María and Paula Marull, queens of the theater, ghosts and memories for Lanata, a vibrant Saturday at the Fair

The Clarín / Ñ cultural space of the 49th Buenos Aires International Book Fair functioned this afternoon as the Ñ magazine and the Clarín newspaper that give it its name do: a generous window onto the most diverse manifestations of culture , those that summon and those that are avant-garde, those that gather crowds and those that explore new margins and phenomena: from the plays of the sisters María and Paula Marull , to the possibility of addressing the disappearances generated by the last military dictatorship from a ghostly approach, without forgetting a tribute to the journalist Jorge Lanata , who died on December 30 of last year. It was an intense afternoon for the dozens of people who didn't let themselves in until after 8:30 p.m.

This past weekend, the crowds were in full swing from the very beginning on Saturday . It's true that there were seductive stars such as Florencia Canale , Agustina Bazterrica, Elísabet Benavent , Paloma Sánchez Garnica, Alice Kellen, and the singer Cazzu , an event that sold out weeks ago. And that's just for starters.

At the Clarín/Ñ cultural space, the activity began early. At 3:00 PM, actresses and playwrights María and Paula Marull sat on the stage to be interviewed by journalist and Ñ critic Mercedes Méndez , who with friendliness and a deep knowledge of her work, guided them through the secrets of writing and staging Lo que el río hace , the play now in its fourth season with performances almost every day of the week, filling the 500-seat Astros Theater after its premiere in the intimate General San Martín Theater. "What happens to us as an audience is very moving," said Paula Marull.

Similar but different, María Marull added: "Theater has that quality, the audience ends up being almost another character ." In the front row, the actresses' mother listened to them like another fan. Perhaps the most loyal.

Regarding the origins of this play, which some people will see twice or more, they said it was a process. "We initially envisioned a biodrama, but we ended up realizing that what we had to do was what we know best: tell a story ," María added. And so, this comedy was born, set in Esquina, Corrientes, where a woman, devastated by the frenzy of urban life, returns to reconnect with traces of her identity linked to that place and her childhood experiences there.

They both agreed that there are biographical traces in all their works . "One always writes about oneself in some way. We are in the material we write," Paula explained. "We write from questions, not answers," María added. Both asserted that writing is a necessity . And before parting ways, they shared their recent readings with the audience: the Argentines Magalí Etchebarne and Alejandra Kamiya, the Irish Claire Keegan, and The Brotherhood of the Grape by American John Fante .

By 4 p.m., it was already clear that the crowds were similar to those on Friday, May 2, a long weekend holiday that exceeded expectations and filled the pavilions at La Rural to the point of claustrophobia. This Saturday was no different: the exhibition halls were packed, making it very difficult to move between the stands, and the lines to get a dedication demanded hours of patience.

However, at the Clarín / Ñ cultural space at that same time, the atmosphere was one of respectful silence to address a topic that is increasingly looming: the spectrality of the disappearance of people during the dictatorship . The event brought together writer Luciano Lamberti and writer and political scientist Mariana Eva Pérez , interviewed by journalist and author Dalia Ber . But Pérez was unable to attend, so the talk focused on Lamberti's novel Para hechizar a un cazador . "For my generation , it was always very difficult to approach the subject of the dictatorship without taking into account the commonplaces of the topic," said the writer.

Born in San Francisco, Córdoba, Lamberti explained that when Kirchnerism adopted the fight for human rights as a state policy, "my discourse coincided with the state's discourse, and writing a novel about the dictatorship in that context and at that time was somewhat repeating the state's discourse ," he added. Therefore, he promised himself not to do so.

But then, WW Jacobs' short story "The Monkey's Paw" and Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary later brought him into the tradition of stories about parents resurrecting their children . "The figure of that son who walked around the house, who was neither alive nor dead, and who was a kind of ghost and a kind of zombie, that led me to think about the dictatorship," he shared.

"My generation has that feeling of inheriting those dead people, right?" he asked, and wondered. Lamberti emphasized the importance of horror stories, even from childhood, when they are ways of peeking into the world; he said he had found it interesting to read I Am What Haunts Me: Terror as a Fiction of Trauma, by Ismael Martínez Biurrun and Carlos Pitillas Salvá, which he had recently read, and he stated that it was difficult to finally write about the dictatorship because "at the same time that I want to be a free author, I don't want to hurt anyone."

At the end of the interview, Lamberti stated that " a writer who wants to write fantasy has to know a lot about realism because they have to know how to describe a scene, how to make a place believable and make the reader feel like they're seeing it. At the same time, I would never write from a literature degree because, at least in my case, I have to write so my aunt can understand it."

To close the day, a tribute was held in memory of Jorge Lanata, four months after his death on December 30, 2024. Writer and philosopher Miguel Wiñazki, member of the National Academy of Journalism and president of the Advisory Board of the Master's in Journalism program of the Clarín Group and the University of San Andrés; María Eugenia Duffard , journalist at TN; and translator and radio commentator Flavia Pitella , recalled the time and work they shared with the creator of PPT.

Duffard asserted that Lanata "always asked for a little more from you . He was hyper-demanding, but at the same time, you felt you couldn't let him down; that if he trusted you and said you could do it, you had to be able to." The journalist asserted that, with the founder of the Argentine newspaper Crítica, "I learned things you can't learn anywhere else, in any master's degree, at any university."

For his part, Pitella recalled that the first newspaper he bought was Página/12 and that he had developed his political voice by reading the Bible, which was the back page of that newspaper. He also considered: "When he began to take an interest in art, it was a radical change in his way of seeing the world" and recalled "when he decided to have the kidney transplant here, because he could have gone abroad to have that surgery, but he told us that he wanted it to be in Argentina and set a legal precedent for other people who needed the swap, a cross-donation."

In turn, Miguel Wiñazki listed the facets "that are indispensable" to Lanata's work : "Curiosity, entrepreneurial spirit, courage, clarity of communication, and a mind independent of everything, of the very medium in which he worked, whatever that might be," he listed. He added: "Lanata is dead, but not so dead."

Ten minutes before the tribute concluded, Nicolás Wiñazki arrived: "Lanata would have given me a good time," he asserted. His partner, Luciana Geuna, was absent, although her presence had been announced. Nicolás Wiñazki listed Lanata's legacy: "Clarity, moral ethics, truth, and something that was important to him toward the end: beauty, because beauty is what moves the soul," he concluded.

It was 7 p.m., and by that time it was already clear that attendance was a record : there were three hours left in the Fair, and people were still arriving en masse around 2 p.m., when the doors had just opened. The organizers shared the surprise of this last resplendent weekend.