The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) has paid tribute to the missing literary agent Carmen Balcells in a massive session in which the writer Eduardo Mendoza, the academic and author Carme Riera, the editor José Calafell and the journalist Xavi Ayén participated.
Prior to the debate, Balcells was presented as “the most influential literary agent of the 20th century, especially in the Spanish language,” who defended authors against publishers at a time when they signed perpetual contracts.
Its influence spread to Latin America and the rest of the world, ensuring that “commercial success went hand in hand with literary quality.”
In its catalog of represented authors there were six Nobel Prize winners, among them Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda and Vargas Llosa, in addition to other Latin American authors such as Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso or Alfredo Bryce Echenique or the Spanish Mendoza, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Juan Marsé.
It may be of interest to you: Mexicans read on average four books a year, very far from Japan and the United States
The director of Planeta México, José Calafell, who “fearfully” confronted the all-powerful agent for the first time at the age of 38, has revealed that in that meeting they talked about carpets looking at the ones he had in his agency.
“I told him that I wanted to buy a rug in Morocco and he gave me the advice ‘never pay more than half the price they ask for’ and upon returning from the trip he asked me if I had bought rugs and I replied that I neither bought nor paid what they asked me because I was very bad at haggling. You are useless, Calafell, you have disappointed me, he threw me.”
The professionalization of writers
For the journalist
“My life changed when she asked me to represent myself, probably because she needed authors in the Catalan language,” confessed Riera, who thanks to her managed to get paid by publishers in the beginning.
Eduardo Mendoza thinks that “the great merit of Carmen Balcells was to increase the potential market for books at a time when a series of writers appeared who were going to change the concept of literature in the Spanish language.”
In his opinion, the editors also understood this change and Balcells’ role was to “organize the change towards that business approach” and also “not only supported the writers, but also some editors, while others continued with the picaresque, curiously these are now in the Planeta Group,” he ironized.
Faced with the idea of Carmen Balcells being too intrusive in the private lives of those she represented, Mendoza does not think that she was abusive, “she was also a friend and she gave her opinion about the writers and we about her.”
Calafell stressed that many of Balcells’ achievements in favor of authors do not appear today in contracts with American or English publishers.
In the conversation, Balcells’ great dream of having an emblematic building in Barcelona, baptized “Latinitatis Patria”, where the writers’ archives could be consulted, was discussed.
“It was one of the thorns in my back for not having been able to create that museum-archive,” says Ayén, who regrets that now “to consult the papers and manuscripts of the authors of the boom one has to go to Iowa, Princeton or Texas.”
Carmen Balcells’ own archive is now in Madrid in the General Administration Archive, but this does not mean that one day it could be in Barcelona, Ayén replied.
In relation to the “turntable” mechanism, by which the literary agent “placed” the work of a famous author next to that of a promising author, Riera recalled that “Isabel Allende’s first book was a turnaround of a book by Graham Greene.”
With information from EFE
Little text and great information in our X, follow us!
