I’m Ferran Torres and I masturbated for the first time when I was nine years old”. With this phrase begins the novel Thanks for the tip (Columna) by the writer Ferran Torrent; a work that was a resounding success with critics and the public when it was published thirty years ago; which would consolidate the Valencian author as one of the most prominent creators of Catalan and Valencian literature and who, in addition, won the Sant Jordi prize in 1994. The writer comments to this newspaper that “without a doubt it is, with La vida en l’abisme (Columna 2004 and Planeta finalist) my most personal work”.
The novel, in which he used autobiographical elements, narrates the life of brothers Ferran and Pepín Torres, and uncles Tomàs and Ramonet in Valencia in the sixties; characters who will co-star in other novels by the Valencian writer. These are, moreover, individuals far removed from the system and official circuits, who need to seek political and sexual freedom in a dark and repressed society. It is, quite simply, the “universe” of Ferran Torrent. “It was a look back to explain a world that was ending”, says the author.
Torrent had achieved great success with his first novels such as No emprenye el commissari or Un negre conba un saxo, also published by Columna. But it was Gracie por la propina, his eighth work, which represented a fundamental leap in his profile as an author. “It is clear that the novel contains elements of my life, but what I wanted was to create a family that had nothing to do with the traditional, I wanted to embody a tolerant, libertarian family in a period that it awakens passion in me, like the Valencia of the sixties”, he comments. The work, which was brought to the cinema in 1997 by Francesc Bellmunt, was very well received because “it was a generational novel”, points out Torrent. And he admits that he is not tempted to “revisit” it: “I don’t even do it with other people’s novels, because I’m always tempted to correct things”.
The writer Rafa Lahuerta, author of the novel Norway (Drassana), says that “the most significant thing after 30 years since its publication is that it has aged without losing an atom of its ability to seduce. I have re-read it twice in the last 10 years and it maintains all its virtues. 50 years from now, if there are still readers, it will continue to maintain them. It’s a classic. Nothing more can be said.” He adds that “I read it when I was just 22 or 23 years old. I discovered the very powerful feeling that Valencian was not only a language of poetry and essays, but also used to tell urban stories full of vivid resonances”.
The writer and journalist Paco Cerdà, author among others of El peón (Pepitas de calabaza) comments that Gracias per la propina “created a character: Rompetechos Ferran Torrent. It broke the ceiling for the Valencian: a book in our language could indeed be a bestseller. He broke the ceiling for his fellow writers: he showed that you could make a living from literature here, and in the minority language at that, and he broke the ceiling for the publishing market: there are fewer excuses to explain why a book good and in Valencian it cannot filter the whole society”.
He adds that “he broke the generational ceiling for thousands of readers born in the eighties who were approaching, for the first time, a world of Francoist repression and, at the same time, a society of brothels with teenagers and alcohol without taboos, a mythical Valencia which, seen and read for the first time from the counties, seemed half Rome and half Chicago – without knowing what one and the other were–”. Paco Cerdà concludes that “Rompetechos Torrent showed that the character – his – was not from a single episode. His series has already lived almost thirty seasons. And here it continues. Boxing in the ring”.
For his part, another prominent Valencian writer, Xavier Aliaga, author of novels such as El meu nom no és Irina (Andana), points out that the novel “arrives at the right moment for Ferran Torrent”. “In the transition between decades, he published novels that were not very successful, such as Cavall i Rei (1989) and L’any de l’embotit (1992), which seem to indicate a certain creative exhaustion”. He adds that “Sedaví’s, an intuitive writer with a certainly commendable level of self-demand, is aware of this. The answer is one of his great works, San Jordi award and entry on the scene of the Torres brothers and what is considered one of his most personal novels, a certain change of register with a story set in the Valencia of the Franco regime” . Aliaga concludes: “He himself recognizes that with this work he managed to mature and blossom. But it is also the collective consequence, very beneficial for the literature of the Valencian Country, of generating a reference author capable of reaching many readers on both sides of the Sénia. An open path that was very profitable for the whole”.
