Miguel-Anxo Murado: “Newspapers are the natural medium of literary columnism”

Journalism and literature are two constants in biography Miguel-Anxo Murado (Lugo, 1965), a round trip that materializes in his unique way of seeing the world and writing about it. A good example are his columns on the back of La Voz de Galicia, which the newspaper is now compiling into a book, Night trains and other tangles. The volume can be obtained with the newspaper this Sunday the 18th for 3.95 euros plus the coupon on the spine of the newspaper.

— In the introduction to the book, you highlight the versatility that a format such as a literary column enables. To what do you attribute this adaptability of the text in print, not to the topics, but also to the way of expression?

— Paradoxically, I think it’s because of how the genre is delimited in terms of space and periodicity. It forces you to offer something different every week and to think of a way to tell it in six hundred and ten words. And then also because of his humility. The literary article has no great pretensions, it was not written for posterity. This frees the writer from his own vanity and enables him to address a trifle or perform an experiment.

— You also recognize your pleasure in the format, which is somehow associated with your “Writings in Cafeterias”, where surely many readers of La Voz enjoy your columns…

— These articles were indeed written in cafeterias, often on paper napkins, which also says something about this format, which has a lot of inspiration of the moment, annotations in the margin. And it seems to me that this is the ideal way to enjoy the column: breakfast in the canteen before going to work.

— This circumstance also highlights another condition of newspapers, that an individual act such as reading creates a social or collective consciousness.

— Yes, I am very much a journalist. Even now, with strong competition from other media, it is still something special, I mean paper newspapers. It is an object, which other means are not. Buying it at a kiosk is like visiting someone. Being subscribed is like getting a letter every day. Reading in the canteen, passing it from one person to another, is a civilized gesture that I have always liked.

— The introduction explains the section’s call to restore literary columnism, which is less present today than in other times…

— Yes, in fact, some confuse it with an opinion piece and expect it to contain judgments about politics or society. But literary columnism does not have that function, but the exact opposite: to ask questions, suspend judgments, observe what is behind everyday reality. Not that the genre has completely disappeared. It still exists, although not at its best. Maybe it happened that the blog first became independent, and then the blog immediately fell into crisis. I don’t know, but the fact is that newspapers, especially on paper, are his natural medium: partly because of the length, partly because of the slow reading…

— What criteria did you use to select the texts? And choose the one that gives him the title?

— I chose the ones I liked the most, without further ado. Giving the column a title made no sense, because the column continues, so I gave the title to one of the articles which, metaphorically, reflects the meaning of the book, because newspaper columns are like night trains: they flash their lights and then at regular intervals they flash again.

— You tolerate seemingly unexpected but very revealing connections very well: for example, the cold coming from 1938. How do you make these connections?

—When writing fiction, the advantage is that you can imagine everything you write, and the disadvantage is that you have to do it. In a literary article, on the other hand, one should look for what can be revealing, comic or poetic in what is apparently normal and everyday. If it turns out that on a very cold day you realize that it is the anniversary of the icy battle of Teruel, that cold is already writing the article for you, as in the case you mention.

— There are also surprising characters: General Vernon Walters, a CIA agent galegofalante…

— Yes, he was even the deputy director of the CIA. A picturesque figure. There are many others, some famous and others less so; people I’ve met, as in that case, or not. I have always loved the genre of short biography, portrait, even obituary. I like it because the life of a man is a story in capital letters, but on a human scale there is something deep, and at the same time somewhat melancholic summary in three or four paragraphs.

—Finally, it seems that your articles are already inseparable from Ed’s illustrations. How do you see his graphic approach to writing and the topics he chooses?

—It’s a real luxury to have Ed. Not only is he a great illustrator, currently one of the best in Spain, but he also tells stories. In fact, more than illustrating texts, what it does is commenting, underlining some images. It’s kind of a conversation between him and me, and we’ve never met in person.