In the previous chapter it was argued that an interpersonal and broader concept of social solidarity tends to be precluded from the outset in La conquista del aire because of the rather determinist development of the narrative. This bleak outlook is echoed in ‘Academia’, a short text published shortly after the appearance of Gopegui's next novel, Lo real. In it, she laments the loss, during the dismantling of Francoism, of revolution as an ideal to be fought for, maintaining rather nostalgically that ‘[s]oñábamos algunos con la revolución. una revolución donde estaría todo lo que aprendimos del error y el acierto de otras revoluciones’ (2001d: unnumbered). Similarly, in ‘Bruto sí era un hombre honrado’ (2002a), an essay written while she was working on Lo real, she reiterates the perception that Marxism, materialism and revolution are now widely considered ‘anticuado’ and therefore, by implication, invalid. She also appears to undermine her own activity and status as a writer through repetition of the phrases ‘[y]o no me llamo Belén Gopegui. yo no escribo novelas’ (2002a: 75, 77). Indeed, the interest in constructing a new oppositional aesthetic, which, along with the concept of revolution, was becoming a dominant theme in her writings, was nevertheless accompanied by an increasing pessimism regarding the viability of such an endeavour. In one interview, she expresses her suspicion that ‘el peso de la institución literaria es tan fuerte que da igual lo que hagas […] sólo verán literatura, y quién sabe si a lo mejor es que sólo están haciendo literatura’ (Trueba, 2002: unnumbered).