The PEN Ten: An Interview in Translation with Carlos Labbé

      Foto Juan Farias E / La Tercera /

The PEN Ten is PEN America’s weekly interview series. This week, PEN America’s Public Programs Manager Lily Philpott speaks with Carlos Labbé, author of Spiritual Choreographies, published this year by Open Letter. Translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden.

1. What was the first book or piece of writing that had a profound impact on you?
Por las mesas de mi casa circulaban, manoseados y manchados de comida, Lagar de Gabriela Mistral y Amereida, el manifiesto que creó la Ciudad Abierta cerca de Valparaíso en Chile. Aprendí a leer de manera no imitativa mientras intentaba imitar a mi mamá y a mi papá ante esos libros. 

From table to table in my house circulated, hand-worn and food-stained, Lagar by Gabriela Mistral and Amereida, the manifesto created by the Ciudad Abierta, near Valparaíso, in Chile. I learned to read in a non-imitative way while trying to imitate my mom and dad reading those books.

2. How does your writing navigate truth? What is the relationship between truth and fiction?
La manipulación mediática y algorítmica de los discursos crea cada segundo una nueva realidad discriminadora y contraria a la mera noción de solidaridad –entendida ésta como comunicación profunda, compasión y disolución de la subjetividad en otras subjetividades–, aunque de paso también ha destrozado poses literarias típicas de la narrativa de los siglos XIX y XX como el cinismo, la polémica y el sentimentalismo. Mi escritura tiene su raíz en lo que había antes de esas poses en los países industrializados, y que ha existido siempre en los países colonizados: el juego colectivista; la exploración de las correspondencias entre los diferentes mundos y los cuerpos físicos; las huellas sagradas de lo sexual en el tiempo y el espacio; la relación entre justicia, lenguajes humanos y conocimientos secretos vivos. Quien escribe hoy debe ser un hacker que descodifica y recrea todas esas escrituras antiguas y remotas, para proponer con cada libro un programa mejor en donde vivir.

Media and algorithmic manipulation of discourse creates, every second, a new reality, discriminatory and contrary to the very notion of solidarity—taken to mean deep communication, compassion, and dissolution of the subjectivity in other subjectivities—but along the way it has also destroyed the typical literary poses of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature like cynicism, the polemic, and sentimentality. My writing is rooted in what came before those poses in industrialized countries, and what has always existed in colonized countries: the collectivist game; the exploration of the connections between the different worlds and physical bodies; the sacred traces of the sexual in time and space; the relationship between justice, human languages, and secret living knowledges. The writer of today should be a hacker who decodes and recreates all those remote and ancient writings, to, with each book, posit a better program in which to live.

3. What does your creative process look like? How do you maintain momentum and remain inspired?
Escribo temprano o muy tarde en la noche. Escucho música revelada en las calles como si fuera el pentagrama de mis notas verbales. Converso con mis amores. Me pongo en tercera fila en las conversaciones, marchas, protestas y manifestaciones. Dejo que me hablen todas las voces que habitan ahí donde me ha tocado estar.

I write early in the morning or very late at night. I listen to music revealed in the streets, as if it were the musical staff of my verbal notes. I converse with my loved-ones. I put myself in the third row in conversations, marches, protests, and demonstrations. I let the voices inhabiting the spaces I’m in speak to me.

“Dejo que me hablen todas las voces que habitan ahí donde me ha tocado estar.”
“I let the voices inhabiting the spaces I’m in speak to me.”

4. What is one book or piece of writing you love that readers might not know about?
La obra narrativa de Marosa Di Giorgio, porque es un detector inmediato de fluidez sexual y saber eso de alguien a quien uno va recién conociendo le quita interés al lento y amistoso proceso de la seducción.

The work of Marosa Di Giorgio, because it’s an immediate detector of sexual fluidity and learning this from someone you’re just getting to know strips away interest in the slow and amiable process of seduction.

5. Whose words do you turn to for inspiration?
“Eros alado” son dos palabras que, yuxtapuestas, me otorgan inspiración, traspiración y respiración.

“Winged Eros” are two words that, juxtaposed, give me inspiration, perspiration, and respiration.

6. What is the last book you read? What are you reading next?
Leo y leo The Dispossessed, de Ursula K. Le Guin. Quiero que termine con algo que sé que ella no escribió: la obra de Odo, la filósofa anarquista intergaláctica. Luego seguiré leyendo, alternadamente, a Joy Harjo y La oscura vida radiante de Manuel Rojas.

I read and read The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I want it to end with something I know she never wrote: the work of Odo, the intergalactic anarchist philosopher. Then I go back to reading, alternatively, Joy Harjo and La oscura vida radiante by Manual Rojas.

7. What do you consider to be the biggest threat to free expression today? Have there been times when your right to free expression has been challenged?
The biggest threat to free expression today is algorithm-based marketing, porque reduce la subjetividad a una caja finita de variables. Las nuevas corporaciones-estado, aliadas con las leyes del viejo estado-nación, encontraron la mejor manera de silenciar a las voces que proponen cualquier tipo de insumisión: encuentran las palabras clave que encienden alarmas económicas, o las gramáticas peligrosas porque no son consumibles, o porque se oponen a mercados ya existentes, y simplemente las quitan de circulación sin eliminarlas, sólo invisibilizándolas al sumergirlas en masas de metadata superfluo.

The biggest threat to free expression today is algorithm-based marketing, because it reduces subjectivity to a finite toolbox of variables. The new corporate-state, allied with the laws of the old nation-state, have found the best way to silence voices positing any kind of revolt: locating keywords that trigger economic alerts or grammars that are threatening because they’re not consumable, or because they oppose pre-established markets, and simply take them out of circulation, not eliminating them, but merely rendering them invisible by drowning them in massive amounts of superfluous metadata.

8. What is the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words? Have you ever written something you wish you could take back?
No me arrepiento de nada, pero sí me enorgullezco de este párrafo radical de Spiritual Choreographies: “Sólo habían aparecido ellos tres en el escenario, un arpa de madera y un órgano de tubos, sin primeros planos digitales intervenidos en las retinas, sin orquestas de tres pisos ni arengas ecopolíticas, versículos apócrifos ni explosiones en las pantallas. Fue entonces que, a una señal de cabeza del vocalista, un rechinar hidráulico levantó el frontis neoclásico del ex teatro municipal para que el concierto quedara súbitamente a la intemperie y las cien butacas fueran de inmediato rodeadas por centenares de estudiantes, de obreras, de desocupados, de auxiliares, de asesoras, de objetores, de almaceneros, de recién llegados, de perros y niñas que a esa hora rastrojeaban entre los basureros de los exclusivos restaurantes de barrio antiguo. Los secretarios financieros del Contraimperio aprovecharon para encender sus respectivas pipas de agua, porque ya lo estaban entendiendo: el costo prohibitivo de los pocos boletos disponibles para el único concierto de reunión de El Grupo había sido utilizado para reconstruir el frontis del ex teatro municipal de manera tal que minutos antes de la primera canción cualquier transeúnte ahí se congregaba.”  

I don’t regret anything, but I’m proud of this radical paragraph from Spiritual Choreographies: “The three of them had appeared on stage with only a wooden harp and a tube organ, no retina-filling digital close-ups, no three-tiered orchestras or eco-political rants, no apocryphal verses or on-screen explosions. And then, with a nod of the vocalist’s head, a grinding hydraulic engine raised the neoclassical façade of what had been the municipal theater, so the concert was suddenly out in the open air and the one hundred seats were immediately surrounded by hundreds of students, workers, the unemployed, assistants, advisors, protestors, grocers, new arrivals, dogs, and girls who at that hour rummaged through the dumpsters of the old neighborhood’s high-end restaurants. The finance secretaries of the Anti-Empire took that moment to light up their water pipes, because it was all starting to make sense: the prohibitive cost of the exclusive tickets for The Band’s only reunion concert had been used to rebuild the façade of the old municipal theater in such a way that, minutes before the opening song, all the people in the streets had congregated there.”

9. Which writers working today are you most excited by?
The collective writers me parecen fundamentales hoy, porque su mera existencia destruye el lugar solitario y egocéntrico que nos ha sido asignado a quienes ejercemos la literatura activamente acá. El colectivo mexicano AEIOU, Elena Ferrante, Tiqqun y Wu Ming en Italia, Sangría, los textos sagrados de nuevas sectas religiosas en Estados Unidos, los grupos Tres-en-uno de la revolución en China, las Mujeres Creando en Bolivia, entre tanta otra gente. Y todavía nadie logra convencerme de que Thomas Pynchon no es un taller de varias narradoras cuánticas. 

Collective writers seem fundamental to me right now, because their very existence destroys the solitary and egocentric place assigned to those of us who actively practice literature here. The Mexican collective AEIOU, Elena Ferrante, Tiqqun and Wu Ming in Italy, Sangría, the sacred texts of new religious sects in the U.S., the Three-in-One groups of the Chinese Revolution, the Mujeres Creando in Bolivia, among so many other people. And I’m still not convinced that Thomas Pynchon isn’t a workshop of multiple quantum writers.

10. Your most recent book, Spiritual Choreographies, was published in Spanish two years before it was translated and published in English (by translator Will Vanderhyden, for Open Letter Books). Do you think this chronological gap affects the story itself, and audience reaction to it? Why or why not?
Por el contrario, creo que esta novela mía es cada vez más actual. Y suena bien en todos los idiomas, porque deliberadamente evita todos los nombres propios. Es algo que parece extraño, pero me parece que este librito se vuelve más y más contingente por su rareza, porque es abiertamente musical y políticamente es declaradamente populista. En nuestros mundos, en sus calles y sus camas y sus campos y sus playas, suenan cada vez más fuertes las performances que claman justicia con buen estilo. 

To the contrary, I think this novel of mine is increasingly contemporary. And it sounds good in all languages, because it deliberately avoids all proper names. It might seem strange, but I think this little book is becoming more and more contingent in its strangeness, because it is openly musical and politically it is brazenly populist. In our worlds, in their streets and their beds and their fields and their beaches, sound out ever louder the performances that, with good style, call for justice.

Carlos Labbé, one of Granta’s “Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists,” was born in Chile and is the author of eight novels, including Navidad & Matanza and Loquela, and two collections of short stories. In addition to his writings, he is a musician and has released five albums. He is a co-editor at Sangria, a publishing house based in Santiago and Brooklyn, where he translates and runs workshops. He also writes literary essays, most notably on Juan Carlos Onetti, Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolaño.

Will Vanderhyden is a freelance translator, with an MA in Literary Translation from the University of Rochester. He has translated the work of Carlos Labbé, Rodrigo Fresán, and Fernanda García Lao, among others. His translations have appeared in journals such as Two Lines, The Literary Review, The Scofield, and The Arkansas International. He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Lannan Foundation. His translation of The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.