Quim Monzó does not remember how he met Sergi Pàmies. Pàmies explains to him: one night in the year eighty-three or eighty-four, Monzó, Xavier Montanyà and Jordi Beltran were screenwriters for the TV3 program Àngel Casas Show. Montanyà and Pàmies were friends. They stayed at the Zeleste on Carrer Argenteria and they all met there. There was an immediate rapport: they had read many of the same books. They discovered that they lived in the same neighborhood, near the Mercat del Ninot, and in addition to meeting at night, they started meeting in the morning for breakfast. Before becoming Monzó’s friend, Pàmies had been a reader and admirer. He keeps a copy of L’udol del griso al caire de les clavegueres (1976), the novel that Monzó never wanted to republish. He remembers having seen him at the premiere of an exhibition in a gallery in Les Tres Torres around 1977 or 1978. They entered Lluís Fernàndez Calpena (The Naked Anarchist), Biel Mesquida (The Salt Teenager) and Monzó: the three stars of the Països Catalans underground. “There was a small tiny star system” – remembers Pàmies.
Monzó explains that when he entered the radio, he started to gain popularity… by voice. He would get into a taxi, give the address and the taxi driver would say: “Oh, you’re the one who…”. Then, he started appearing on TV, in Miquel Calzada’s program Persones humanes. He had published Uf, he said (1978), Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux et Maury (1980), Benzina (1982), El dia del senyor (1984), L’illa de Mayans (1985)… The books connected with the public After a stay in New York he decided to abandon graphic design and dedicate himself to writing. The magnitude of the tragedy (1989) was a sensational success. Monzó explains that José Manuel Lara wanted to sign him for Planeta. He promised him that it would reach 25,000 copies, that he could win the Ramon Llull prize and, later on, perhaps the Planeta. “What do you mean 25,000?” At the time of the interview with Lara, The Magnitude of the Tragedy had sold 175,000!
Sergi Pàmies followed Monzó’s path. He began by writing short stories: You should drop your face in shame (1986) and Infection (1987). In 1990 he published the novel La primera pedra. While working as an accountant at the company Mobles 114, he began collaborating on the radio. The radio novel Sang bruta, which told the story of the relationship between Estefania de Mònaco and a police officer, was one of the highlights of the relationship with Monzó. Both were authors of Quaderns Crema, the publishing house of Jaume Vallcorba, which was a reference especially in the eighties and nineties. Culture, football and television have been the three journalistic specialties of Pàmies who, like Monzó, moved from radio to television, without abandoning the written press. They have been writing weekly for La Vanguardia for many years.
As a result of this relationship with our newspaper, the editorial proposal arose to bring them together, interview them at length and make a volume of Libros de Vanguardia. We started around Christmas and devoted four long sessions to it: more than twelve hours of recording. We ended with a photo session with Pedro Madueño, who in recent years has photographed Monzó and Pàmies in his characteristic surprising style: Monzó half-shaven, with a face full of foam, after surgery or dressed as a woman like the character of one of his stories, Mr. Beneset; Grandmothers poking their noses out between the curtains of the El Velódromo bar or on Barceloneta beach, with water up to their necks, wearing glasses. It is the first time that he portrays them together. He immediately has the idea of ??making them walk down the street holding hands. Taking advantage of the fact that there is a fair on Avinguda Mistral, buy half a roll of churros and repeat the famous noodle scene from La dama y el vagabundo. We both have to watch our health and, when we finish, we don’t know what to do with the churros.
Since the glorious era of Catalunya Ràdio and the first books of Quaderns Crema, from the nights of Mas i Mas and Bikini, a lot has happened. I ask them how they now see the moderns they once were. “I would see myself as someone who looks at photos from the past, who says: ‘Look what he was like, what a buffoonish boy or what a mischievous boy’ – says Monzó-. I am from a generation that has few photos and was not recorded on video. There were people who filmed in super 8, but in my case we didn’t even know what it was. Just some photos that you look at and think: ‘At that time I was thinking of fucking myself out of the window, then I got over it’. That’s it: I don’t know what else.” Pàmies: “As a family opposition, I campaigned in favor of all those who gave my mother the sack. Quim, Biel, all of them, were part of the microcosm of authors who were not well regarded at home. Or that they simply didn’t know each other.” There is no nostalgia.
Before starting, I explained to them that I wanted to make the interview as literal as possible: that I would make the effort (because it is a lot more work) to transcribe word for word everything they said, without cutting or combing. The result is a conversation between friends who talk about everything: family, school, design (Monzó), exile (Pàmies), reading, journalism, narrative strategies, advertising, of restaurants, of cinema, of the literary language, of Johann Cruyff, of progress, of the Chavas, of porn, of the mili, of television criticism, of the convenience or not of making books of articles.
None of the three of us are big on words, everything is spoken and transcribed from the ground up, so that people can be interested. But I have the feeling that, in addition to being a book that will make those who read it now read and laugh, it will be a reference for understanding the personality and work of these two great writers.
