Jaume Vallcorba “Being elite does not seem too bad” – Newspaper

Saturday, August 23, 2014 – 15.12 h

Jaume Vallcorba, discoverer of authors like Quim Monzo or Sergi Pàmies.

The double anniversary has caught Jaume Vallcorba working and not popping champagne. Although not missed reasons for satisfaction

-. Did the success of Cliff has obscured the old brightness Quaderns Cream?

– No one can accuse me of neglect. If you look at the books Cream Quaderns published each year you will see that there has been neglect, or yearbooks numbers, or finding new authors, or titles, or the recovery of classics. What happens is that the reading public in Catalan has been reduced in recent years

-. Distribute blame.

– There have been direct to the Catalan edition with the disappearance of reading in schools and colleges attacks. Probably by vice to understand that what matters is not the language and literature. In addition, there have been extraordinary public support for publishing, without thinking of the public. That has produced a supersaturation title

-. Triumphed Why Cliff and Sirmium, a publishing house that you threw in the 80s with a very similar philosophy, went to hell? In that seal discovered, for example, Javier Cercas.

– I’ll give you another. In Sirmio I published chess novel by Stefan Zweig, who just sold and now in Cliff took 11 issues

-. Do you have any theories on this?

– There were too many books in the university catalog and now a humanities student can finish a race without having read a single book. This I have said publicly before the minister and has not corrected me, so I tend to think it’s true

-. You, which has been a university professor, I know .

– I stopped having fun and I left four years ago. Less rector and cleaning woman, Pompeu i Fabra in’ve been around. Cliff growth perhaps my current dedication is due to full-time

– With his name an adjective usually appears. Exquisite.

– If exquisite means demanding, we assume

-. But it can also mean elitist.

– Well being elitist nor does it seem wrong. In recent times I hear about the democratization of culture no one has explained to me what that means. So far, I’ve only seen it serve to try to remove the copyright. I understand the culture worked with effort, the transmission of a tradition, duly adapted to future generations

-. One of his inventions, the recovery of forgotten classics, has had much luck in the current issue, not a few have imitated him.

-. When I decided to edit the memoirs from beyond the grave, of Chateaubriand, more than one I predicted the utter ruin and now we are on the sixth edition

– What has been your greatest satisfaction as an editor?

– Every time I get a finished book printing: smell, touch … But there are brighter moments: when you have opted for an author and give a Nobel.

– As the Hungarian Imre Kertesz.

– An author who, incidentally, did not sell much. Now a new writer like David Monteagudo, who paced his manuscripts by many publishers, has become a bestseller in mine, it is a great joy, but there are books I’ve sold very little and I am extremely satisfied. Would post them tomorrow. My publishers are moving in a subtle balance between the commercial and cultural

– But much risks. Desconocidísimos by Central and Eastern authors such fondness.

– The Iron Curtain was real and still live quite apart from what is happening there. But you have to be careful with what we call minority. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, has been reprinted, like My Century, Aleksander Wat, one jewel memoirs. Hope you come what Stefan Zweig, another capital authors, who had to bleed the consideration having been very successful. I want it to have soul in my books, the deep human truth. H “I understand the culture and the transmission of a tradition to future generations”