The past was always better. Or that is the conception that we used to have. “Nostalgia tends to win out over reality,” Benedict Wells reflects on it. Under this premise, the Swiss-German writes his fifth novel, Hard Land, a story with which he focuses on the coming-of-age films of the 80s and which has just arrived in bookstores thanks to publishers Cathedral and Les Hores, in Catalan.
“Hollywood movies insist on making us think that this was one of the best decades we have ever lived. That everything was better, that our society was intact, that without the Internet everything was more intense and calm. But it’s not true. The 80s had their dark side. There was a great AIDS epidemic, the Cold War, the recession and crisis situations were happening. Cinema and literature tried to counteract that situation and showed us that idyllic world in which we would all like to live”, explains Wells.
That utopia is precisely what Wells always dreamed of as a child. From the age of six to 19, the writer lived in different boarding schools in Bavaria. It was there where his love for literature arose and, also, where he closed his eyes and mentally moved towards those attractive scenes that he saw in films like The Club of Five. “One of my greatest aspirations was to live a bucolic summer, one of those unforgettable ones, in which one meets his first love, stays up all night with friends and grows with each conversation. But with the problems at home I never had a summer like that. That is why I suppose that, over the years, I have ended up capturing it in this novel. The longing was my gasoline.”
Wells was clear that he wanted to talk about those idealized years. Of course, stepping with your feet on Earth and giving them something of truth back. For this reason, although in the background, he deals with topics as diverse as homosexuality, unemployment or racism. Also the death of someone close. “That summer I fell in love and my mother died. That’s over a year ago, but for me it will always be ‘that’ summer”, begins his story, with which the reader will travel to Missouri in 1985 at the hands of Sam, a fifteen-year-old boy who gets a job in the old and dilapidated cinema of the city.
Young people his age look forward to the end of school and the holidays. However, for Sam, summer means visiting his cousins ??in Kansas, and that’s something he’s not up to this time. And even less having his mother sick at home. He prefers to stay in the city and enjoy his secrets, while he makes sure that everything is under control at home. Of course, to occupy his hours and justify his stay at home, he decides to look for a job.
“This is a story of youth but also of maturity. The evolution of the protagonist is clear as the pages turn. And I, as a writer, believe that I also made that transformation as I was writing. When I started the book, it was clear to me that I wanted to write about youth and summer, since they were two concepts that I always related and had in mind. But precisely because I was so young, I realized that I had to stop in order to take emotional distance, since otherwise I would not be able to present a protagonist objectively. So I continued with other stories and after a while I took it up again. Today I can say that I made the right decision.”
