Raúl Romero launches his first novel: Why won’t he write his autobiography?

The first novel of Raul Romero It doesn’t have a typical narrative. It is not the story of a character who goes from one point to another, who encounters people or situations that alter his “journey” and help him understand something about himself. Nor is it a story of personal introspection; Instead, it is about an attempt at physical transformation, where the protagonist, who is an alter ego of the author, seeks to improve his health. At the same time, it is a conversation of unilateral dialogues where there is an additional “character” who does not breathe, does not speak, does not live, but who is the trigger of the text.

“Exercise diary” is, as its name suggests, a record of incidents related to physical work. Divided by days, in its pages the musician from the Nosequé and the Nosecuántos details the movements he performs with the help of rubber bands to activate the muscles. They are not strength exercises, considering that Romero was 59 years old when he wrote it (he is now 62), but they require effort. These pages not only make up a record, but Romero refers to the Diary – like this, with capital letters – as if it were a very close friend. “I hope that my creations seem to you not only sportingly appropriate, but (…) worthy of being captured, graphed, on your still young body.”says one of the first passages of the text.

Regarding the origin of the book, Romero remembers being in the “quarantine atmosphere” due to Covid-19, which made him feel like he had the opportunity to commit to something without distractions. “I have always exercised; I am not a born or dedicated athlete, but I have always liked the subject. And I have always wanted to write, I began to get the taste, to realize that some things were nice”Romero tells El Comercio from Spain in a Zoom interview.

The writer’s physique

When reading “Exercise Diary,” at times it seems that Romero is talking to an imaginary friend, something that the author says he did not have as a child. “In fact, some classmates in the classroom believed that I was the imaginary“, he responds, with a tone of humor that is present throughout the novel, where the protagonist, progressively, takes more and more to heart the idea that the notebook where he records his activities is a real person. He laughed alone when writing the book, he says, but also when reading it to his wife and children. In fact, when reading the book one thinks not of the author’s musical work, but of his time as a television host, where he had to be eccentric every day. We tell you about it.

“In my daily life there is an axis that is humor. I would tell you that ‘Habacilar’ (América TV) was the program in which I had the least freedom to develop this type of half-eccentric things, I would tell you that it is with ‘De dos a cuatro’ (ATV) or ‘R con erre’ (Panamericana ) in the first two years, when I expanded more and dared to try characters and did a bit of fantasy and made myself crazy and others crazy”, says the musician of those times. Does he consider himself funny? Yes, he says, but he is aware that there is humor in this particular book that might not land equally with all readers. In the end, he knows that being funny also depends on who listens to it.

Romero is one of the unmistakable musicians of the Peruvian scene. Can we expect an autobiography from him? He doesn’t have it in mind. “There are aspects of my personal, intimate life, and my feelings that I don’t think I would ever air in public, in a book. I think that whoever makes an autobiography must be willing to show and reveal much of his life, his affections, his personality. So, the truth is that I don’t feel very called to do something like that.”. For now, fans will have to make do with his diary, fictional as it is, but which shows something of the person behind the shows.