Jordi Coca

Among the different itineraries opened up by Jordi Coca's storytelling, there is one that should be given close attention: that of the father figure. This is a figure that, distressed and distressing, had appeared in some texts of the 1980s and that had always left the strange sensation of a conflictive, almost impossible relationship. It was a negative relationship from the standpoint of the character-narrator. There were always more reasons for distancing than for drawing closer. If one of the core themes of Coca's early work revolved around relationship conflicts, around the complexity or fragility of human relations, or the attempts at or different ways of making them possible or not, given each person's conditions and circumstances – a clear example would be La japonesa [The Japanese Girl] – the relation was always problematic when one of the elements was the father. Hence, this figure has hovered in Coca's fiction from the condition and perspective of negativity, which then leaves open the question of the reason and explanation for this fact.

Sota la pols [Under the Dust] or the Novel of the Father
This itinerary has moved, to date, through three titles Mal de lluna [Moon Sickness] (1988), Sota la pols (2001) and, more recently, La noia del ball (2007). In Mal de lluna, a female character who had previously left Menorca returns to the island – fleeing a sentimental rupture – with the aim of seeing her father who lives in Ferreries, and of rediscovering herself. The whole of this brief novel is about the impossibility – interior, of need, of will – of picking up the telephone, of announcing the visit and then going about it. The reason for the trip was this, but the indecisiveness of the character keeps putting off the moment as other elements – re-encounters with old friends and acquaintances – are introduced, putting space and time between the intention that has brought her to the island and what she is really doing there. Ferreries is the frontier that divides the island into two halves. She circulates in one but it is impossible for her to accede to the other. There is some reason, some internal borderline of irresolution that ensures she will not be able to. Meanwhile, memory keeps constructing her past life, her relationship with her parents, with her sister, with her friends, her childhood and adolescence, until the island becomes too small and she decides to return to Barcelona. With her return the reunion has not been possible. The last sentence of the book leaves open the possibility of a call to the father to tell him that she won't be going to visit him. It is a call made from the island or perhaps from Barcelona itself. There is no particular aggressiveness shown towards the father but some reason, some inner dividing line keeps them apart.

A very different work is Sota la pols, which introduces major changes with regard to the father figure and begins with the construction of a narrator-character who sketches out a specific psychology that not only explains his personality but, in the act of doing so, provides the keys for interpreting this, let us say, to paraphrase the earlier title, "father sickness". In these two novels, the father is always seen from the standpoint of the other. The narrative voice is the active subject that perseveres in constructing the point of view around which the relationship is determined. In Mal de lluna, as we have seen, the description is more of an atmosphere of the impossibility that ensures that a father and daughter will not meet because of the vacillation of the daughter, the cause of which can only be attributed to reasons from the past that impede this renewed encounter. There is the desire, or the responsibility of filial duty but, at bottom, there is also some reluctance that gets in the way. Sota la pols is a completely different story. It is much more than this and there are many more factors. First, there is a change of narrative voice, shifting from female to male and beginning to identify an underlying possibility in this whole conflict of the relationship, explaining it in good part, or at least a significant part because, all at once, the personality of the narrative voice starts giving out hints that bring it closer to the author and then there emerges possibility of finding oneself before a narrative alter ego. Naturally, the author establishes a series of prudent narrative distances, yet this does not hinder his possible proximity or identification. The years of birth of character and author, for example, are not the same, although there is not much between them, which makes them witnesses to the same experiences and of the same historic period. If we are before a narrative alter ego, then the hypothetical father ceases to be this to become a real father while the standpoint, the relationship and the personality are submitted, of course, to all the screens that literature allows to be introduced but are always based on an underpinning of truth. Continue reading...