Author, Philosopher, Painter, Teacher, Tutor
An Interview with José Antonio Covo Meisel
“There is no real reality”

By Carol Severino (an English translation of an interview conducted in Spanish, Spring 2021)

I met with José Antonio Covo Meisel from Colombia, 34, writer of science fiction and autobiographical non-fiction, expressionistic painter, and the first student in the doctoral program in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Iowa.  He is also a Spanish TA and a tutor in the Spanish Writing, Reading, Speaking, and Conversation Center. We met on Zoom during the spring of 2021, so I could ask follow-up questions about his written responses to the questions I had sent him by email.  We discussed his career trajectory, his books, the influences of his family and his studies on his writing, and his suggestions for writers of Spanish as a second language.

Career as a Writer

At what age did you know that you wanted to be a writer?  How did you discover that you had that interest and talent?

When I was a child, I sometimes wrote, but I also drew, and most of all I was interested in science. I learned a little about electronics and programming. At age 12, I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Only years after, during my first stay in a rehab center for drug dependency did I decide to become a writer.

Why do you think that it was in this rehab center during a reflective period of your life that you decided to become a writer?

I had been challenging all of society and its rules and experimenting with drugs to discover a new reality; but living like that wasn’t working the way I had hoped.  I realized that I needed to make big changes and do something completely different with my life.

Do you have family members who are writers, who were role models for you?

My parents and my aunts and uncles had studied formally and written, but they didn’t write literature. My father is a civil engineer, and my mother, a psychologist. I have an uncle who is an intellectual—an economist and a sociologist—and an aunt who had political responsibilities and wrote for her job, but now writes fiction.  All of them have influenced my writing because they are intellectuals and thinkers.

What vocation did you practice first—painting or writing? How are the themes of your novels related to those of your paintings?

Painting came first. I studied art as an undergraduate. There is great skepticism about the set of sensations and ideas that present themselves as reality. In painting as in writing, I try to show that the obvious, the natural, and that which we take as given is just the surface of a more complex apparatus.  

When you say that the natural and the given are more complex, are you referring to something diabolical and evil, planned by the powerful to take advantage of those without power?  Is yours a political view, for example, a Marxist one?

It could also be a political vision, but that view doesn’t interest me that much.  I am more interested in a philosophical vision of reality. It’s like seeing below the surface of the sea; if you submerge yourself, you will see that there is much more there—another structure.

His Work

Why have you chosen the genre of science fiction for your novels and not realistic fiction? Which authors have influenced your work, your themes, and your characters?

I wrote two science fiction novels (Osamentas Relampagueantes/Flashing Bones y La Oquedad de los Brocca/Hollow of the Brocca), but the book that just came out is autobiographical non-fiction. The science fiction authors that have influenced me the most are Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem, but I read psychoanalysis and philosophers like Derrida, Heidegger and Hegel, and those readings had an equal influence on my writing.

What is your non-fiction book about?

It’s about my life from 18 to 23 years old when I was studying art and trying to reach the limits of reality through drugs; I found psychosis instead, but also some important insights. The cover I chose for my new book has a famous painting from the 19th century of St. Augustine with his heart in his hands—a vision of romanticism because spiritually I am a romantic.

Is that book narrative or philosophical? Does it have important characters besides yourself?

The book is narrative; it relates my experiences, but also my thoughts. It has an enormous proliferation of secondary characters that come and go. It doesn’t have main characters.  My next non-fiction books will be about my life when I was older and will be more philosophical. I already have written the sequel to Como Abrí el Mundo/How I Opened the World, which will be my doctoral thesis.

Were you alone in your explorations of reality, or was there a group of friends that accompanied you? Were you like us young Americans in the sixties and seventies? Did you form a counterculture like we did?

Yes, we were very much lie you. There was a group of friends—doctors and scientists that were cerebral like me, and artists that were more intuitive.  I wasn’t alone.

What message do you want readers to take from your science fiction books? What ideas do you want readers to be contemplating when they finish those books?

I would reduce the philosophical substance of those two books, which function like a diptych, to these phrases: for Flashing Bones, “There is no real reality.”  For Hollow of the Brocca, “We are all clones.” That’s the two books in a nutshell, but the first as well as the second touch on many other themes.

Thank you! Most authors would refuse to reduce their books to a phrase! How would you respond if some readers, friends, or family members say that your plots and your scenarios are too dystopic, depressing, and blood-curdling?

I would say that big human tragedies are good stories.  All of us want to see the evil that things can come to, and upon closing the book, return to our comparatively better lives--more boring, but less painful, with the exceptions that all of us know well.

Studies and Other Influences

Many writers write without pursuing academic studies. How do you think studying at a university can benefit writers?

Writing is, or should be, an act of adding to the literary tradition. That’s why it’s important to study it. One can study literature and philosophy outside of the university, but whoever doesn’t study either at the university or at home is writing with their eyes closed.

How does studying creative writing at the doctoral level benefit a writer?

By being able to study more thoroughly the literary tradition and obtaining what academia has to give the artist, which is a lot, but not sufficient.

How have events and circumstances in Colombia influenced your writing?

Every Colombian is familiar with violence. My writing has a lot of violence, but that is perhaps the only thing I import from Colombia into my own writing. I’m not that interested in its history or in its politics. It’s very violent, yes, but boring at the same time.

Advice for English Speakers Who Also Write in Spanish

What do you suggest for English-speaking writers who want to write chronicles, non-fiction, stories, and poems in English, but also in Spanish?

Study the literary tradition, not only from this current era, but from all eras. That’s how we pray to the god of literature. He will know whether to respond to us.  The muse visits some, but not all.

I agree. We all need to read. Simply living and then writing doesn’t work, especially for undergraduate creative writing majors here at the university who are only 20 years old and haven’t experienced much yet. What are the most common problems that you have seen in the Spanish writing of English speakers at the Spanish Writing Center and in your classes?

Literal translation is the most common problem. Also, the whole issue of gender agreement in Spanish, and the difficulty in the learning of any language—understanding the subtle differences in how things are said, which many times don’t make sense in our native language.

Yes, I think not understanding subtle differences in the way things are said is our biggest problem.Thanks, José, for sharing your life and your vision with us and the readers.

Thank you. You made me feel important.

You are very important. It is a privilege to know you and interview you.