dedicating the book to him. I wanted to portray the relationship between fathers and sons. Even though the relationship between father and son in the novel reflects the one I had with my own father, it also reflects my bond with my sons.

How did you conduct your research for the chapters on the space mission?

Aside from great history books, there are numerous memoirs. Interestingly enough, one of the few people who have never written a memoir is Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin published a couple of very interesting works, and [Michael] Collins, who stayed inside the lunar module and did not walk on the moon, wrote an extraordinary book. One chapter in my novel is told from the perspective of an astronaut who stays inside the module alone as the others explore the moon, inspired by Collins’s own account.

Throughout the novel, there are subtle but frequent references to the unresolved debts of the Spanish Civil War, the “heavy burden of the past,” which ends up being an essential element to the story.

In order to highlight this young man’s drive to escape into the future, I wanted to bring to light the way in which the previous generation is still anchored to the past. He is not interested in that past; it is a drag for him, very present and weighs a lot. At the same time, it is buried: the older ones do not talk about it. Such is [typical of] survivors of terrible circumstances. It was important to me to convey that the past is there even if it is never mentioned.

Many of your novels are set in the fictional town of Mágina…

I do not believe there is a great gap between some of my novels and others. In a more or less visible manner they are all linked to Mágina, a sort of symbolic but real space. Although it is not mentioned, Plenilunio—which might seem thoroughly different from this [novel]—also takes place in Mágina. However, if the reader pays attention, they will find that the names of the places [in Plenilunio] are similar [to the ones that clearly take place in Mágina]. I like my novels and my stories to be organically related: not obvious, but evident to a careful reader.

What effect did writing in New York have on this work?

Certainly, when you are in your own country there is a continuity of time for you; as you leave, a sort of cut is produced. Paradoxically, this cut gives you a broader perspective. You do not confuse past and present. When you are in your country you walk down the street and say: “That’s where my uncle lives, that’s where I used to play as a kid….” Sometimes, this adequate distance makes our imagination and our lives more fertile. I like to live in New York City in part because that distance gives me a freedom of spirit and opinion that I could not have if I were over there.

Has living in New York also influenced you in a literary sense?

Yes, [it’s affected my] precision of writing. That consciousness would probably not be as acute in me were it not for the permanent example of so much literature in English. Aside from specific authors, languages have their own personalities. French, for example, is a very literary language in itself; English is much drier than Spanish, which tends to spread out, and more so in [literature].

Another thing that interests me a lot is nonfiction writing, news reports, magazines. For me, that discovery, which I made a long time ago, is one of the most important ones in my life.

You are well recognized in Spain and Europe, but in the United States a New York Times review of Sepharad cited that you are still “scandalously unknown.” Do you feel this is changing?

Translations are produced in much smaller volume here than in Spain or Europe, of course. There is a crucial difference between a good bookstore in Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, and one in the United States or England. This is a much more impermeable world. Then, inside, it is even tougher for everything Spanish, anything that isn’t from Latin America or from the Boom movement. Still, I am not worried; I’m actually excited about it. I find it very cleansing to start over, with all its advantages. Having a book that all of a sudden receives a few great reviews, such as Sepharad and two more about to be released—In Her Absence (Other Press, 2007) and Beatus Ille (Harcourt, 2008)—is very rejuvenating.

Books by Antonio Muñoz Molina
Beltenebros Booket: Planeta. 2006. ISBN 978-84-322-1735-7.	El invierno en Lisboa (“Winter in Lisbon”) Booket: Planeta. 2006. ISBN 978-84-322-1722-7.
El viento de la Luna (“The Wind on the Moon”) Seix Barral: Planeta. 2006. ISBN 84-322-1227-X.	Beatus Ille Booket: Planeta. 2005. ISBN 978-84-322-1724-1.
El jinete polaco (“The Polish Horseman”) Booket: Planeta. 2005. ISBN 978-84-322-1705-0.	En ausencia de Blanca (In Her Absence) Punto de Lectura: Santillana. 2005. ISBN 978-84-663-0878-6.
Ventas en Manhattan (“Windows on Manhattan”) Booket: Planeta. 2005. ISBN 978-84-322-1707-4.	Plenilunio (“Full Moon”) Punto de Lectura: Santillana. 2004. ISBN 978-84-9550-105-9.
Carlota Fainberg Punto de Lectura: Santillana. 2001. ISBN 978-84-663-0101-5.	Sefarad (Sepharad) Alfaguara: Santillana. 2001. ISBN 978-84-204-4256-3.
Ardor guerrero (“Warrior Passion”) Alfaguara: Santillana. 1995. ISBN 978-84-204-8171-5.