Daniel Sada

Author(s): Jos Manuel Prieto and Daniel Sada

Source: BOMB, No. 94, The Americas Issue: Mexico and the Gulf (Winter, 2005/2006), pp. 56-59
Published by: New Art Publications
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theslam ofthedoorand an
Immediately
unexpecteduneasiness,afterlettinghimself
succumbonce againand feelingsuddenly
thathe was beingsignaledby a diabolical
finger
justas his nightmare
began,in
whichhe was walkingwithdifficulty
atop
a sluggishstreamofbodies onlyto fall,
DANIEL SADA AND I HAVE SPENT MANY AFTERNOONS
together in cafs in La Condesa, Mexico City's bohemian neighborhood.Of all the Mexican writersof my
generation, Sada is the one I most admire, for his
highlyrigoroustechnique,the unequaled densityof his
prose, his steel-solid aesthetic sensibility.We always
talk about literature,sharing ideas about our own
projects and discussing what's happening in Mexican
writing,withnumeroustangents intoworld literature.
As can be seen fromthis, our most recent conversation,Sada has a clear pedagogical mission. He is able
to hold in his mind radicallydifferentmodels, alongside the most refined metric forms in the Spanish
language, which he utilizes with the familiarityof a
daily visitor. Everythingthat blossoms most wildly
in his work entails a level of difficultythat seems
at times insurmountable for the common readerbut that reader,in any case, is not the one he has in
mind. Many critics note his kinshipwith Juan Rulfo:
the world he sketches, the violence runningthrough
it,the irascibilityof his characters,but even that does
not adequately explain the weight and cardinal importance of his work in contemporaryMexican letters.
His principal text, Porque parece mentira,la verdad
nunca se sabe (Because it seems to be a lie, the
truthis never known), from1999, invariablyarouses
a certain distress in his readers' hearts: its 700-page

and a healthydistress,that of greatness, which I hope

readers of BOMB willexperience,and about which I've
attemptedto spark himto talk.

JOS MANUEL PRIETO

The firsttime I heard about Porque parece mentira,la
verdad nunca se sabe (Because it seems to be a lie,
the truth is never known), I learned about its internal rhythm,its infamousoctosyllabic meter.Can you
explain that a bit for readers? What effect are you
seeking there?
DANIEL

SADA
It is in no way a desire to be flashy or overly
elaborate that leads me to use octosyllables,
hendecasyllables, alexandrines, decasyllables or
heptasyllables. I have a deep knowledge, fromchildhood, of the most elemental constructions of these
metric forms, so characteristic of Spanish. In my
primary school in Sacramento, Coahuila, Panchita

Cabrera, a rural schoolteacher who was an ardent

fan of the Spanish Golden Age (a type that no longer
exists) taught us these phonetic techniques with
one goal in mind: that we might fine-tune our ears
in order to appreciate the expressive delicacy and
virulence of our language. In fact, to be honest, it's
more difficultfor me to write free prose, because

length, its unique stylistic mixture of colloquialism and elegant language, its internalrhythm(about

I don't have any technical (phonetic) resources on

hand that might provide some support. Now, in the
most recent novels I've written, Luces artificiales

which I've asked him and on which he expands here);

(Artificial lights) and Ritmo delta (Delta rhythm),

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DANIEL SADA
JOSE MANUEL PRIETO

L
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at last,exhausted,wan,and hearalmost
rightin his ear,hiswife'ssentence,
piercing,
and his sonswhispering
in unison:
Die, dearheart,herenextto us! as he
became,in theend,justanotherbundle- likeanyone
emaciated?
completely
ofthepile thathad arrivedin thetown.

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and in an as-yet-unpublished novella titled La

duracin de los empeos simples (The Duration of

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simple endeavors), I've let go of meter, and forthat

very reason I've had to work much harder to write
them. I should also say that for many years I buried

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myself in the study of Spanish rhetoric, partly in

order to destroy and then rebuild, in a different
way, the internal logic of the Spanish language (to
rid it of aridity and give it more expressive color).

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Sa

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SS

The result, over the years, is not definitive. The

process of transfiguration continues to expand,
and that's one of the reasons I keep on writing. I

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have plans for literary projects that, according to

my calculations, will take up the next 20 years of

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my life. This whole agenda depends more on my

health than on the health of my ideas.
JMP But doesn't it seem a bit unusual to you that a prose

in
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writerwould relyon meter? Do you know of any similar instances in Spanish or in any other language? How

DS

do yourreaders react? Do they even perceive it? How

does it aid in the readingof these books?
Of course the use of meter by a prose writer is
unusual, especially in the literature of our time.
With regard to that, I must emphasize my classical education. I read Dante's Divine Comedy, in
hendecasyllabic lines, in the Argentinean writer
Bartolom Mitre's translation, direct from the
Tuscan to the Spanish, and also the Poema de
mo cid (Poem of my cid) and La Araucana. These
three works, in addition to Ovid's Metamorphoses

and Virgil's Aeneid, have all the characteristics of novelized histories, with characters, plots
and subplots branching out in a form that moves
beyond the most simple and unequivocal aspects
of a linear projection with a chronological movement. To all this I should add that the works are
written in verse, and I wanted to attempt something similar. My novel Albedrio (Free will) is written in octosyllables, and some of my short stories
are written in decasyllables, hendecasyllables and
alexandrines. In my novel Because It Seems To Be
a Lie the Truth Is Never Known, I utilized all the
meters I know of in Spanish. However, the problem
that presented itself in the context of this whole
range of constraints is that the reader might never
develop empathy, might become confused ifshe or
he does not have a basic knowledge of the rhythms
of our tongue. In some fundamental way, anyone
might conceive of all of this as just so much
pedantry, but I begin from the idea that my work
will be read by ideal readers, who are connoisseurs
and lovers of meter rather than simply arrogant
exegetes. The end point of this audacity can only
be reached via our own passions: you either take
it or leave it, and that's that. Readers love me or
hate me; there is no gray area. Now, in Artificial
Lights and Delta Rhythm,I have abandoned meter,
not because these are urban novels, but because I
want to discover how I might function without so
many restrictions. Some readers thank me for it,

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D
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L

of violence. Perhaps you mightadd something more.

ArtificialLightsis a veryurban story.Has makingthis
change signified a certain challenge for you? Does

while others reprimand me for having abandoned

my perhaps unmistakable literary stamp. And as
for me, I can only say that I will write exactly what
I want to write.
JMP Can you talk a bit about the genesis and historyof
Because It Seems To Be A Lie?
DS
When I wrote that book I was immersed in nine-

S
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A

teenth-century novels, and I realized that most of

them incorporated an entire gallery of characters:
Dickens's Oliver Twist has 67 characters; Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina has 27 female characters, including
the protagonist- a marvelous diorama of temperaments that perhaps comprise all that women have

DS

any type of rhythmicemphasis. I confess, a propos

of that, that I could never write outside what my
ear can't even conceive as a modulation.
JMP Talkto me a bit about yourrelationshipwithfilm.How
many of your books have been made into movies?
How do your books, your baroque writing style (I
don't know ifthat's an adjective you use foryourown
books, and incidentallyI'd liketo know ifyou consider
yourselfa baroque writer),adapt to the more linear

been and will be; in War and Peace there are 109
characters, and none of them is incidental, but
rather each has a direct effect on the plot. In terms
of what we might call the marrow of Balzac's A
Human Comedy, with the trilogy formed of the
novels Lost illusions, The Splendors and Miseries of
Courtesans and Old Goriot,it's possible to enumerate 234 characters. Novelistic ventures of this caliber impressed and informed me: in them it was
necessary to touch on every social stratus, and in
turn I required myself to conceive of a story with
90 characters, with bifurcations and reflections
that might extrapolate narrative time and overflow my imagination, which is always- and this
is for certain- circumscribed by the most evident
parameters of reality. I wanted to see the novel as

DS

textureof film?
None of the stories I've writtenhas been conceived
for film. Suddenly, over time, many readers have
commented that they see cinematic scenarios in
my work, and in addition, that my dramatic texture
seems to them to function excellently on-screen. I
don't know why such a large number of filmmakers
and passionate fans of film have appeared in my
life. I had to get used to hearing overly elaborate
justifications for dramatic compositional methods that I found extremely strange and inapplicable to my work, and despite that hodge-podge of

a totalizing venture.
JMP What is yourrelationshipwith so-called border literature? Do you believe that such a literatureexists, and
if so, do you see yourselfwithinthat framework?An

excesses I simply couldn't assimilate the idea that

one of my stories might work on the big screen,
until 1996, when Marcel Sisniega, who at that
time was a young film director, proposed to me
that we shoot my novel Una de dos (One of two).

offshootof this question, seen froma U.S. perspective, is to imagine the relationshipwith literaturethat
is constructed in the south of the United States. I'm
thinking,forexample, of Cormac McCarthy.

good judgment to invite me to write the screenplay

together with him, and after I accepted, I set two
conditions: that despite being an adaptation, the

DS

I am exceedingly irritated by the fragmentation

of literature: that a writer might self-identify as
"detective," "fantasy," "romantic" or "minimalist" is reason enough for me to stop reading her
or him. I like it when literature surprises me as I
move farther into a story's dramatic density. If
know in advance that the book in question is a
"thriller" or a work of "science fiction" or whatever naming device might help me to sight the
path I will traverse, then I'd prefer not to traverse
anything, not to read anything. Likewise with socalled border literature. I believe that a reader who
is truly passionate about literature is not interested in any kind of classification. It may be that
this whole mess of adjectives thrown together any
which way only works for didactic ends; perhaps
in that context the infinite number of conceptual
demarcations might be justified, but for me as a

reader or as a writer,they don't work at all. I could

give a fig about the future of border literature.
JMP I understand perfectlywhat you're saying, and the
irritationsof such narrow demarcations. But it's a
question, in some of your stories, in some of your

your abandonment of meter have something to do

withthe abandonment of that particularlandscape?
My abandonment of meter is partial. I now put my
faith in cadences, rather than withdrawing from

books, of narrativesthat take place in ruralsettings,

with a certain very palpable and quotidian presence

I accepted, with some skepticism. Marcel had the

filmwould preserve the spirit of the book; and that

it would maintain a consistent rhythmin which the
level of intrigue would never falter. We worked on
the screenplay for over a year. There were struggles, and in our excessive desire to achieve perfection, we wrote a number of differenttreatments.
We agreed on one thing: that we were not going
to make a bad movie simply to remain faithfulto
the book. To our surprise, the film won a number
of prizes, but it had no success at the box office.
In the years following 2002, One of Two has been
shown in art houses and on TV. It's become a
symbolic reference point for recent Mexican filmmaking. And on the other hand, to answer another
part of your question: it's true that I'm considered
a baroque writer,and what can I do? In the oldest
meaning of the term, the baroque is the "poorly
made," the "excessive," the "overdecorated." I tend
toward explorations into language, and I attempt
to achieve clarity and eloquence in the anecdotal
movement of my stories. The rest is a system of
aesthetic inquirythat, in essence, should not alter
the development of characters or stories.
JMP To go a little deeper into the baroque: what would
differentiatea writerwho is baroque fromone who

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5
8

isn't? Withinthe boundaries of work in Spanish, we

always talk about writerslikeAlejo Carpentieror Jos

Lezama Lima. In yourlast response,you basically characterized yourselfas a baroque writer.What are the
- a baroque approach
characteristicsofbaroque writing
to realitythat attractsyou, or that you consider useful
in order to delve more deeply into realityand locate
DS

truthsthat mightotherwiseescape you?

It's difficultfor me to call myself a baroque writer.
I would like to be a writer without adjectives,
because I know that grants me all the liberty in
the world, including my tendency to measure my
prose. If Carpentier and Lezama Lima are known as
baroque writers, I don't think that such a denomination adds to or detracts fromtheir literarymerit.

symbolic and all the rest. It's an attempt to align

myselfwith dream logic.
I'd prefer not to talk about my next novel,
because I'm very superstitious. All I'll tell you now
is that it's a plot based in obsessions. The novel is

short and will be out in March 2006.

JMP What kindof writerdo you thinkyou are? Could you
answer this by thinkingthroughone of yourbooks?
ID S
I still don't know what kind of writer I am. I know
that I'm not famous, which allows me to continue
to explore my perception and my psyche with abso-

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lute freedom.
Translatedby JenHofer

All you can say about them is that they do not write
in meter.
JMP Talkto me about yourrelationshipwithJuanRulfo.Did
DS

you know him personally?

Throughout my life Tve known many intellectuals
and very few artists. In my thinking,I place artists
at a much a higher level than intellectuals. It goes
without saying that thoughtfulpeople interest me,
but when I discover that a person is also creative,
I can say that I'm almost touching heaven. For
me, knowing Juan Rulfo has been one of the best
gifts life has given me. Rulfo was familiar with an
amazing amount of literature, but he never went
around boasting about everything he had read,
and therefore he was not an intellectual. He once
recommended that I shouldn't persist in intellectualizing everythingI was experiencing, because that
would end up getting in the way of my perception.
Reading is perpetual nourishment, never a vehicle
for vanity. Intellectuals, in general, are braggarts,
perhaps because they do not possess a true interior
landscape. Artists are more silent; they are observers and have, naturally,a great capacity for astonishment. Artists are continual absorbers, and it is
perhaps only much later that they pick and choose.
These are all Rulfian concepts, and were spoken, I

will confess, very close to my ear, as if they were

secrets that can only be told in low tones.
JMP Tell me something about your latest novel, Delta
Rhythm,and in what way it is or isn't a continuation
of what you've been doing up to this point.And what
DS

are you workingon now?

Delta Rhythm is a novel about dreams, and that
particular rhythmconsists of a duration of approximately one hour, which is quite exceptional, since
it's only possible to have a dream of that temporal dimension once or perhaps twice a year. There
are four dream rhythms (and here I'm applying
solely the physiological mechanics of oneirism),
which are alpha, beta, gamma and delta, with this
last being the most prolonged and the most saturated with differentstates of mind. Delta rhythm
is sometimes hurried and sometimes slow. It's also
digressive, symbolic, ambiguous and derivative. I
attempt to engage all these modes in the style and
form of my novel. I like it when the plot speeds up
and then immediately slows down; I like it to be

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