How were the 90s for the middle class? A Mariasch radiography

The first idea that arises in the conversation with the writerteacher and editor Marina Mariasch (Buenos Aires, 1963) is an English: “War Flashbanks”. We are talking about the recent reissue of the book We are united (Emecé), one of those narratives that enable several possible readings: an episodic and fragmented novel or a series of stories that address the same characters and build a kind of collage. Now, in any of the two cases, the text gets with three issues: Grow in Argentina Menemist (each president marks the time inescapably), Grow in a privileged class family (The book opens with a Karl Marx appointment) and grow with a sister In the last decade of the twentieth century with everything apocalyptic that meant at that time (destruction and self -destruction are two of the attractive components of this story).

Mariasch continues to speak: “When I was a girl, traumas of the past was said and now War Falchbacks is told, as war flashbacks that we have of the 90s. Those sensations come that there was a kind of attempt to crush the middle class and that the differences between rich and poor are stretched more and that in the middle there is nothing left. ”

We are united It is not a melancholic book Nor is it about reading it how an old photo album with some nostalgia is seen (moreover: “Nothing to do with nostalgia,” he says in a moment), but the narratives show a particular type of life with the always sharp prose of Mariasch.

Some underline phrases: “Where are the skeletons of the Russian mountains when the amusement parks are closed?”, “Those who handle the country today were my colleagues from Primaras”, “The route undoubted black, dry and rough as a language of a cow”, “although it was different, in the shopping Warm water bathtub ”, among others.

“What was interested in exploring above all are the contradictions of that high middle class illustratedof course it did not become so high nor was it the oligarchy. They were families where people who had militated in the 70s and whose companions had also militated, or state near the militancy, and later, already in the 90s, could calmly go to the United States and open an account in dollars. Or a mother who had Marx books and the Chinese, but also wanted to be skinny and tan. Those contradictions of the time that were very clear to me in those people and that were between funny and pathetic. ”

Mariasch’s literature is deeply crossed by politics and readings. For this reason, it does not attract the attention that your poetry book has also recently left Mutual feeling (Neblipratada) and the first verses that are read say: “For now/love democracy/take a helicopter to the square/a train if you are a woman and want/handle the machine.”

Are the 90s united seem to continue with the outbreak of 2001 by mentioning the flight to the Rúa helicopter? It is possible. For now, he says about this poems: “Mutual feeling It is a book that was written in the heat of the feminist assemblies, many of which were made in the mutual that bears that beautiful name. They are written poems on the march, among the words of others and othersas I think poetry is always written, literature in general. I do not think the book as a project but rather as an environment that is condensing until it falls, a cloud that transforms into water. Then comes something else. Another atmosphere, another semantic climate. Another area of ​​interest, of concerns. Another space that summons the look, thought, attention to write. An area that is not only in the world but also in language. “

Two books on the bookstores table, We are united y Mutual feelingThey dialogue as ways to expose a type of voice as important as the Mriasch Navy. Interviewed by ClarionThe writer tells her way of understanding literature at a time in the country that seems to go in the opposite direction to the one she expected after years of militancy, commitment and writing.

– We are united is always handled in a tone that goes from humor to pain in very few words, but never falling into the commiseration.

– It is a tone with him I want to undress or undress one’s class and its contradictions. It is also a book that is born from a biodrama workshop that I did with Vivi Tellas. One of the exercises was to write an autobiographical story from a photo. I wrote a trip to the United States. That was a germ of what I wrote in the book, the heart of the matter. When I wrote it at that time that my mother’s suicide had occurred. And I felt that I had managed to tune in with writing regarding that. So far I could get with my writing, I couldn’t get closer. And that text made me feel very happy, as if I had done a doctorate, I managed to write something about that. And the style tried to take him to what happened to me when I saw Twin Peaksa series of David Lynch of the 90s. There was something of the tone of mystery Lynchean that was interested in capturing. In addition, I was trying to write in a more transparent way, more pop.

– The 90s were in themselves a very contradictory decade but you could still see these social classes crosses that are seen in the text.

– At all times there were more exclusive or more exclusive sectors, if you want, but out there, this social layer I speak in We are united He had, for example, in public school the possibility of having crosses with all sectors. But beyond this the text does not want to be prey to any supposed truth of reality. And those two words, truth and reality, for me they are very annoying, uncomfortable, questionable.

–The book often predicts a devastating future.

– Yes, it has a kind of prophecy that the future will be very terrible. But I didn’t know it was going to be as terrible as it was later.

– Do you have to do with Personal effectsyour previous novel?

–We are linked in some way as a prequel to Personal effects. Of course, it was not thought so. It simply happened like this. This book tells how all that discomfort of this world of three women, a mother and two daughters was created. They are women who inhabit an average female world without men or with half ghosts or who circulate a bit like more sexual than affective dolls. And there is lack of control in the affective issue because there is lack of containment and limits here, in this novel. Then all that materializes and is substantiated in Personal effects. Also, from the political and economic point of view, in what we are living today with Milei. Yes, I warned that everything was going to be horrible but it was worse than I imagined.

– What time does this reissue find you?

–We are united It is a book that I could not write today because I have again, the years have passed. But I take care of this book. It seems nice in a sense, successful in some things. I already consider it an external object, a satellite.

–Iibro a book you were putting together a kind of constellation around the family from many angles.

– I am very interested in the construction of the intakes as the basis of capitalism. In fact, I have a poems book that is called The Zig Zag of institutionsI like the title because I think and reflect a lot in that sense. In fact, I studied suicide in its social sense to write Personal effects That a book only from catharsis, at all and is not literature of the self, is an autobiographical essay on the matter. But going to the whole of my books I do not think in terms of work. I do think it is good and it makes me happy to circulate titles that were exhausted and now they are there.

– How do you see what happens with culture at this political moment?

– I think you have to get out of the indignation loop and organize in a serious and committed way. And, in addition, it seems to me that we must not be captured by their agenda. And at the same time it has been a while that literature interests me more to read than to write and write and publish is a completely vain act and that I prefer to be on the other side. Anyway, with everything that happens in the world, I just want to lock myself and get into some novelite of the nineteenth century, but it is impossible and still writing.

–On day, where do you find what leads you to a poem?

–That is usually in unexpected places. Although sometimes I find it in the most obvious, for example, in another poem.

• He was born in Buenos Aires, in 1973.

• Published poetry books Coming attractions (1997), XXX (2001) y Tigre and León (2005), in the Editorial Sieta label, which founded and co -directed. Those and other books were gathered under the title Peace The Love (2014).

• They followed Nice to meet you (2016) y Mutual feeling (2018), The little company (2022).

• His essays were published in different volumes. His novels are Marriage y Personal effects.

• She has a degree in Letters from the University of Buenos Aires and a professor at the Career of Arts of Writing (National University of the Arts).

We are unitedby Marina Mariasch (Emecé).