He wanted to be a writer from the tenderest childhood. But life and a teenage crush took him down other paths. Carlos Zanón enrolled in Journalism “after rejecting Philology, but later I signed up for Law because of a girl I liked, although it didn’t work out because I went there in the afternoon and she in the morning”. The relationship did not come to fruition, but Zanón became a lawyer and practiced for several years, although “the writing thing continued to dance in my head”. He wrote and published music-themed poetry and novels until he opted for black and made a place for himself in the literary scene with titles such as No llames a casa or Yo fui Johnny Thunders.
“And I was able to stop being a lawyer”, he explains in an interview granted to La Vanguardia while he was at the Malaga Festival where he was part of the critics’ jury. The letters opened new doors for Zanón. The writer had already collaborated with Avui newspaper as a literary critic, but his novels allowed La Vanguardia to discover him to develop a new vocation, that of a columnist.
This happened in 2016 and since then Zanón publishes four weekly collaborations in this newspaper: “They let me write a little bit of everything. I’ve always been clear that I’m not a journalist and that’s why I try to make literary pieces that are entertaining and not necessarily topical. I’m inspired by cases that don’t usually appear in the press, I look for the look”, he explains.
Now, this look has become a book because Salamandra, Zanón’s publisher, has selected the best columns published by the writer in La Vanguardia and has turned them into a book, Cien formas de romper un glacier which “is a thematic selection in ten blocks of ten columns each”. Zanón discarded his sports articles and also the political ones, such as those relating to the process, “which were very linked to the moment and could have aged badly”.
“I chose the columns I liked the most and the result is a book that can be read like a book of poems, not necessarily followed”, adds the columnist, who has a shrewd look and also a nostalgic hair: “It is one of the notes that I use, but not as if the past were a better place, but as a new place, because it is not true that the past time, envied time, nor the previous one should prevent us from looking towards the future”.
Manuel Jabois maintains in the prologue of Cien formas de break un glacier that the columnist’s life is not as simple as it is made out to be, because sometimes finding a topic to write about is a challenge and because the supposed favored ones who appear in his columns do not they always see this mention as a flattery.
He always has “the radar on” and although he delivers the texts on Fridays, “on Mondays I’m already thinking about what I can talk about, it’s a matter of going down to the street and being attentive”. And if you can’t think of anything, you can always turn to your imagination. For something he is a writer. In the column that gives the book its title, for example, Zanón explained when a girlfriend left him during a trip to Iceland. “I have never been to Iceland”, he confesses now.
But real or invented, stories appeal to readers, “who see themselves represented in them”. “I notice a lot of affection and a good reception”, concludes Zanón, who does not want to say goodbye without thanking “Miquel Molina, Lola García and Joan Josep Pallàs, who support me at La Vanguardia every week”.
