Humorous, gastronomic, crime, these are the terms used by journalist and writer Ivica Ivanišević to describe his novel "Tomorrow is a New Lunch". In addition to all that, the crime story is also a reference to contemporary (Croatian) society, because "all crime novels, if they are successful, must at least in their ambition be social novels and some kind of picture of society", says the author in an interview with Vijesti.
At the 19th International Podgorica Book Fair, Ivanišević spoke about his novel, which was published five years ago and has now been published in Montenegro, and he revealed to Vijesti that a sequel is coming, also with the gastronomic title "Do you have something on a spoon?" or "Something on a spoon"...
Speaking about the society and circumstances in which we live, Ivanišević told Vijesti that he would gladly trade places with the youth of today, but only for organs, while he would not like to be 20-30 years old in today's time, because of everything that comes next. And what comes next, he believes as a pessimist guided by the experience of his generation, is not good. For the lives of members of his generation, those a little older and a little younger, he says that they are actually the sum of crises, different ones that have happened and that they have survived.
Commenting on the crises, he also believes that the European Union has been in one, since its inception, and although he highlights a number of good sides of that community, he believes that there are others as well. Touching on that, including Yugoslavia and Croatia, he also talks about the one language that we share.
"We are a space that has not yet healed from the 1990s, because some persistently try to leave open and unhealed wounds that everyone had in their own way, and which simply ignores the fact that is self-evident in itself - it is a community of people who speak the same language. We can call it by different names, because it is polycentric, but we understand each other. That is key," says Ivanišević.
His novel features an exciting plot that follows two different characters, a Split police inspector in his late sixties and his partner, a 30-something Zagreb detective who, after an emotional breakdown in her relationship, flees from Zagreb to Split in the hope of a quieter life. Together, the two will have to solve a difficult case of mysterious murders in an alley in the old part of Split. However, Ivanišević confirms that the characters are more interesting to him than the crime plot itself.
"I find it interesting that in the end every crime novel, if it is successful and good, is actually first and foremost a great social novel, a picture of a society. Since I know nothing about any society, except contemporary Croatian, then my story is very much a Split story. I have been trying to escape Split my whole life, but I always return to it. In the end, I always return to Split because it is the only world I understand deeply," said Ivanišević, presenting his novel.
The novel "Tomorrow is the New Lunch" is a crime story that, in addition to mystery, also brings a critique of society, a depiction of mentality, and there is also the adjective "gastronomic." What is on this crime table?
I prefer to present the book as a humorous-gastronomic-crime novel. Namely, it is a crime novel. It is a story about three almost ritualistic murders that take place in the very center of Split, and my main character solves the case. However, the mechanics of a crime novel are actually the least interesting to me. I am interested in the social environment, I am interested in the characters, and since in a way my detective lives the way I would like to live, and I can't, because at my age you get certain diagnoses and you are not allowed to smoke, eat, drink and the like, I allow all of that to my hero. Even though he has a heart condition, it doesn't matter, he eats, drinks, kills himself with nicotine, and to that extent the novel is also gastronomic. I actually think that all crime novels, if they are successful, at least in their ambition must be social novels and some kind of picture of society. So "Tomorrow is a New Lunch" is a picture of a moment. It is a novel that is five years old. I was just finishing it when the Covid panic started, so it also happened in that novel.
In addition to the mysterious case and the excellently framed crime, what is particularly interesting is the tension you have built, the atmosphere of life, or rather the moment, the sense of humor, the images and characters of people, their personal and collective identity. How much did you actually dedicate to all these branches of the work and what guided you?
I start from my reading taste. Those geniuses who compose crime novels with engineering precision, but whose characters look like paper, definitely don't appeal to me. What matters to me are the characters, their personalities, or rather who they are. That's important to me both when I write and when I read. In the end, the technology of my work on a book is always such that I first come up with the characters, and then I let them tell me the story themselves. That's why they have to be layered, they have to look like people of flesh and blood. I don't want to discourage people, I think they'll have fun if they read it as the most classic crime novel, but for me, something else is actually in the foreground.
The novel was published about five years ago, and yet we are now presenting it to the Montenegrin reading public, published by “Nova knjiga”. I would say that also hints at its new life? However, considering that you wrote, published, and then presented other works to the public after it, is it demanding to return to “Ručko”?
Logically, it should be difficult to return to a book from five years ago, because more have come out in the meantime. I release one book about every year. However, due to a combination of circumstances, this was easy for me, because I recently finished the sequel to the book “Tomorrow is a New Lunch”. I gave this same hero another criminal case to deal with. By force of circumstances, when writing the second book, I had to remember the previous one, because I inherit a lot of the same characters. Considering all that, it was a little easier for me, because normally, when I am asked about a novel from two or three years ago, I look like I have been hit by a more severe form of something. Namely, you have to empty your head of old stories in order to fill it with new ones, so I always somehow lag behind someone who has read my book recently, because they know it better than me.
So, this is the right moment to return to the novel, because it is getting its sequel. What would you say to readers, why should they read “Tomorrow is a New Lunch”, and then what can you hint at when it comes to the second part?
They should definitely read that novel. But I did something stupid with this first novel. I sent my inspector into retirement... But in the second novel, I bring him back, I bring him out of retirement, and he fills his modest pension by working on two kidnapping cases. He gets a case to solve, and it's about the enigma of the disappearance of a man who disappeared on the night of the liberation of Split in 1944. While he's solving this mysterious disappearance case, the equally mysterious disappearance of his ex-wife occurs. And so he'll be solving a parallel case, let's call it an archaeological, historical, mysterious case, but also a contemporary one. That's the backbone of this new book. The first novel is called "Tomorrow is a New Lunch," but the second one also has a gastronomic title that reads "Do you have something on your spoon?", because I was amused by the idea of a man coming into a bookstore and asking "Do you have something on your spoon?", as if he had come to a restaurant.
Is there something more hidden behind these gastronomic titles than just the name and playing with these terms? "Tomorrow is a new lunch" seems to say "tomorrow is a new day", leaving hope and the possibility of a new beginning, new opportunities, but also comfort or a warning that today's will pass...
There's a certain undertone to it... I don't want to reveal too much. In my first book, the hero will solve the case he was given. But... I'll probably reveal something now... He'll solve the case too late and it will cost him too much. And so as not to end the book on a depressing note, I remembered that he's a hedonist who loves to eat, and that he can always console himself with the fact that tomorrow is another lunch.
I think the European Union has been in crisis from the beginning, because it is a strange project, almost made of wood and iron, in which you share part of your sovereignty and transfer it to a community that is actually loose and not solid. From the Croatian experience, joining the European Union is something that has reborn the country. That is not in question at all and I wish you with all my heart that you join the European Union as soon as possible. Of course, it has a billion of its weaknesses and knows how to irritate with its foolishness
You graduated in sociology, and you are also a long-time journalist, in addition to literature... You have many works in your oeuvre, how does literature fit into all of that? Is it necessary to balance between all these professions and callings, or is it just the same urge that you satisfy or express in a different way and through different genres?
You know what, for me, literature is therapy so that I don't get carried away by journalism. I've been in it for too long. I'm ashamed to say it, but I published my first text in Slobodna Dalmacija as a minor, in 1981. So, I've definitely been involved in journalism for too long. I started to engage more intensively in literature at the moment when I needed some kind of therapeutic writing and to escape from this reality, as it is, into a world of fantasy. These are two writing disciplines that intertwine. I think that journalistic training is very useful for someone who wants to write a literary text later. Journalism teaches you discipline, teaches you respect for form. Every novel, and crime fiction in particular, has some kind of mandatory protocol that you have to follow. Well, journalism teaches you that kind of discipline. Finally, and what's key, journalism teaches you to write every morning, so that you can't skip a day.
Exactly... When you say that literature came to you as an escape from reality as it is, what can you say about what our reality is like, how you see it, experience it, feel it? Where do we live today, what are the circumstances, and what kind of society is it, whether in Croatia or in the Balkans in general, and perhaps even globally, because I have the feeling that there are no longer any isolated territories that are not affected by globalization?
It seems to me that for the last year or two, and especially the last few months, we have been living in the worst possible time. This evil that is looming on the horizon, on the horizon, has not yet reached these parts, but I fear that it will. You know, I have a little problem. I have been a pessimist all my life. It is not a matter of choice. You are born that way, the biochemical formula in my head coincides, and I always imagine the darkest possible plots and solutions. But, to be honest, I would gladly switch with someone who is 20 years old, but only at this level - so that I take their organs at factory settings... But, I would not like to be 20 or 30 years old in this day and age, because I think that what will happen will not be very nice.
I assume you're thinking about what my generation and the younger ones will face, what awaits us, but also what we know has happened in between?
That's right, that's exactly why.
On the other hand, I assume that your youth was different, and as you wrote even as a minor, I believe that you have a treasure trove of memories and recollections, you remember society and the world and circumstances differently, and I believe also different crises that may have taught you to anticipate the next ones, so maybe that's why you're a pessimist?
I used to joke, so I used to say that for people of my generation, and I was born in 1964, that is, for those people who were born a few years before or after me, that our lives are a sum of crises. It's lucky I wasn't born in Zagreb, because in my second year of life I would have had my first major disaster, a flood in Zagreb. Come on, I missed the flood, but in the 80s the first major economic crisis in socialism followed, the famous stabilization, when we drove even, odd, there was no chocolate, bananas, coffee and so on... Just when you somehow recover from that crisis, war comes. And after the war comes the comeback. And just when you get back on your feet, the global economic crisis of 2007 comes, which in the Croatian case lasted 10 years. So, in fact, we go from one crisis to another. In a way, it kills a person's hope for a better tomorrow, because tomorrow something awaits you again, another crisis comes. I believe that your generation, as well as the younger ones we have and those who will come, will experience something similar... But, as they say, that's how we got our money's worth, apparently.
From Montenegro's perspective, the fact that Croatia joined the European Union a long time ago is a bright spot among all these crises. However, speaking of crises, is the European Union perhaps in one today?
I think the European Union has been in crisis from the beginning, because it is a strange project, almost made of wood and iron, in which you share part of your sovereignty and transfer it to a community that is actually loose and not solid. From the Croatian experience, joining the European Union is something that has reborn the country. That is not questioned at all. In many ways, Croatia is a ten times better country than it was ten years ago. And with all my heart I wish you to join the European Union as soon as possible. Of course, the European Union has a billion of its weaknesses and it knows how to irritate with its foolishness. For example, this is one of the foolishnesses of the European Union (points to a plastic water bottle with a cap attached, ed.). We cannot drink water from that cap... This was obviously done for the European Union market. Ecology, but stupid and impractical. This is proof of how good intentions lead you to hell. So, in many ways the European Union can annoy you, but on the other hand, life would be incomparably worse without it.
How, from a journalistic and even political perspective, do you view the socio-political circumstances in the former Yugoslavia, the legacy of cultural identity and space, and on the other hand, the divisions that emerged after the war, probably mostly created, political, intentional, and driven by interest?
We are a space that has not yet healed from the nineties, because some persistently try to leave open and not heal those wounds that everyone had in their own way, and which simply ignores the fact that is self-evident in itself - it is a community of people who speak the same language. We can call it by different names, because it is polycentric, but we understand each other. That is key. It is imbecile not to take advantage of that fact. But, yes, we all try in different ways to obstruct and turn our backs on that fact.
Literature for the soul, screenplays for a fee
In addition to journalism and literature, you also write drama texts, television and film scripts. Can we expect anything new in that field in the near future and how do you approach such tasks?
There is nothing new in that segment, because I do it all on commission. I am very happy to do it, because you can earn a lot more money if you work for television, film and theatre, if they commission you, say, a theatre company... In that sense, the order book is empty, at the moment. I am less looking forward to that type of writing, I must admit, because there is no freedom there that you have in literature. Whenever you work on a work like that, the author of the final creation is still the director, who in turn relies on the actors, the production and everyone else. That is why it is always a bit of a frustrating job for me, and on the other hand I am quite happy when I get paid a fee, because it is much more serious than literary work. But literature makes me happier.
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