Old Book Reviews: 'Nadería' by Julian Gallo

Review/Interview written and conducted by Garry Crystal (2011)

At its core, Julian Gallo’s second novel Nadería is a search for meaning, a search that can occur inwardly and on a wider scale with or without the participant’s knowledge. Nadería is a journey, and the ever increasing and inescapable momentum propelling the characters forward is a defining theme throughout this novel. There is a destination but it may be one where the characters are no closer to discovering who they actually are or what life means to them.

Nadería focuses on the lives of Dario, an American poet, Julia, a Uruguayan painter, and Antonio, a Peruvian chef, all living in Paris far from their home countries. Like a family tree with many branches, all of the characters in Nadería are connected in some way, and the Butterfly Effect can emerge as softly as a summer breeze or as a destructive force of nature knocking the wind from anyone who stands in its way. It’s a simple role of the dice that leads the Uruguayan painter on a path towards the fundamentalist Muslim. The chef looking for a new life in Paris cannot escape the roots of his old one as he is relentlessly pursued by a woman he was simply being kind to. The poet takes a cultural road trip through Mediterranean Spain only to find that exploring his ancestor’s past doesn’t mean he can escape the demons from his own.

Whereas Gallo’s previous novel, November Rust, was character driven, Nadería focuses on the bigger picture and has a definite grandeur to it. This is a wide screen novel that explores religion, sexual and cultural identity, the search for a place in the world, and above it all, the uncontrollability of life. It’s about how a seemingly  inconsequential act to one person can forever change the lives of others. Nadería is an examination on the basic question of the meaning or lack of meaning to life. If the reader looks hard enough and keeps an open mind they may eventually find their own answer in this story.

Above all, Nadería is a joyously entertaining book and in some ways a celebration of the journey of life. It’s an explosion of colors, cultures, humor, and drama with an underlying heartbeat that drives the story onwards. This story can take the reader from the rainy boulevards of Paris to the sun soaked streets of Barcelona to New York where there is already another flight waiting to leave. There are some scenes in Nadería that should force readers to think about their own lives and consequences their actions may have had on others, and for some this may be uncomfortable. But there is no denying that Gallo has found his voice with Nadería and has crafted a multi-layered story that can well stand up to repeated readings.

In this interview, Julian Gallo talks about Nadería, the struggle of writing a second novel, and independent publishing.

So gone are the experimental passages that peppered November Rust. Did you simply feel a more straightforward approach was necessary for the momentum of Nadería?

This book took a long time to fruition. I finished ‘November Rust’ in 2003/early 2004. Almost immediately, I began working out the book which would eventually become ‘Nadería’. So for about six or seven years, I struggled with it, mainly because I didn’t know which direction it was going to take. I knew I wanted something different from ‘November Rust’ and there were many false starts, many things which were written and then abandoned. I was kind of at a loss. It was really a struggle trying to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be. Did I want to keep following the ‘literary’ route, which was what ‘November Rust’ was attempting to be? I just didn’t know. Then I came across a novel by the Italian novelist Niccoló Ammaniti called ‘I’ll Steal You Away’. Reading that book caused me to have an ‘epiphany’ of sorts. It reminded me of the days when I was very young and I used to write without worrying whether or not the stories fit into any particular category, or whether or not they would be deemed ‘literary’ or ‘mainstream’, or whatever else. While reading that book, it struck me that the reason I was getting so blocked up was because I was standing in my own way and I needed to get out of my own way in order to move forward. I came to the decision that I wanted to write a good story, or try to, anyway, without all the gimmicks, experimental things, or the worry as to whether or not what I was doing was ‘literature’ or not. I’m in a much different place now than I was when I wrote ‘November Rust’. I thought it was time to do something different, something more straightforward. ‘Nadería’ is my first foray into that new approach.

There are about ten characters in Nadería all with converging storylines branching out from three main characters. Was this intentional or did this happen as the writing progressed?

It all came about through the writing process. When I started it, it was initially going to focus on the three main characters of Dario, Julia, and Ana. The second half of the book was only going to be about Dario and his ‘quest’ around the Mediterranean. Julia and Ana were going to disappear from the story altogether. When I reached the end of the first section of the book, I changed my mind and that was because of the introduction of the character ‘Gloria’. Once she came into the story, the whole thing took a different trajectory, one I didn’t intend at all but I just went with it to see where it would take me. It was from that point forward where I knew I had something different from ‘November Rust’ and it really helped me forge ahead.

Gloria could have made for a humorous character but she soon becomes very dark. I found her an engrossing, infuriating, and tragic figure in the book.

Gloria was one of those characters that came up during the writing process. I was thinking that Dario has his issues he was dealing with, Julia certainly had hers, so instead of giving Ana an issue, I figured why not her love interest Antonio. What was he running away from? What was his deal? The idea of Gloria cam to me as a way to have his past coming back to haunt him in a way. She was the physical embodiment of the place he was trying to get away from and put behind him. And you’re right, she is a very dark figure. Extremely so. Psychotic would be a better word for it. She’s the embodiment of total selfishness. She only cares about herself although she convinces herself that she is doing this out of ‘love’ for Antonio. She’s single minded in her goal and nothing — not even her own child — is going to get in the way. The humor there is that she would go to such extremes in order to satisfy her own desires, that she was ready and willing to do the things she does. And of course, this throws a potential monkey wrench into everything Antonio desires: a new life, a new identity, etc. The humor I see in Antonio’s character is the fact that he’s trying to be more ‘European’, his desire to be the best French chef and all that but winds up working in a low grade South American restaurant, mostly cooking his native dishes. So in a way, it’s kind of like another hurdle for him to get over his quest to reinvent himself. Gloria is his past coming back to bite him in the ass.

All of the characters are on a journey for some form of meaning to life. How does this connect with the title of the book, Nadería, which means nothing?

Even though I wanted to do something different with this book, I wanted to keep my original intention in place, and that was to write a story about the whole notion of ‘meaning’ in people’s lives. I wanted to raise the question, ‘Is there one, all encompassing meaning of life that applies to everyone, or is ‘meaning’ something that we have to give our own lives? Not anything that hasn’t been done a million times before, but I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion, so to speak. So you have these hapless characters who are all on their own journey, each of them so wrapped up in their own shit that they don’t even know what they’re really searching for. They only think they do. They keep looking ‘outward’ in order to find the answer that I think is something more inward. The title of the book comes from an interview I read with Jorge Luis Borges. In it, he talked about the idea of ‘nothingness’ and mentioned that, in Spanish, the closest word to ‘nothingness’ was ‘nadería’ and I immediately knew I wanted to write something around that and use the word as the title of the book. The word literally means ‘trifle, unimportant’. I loved the double meaning there so I wanted to explore that. Also, in a time when many people often place a lot of importance on literature in general — with all these raging debates about what is and isn’t ‘literature’ — I wanted to make a statement that what you hold in your hand is just a book. It’s just a story. It isn’t going to be something that was going to change the world. Very few books have actually had that kind of impact, and Lord knows, this one wasn’t, or isn’t, going to be one of them. But to me, this particular story, wasn’t intended to be all that ‘heavy’ to begin with. I tried to inject some humor, albeit a little dark humor. It’s intended to be a good story, something entertaining while at the same time aiming to allow the reader to think about the point I was trying to make with it.

Travel and different cultures play an important part in this book. I don’t think there are many characters who are actually from the country the story is set in.

None of the characters are. All of them are form somewhere else. Dario is an American, Julia and Ana are from Uruguay, Antonio and Gloria are Peruvian, and so on. The setting of the book was really because when I began it, I had already set the story in Paris so I just decided to keep it. Of course the story moves to Spain and New York as well. It was really just a way to reenforce the idea that here are a bunch of people who are ‘running away’, so to speak, in order to find themselves, again the idea being whatever meaning they are searching for is ‘out there’ somewhere.

There is a road trip from Paris through Spain that takes up a lot of the book. You went into a lot of amazing detail in setting the scenes on this trip. Did you undertake a lot of research for this?

No, not really. That’s the funny thing. The 21st Century offers writers a lot of tools they can utilize if they choose to do so. That particular road trip posed a problem for me because I never set foot in those places. I tried to figure out how I was going to pull that off and then two things occurred to me: YouTube and Google Maps. In order to really capture the atmosphere of those places, I went to YouTube and looked up videos of those who actually took this trip and videoed it. Believe it or not, it was there. So I was able to watch these home videos and get a sense of the landscape and the atmosphere. Google Maps came in handy with regard to how long the trip would actually take, what highways would be used, etc. The internet can be a very useful tool for any creative writer. Now a writer can do something like this whereas in the past they would have to actually go there to experience it. Of course, it would have been much richer had I actually been to those places but since I wasn’t, that was the best I could do to try and capture it as realistically as possible. I’d been to Paris and Barcelona, so I was able to draw on my personal experiences and impressions there, but as to the rest of those places, that’s what I did. Writers shouldn’t fear the internet but utilize it, especially if they are writing fiction. The world is literally at your fingertips. Some writers shun the internet as a distraction, like Jonathan Franzen, who once said a ‘real writer’ cannot produce any worthy fiction if they are connected to the internet in their workspace. I emphatically disagree with that notion. I think it depends on how you choose to utilize it.

The road trip seems in a way to be the theme for all the characters in the book. The trip is interspersed throughout and keeps a momentum going for the characters back in Paris.

I suppose the ‘road trip’ is also sort of symbolic of all the characters’ personal journey. In a way, each one of them is on their own personal ‘trip’, reaching out blindly in order to find their place in the world. Dario literally goes on a road trip for his search, while for others it’s more personal.

There are no clear cut conclusions to this novel. There are a few loose ends and yet the ending is satisfying, as with all great books, you need to make up your own mind.

I’m glad you think so. I worried a little about that ending at first. Originally, there was a more conclusive ending to the book. There were another seven or eight pages that sort of ‘wrapped up’ certain things but when I was doing the rewrites for it, and I came to the part where the book now ends, I thought it would be a good stopping point. I don’t know why, but I felt it was stronger than what I originally had. I also thought that if the readers become invested in the characters enough, it would make them think more, wondering what came next, what would come next. Not exactly a cliffhanger ending but something that doesn’t tie everything up with a neat little bow, mainly because rarely do things in life have such conclusions. Things happen, go one way or the other, without rhyme or reason, and sometimes we never really get that sense of closure. I didn’t intend to have an ‘answer’ to the questions the book poses.

How do you feel your voice has grown since ‘November Rust’ to ‘Nadería’? I can see a significant difference in the writing style between the two books. This one does feel more assured and confident for some reason.

I don’t really know. I hope so. If it seems more confident it’s probably because I decided while I was writing this book I was no longer going to concern myself with some of the trappings that comes with ‘literature’. There had always been this huge divide and debate over what qualified as ‘literature’ and what doesn’t. I understand that argument to a degree because there are so many great, meaningful, powerful novels that have been written over the course of time that are truly works of art. But there are also a lot of really good books with truly great stories out there that many wouldn’t consider ‘literature’. It really depends on your own tastes. My tastes tend to run more ‘literary’ but I enjoy some of the more popular and genre fiction too.

‘Nadería’ is more story driven than ‘November Rust’.

This particular book was meant to be more story driven, more character driven, so I decided I was going to strip away all the ‘trappings’, so to speak, and just try and write a good story. This book was as influenced by Stephen King as is was Hemingway or any of my other favorite writers. Lately, I’ve broadened my palate so to speak as far as my reading goes. I’m reading everything from literary to popular fiction these days. In my mind, there is much one can learn from all of it. What to do and what not to do. But in the end, it is what it is and ultimately it’s the reader who will decide what you did is crap or not. Once it’s out there, you lose control over how people will react to it. Some will like it, others won’t.

‘Nadería’ has been out a few months now. What’s next on the writing front?

I have another novel completed. This one brings everything back home. It’s set in Queens, New York in the early 1980s and it’s about how there were some people during the early part of the Reagan era that were still being left behind, despite all the optimism surrounding those times. It’s set in a time when things were still pretty bad, coming off the Carter era. It’s the 80s before it became ‘The Eighties’. Those looking for 80’s nostalgia — Culture Club, Madonna, Miami Vice, etc — are going to be disappointed. The story takes place before any of that happened. Reagan hadn’t yet lived up to the promise that those who voted for him hoped for. It was still touch and go, really. The story mainly centers around a group of teenagers, but like ‘Nadería’, it’s a multi-protagonist story with converging storylines.

Originally published in BrooWaha, 2011

Nadería is available here.

Author’s note: An excerpt of this novel was published in Jorge Majfud’s Latinoture Magazine.

The novel was also listed as part of ‘Books That Changed My Mind’ feature on the Brian Lehrer radio show in New York City, 2014.