It's a storybook. First of all, that draws attention…

I have included thirty-seven stories in this book, plus another text, plus a counter-narrative micronarration, a version of a story that is inside... There are many, but the previous book, the writer who writes While writing, is his son, even if he publishes it before. The stories here and there belong to the same section. I was working on the project of writing biodiskographs, and on the other hand, I was writing other stories, until I had lots of stories. I noticed that everyone was very closely related to each other, and all of a sudden, I saw the book. In my case, I have to see that there is a book. Anyway, my first job is to write stories. Then comes the book…

In the case of Biodiskografiak you told us that you had acted differently…

In the case of Biodiskografiak, I had a project, a thread, and I did. In the case of stories I was writing differently, I didn't see the structure of the storybook. So, I realized that a lot of stories focused on literature itself. Therefore, the books were two: one on reading and literature – after all the book is writing…–, and this one, more ambitious, more thematic. The first thing was clear, and so was Elkar. The other, the thicker one, I wanted it in Alberdania, but my project was delayed when it entered the standby of one of them. Stories have been reinvented, stories have been postponed, stories have been thrown away, some news has been written that was linked to the environment of the book and the following Inon ez has been published, never hau.

In
this work, we have a thousand ways and one more to write stories. Stories of all kinds …

They're very different in terms of technique, yes. There's, in a way, an entire panoplia. It could have been a catalog. Anyway, now it's me who knows it, when people warn me. It's not an anthology of stories, because all stories are new, never published in the book, but in a way it's a collection of stories of all the trends that I've worked on.

Nowhere, we never have a title on the front page. Inside there is another section, even if you haven't brought it to the title Here, now.

Here, now that's for a section, but nothing else. If you hit the surface, it could divert the reader's attention. Moreover, Inon seems to me to be a more inspiring title than the other.

Here, now, of course, is a Basque thing, which Ramón Saizarbitoria, and you yourself, have mentioned for a long time. The Basque thing…

Yes, it is one of the main issues, but fortunately not the only one. In fact, I would say that there are two trends in Basque readers: there are some who believe that little has been written on this subject – but among those who read in Basque I do not think it is the majority – and others who, on the other hand, are always talking about midwives. I do not want to deceive anyone, I already said in the presentation that there are quite a few stories on this subject in this book, but let us at least leave the title in peace in that sense.

Besides being a writer, he is a professor of history at the UPV/EHU. He has not written much about the Basque thing. What about the state of the thing?

I do not think I care about my opinion, I feel unable to give a doctrine. I would give you a doubtful opinion and people do not ask for it, but a strong opinion. It is true that when I was young I had firmer opinions on this issue, as on many others. I read the article to one of these people, and I see it as useful. I read the article which defends an attitude contrary to the previous one, and there I also see positive points. So, I think I have a small personality... Ha, ha... If in my youth I had been asked for opinion I would have made it easier and I would have paused continuously. That is not to say that it refuses to participate in politics, but not as an opinion, but as a citizen. Fiction, in this sense, serves me more to gather and cast some impressions of what has happened to us or is going on without indoctrinating us, or to reflect my doubts: it is not so invasive, to say the least. I have the impression that along that road I come more easily to tell a truth than to structure my opinion systematically. And yet, to know if… you can do a lot of bad literature along that road, too…

Is he still wearing the badge against chest input?

Yes, according to the jacket. A broken rifle. I still agree with that: the input did not achieve its goal, because it was not only the end of military service, but the demilitarization of society. Because even if ETA has left the guns, we do not live in a demilitarized society. We continue to manufacture and export arms, both to the Third World and to the Third World. On the part of States, society is more militarized, even if there are no forced soldiers in force. The test is in attacks on freedom of expression. The police are always here. That is where we have to fight. But, look, I'm already giving my opinion, giving my word...

Nowhere, we never have a title. Two separate paragraphs…

Here, now, those of the section, those of the conflict, who and what they should be, there was no doubt. They are organized chronologically from 2006 to the present day. For the rest, I wanted to build two fairly homogeneous parts. In both cases I have compiled the stories that could have their reference and their echo. In the first, those related to the place and the landscape in some way; in the third, those that most fit the time. But it hasn't always been an automatic thing. On the other hand, I have also worked on the location of stories, I have made parallels, links – they are my links, in my opinion – giving an instruction to the reader… But, that, nothing but an instruction. I think a story book can't be read like a novel, a gallop, because every story is a novel. In this way, each story has to awaken the passion to read the following, but not immeasurably, because otherwise, the effect of the story is lost. I think I do it from my theory, another thing is the reader’s belief and the reading that he will receive: after all, the book reader is more sovereign, more independent in himself than the novels reader...

There are also themes that appear in Biodiskographies and Writing... Music, literature -- they're constant in your work.

Some stories could have their place in Scripture… in it, but I have also put here some stories with other content. I have just read Songs of love and rain by Sergi Pàmies. I don’t know if you read it…

No…

It's a book I'm very grateful for. And in many stories, the protagonist is the writer, who goes back and forth, offering lectures, etc. It's normal. This is, at least in part, your world, to which you cannot fail to turn. It gives you the starting point to start the story. But in this book I have used, to a lesser extent, the literary world itself, than in the previous one; I would say that this book is more dedicated to life than literature.

You are running reading clubs in the last ten years. If you weren't in them, maybe metalworking, would have so much space in your works?

Probably not. For starters, I wouldn't have written a few stories. Others write yes, but not that way. I don't know what the exact effect is. Playing in the club, not walking, I don't know what the result would be, I don't know. The fact is that I’ve been in it for eleven years… When I got the proposal, I found it curious. I didn't know the atmosphere, I'd never been there. I had to go to the Mondragon Library to see how it worked. Since then, I have continued to coordinate the Vitorian club. It has helped me stay up to date and allowed me to reread the books I loved and delve into them. And the rereading has taught me a lot. I've recovered some authors and I've enjoyed the work of some of them that I didn't appreciate so much in the past. Sometimes, I had read them in Spanish; I think I have read them in Basque and I have learned a lot. As a writer and a reader, the club has given me a lot. On a personal level, I've made great friendships. Today, without them, I do not conceive life. I met Ángel Erro at the club, or Mikel Ayerbe, or Asun Agiriano, and many other people, which I very much appreciate.

It's also read in clubs.

Yes. The hegemony of the novel is always there, but I try to break this hegemony a bit in clubs, so that other genres also have room. The reader is used to reading novels. In that they have educated us. Stories, don't think so, aren't usually read by people. There is also the poetry, the essay, the theater… genres that are read less, always, but that we read in the club, although in smaller doses than the novel. A member of the reading groups often enthusiastically receives reading a text that is not a novel, but at the same time shows a surprise. At least those who have just started in the club.

It is not much, the professor and member of Euskaltzaindia Ana Toledo assured that the Basque literature has grown, but that the receiver has not increased in the same proportion. Readers are few...

I have once commented on the paradox: “Where is the salvation of Basque literature? In the unlimited expansion of the number of writers.” The more writers there are, the more readers there are, because they are the ones who read the works of others, even to spy on. On the day that the whole of Euskera becomes a writer, Basque literature would be saved as far as the reader is concerned. But, aside from boutads, you don't think you live much better in the literatures there, but always in favor of scale. It takes the production of books in Spanish and compares with the rates of reading and selling, and very few books more or less are disseminated. The supply is huge, the demand is small. On the other hand, society reads, but increasingly through other ways than the book. In our case, the diglosis situation increases the shortage of readers. Some complain about the lack of Basque literature of the best-seller type, but the Basque reader, for his part, as a bilingual, always has the way to access other areas, be it French or Spanish. We compete with each other, on the one hand, but also against other literature – or book production, because there are books that have no literature at all. That squeezes our market, but those are the rules of the game, and we have no choice but to accept them.

In March, you studied the days of
Bernardo Atxaga's Nevada at the reading club he leads. In a passage of the book the teacher of the school of Reno appears, reading the students of the book of literature…

I have also read to Anjel Lertxundi the same concern…

Again and again...

And if teachers don't read here, how do you convey hobby?

Well, the professor does not have to use the word “can happen” and the word “can happen”, but there he is always teaching all the verbal paradigms in the form of “nor-nork”, working and asking the students…

Yes… yes… After all, I suspect that we are quite Spanish when it comes to the habit of reading. In Spain, reading rates have been historically low. What tradition of reading have we received from there? In Ipar Euskal Herria they have another handicap, Jacobinism, although I believe that this is more and better read; not in Euskera, but the change of the literary axis to the South has not helped much in that. The percentage of people interested in literature, reading books, for example, is scarce, due to the history of Spanish culture. The possibility of finding teachers who encourage you to read throughout the teaching, therefore, is probably lower here than in France or in the United States, and in that sense it does not surprise me that the good impression that Bernardo Atxaga gathers in the book of Nevada... about the relationship between teaching and reading in the United States... The cultural status of the book in Spain is small, in the Transition it was a bit ascending, but But it has to be admitted that it may not be the most common thing. I would like to reflect on this, I am concerned about the article…