A book a day: Andrés Berlanga: Wet gunpowder

Original language: Español

Year of publication: 1972

Valuation: Advisable

We could summarize the plot of this book as the story of a group of friends who try to blow up one of the faculties of the University City around 1969, approximately. The problem is that sticking exclusively to the plot makes the idea that is transmitted wet gunpowder is most partial. Because this “novel” has different aspects and readings.

To begin with, it must be said that wet gunpowder It is very much an autobiographical and documentary novel. The autobiographical component is observed in the characters of Paco and Loren, who bring together elements of the author’s life (origin, profession, etc.); The documentary nature, for its part, comes from the author’s portrait of the university environment of the time: assemblies, manifestos, protests, political tension, etc. Now, this is a quite demystifying portrait.

(…)not saying no to Paco when he counted on him to give ideas and launch the FAT had a lot of adventurous inertia, of a toothpick player who clangs on one more, of being disappointed who lets himself be carried away by the only thing in what you can believe: that destructive force.

The above does not imply denying the eminently novelistic and fictional nature of the book. The sociopolitical context is the framework in which some characters inserted in a plot that draws from two of the main Spanish literary traditions are framed: the grotesque and the picaresque. Both allow the author to start dealing blows left and right (to the bullying of positions and perks, to the machismo of the time, to journalism at the service of power, to armchair revolutionaries, to the childishness of some organizations, etc.) and to get closer, although in a more tangential way, to other topics such as the rural exodus.

Among the strong points of the novel I would highlight:

• the construction of characters from language,
• the semi-documentary side of the book,
• the formal risks that the author takes in the last third of the novel, in which internal monologue, more or less conventional narration or communications between the various police forces during the assault on the University are interspersed with the daily life of the population (the 2 Spains, perhaps?), and
• the language. Although initially this somewhat obsolete language seems somewhat strange (how things change in 50 years), one of the most successful aspects of the book is the voice that the author manages to give to characters from diverse geographical and social origins. It seems stupid, but it’s not.

So, although it is not easy to get the hang of it, wet gunpowder It has surprising validity and literary merits that are more than enough to justify its recovery, even though more than 50 years have passed since its publication.