Only two months after publication, the collection of stories by Igor Marojević Belgrade women in the "Laguna" edition, it went through three editions, which is an unusual commercial success for a short story collection. Belgrade women are Marojević's eighth book. Before her, he published novels Deception of God (1997) Twenty-four walls (1998, 2010), Heat (2004, 2008), Schnitt (2007, 2008), Ground floor (2009) and Mother's hand (2011), story collections Seekers (2001) and Mediterraneans (2006, 2008), as well as a book of essays Through the head (2012). He is the author of the drama Nomads, At least I'm my own man. i Radovan 2013, he translated from Spanish, among other things, four books by Robert Bolan and is an editor at the "Laguna" publishing house. His latest book is the reason for this conversation.
"WEATHER": The collection of stories by Beograđanka represents a thematic breakthrough compared to your previous books. Why this time a book about women from Belgrade?
IGOR MAROJEVIĆ: If it is viewed as part of my entire oeuvre, it can be done that way, especially since my five-volume "Ethnofiction" is not yet finished, and from the three works published so far, i.e. novels, it may still not always be possible to the overall intention is recognized. I think that when "Ethnofiction" is published as a separate edition, the coordinates of my overall work will be incomparably clearer, but already now it seems to me that Belgrade women in clear agreement with my two previous books of stories. In all three cases, it is an attempt to undermine some established performances, and in the last two, performances related to a specific location, the Mediterranean and Belgrade. Hence the plural forms in the title of my story books. Also, I think that with each piece I am questioning the position of the individual in a more or less aggressive collective, whether it is peace-oriented individuals within the war, the sick in society whose majority, at least physically, is healthy, or the coping of individualistic women in the eternal Serbian transition, such as the case in Belgrade women. I immodestly think that I belong to those men who would not really have to change their gender in order to be able to say that they know women. And of all the people I know, I must know women from Belgrade the best because they come from the city where I spent most of my life. I focused on girls and women between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. It was not difficult for me because the communication with my readers usually involves female persons in the respective time span. In addition, I have thematized contemporary women from Belgrade in earlier books and novels Twenty-four walls i Ground floor , a book of stories Seekers, even in drama At least I'm my own man.. With the fact that this time I approached them differently, more from the inside, and let my narrator speak from their point of view.
It says on the cover of Beogradanka "A book about different women". What makes your heroines different?
It may be useful to clarify that it is not the author's subtitle but the publisher's blurb. But I think that there are women in the book who are different, and those who are typical in many ways, although I'm pretty sure that we don't know very many women in our country who have completely changed their offline life for online, so they haven't come out for almost ten years. from the apartment as in the story Inside, or those who emigrated from Serbia, practically, in order to escape from Ivo Andrić and general stories about him (Gray set). In any case, it seems to me that there is at least one paradox regarding whether women from Belgrade are different or not. Most of them seem to me like discreet, intuitive, individualistic heroines, somewhat traumatized by life in Serbia, but most often strong and reasonable, and the latter should make them the majority model. But it doesn't have to be like that in this multi-displaced environment, where they certainly seem separate in relation to some of the most striking and exposed models, and even as a different, minority type, although they are not necessarily so. Literature is a pre-lost battle against commonplaces; not only against established and imprecise idioms but also against typical, one-sided ideas about certain topics, various mental shortcuts. Every successful book only postpones defeat.
In a relatively short time, your book went through three editions. How do you explain it?, especially considering that it is a collection of stories, that in our country the genre is quite neglected compared to the novel?
I think that in that context, two months is an absolutely short time. Especially since the circulation of the first edition was two thousand copies, which is not small by the terms of Serbian publishing, although it is standard with "Laguna". So far, the most commercial book of stories of Serbian literature of the twenty-first century, If it's love Mihailo Pantić, had seven editions in ten years, although it would have recorded more if it had been published by a more ambitious publisher. The case of both those collections shows that it does not have to be a commercially undervalued genre. The story is basically an ultra-short novel, so it should be in the interest of readers to get more novels within the same cover rather than one. Besides, as a more fragmentary form, it is more in the spirit of the times. Now, the question is also how the story is written, and if the media are hermetic, poetically backward narratives with a weak narrative and symbolic economy, such as are being forced here, then it is not surprising that readers sometimes even buy poetry collections more than books of stories. Maybe success Belgrade women it owes to the fact that, at least in an attempt, it is a storybook written with a completely different logic.
Every society changes, even the Serbian one. Accordingly, it should be expected that certain things related to its culture will also change, even though it is the area in which the least investment is made. Until a few years ago, the unofficial refrain of a good part of the local readership was "I don't read local writers", but now the first word of that statement could almost be abolished. And there are more and more confirmed literary names among commercial authors. By the same principle, I also believe that the position of short prose books will improve, even though it is not only a local but a much broader problem, and even though in some more developed cultures concrete investments are being made to preserve the short story. Since there are no such measures in our country, I am glad that the position of the genre in our literature is currently being improved by my title, and I will try to correct it in one of my next books. Of course, all this within the framework of the remark that literature in the whole world is increasingly losing its importance. But we are a backward society, so here it loses its importance more slowly than elsewhere, and that is one of the few advantages of backwardness. Roughly speaking, it is similar to the position of this society in the second half of the nineties; since we were isolated, foreigners rarely visited us, so there was less casual sex and, therefore, the relatively low prevalence of AIDS patients and infected was one of the few collateral benefits of the sanctions.
You stated that you have been contacted by interested producers who would turn this collection of yours into a television series. Has an agreement been reached??
I'm not entirely sure why I'm talking about it. It's probably the result of a much more dynamic media campaign than I'm used to. After promotion Belgrade women I gave several interviews on the spot, the producer contacted me that day and a journalist asked me if there would be any filming of the series after Belgrade women, a little carried away, I said maybe he would so I have to talk about it now instead of when everything about it gets worked up. Well, if it has to be like this, there is a serious producer with whom we are talking about the screen adaptation Belgrade women I completely agree about the poetic issues, which is very important. The only thing left is to agree on the conditions, which is often crucial. If everything goes as expected, it should Belgrade women will be shown from the spring of the following year. The opening episode would draw from the story Inside and I would also write the screenplay.
Your publisher "Laguna" he made an unusual move: based on the book Beogradjanke, he announced a prize competition of the same name for a story that will talk about one or more Belgrade women. How did you come up with that idea and what response do you expect?
For the first time, I see from personal experience how many different forms the life of a book that has a lively circulation among readers can take. Among them is this award competition, whose propositions can be found on the appropriate banner on the "Lagune" website. The idea probably came from the number of comments on my last book both on that and other websites, and in my inbox. I used to prefer communication with readers, as the only completely uncorrupted layer of literary and non-literary life. No one can force someone to buy a book by a certain writer, the reader invests in it according to his choice, so his motivations are pure, which is not a small thing in our environment. Since it's about the comment on Belgrade women or very creative, and since the readers also create the meaning of the book, they can show even greater creativity in the specific case, where my prose is only an occasion, in the sense that the submitted story should be titled after one of those from the book, whose title should conditionally keep as themes in the writing process, but the story profile is completely free. I can't say what kind of response to the award competition I expect, given that I didn't even predict this much commercial success. Belgrade women.
Your novels Žega, Schnitt and Mother's hand are, as you announced, the first three parts of the announced pentabook named "Ethnofiction". It has also been said that with these novels you are the originator of the poetics of the same name, which exerted a certain influence on several younger Serbian authors, the most impressive of whom is Dejan Stojiljković. What is it actually "ethnofiction"? How do you choose the topics that are in the cycle "Ethnofiction" also deal with what will be the subject of the next two novels?
"Ethnofiction" wants to show ethno in both its qualities: as an interest in otherness with accompanying multicultural derivatives, but also as ethnocentrism, thus a complete counter. In all of this, nationalism is broken through the story of several European nations that experienced isolation due to their own ethnocentrism during the twentieth century, that most unhappy and worst century. In the middle are, first of all, Germans, Spaniards and Serbs. The members of those nations are portrayed both as aggressors and as victims in the novels mentioned in your question. For example, in Shnit the Germans are shown as the occupier, and as the victims - in Mother's hand. I planned to depict the nineties here in the next novel, after I had described them mostly allusively in the previous ones, placing the story in the forties or twenties, and to include Spain in the story, starting with the Civil War, as in some aspects the decisive European war in the twentieth century, until in the nineties: the main, nameless hero of "Ethnofiction" escapes to Barcelona during the bombing from Belgrade via Perast and Brezovik. The final novel should establish additional connections between the more important characters from the first four and offer a continuation and an epilogue as far as the plot is concerned.
At one time, you suggested that instead of changing the ministers of culture, the Ministry of Culture should be abolished. Do you still think the same?, considering the balance of work of the current Minister of Culture?
That statement of mine was first of all a reaction to the fact that the Government of the Republic of Serbia allocates 0,62 percent of its own budget to the Ministry of Culture, and then to some other things inherited from past convocations of the relevant ministry. In such a culturally devastated country, the percentage had to go twice above the standard, not more than three times below. My logic was that it is less shameful that the relevant ministry does not exist than that it receives such a churchman, and that in that case his work could be done in an office within the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now, since I am not engaged in a party, such a statement in this society can at best have the weight of an individual outburst. Well, if the Ministry of Culture already exists, I have to say that I liked the reaction of State Secretary Dejan Ristic to the case of Srđan Tešin. And for some other reasons, I got the impression that this is a modern and reasonable manager, who could help. It is easy to criticize without pointing to a possible positive direction.
How do you generally assess the current situation on the cultural and political scene of Serbia?
I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that Serbia has not officially gone bankrupt yet, although there is time... This is a country that has practically no income economy for years and that spends the little it has on partocracy. In past convocations, the government tried to substitute exports for the export of Hague indictees, and in the last ones, the income economy for the arrest of tycoons. Now her attempts are underway to replace the story about the lack of economy with something else, for the story of "Belgrade on the water" or "Etihad". All of this passes with a sufficient number of voters, which shows that the electorate is not asking for much. It means that everything that happened politically from the nineties until today, including the tragicomic reduction of the percentage for the Ministry of Culture, unfortunately bore fruit.
