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Popular Culture Review
beginning authors, and in today’s market, its direct relationship with the
commercial success of any given novel cannot be ignored. This time, the prize
went to Pedro Maestre for Killing Dinosaurs With a Sling Shot (Matando
dinosaurios c on drachmas), and the fact that two young “leather” authors both
received the award (in 1994 and 1996 respectively), and Juana Salabert, another
newcomer associated with Leather Literature, was a finalist for her second
novel, Burn Whatever Will Be (Arde lo que sera), became a sufficient basis to
establish the existence of an entire new literary generation. Another significant
event occurred in the Spanish literary world that very year when Ediciones B (a
publishing house) paid an unprecedented advance to commission a novel from
Juan Bonilla, who at the time had only published a book of short stories, The
One Who Turns O ff The Lights (El que apaga la luz) and a compilation of
newspaper articles, The Art o f the Yo-Yo (El arte del yo-yo). Although virtually
unknown, Bonilla was promoted along with Marias, Maestre, and Salabert and
found himself at the forefront of an alleged literary revolution. In this particular
case, it could be said that Ediciones B simply “bought” their stake into a
marketing strategy disguised as a literary movement of young authors bom
between 1962 and 1971. Perhaps the most infantile sign of this desperate search
for new blood was the publication of Dead Or Something Better (Muertos o algo
mejor) a novel written by a 14 year old girl, Violeta Hernando.2
The year 1997 can be considered as the height of the Leather Literature
movement’s popularity, when the most prestigious literary award in Spain,
Premio Planeta, was won by Juan Manuel de Prada, a young, Leather author,
for his novel The Tempest (La Tempestad). As could be expected, and in spite of
the shocking originality of its title, the book quickly became a best seller. To
capitalize upon the movement, the publishing house Lengua de Trapo released
Yellow Pages (Paginas amarillas), a compilation of short stories written by 38
new writers bom between 1960 and 1971 and defined by its publisher, Jose
Huerta, as “not an anthology but a guide.” In his introduction to the collection,
Sabas Martin presented the authors who contributed to the collection, in addition
to 23 other writers who supposedly belonged to the same generation, and coined
the expression “Brotherhood of Leather” to name this particular literary
tendency.
In this way, Jorge Heralde, chief editor of Anagrama has
called “Brotherhood of Leather” a bold group of new authors,
deeply impregnated with rock music aesthetics and visual
culture. Their narrations exhibit a certain nihilism, with outlaw
tendencies, and are centred around sex, alcohol, drugs, the
road, and violence. (Yellow Pages, 14.)3
Yellow Pages is perhaps the most visible attempt on the part of the
publishing industry to create a true, credible literary movement out of thin air, as
it is the clearest illustration of its failure to do so. The fact that the author of the