Vila-Matas follows, sometimes quite literally, in the footsteps of authors as various as Cervantes, Montaigne, and Musil in a bi-continental search for the purpose of literature in a shifting world that seems evermore to question the need for literature. [...] [The narrator] attempts to commune with the writers who have inspired his battle "against the enemies of the literary" and reconcile his dreams for literature with the competing limitations of his own mundane life as a writer and husband.. [...] Montano's Malady is a touching and perhaps hopeful inquiry into what it means to be a reader, or writer, in an increasingly unliterary world.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Mi libro del año
With all the fuss about other Spanish and Spanish-speaking novelists, I want to shout the name of Enrique Vila-Matas above the din. Montano's Malady is my novel of the year so far and Words without Borders has a new review:
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Stephen,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for this. A gem, even although I have reached only the half-way point.
"Literature has always enabled me to understand life. And for precisely that reason it leaves outside it. I mean it: I wouldn't have it any other way." (p.100).
Moving swiftly through part two, disciplining myself not to look ahead at the Pessoa entry. Pleasure deferred, I'm sure.
Q
I noted that quote from p100 too! I haven't heard of one person (among my friends until now) who hasn't loved this book.
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