A masterpiece, by Lorenzo Caudevilla

Original language: Español.

Year of publication: 2024.

Valuation: Highly recommended.

I met Lorenzo Caudevilla during BBK-Legends 2023. I knew him from the comic he had drawn during confinement and he told me about a project he had in hand. «I can barely say anything», he said, «but I am drawing texts by Juan Carlos Ortega. The host! A few months later I received an email from him: «Hi, man. I need you to write a funeral sermon. He gave me a couple of guidelines for the eulogy and Easter.

That’s how little my contribution was.

Last week I read “A Masterpiece,” the comic we talked about. In its pages, Lorenzo Caudevilla focuses on Jacinto, a narcissistic, misanthropic and moody writer, a lonely and impoverished antihero who, however, harbors the dream of writing a masterpiece. A work that survives him and bears witness to his name, just one.

Writing as a project of immortality.

The problem is that Jacinto, alas, has no talent and takes out his frustration with the world. But what could become a trip to madness – like in the “Joker” movie – in “A Masterpiece” results in a hilarious satire that leaves no stone unturned. With aim and bad drool, Lorenzo shoots poisoned darts towards the egomania of writers, towards self-publishing, towards a publishing industry imprisoned by marketing and towards the emergence of artificial intelligence in the world of narrative.

A meta-literary exercise illuminated by humor.

I would say that even from affection.

All this, also, accompanied by an enormous graphic section. Overwhelming. In an orbicular way (op cit), a true masterpiece. Lorenzo Caudevilla’s graphic skill covers a number of styles and includes everything from Belgian lines to sumptuous splash-pages. And what a use of color! I am not exaggerating if I say that many vignettes fill your eyes, turning the color range into another character. This comic also proposes an additional challenge for the reader, since the author scatters nods to literary works, paintings or films everywhere, in a kind of game of clues or visual acuity. The solution to the crossword puzzle, as always, at the end, where we will also find a soundtrack to accompany the adventures of the dearest Jacinto.

Because, despite his numerous flaws, it is impossible for us to hate Jacinto. Who else has fantasized to some extent about being a successful writer and composing unassailable pages, using literature as a chisel that gives shape to their pain. Jacinto is a distorting mirror that points out our ridiculousness, our smallness, our absolute insignificance under the amniotic fluid of this world made of appearances. If we are amused by their stubbornness, their vanity or their proverbial laziness, it is because it is ours.

Jacinto is all of us, yes, getting angry over nothing, ranting childishly on social networks and finally rising above the smoking rubble of failure. Tell the truth, aren’t we looking just like him for that philosopher’s stone that elevates us, signifies us and marks us out as special people, not transitory, eternal?

Jacinto wrote as if he did not know that the world was badly made and that is how we have to live.

From art.

From a hopeful conceit.

From the heights—what the hell—of believing we are better than we really are.

Signed: David Villars