“This work that we present today will not disappoint you.” Max Aguijón, a multi-award-winning writer, says it before an expectant audience and in a room where there is no room for a yawn. There have been no empty chairs for two hours and the people who are standing rush to put their elbows in a position of resistance, without the gesture seeming rude. Aguijón presents La ilusión vive en la buhardilla, the latest novel by the multi-award-winning Ferran Moncau. A presentation between friends, because Aguijón and Moncau are close, as well as competitors, but they say, they say, they say that they get along very well. “And it will not disappoint you, because it is just as weak as the previous ones; one more shit, well wrapped, in the bibliography of friend Ferran”.
The occurrence is welcomed with laughter and smiles in the room, aware of Aguijón’s sarcastic tone, corrosion that he also practices in writings in newspapers and on radio talk shows. (Look at your face, Ferran! He pretends, but he’s uncomfortable. I’m tired of always being valued more). Moncau smiles like a Joker and looks sideways at his friend (friend?), while he waits for a change of direction in the speech. But the wind fills the sails on the same side and Stinger continues: “Do not expect to find any spark of literature in these pages, even in its primitive state. Everything is pure facade built with a bit more action than in other works, witty characters and a bit of mystery, which wants to be from a gothic novel, but which recalls the peplum set of series B movies”.
The journalists look at each other, open their eyes and write eagerly. The critics sharpen their fangs and the public, between puzzled and amused, shifts in its chairs and widens the space between its elbows, as if a better understanding of what is happening depended on these gestures. (Ferran has always liked this intellectual gesture, this way of pointing his chin, as if he possessed an unattainable secret). Sting picks up the book and shows it as if it were a trophy: “You only have to see the title to predict what we will find in these pages: the dust that reigns in the attic, useless utensils, like the stories that are told.”
“Man, Max, don’t you cross the line?” interrupts Moncau, who says it with a small voice, because he still doesn’t know if he is facing a surprise montage of this man who has always had more people skills than him , but worse reviews and sales. If he had to help him succeed after years of creative drought, he himself now has the feeling that he is putting his hand on his head at the bottom of the pool. “Man, Ferran, to write this fart you could have been silent for a few more years. It was necessary, this… little novel? The few photographers who haven’t left – they are entrusted with more acts than the Road Runner can cover – shoot left and right. “It seems incredible that you tell me that, friend Max. I always have to watch that your books do not crush my toes when they fall from my hands to the first pages. The critics have Dracula’s fangs stained with blood. “The first chapter, Ferran, is filled with clichés and commonplaces that make you vomit.” Readers boo the nonsense of one and cheer the occurrences of the other, according to preferences. “Do you think that because you have witty, but empty phrases, and fill the airwaves with your nonsense, that you are an intellectual of the first order, Max?” “Ferran, do you think you are the 21st century Aristotle, the know-it-all, who has four goofy critics who get attached to pretentious paragraphs, like this pair of lickers?”, pointing to two critics who have it in for him.
The elbows, previously respectful, look for the neighboring ribs. The two writers, until now bosom friends, surrender their souls to the devil and their hands pounce on each other’s lapels. The photographers are shoved by the assistants, who are now supporters willing to eliminate the opponent with a push, slaps and some punches, which are always violent. Phones that try to record, screams of panic and insults with variations (“You will always be a shitty writer” “And you a shitty novelist”) from the two beasts of literature, who spank each other breathlessly and with streaks of blood and bile .
“This novel will rock it,” says Ferran’s editor-in-chief, far from the tidal wave. Max’s editor-in-chief, who is standing next to him, nods, thinking that he will also increase sales of his star. If it weren’t for the fact that in the brawl the tables have been loaded with canapés and drinks and everything is destroyed, they would toast.
