{"id":12859,"date":"2022-09-11T17:45:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T00:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/?p=12859"},"modified":"2022-09-12T11:36:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T18:36:02","slug":"javier-marias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/javier-marias\/","title":{"rendered":"Javier Mar\u00edas: the great writer and controversies with women"},"content":{"rendered":"

Javier Mar\u00edas has died. And yes, I have no doubt that the world of Spanish literature is in mourning. In addition to being a narrator, he was a translator, essayist and member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. He was an eternal candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature and a Knight of the Order of Letters, as well as winner of many very important literary awards, such as the Jos\u00e9 Donoso, the Formentor de las Letras and the Library Lion of the New York Public Library. He received these numerous awards because he dedicated his entire life to writing and did so with skill and quality. He has, to his credit, sixteen novels such as Tomorrow in battle think of me, The crushes, Your face tomorrow<\/em> (trilogy consisting of Fever the spear, Dance and dream<\/em> and Poison and shadow and goodbye)<\/em> and Thomas Levinston<\/em>, among others, as well as books of short stories, essays and more than one hundred newspaper articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00edas was able to capture the spirit of a Spain that went from being depressed after the war, to being liberated by the Movida, to being a rich and developed country where African and Latin American immigrants arrived with the hope of surviving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like reading Javier Mar\u00edas, how could I not? In addition to what I mentioned in the previous lines, his work is deeply universal, it is nourished by his multiple and varied readings. In 2018 I wrote for the Gatopardo magazine <\/a>about his book Berta Isla<\/em>: \u201cIt is a novel in which Mar\u00edas\u2019 literary passions can be seen, from Shakespeare to Eliot, Faulkner, Doyle, Melville and Dickens. It is also a tribute to English literature and culture, with its great classics but also with its pop characters, such as James Bond, of whom Tom\u00e1s will at some point say \u201cthere have been other Bonds but the only one, the original, is Sean Connery\u201d. The spy in the novel talks about the most famous English spy in the world. Another flash of the sense of humour that Javier Mar\u00edas displays masterfully.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was Javier Mar\u00edas, the writer. But the opinions of Javier Mar\u00edas, the journalist (how to separate one from the other? Is it possible to do so?), when they had to do with women and feminism were not so honourable: his column in El Pa\u00eds of February 11, 2018 <\/a>She was criticized for statements such as this one, in relation to the emergence of #MeToo: \u201cGiving credit to victims for the fact that they present themselves as such is opening the door to revenge, slander and settling of scores,\u201d or \u201cNow the MeToo movement and others have established two pseudo-truths: a) that women are always victims; b) that women never lie.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some of Mar\u00edas' friends, such as the writer Arturo P\u00e9rez-Reverte defended him to the hilt<\/a>thousands of users of the networks (especially those who have users<\/a>, but also men) who criticized him<\/a> for the column, which is full of irresponsible phrases - to say the least - and misogynistic, to put it bluntly. For example: "There is no need to resort to names to remember the considerable number of young and attractive women who have married decrepit men not precisely for love, nor for sexual desire either."<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just on May 6, 2022, your news house, The Country<\/strong>, public an interview<\/a> that he did about the book of newspaper articles Is the cook a good person?<\/em> published by Alfaguara this year. In this interview, although he says that \u201cat this point everyone is a feminist\u201d and that \u201canyone who is not a stubble-bearer has been one\u201d, the author of Sometimes a gentleman <\/em>She also warns that \u201cthere is a so-called fourth wave feminism that, for me, contradicts classical feminism. They are saying exaggerated and nonsensical things. And above all, there is an error in that they are dangerously close to the intolerance of the Catholic Church during the Franco dictatorship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this \u201cmistake,\u201d Mar\u00edas refers to the intention to \u201cprohibit or fine\u201d lascivious glances, and speaks of what he considers an intrusion into people\u2019s freedom. I have no doubt that the writer has never been the victim of one of those glances that make you change sidewalks and quicken your pace in the street, or that make you get off the subway car or the city bus you are riding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also have no doubt, as write<\/a> Mexican writer Dahlia de la Cerda, that not all men are potential murderers of women, and that those who grow up in contexts of high marginalization and violence are at a disadvantage in terms of equality, freedom, respect and many of the things that we demand as feminism. In other words, as Rita Segato also wrote, there are men oppressed by other men, even by white women and from hegemonic social, economic and political strata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The topic is open to a much deeper and thoughtful discussion, but as a reader, I prefer Javier Mar\u00edas as the narrator. As a feminist, I cannot help but think that Javier Mar\u00edas, the columnist, should have done a much deeper analysis before giving his opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Irma Gallo <\/strong>She is a reporter and writer. In addition to Pen\u00ednsula 360 Press, she has collaborated with Letras Libres, the University of Mexico Magazine, Lee M\u00e1s Gandhi Magazine, Gatopardo, Este Pa\u00eds Magazine, Sin Embargo, El Universal, and Newsweek in Spanish. Her most recent book is When the Sky Turns Orange. Being a Woman in Mexico (UANL\/VF Agencia Literaria, 2020). Twitter: @irmagallo<\/a> IG: @irmaevangelinagallo<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may be interested in: Salman Rushdie, a long struggle for freedom of expression<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Muri\u00f3 Javier Mar\u00edas. Y s\u00ed, no me cabe duda de que el mundo de las letras en espa\u00f1ol est\u00e1 de luto. Adem\u00e1s de narrador, fue traductor, ensayista y miembro de la Real Academia de la Lengua Espa\u00f1ola. Eterno candidato al Nobel de Literatura y Caballero de la Orden de las Letras, as\u00ed como ganador de […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12859"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12871,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12859\/revisions\/12871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peninsula360press.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}