THEY ARE NOT METEORS OR METEORITES OR FILANT STARS LETTER TO A DEFATOR

 

OPEN LETTER TO ALVARO TERÁN CUESTA AUTHOR OF METEORS

 

 Alvaro:

 

I read your book one sleepless night and found it partly interesting or at least original but subject to the handicaps of a dilettante, good-natured writer who gives advice right and left moralizing than not moralizing and I decided to make you a eulogy, although I refused to present it citing a temporary absence from Madrid, always allowing it to be read at the conference. I think that with such condescension I made a mistake.

I didn't finish the centón and went to bed at dawn. I wanted to be kind and gave you the benefit of the doubt by pointing out the fact that a retiree would take to writing. I even wrote a laudatio on my blog.

 I had given you my books and I thought you were a kind man, good family man, but the other day I was surprised by your phone call saying that my “Remember Brunete” is shit, that I am twisted and resentful.

Well it goes, the classic said that de gustibus non disputing est (there is nothing written about tastes) what can is the personal attack. I have been writing for more than fifty years and I think I have been a brilliant and well-known journalist… consult the newspaper archives where my London and New York chronicles are, as well as countless reports in the provincial press as a collaborator of EFE. I swore to the flag and defended my country rightly or wrongly. I am not a facha, I admired Franco but I feel a certain aversion to the Franco supporters and the types of the right in which I think you are incardinated.

I don't like the meek and the guys who don't look straight ahead. I have gone through life bare-chested defending a series of values, even if they are politically incorrect. Your book is the text of a mansurrón, you advance with your cautious prose to the rhythm of those goblin oxen that dragged their creaky carts through the coves of the north.

About my book on Brunete it is translated into English and Russian and I think I hit the key but this target that I hit conventionalisms do not like many people especially right-wing bourgeois types. In my Hour of the Beast I think I have prophesied the war in the Ukraine that Putin will unfortunately win at the cost of much Slavic blood. My Empty Seminary was ahead of the ecclesial abuses of minor priests and child abusers, and I discovered who was the author of the Lazarillo in my text about Doctor Laguna. The Spain of today does not want to know anything about his past. He is very busy listening to Carlos Herrera or hung up on the babes on TV, some beauties on all the channels.

 Ah Cela's book and Café Gijón y yo is a tribute, recognized by his own son, to one of the great writers, the greatest after Quevedo: CJC, who dislikes both reds and blues.

This ignoring and contempt for good literature is what makes me revolt and you come with the gibberish that I'm resentful. You will have verified at the book fair that there only a few marked and distinguished by the regime mark the page. They are the ones who sell in the decrepit bookish vanity fair.

 Larra used to say that in Spain writing is crying, but in the Spain that calls itself a democrat, an ochlocracy (look at the word in the dictionary) is moaning and gnashing your teeth. There is a strong censorship. You can publish, but they won't let you distribute your works, you eat them or you'll have to give them away to friends.

Brave way of proclaiming freedom when we are not free, we are shackled and tense. Then there is a latent violence that can break out at any moment and of which I warn.

I am a man of good will and that is why when I found out that your son had a delicatessen products company I bought him a basket. I got more than twenty euros a bite of nougat. Almost four hundred euros. A scam, but I didn't want to make a fuss because I want to be a good neighbor and not mess with anyone, but I answer that I step forward when they mess with me. I never attack from behind. So accept this statement of disclaimers if it asks you, I don't hold any grudge against you, although from what I see you have an omelette or envy me, maybe that's the key. There are many people who like to fuck the pig. So one and no more, danto Tomás.

 I will go my way and you yours. A tip I will tell you yours is not literature. Dedicate yourself to the accounts and keep in mind that in this profession and in others where they are given, they are taken and slanders always turn against those who formulate them. I said and good luck to you. We're done. Antonio PRRA CAN'T STAND FOR CRETINES