Entrevistas 13: Juan Benet by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier

   

   Juan Benet by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier

       Juan Benet Goitia was born in 1927 in Madrid, where he studied engineering. In 1954, he became a public works engineer, an occupation he has to this day. At the same time, he also dedicated himself to the craft of writing and has become one of the most important authors of the postwar era. Nevertheless, he insists that his true profession is that of civil engineer and that he writes only in his spare time: “I am a man of a single profession, I´ m an engineer who writes on Sundays.”

 

  Benet is the author of numerous novels, short stories, essays, and, plays. Among his book are Nunca llegaras a nada (You´ll Never Amount to Anything), 1061; La Inspiración y el estilo (Inspiration and Style), 1966; Volverás a Region (Return to Region), 1985; Una meditación, winner of the 1969 Biblioteca Breve Prize (A Medidation), 1982; Una tumba (A Tomb), 1971; Cinco narraciones y dos fábulas (Five Stories and Two fables), 1972; Sub rosa, winner of the 1973 Critica Prize; En el estado (In the State), 1977; Saul ante Samuel, 1980. With Herrumbrosas lanzas (Rusty Spears), a four-part series on the Spanish Civil war, Benet marks the end of his cycle on that conflict. His most recent book is La construcción de la torre de Babel (The Construction of the Tower of Babel), 1990.

 

 The “region” he describes in many of his novels is inspired by the settings of Leon, in the northwest of Spain, where he worked as an engineer. Not only did he re-create its atmosphere, he even invented a fictional map for it. A master of his crafts, Benet builds with a firm hand a bridge or a novel, a road or an essay.

  He has lectures extensively both in Europe and the Americas. In 1982, he was Visiting Tinker at Columbia University.

  This two-part interview was conducted at St. John´ s University and at the Gramercy Hotel in New York City. I had met Benet before and I could have recognized his aristocratic figure anywhere. Tall, handsome, a strand of hair falling over his forehead, the strong aquiline profile, no doubt it was Juan Benet. As usual, he played down his life as a writer and enjoyed talking about the exciting moments he had experienced as an engineer.

 

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                                               Part I

 

MLG: Juan, you are equally successful in two professions: as an engineer and as a writer. How can you function in both worlds and reconcile them?

 JB:  Is very easy, because I do not try to reconcile anything. I am really an engineer who writes on Sundays and during my free time, which is fairly extensive. For this very reason, you cannot say that I have two professions, one in which I am successful, and the other in which I am not, or in which I am successful to a different degree. I am really a man of one profession, the one that supports me.

MLG: You have given many lectures throughout the world: in Spain, Great Britain, West Germany, Puerto Rico, and the United States. I was fortunate to see you on two occasions, in Puerto Rico and New York. Both times, I noticed that you prefer to talk about your life as an engineer far more than about life as a writer. Why?

 JB: Life as engineer is undoubtedly the more interesting of the two because I get to travel the world and come face to face with more problems, people, and situations t that are rather unique. Life as a writer consists of sitting at a desk with a pencil and paper, and the problems to be faced are purely of a technical nature, which I don´ t think merit the attention of the public, although perhaps they might be interesting to critics and professors. On the other hand, life as an engineer, as a “civil engineer” as it is called here, is undoubtedly far more interesting. I have to live in the countryside, and each project presents new problems and the opportunity to meet new people.

MLG: But isn´ t the same true of your writing? Each work is something new…

 JB: Yes, but that is something new in my own world, it is not something objectively new. It is neither a new landscape nor new people.

MLG: New Characters?

 JB: They´ re not. Maybe my characters are always the same boring, tired and taciturn individuals.

MLG: What are the factors that drive you to write?

 JB: The main one is that I have a lot of free time. All engineers have free time. It is generally assumed that my profession is very tiring and exhausting. But that is not the case with me. I am an engineer who likes the country more than the city and the office. Therefore, even though I live in Madrid: I return home at seven in the evening, and since I don´ t have many domestic responsibilities and I dislike television and hate the theatre. I have a lot of free time. Along with the rivalry that reading the works of other incites, this is what eventually led to me write. Up the present, I have not found any diversion more trustworthy than writing, or capable of competing with it.

MLG: So, for you, writing is means to let off steam?

 JB: To let off steam? No, no, because I am never steaming. To enjoy myself.

MLG: Jorge Luis Borges once said he left more like a reader than a writer. Reading your work, one immediately recognizes your extensive knowledge of world literature. What does reading mean for you?

 JB: I spend a lot of time reading. Not as much as Jorge Luis Borges used to, but, apart from writing, it is perhaps my favourite pastime, and the one which takes up the most time.

MLG: You have a very cosmopolitan vision of the world, but you nevertheless are thoroughly involved with Spain. How do you explain this?

 JB: I don´ t really think that I have a very cosmopolitan vision. I don´ t think I am a man of the world, in the sense in which that expression is understood. It is one thing for thorough involvement to have nonlocal connotations and perhaps, even if this sounds a bit presumptuous, universal implications. But I think that any individual who is truly involved with his surroundings, even though they may be in the most remote setting, can, should, and finally will achieve that universal understanding. There are many examples of this. For instance, writers who were closely constricted in terms of location, like Thomas Hardy in the nineteenth century, and Faulkner, García Marquez and Rulfo in the twentieth. Because of their talents, they immediately achieved that universal understanding, using nothing more than the localisms in which they lived as a resource.

MLG: You have written novels, short stories, essays, and even plays. With which genre do you feel most comfortable?

 JB: In the one that is most appropriate to the moment. That depends on inspiration or the first cause. Ultimately, I am not comfortable with the theatre, and that´ s why I don´t  write and plays, because I have no ideas for it. Recently, a friend of mine, who is a film producer in Madrid, asked me something which he had never asked me before, and that was to write a script for a movie based on my novels. I don´ t know if is the mere fact that he asked me to do this that has inhibited and prevented me from doing it. I can´ t seem to get started on that script, probably because he asked me to do it, although he didn´ t   set a deadline. But the mere fact that someone requested something is sufficient cause for me not to do it.

MLG: So you are very independent?

 JB: Let us say that my will is more independent that I am, because I would very interested in doing that script. If I must be sincere, however, I don´t feel I have enough drive to begin writing it.

MLG: Do you believe in inspiration?

 JB: Yes, unfortunately I believe in inspiration. So I move along a shady path.

MLG: In what short of inspiration do you believe? Divine inspiration? A muse?  Enthusiasm? What is for you?

 JB: Not divine. Etymologically, enthusiasm means something like being transported or elated: And that elation is probably related to strength. Perhaps not a superhuman strength, but certainly a strength that is greater than the one individuals can muster under circumstances. But, irrespective of where it comes from, inspiration is a phenomenon that will not be denied. It moves the author, compelling him to write. In Latin etymology, inspiration is like infusing breath, it fulfils like an approaching wind, perhaps the Holy Spirit, so that one is transported. And since I don´ t have that inspiration for the script, I cannot be moved to write it. But we shouldn´ t try to explain. It has always seemed to me that looking for the causes of those phenomena and attempting to psychoanalyze them is somewhat superfluous. The phenomena occur nevertheless. Someday when you are walking down the street, for instance, or when you are reading something, or for any other reason….

MLG: Or at this very moment?

 JB: Or at this very moment an idea springs forth that can lead to another, which the smallest experience can expand, and in this way an ensemble of ideas develops, a nebulous set that acquires a shape of its own, compelling one to write.

MLG: Reading your work, I notice how dedicated you are to polishing it. What does style mean to you?

 JB: Let ´s distinguish. Polish is one thing and style is another. If I am dedicated to polishing, it must be because I am naturally uncouth, so I have to polish in order that the public will accept the product. It is quite possible that a writer who is more refined than I, and there are many, does not need as much polish. But the style is something else. Style, for example, produces raw material, whether it is of good or bad quality. To go back to etymology, style is like a graving tool which Greek sculptors used in such a way that, even when two of them were making the same object at the quarry, one would be distinguishable from the other. It was a tool used to collect, so that one sculptor would not get paid for an object his colleague had graves. And that “style”, which Buffon would later qualify as the most secret and intimate part of an individual, is what makes an object unique and distinguishable from the competition. That polish which speak of might not even be necessary, because another tool could come along that would give a work its finish.

MLG: Do you believe in a plurality of styles, or in just one?

 JB: I believe in just one style. If a man had a plurality of styles, perhaps his personality would be less focused. Above all, I believe it is style that solidifies an individual, even if his personality is dispersed among various occupations.

MLG: Do your characters speak as Juan Benet?

 JB: Yes, how can I not believe in the power of dialogue? But, we ought to make some distinctions between written dialogue and the conversation we are having, for instance. Of course, it was very hard for me to write the first novel I published, Return to Region. It is very hard for me to do anything. For many years, I tried sending it to a series of publishers who replied with silence, as was customary in those days. After scouting for publishers in Spain, Europe and America, my manuscript was sent to a literary agent, who in turn passed it on to the secretary of a publisher. And the secretary gave me a lesson: not only did she tell me that my novel did not fit the requirements of that publishing firm, but she also made some literary suggestions. She said that the novel had too little dialogue, and that the public usually did not buy works like that. She gave me a lesson, because I then opened my draft, which had only three pieces of dialogue in three hundred pages, and crossed two out. I did not think her reasons were sufficient to stop me from doing what I wanted.

MLG: Do you give priority to style, emotion, or imagination?

 JB: I don´ t think that there is any question of priorities here. Style is a tool. Style is what one has handy to sculpt a block of stone, which can sometimes be marble, sometimes granite, and sometimes clay. Style treats feelings, circumstances, and the description of nature is the same way. It is the most important tool. Giving priority to one thing or another depends on the paragraph, on that mysterious equilibrium that we are never sure is going to turn out well. At those moments, a writer may stop and say: “I need a little more description of the landscape here”, or “I have to say something about the character there, he is badly drawn,” or “I must make some philosophical observations”. This is the way it goes. There are no priorities.

MLG: You have an analytical mind that makes you a very demanding and original critic. Do you approach your own work with the same criterion?

 JB: For better or for worse. I have a mind rooted in the study of mathematics. I don´ t know if that gives me analytical powers, probably not. And if it does, what it usually does not give is the ability to observe, which is a much more useful tool for a writer.. Coming to your second point, I think that an accumulation of criteria in exaggerated proportions and with maximum intensity should be applied to one´ s work. And for this reason, it is my work that is the only worthwhile thing about me. I shouldn´ t   have to be looming behind it, and I have nothing to add to it. I thing self-criticism is implicit in every book. And if a book is written with that awareness, there is nothing to add to it afterward. I have never understood those writers who complement their books with a preface, an introduction, or critical notes. Even a writer as complex as Henry James, in his last novels, when he was at his most creative, devoted himself to writing prologues expounding on the implications of his characters. He took advantage of these prologues to comment on the literature of his day, even on the novels of George Eliot. But I have always thought of this as “superfetation”, or overexplaining, which indicates in some way the author´s discontent with what he has done. Another facet of this is that there are many authors who like to go around the world explaining their work. I recall an anecdote about a famous dancer from the first quarter of this century, Pavlova, who was once asked: “How do you explain your art?”, to which she replied, “If I could explain my art, I wouldn´ t dance”. This is the same thing, I must emphasize that self-criticism should be implicit in every page of the book.

 MLG: You began to be published in the sixties. Do you see some resemblance between your work and that of the Latin American authors of the Boom, like Mario Vargas Llosa, for instance?

 JB: No, I don´ t think there is much of a likeness between Vargas Llosa´s work and what I do. In fact, I began to be published eight to ten years after Mario Vargas Llosa, even though he is much younger than I am. So there is not even a chronological relation, if we are going to speak in terms of precise figures. Mario Vargas Llosa began writing and was published when he was in his twenties. I was first published in my forties, although I had been writing since the time of Luis Martín Santos. To tell you the truth, that famous Boom caught us when we were already over the hill. So there isn´t any parallel between my work and the Boom, whether it be on stylistic or thematic grounds. My novels are European or Spanish; they don´ t have much in common with Latin American works. Of course, the language is the same, but within that language there is room for anything. And yet, even the Boom is not a unified literary experience. It is a coincidence in time. Look al the difference there is between Rulfo and Borges.

MLG: Flaubert wrote a moral chronicle of his age. You work also has moral ramifications, since it is an account of post war Spain. Do you feel that there is a moral or social obligation in a work of art?

 JB: I don´ t know, but, irrespective of whether is or not, I wash my hands of it because I do not believe in categorizing conscience. When a critic says that Flaubert wrote the moral chronicle of his age, what he is doing is applying a label to evade the far vaster problem of what is a generalized conscience. When people bring up concepts like “historical conscience”, what are they really saying? That there is a part of their conscience that is historic in contrast to another part that is not? Or that an individual can separate his historic conceptions of the world from the non historic ones? I believe that conscience is one, and that not only morality, but history, society, and the world of values in which we live, are all indissolubly tied to this conscience. In this world of values, an individual has an awareness of the society and the history of his time, of the moment in which he was destined to live, of his friends, of his country, of his landscape, of what the human soul is –which all correspond to what he experienced. It cannot be any other way. And with regard to that very pretentious phrase that says that he was the writer or the artist of his age- who is not? Who is anachronistic? It would be very nice if we could free ourselves from our moral, social, and historical conditioning, so that we could travel to another time and another place. But we can´ t.

MLG: Why do you attach so much importance to the return of your characters?

 JB: I don´ t give it any more importance than if they did not return. There are some characters who return, and others who stay. Perhaps what I give importance to is the contrast between those who stayed and those who came back. In the words of a brilliant, contemporary, young Spanish writer, “Returning is the greatest of infidelities. “ Perhaps you are referring to the circumstances in which I have depicted some of the characters of my novels as returning from a somewhat hypocritical exile to face the basically sordid reality of post war Spain. In that case, it is in a way the history of an infidelity that, as always, is justified by the limitations, the incompetence, and the dissatisfaction of a character who left behind those to whom he wanted to be faithful.

MLG: You have said, “The man of letters who writes only about what he knows is a false scientist. “ Since you are also a man of science who likes to differentiate between one point and another, what is the proper mix of reality and fantasy with which you craft your works?

 JB: That is a question which is very hard for me to answer quantitatively. In the first place, I am not really a man of science, I´ m a technician, which is something lesser, or perhaps greater. Nowadays, science is a by-product of technology, because the latter controls money. But I do not have that scientific mentality that attempts to observe nature to the smallest detail that the scientific apparatus will allow. Of course, when I adopt the posture of a naturalist, I like to be as precise as possible. I don´ t know if this is due to my professional training, or because to be able to earn my living, my occupation demands a certain degree of precision. In that sense it is not very hard for me to apply the same principles to various narrative elements. Of course, these elements would amount to nothing or would not entertain me unless they were compensated in good measure by some outings in the realm of fantasy. But which one dominates? The reader should really be able to tell, more so than the author. I must emphasize that I do not think the writer is in a position of speaking about his own work, or analyzing it, nor should he be expected to have set guidelines and some very learned answers about his work readily available.

MLG: Region is a mythical area you invented and where three novels, of your unfinished cycle take place. How did you come up with Region, that distance town which symbolizes post war Spain?

 JB: It is a region of my own making, but it is not mythical. Ricardo Guyón is the one who said it was mythical, in an article that he wrote. Other critics continued with that designation, and since then it has been labeled as such. I came to that area when I finished my engineering degree, and I began working on some hydroelectric projects in the northwest Spain, which is a very backward place and very picturesque. It was very enticing for a youth who up to then had only known the city, although I had occasionally spent my summer and Christmas vacations in the country. That the area was very isolated, very striking, and I was quite knowledgeable about it, since I had to study many books on its geology and biology. I later gave it a fictitious name, so I could move within it at my own discretion, without having to explain anything to anyone. I could then be the absolute and arbitrary owner, and determine where I wanted to put a country estate or a river, or how high a mountain would be. I could even set up a battle of the Civil War there and describe it, develop it, and finish it as I like.

MLG: Do you think censorship caused you to create symbols?

 JB: Symbols are created by critics and professors.

MLG: Why did you call that world “Region” when it is really Spain, then?

 JB: But I didn´ t call it that! I emphasize that it was a professor who said that Region symbolized Spain. I have never symbolized anything. I described a place abd gave it a name. I could be reproached for taking over the role of the parish priest in christening a whole area, something that is never mentioned in university departments. But God save me from creating a symbolic region. Moreover, which each passing day I have less tolerance for symbolic writing and for that modern craze of finding symbolism or a reference in every line, in every concept, in every phrase and every insinuation. As if what is hidden is always more important than what  the reader has in front of his eyes, as if literature were only there to uphold insinuation or an obscure legend. I think this craze is somewhat pernicious. It is little less than surrendering literature into the hands of critics.

MLG: It has been said that A meditation is one of the most important novels of the post war era and one of the most lyrical works of the last thirty years. What does poetry mean for you?

 JB: I am probably partially responsible for that label, because I told the publisher that I was planning to write three novels: one with an ethical bent, another with a lyrical focus, and a third with an exclusively narrative approach. But it was only a plan so that we could understand each other. I have to confess that I do not read much poetry because I don´ t know how.

MLG: have you written poetry?

 JB: I´ m going to reveal that. I don´ t know how to read it. I have no background for it. I cannot read poetry for more than half an hour at a stretch. I will never succed in spending a whole afternoon reading poetry. In the space of one year, if I read one hundred volumes of prose, I may manage to read three of poetry. So my lyrical education is very deficient. But that has nothing to do with the designation I gave to that novel, which was a general definition. When I said that I wanted to give the first novel an ethical bent, I merely meant that I wanted to describe certain events that, although not supernatural, are uncommon, singular, and outside the normal course of things. The epic is always the narration of extraordinary events with words that are very normal. Leaving aside the shape this description can take, the lyrical can in some way be described as the narration of normal events with very cautiously chosen words. But there are no great conflicts or catastrophes. Narration is the conjunction between both things in a neutral zone.

MLG: In A Meditation there is not just one pilot, but rather a series of arguments that help sustain the structure of the novel. You give readers a puzzle, and leave it to them to put the pieces together. Do you see the work of art as an exercise in hieroglyphics? Why do you force your reader to do mental gymnastics?

 JB: It is possible that readers may see A Meditation as a challenge to which they have to respond by deciphering and unthreading a tangled ball. But that´ s not the point at all. Moreover, that jumbled web is not sufficiently thought out, so it can´t  be unravelled. And anyone who tries to is wasting his time. That book is like a tangled web because that is its aesthetic, but is it meant to be read or enjoyed line by line and phrase by phrase, without any further ado. And if the general flow of the novel is broken at some point, well it is broken, and it is not necessary to know the relationship between some characters and others, or the temporal sequence of events that are described, or the chronology, or the geographical setting. Everything is as is, no more. If the reader accustomed to analyzing, conditioned by logical puzzles, and steeped in my mystery novels, wants to untangle the ball, then fine. But I can warm him right now that he will reap no rewards, because that is not the main objective of this novel.

MLG: You wrote that novel without paragraphs. It is true that you used a continuous roll of paper with your typewriter?

 JB: Yes.

MLG: Why? To convey that continuity?

JB: No, I didn´ t want to write on a continuous roll of paper like toilet paper. What I did, with the help of a carpenter friend of mine, was to built a device, which we place behind the typewriter, so that the paper would enter the carriage and then wind itself into another roll. I did this on purpose so that as I wrote the text, what I was writing would get rolled up and out of view. I wanted to trust in my memory alone, even when it might introduce contradictions, breaks, and falsehoods into the text. So, this is what I did, even if it meant creating a mess. When I finished the roll, and the publisher asked me to give it a somewhat more accessible form before printing it, I wrote it in folios with the same device. And then, of course, I corrected certain structural brutalities, and in a way I amended the text fairly extensively. But I stuck to the basic system I had developed of not depending on anything more than what I remembered from the previous day. I won a prize for that book, by the way.

MLG: What did you think when you read the English version of that work?

 JB: It is much better in English than in Spanish.

MLG: Why?

 JB: Because MR. Rabassa did an excellent translation, and I think the book is more interesting and readable in English than in Spanish. The Spanish version was well received but little read. I don’t know if it will be equally well received in English, but I´ m sure that, thanks to Rabassa, it will probably be more extensively read. He has accomplished the remarkable feat of making me read my own novel twice. It was very interesting, because I had practically forgotten the work, and many of the pages written with an English phrasing sounded quite new. I liked it.

MLG: What does destiny mean for you?

 JB: In a way, destiny is a conjunction of circumstances.

MLG: And what about time? Do you like to play with it?

 JB: No, time likes to play with me. I don´ t play with time. Time plays with me the way a master plays with his disciple, or the way a boxer spars. It is time what teaches us, and I am just one more person. I understand that I am a bad student, and that time, that old teacher, sometimes gets impatient with me and throws me out of the classroom. But all I try to do is follow that whimsical and irreducible master, and take advantage of “his” complex and never-ending lessons.

 

                                             

                                                              Part II

 

MLG: Do you still work as an engineer?

 JB: Yes, and I will never stop working as long as they put up with me. I will never stop working because, first of all, that´s how I make my living. Secondly, even if I could earn a livelihood writing, I would prefer to write in my spare time. To be a writer, you really only need to be al home between eight and ten every evening.

MLG: Which do you prefer?

 JB: I can´ t say. But in any case, I don´ t want to give up being an engineer until I have to retire.

MLG: Your experiences as an engineer have undoubtedly influenced you.

 JB: Yes, because, as I told you, my first experience was living in a very unusual place, the mountains of León, where I spent ten years. The view from my window became the basis for the world I called Region. But I have few anecdotes to tell. Life as an engineer is like any other. There were some encounters that were interesting, like meeting some old miners, or an aged guerrilla. In the world of public works, there are always very varied people.

MLG: And where do your characters spring from?

 JB: From the imagination, although sometimes the characters have certain traits of people I have known. But generally I don´ t draw exact likenesses.

MLG: You recently said samething very interesting about style. You said that structure was the most important thing for you. Do you think the reason for this is that you are an engineer, so that structure is fundamental?

 JB: I´ ve been told that before, but the structures that an engineer thinks of are definitely very different from those that a writer imagines. Perhaps I cannot avoid the need to have some sort of structure. But it is as if you said to me, “You are an engineer,so your house has to be arranged in a set fashion. “Well, you can be an engineer and have a very chaotic house.

MLG: And is your house chaotic?

 JB: No, it isn´t. I have to admit it isn´t. My life is very simple and peaceful. I have a little to boast about.

MLG: Do you feel humble before your work?

 JB: I don´ t care to be like those mothers who speak about their children as if they were the most handsome, intelligent, and outstanding in their class.

MLG: Do you see yourself as an intellectual writer?

 JB: I have never understood what is meant by “intellectual”. What does it mean? In contrast to the United States, in Europe an intellectual is understood to be someone who delves in politics and embodies certain political ideals, be they of the Right or the Left, although they usually more leftist. Those are the European intellectuals. In the United States, as intellectual is usually believed to be an elite writer who does not devote himself to writing best-sellers for the masses. A man like Mailer, for instance, is the American idea of an intellectual.

 MLG: Or like Borges in Latin America?

 JB: Or like Borges, of course. But in Spain, an intellectual is someone whose name comes out in the press and who speaks in public with political overtones, usually leftist ones. In that sense, I am not an intellectual. I don´ t like the term, because it is too often abused, as if it were the sole province of people who use the pen or who have a name in the art world. But doctors or lawyers are not considerer intellectuals because they don´ t have public renown. Yet, they could be, ant they may in fact reflect better on public affairs than the man who writes stories and who does not always have a very organized mind. And let´ s not even begin speaking of poets. I don´ t like to be considerer an intellectual.

MLG: Do you have any new projects in the works?

 JB: No, this last one will take a long time, perhaps two or three years. And once it is done, I will have covered the Civil War definitively, I hope. I cannot imagine or see beyond this.

MLG: So you think that after two years you will finally be done with the Civil War?

 JB: Yes, personally, I will be. Although I don´ t discount the possibility that I may write a book of essays on the war someday, from the point of view of its military operations. But that would no longer be fiction. And until I finish this novel, I don´ t plan to devote myself to anything else.

MLG: It´ s incredible the impact the Civil War continues to have, even after all these years.

 JB: Yes, but it is nothing to marvel about. Keep in mind that Tolstoy wrote War and Peace eighty years after the invasion of Napoleon, and Faulkner wrote his saga eighty years after the Civil War in the United States. Neither Tolstoy not Faulkner, however, saw either of those wars, while I did witness the Spanish Civil War. I lived through it when I was very little, at an age when it leaves indelible marks.

MLG: You have produced a remarkable work, for which you even invented a map. What willpower?

 JB: That is more a product of free time and a willingness to have fun than willpower. It´ s a lot of fun to draw a map. The places on the map, by the way, are almost all named after my friends.

MLG: Do they know it?

 JB: Yes, they do.