Gastón García's literature "is transitory, geographical, emotional or temporal"

▲ For the Argentine author, every writer must emigrate, shake off the sense of homeland. Photo by Atonatiuh S. Bracho

Reyes Martínez Torrijos

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, June 30, 2025, p. 5

The novel Instructions to Kill the Father (Alfaguara) has as its thematic triad migration, fatherhood and orphanhood, which summarize the interests of its author, Gastón García Marinozzi.

The narrator told La Jornada that traveling, moving from place to place, is the best part of literature. First, to compose it, to create it, to think about it, to write it, and therefore, to read it. In all my books, the characters and stories are in constant transit, geographically, emotionally, and temporally .

The novel is marked by migration, noted García Marinozzi (Córdoba, Argentina, 1974). “The writers I'm talking about have some history, some relationship with that physical or temporal movement. I cite authors like Pitol and Piglia, who speak of the writer's mandate to leave, to shake off the sense of origin, of nationalism, and to seek out other stories, other worlds.”

The best of all, Jorge Luis Borges, never left his home library to write his best stories. This would be a paradox, but the rest of us are forced to move, let alone migrate to another language. Juan Rulfo writes locked behind a desk, like Borges. They both have something; there's a reason they're extraordinary.

The author mentioned that one doesn't write for the times one lives in, but rather writes in them. It has to do with the way one reads in the times one lives in. It's like working in a specific time where there are codes that define artistic production. One hopes to find a kind of accomplice in whoever is going to confront this book .

He believes in a literature of two people: the writer and the reader. Therefore, an unread book is meaningless, and a read one creates a new universe between the reader and the writer. I know many people of my generation who are deeply interested in the topic of parenthood, how we're approaching it, and what's happening these days with such issues .

He approaches orphanhood from the Freudian perspective in Totem and Taboo, which means killing one's father or mother, as almost an obligation for all people and a way to gain a foothold in maturity through a certain liberation. "Killing one's father is an act of love, of absolute independence, and of human creation ," the novelist said.

Freud, Gastón García said, wrote that once we achieve the sacrifice of killing our father, we can live, a decision in the interesting sense of living our own life, the responsibility, freedom, and pain that it entails.

He added that a leitmotif of his book is the moment when the legendary Aeneas has to flee with his father and son, Anchises and Ascanius, from defeated Troy. He's escaping from the fire, from the war, and he has to carry his elderly father on his shoulders and can't let go of his son's hand. That image is important for this book, given that we constantly go through life like this: whether those children are with us or not, whether that father is alive or not, we always carry them with us .

The author, who has been away from his country for 25 years and 17 of them in Mexico, called Aeneas the first migrant in history, the first who must flee, and inaugurates the figures of exile, refugee, and the one who must go out to save his life, that of his father and that of his son in order to live another existence in peace .

Conversely, killing your father also means being ready to be killed by your children. There are ages and times for everything, but that's what a child is trained to do: to kill his father when it's appropriate .

The journalist also added that the story not only explores instructions for killing the father, but also for doing so with the son, the homeland, and growing up leaving something behind, even though migration has seemed like a dirty word for several decades. We are now reaching new heights in the hate speech against it .

He concluded: "Let's not forget all of Europe expelling Africans and so many migrants trying to reach us across the Mediterranean. Now we're seeing it firsthand in Mexico, with people trying to cross into the United States, and in 2026 we'll see worse things, as we're reaching this madness of this hateful leader who is causing more and more pain ."

▲ Xinhua Photo

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, June 30, 2025, p. 5

The iconic Chinese opera illuminated the Duyet Thi Duong Royal Theatre in the Imperial City of Hue, Vietnam, yesterday after a musical performance by the Guangxi Zhuang Orchestra. The venue is considered an intangible cultural heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. During the performance, the audience enjoyed the colorful traditional costumes worn by the group from a region where the cultures of China and Vietnam converge.