El Vano Ayer by Isaac Rosa

El Vano Ayer by Isaac Rosa

Introduction

Following a recent trend to mix history and fiction that has produced best-sellers as Soldiers of Salamis - the young Sevillian writer Isaac Rosa raises his novel The vain yesterday as the development of some lives and some facts located in the Spanish Civil War and supported by documents and studies are collected at the end as bibliographical appendix of any historical monograph. We have here another 20-N, and this year it seems that the date is in addition to the fashion for some time feeds the newsstands, bookstores and even parliament. Gentlemen, we are of revival, if only to get ammunition. A few years ago it fell to the transition - with a capital and now the civil war appears to be rediscovered, not least because the tellers are always adding the Moas and Vidales, who certainly is not lacking speakers, contradicting arguments "as usual" - for those born in the 70's, I mean, even if this does not make bail but the arguments of that other "always" we, in our happy childhood and newly democratic, not met.

Discussion

This return to the genre's origins, when the first narrators of novels proclaimed that their stories conformed to the truth, offers, however, unusual aspects in recent fiction. First, there is no linear narrative, as expected on the purpose of reconstructing the life of a university professor allegedly victimized while Aranguren, Tierno Galvan Diaz and Garcia Montero Calvo. There is, however, a continuous process of deconstruction. The author enters the story, appeals to the reader, or is challenged by it, shows the possible paths that could go on, gives access to diverse voices and radically different versions of events, even in some cases using the device of the two columns parallel and contradictory content, as assayed Perez de Ayala, the narrative material subjected to all kinds of ups and downs and parodies bookish and carefully served invertebrate (actually, the story of the vain yesterday has no beginning or end), but establishing internal connections and correspondence that help mitigate the effects of changing approaches (see, among others, p. 61 and 299, or 152 and 302-303). It is as if we were witnessing an experiment similar to that of Gide in Les faux Monnayeurs, updated and enriched by implicit considerations about the problematic nature of truth and its relations with fiction, and where the author has used also of narrative devices much studied by literary theory, as the perspective and point of view that introduce an element of uncertainty in the facts.

Naturally, though some events and characters mentioned correspond to historical truth, the appearance of the fictional elements fictionalized everything, and even leaves clues or concretions in the text materials. Thus, the student activist wanted by the police and known as "William Ber" has taken his nom de guerre of a popular novel character. There should therefore be sought in vain yesterday's chronicle, although the actual data that includes, but an experiment on a novel ...