Rodrigo Blanco Calderón Venecos

Original Language: Español

Year of publication: 2025

Valoración: It’s very nice

A plane taking off in a sunset is the image of the roof designed by Paul Viejo for this Venecos of the almost Malaga Rodrigo Blanco Calderón. A clear metaphor for an exile or an emigration that, although it is present in almost all the thirteen stories included in this volume, does not have a place as central as it might seem. That is, the experience of emigration is present in the stories but is not essential for their characters; Rather, these are beings that try to remake of various failures, whether these marriage, labor or artistic, which gives texts a universality that otherwise they would not have.

I do not want to roll up much because what the author tells us in the interview we link in this same review is much more interesting than what I can say, but I do want to highlight some aspects of Rodrigo’s stories. Would be:

• Its structure. In almost all texts there are two layers, one more visible and another “underground” and I really like how the author drives them, how he plays with them and how they intertwine, either in a more or less subtle way. I think the one who gets best is Old age
• The voices. People of different sexes, ages, economic and social conditions, with perfectly identifiable and differentiated voices, star in texts set in places as diverse as Paris, Caracas, Malaga or that claustrophobic and dark the crater.
• A certain tendency to “grotesque” realism. I believe that this point links in a certain way with those two layers I spoke, in the sense that every situation, however clear, hides something more or less “dark.” Clear examples are A different life, Virgin of Impurity, Rostand coffeeetc.
• Literary references. I know this is not a virtue per se, But I like these authors and these books that make clear references and tributes like the ones Rodrigo makes in these stories. Thus, Kadaré, Camus, Roque Dalton, Sabato and Ovid are peeked through these pages, with special mention to the great and dark The foreigner.
• Cinematographic references. Ok, we don’t talk about Manuel Puig, but there is a lot of cinema here.
• The winks to their readers. I do not know if it is something wanted or not (I even know if it is something “invented” by me), but here there are traces of The Night (with Darío Lancini) or of sympathy (oh, The godfather)

Little else. Just give way to the talk that I maintain with Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, to which I greatly appreciate his kindness.