Autofiction (which does not exist, because everything is autofictional, since what is written always comes from oneself; even the Bible is autofiction, because it begins with someone creating something), self-representation, nonfiction, which does not exist either because any Narrative version of a true story is always a form of fiction, since from the moment the world is ordered with words, the nature of the world is modified.
De “Montevideo”, Enrique Vila-Matas
Returns Vila Matas to inquire into the processes of reading Y writing through an essay writer who is going through a blocking in creation Of his work.
The essayist narrator, who sometimes merges and/or confuses himself with Vila Matas, recalls and revisits those cities that in his day marked his writing.
It begins at Paris, the last text created by the writer, three years earlier. In it he tells us both literary and experiential experiences. By way of delirious reveals his stage of camel Y consumer drug:
For me, Paris, in that first stay of two years, was just a place where I worked exclusively as a drug dealer and, during a brief period of three months that flew by, I was a regular user of lysergic acid, of LSD, which It made me understand that what we call "reality" is not an exact science, but rather a pact among many people, among many conspirators who one day in your hometown, for example, decide that Avenida Diagonal is a walkway lined with trees when Actually, if you take your acid, you can see that it is a zoo full of beasts and parrots with a life of their own, all loose, some climbing to the tops of the trees.
He reflects on certain trends in writing, recognizing that during his stay in Paris he did not have "nothing to tell":
1) That of those who have nothing to tell.
2) That of those who deliberately do not narrate anything.
3) That of those who do not tell everything.
4) That of those who hope that one day God will tell everything, including why he is so imperfect.
5) That of those who have surrendered to the power of technology that seems to be transcribing and recording everything and, therefore, making the profession of writer dispensable.
The first box —the only one I went through in that Paris of the seventies— always ended up sending me to a gray post-war landscape in Barcelona with a solitary figure in the center of the scene, in the middle of Paseo de San Juan, a skinny and terrifying bored schoolboy, myself without going any further.
He brings up the questioning of the nineteenth-century novel in his eagerness to tell everything through the omniscient narrator, with some valuable exceptions for him. Such would be the case Kafka and of Moby Dick of melville:
I have always thought that in Moby Dick he drew an immense metaphor for the immensity, the immensity of our darkness.
From Thomas Wolfe, highlights some accurate reflections on The angel that watches us, affirming that his desire to cover everything was about to destabilize his work.
Vila Matas he has always been very clear in questioning the practice of the 19th century novel model in contemporary writers.
The essayist is surrendered to Antonio Tabuchi, touching the fiber his Lady of Porto Pim, work that links with sleepless nightsOf elizabeth hardwick:
I loved Dama de Porto Pim's unusual organization of the texts, its structure so similar —at least from my point of view— to that of Sleepless Nights, another far-reaching border book, also as disparate as it is unitary, where, Through fragments of memories and personal notes, Elizabeth Hardwick She was composing the portrait of a self-made creator, with some obvious influences, but deep down a unique creator, always somewhat tired, like a Billie Holiday from literature, surrounded by musicians even more fatigued than her, sunglasses, insomnia ashen, stifling overcoats and the wives of the musicians, all so blond and so, so exhausted.
The writer extols the tristram shandyOf laurence sterne:
Tristram is not only my amulet, but the backbone of everything I have written. In that possible biography of my style, which I have already abandoned, it would undoubtedly have occupied a central place. In fact, you can understand almost nothing about me without the lightning influence of Sterne's book.
He is proud to belong to the Society of Friends of Laurence Sterne.
He tells us about beloved writers, such as piglia, Raymond Roussel, Italo Calvino, Mallarme, Julien Grace…
The essayist befriends the writer and filmmaker Madeline Moore, with which he will later be an active part of a performance:
Of my old copains, I only looked up, on my second trip to Paris, Madeleine Moore, because I had her address and we had had an amusing correspondence. In those days, she was making her way as a performance artist, and also as an incisive art critic.
Vila Matas in interviews has revealed that the artist was actually Dominique González-Foerster, who at the Pompidou Center prepared a performance in which he himself participated.
In his fiction and nonfiction game he introduces an imaginary writer, Enzo Cuadrelli, who is writing a book about the office worker Bartleby. That leads the writer to review the you give up writing of some writers, like Rimbaud.
In CascaisAfter three years of creative drought, curiously things happen to the writer. Invited by the Portuguese producer paulo branco, stays in a hotel in the town. In an adjoining room, is the actor Jean Pierre Leaud.
It is a crazy text where the author suffers insomnia because of his lack of creativity. In the silence of the night the actor's laughter follows one another, which seems to delve into the writer's wound:
I was lying down and perfectly clueless, but calm in my room wondering, for the first time, how it was that I could still believe that my way out of the blockade would be an essay. And in that I heard the first chain of laughter from Jean-Pierre Léaud. It was the last thing I could expect. Some laughter that broke into the silence in a way I would say deliberately scandalous, as if they needed to be obscene so that there were not too many doubts that they were there, ready to prevent me from sleeping, or from concentrating on the increasingly improbable future rehearsal.
Insomnia and the incident offer the author the chance to discuss different topics and writers, such as Sebald or Kafka.
In the texts of Montevideo Y Bogotá, the writer recalls the tale of Julio Cortazar, "The Doomed Door":
There is a formidable story by Julio Cortázar in which the room next door to a hotel room plays a fundamental role. It is "The Condemned Door", it belongs to both the world of fiction and the real world, and its setting is the city of Montevideo, in Uruguay.
It's another story surreal where the writer will stay at the hotel where cortazar he wrote the story and supposedly there would be a blind door.
Vila Matashe actually went to the hotel cervantes to know the room, but he had changed his name and was engaged in dating activities.
In the text, the narrator continues with his literary references, Idea Vilarino, Onetti, Felisberto, Borges or cirlot:
The door, said Cirlot, is an invitation to enter the mystery, the opposite of the wall, which would be masculine. His words could not be more applicable to my relationship until then with "The Condemned Door."
And I thought that Cirlot was absolutely right when he said that the doors were thresholds, transit, but they also seemed linked to the idea of home, country, worlds that we abandoned and then returned to.
He also talks about the work of cortazar, preferring his short story facet.
The author in the room, immerses himself in a strange succession of fantastic facts.
The series of unforeseen events seem to try to push the author to literary creation:
After the fragment "Paris" and my withering and sometimes, only sometimes, anguishing writer's block, I had the unprovable impression that people had begun to conspire so that I would live stories that, in the long run, demanded of me that they be narrated. and put me back on the "straight path." I started some resistance to this, but realized that, resistance or not, I lived more to write, even if I didn't write.
From circular way, the book closes in the Paris -Paris never ends- Dear of Vila Matas, in which he developed his stage of literary training.
Enrique Vila-Matas he continues to reinvent himself again, without losing enthusiasm for his trade at almost 75 years of age. He proposes a literary game in a narrative voice full of ambiguity, where the reader sometimes doubts whether what is narrated belongs to the fictional essayist character or to the author of the book himself. The limits between non-fiction Y fiction, siempre son difíciles de determinar y, tal como defiende el escritor ante tanta reiteración de los medios por poner etiquetas y tildarle de autor de auto-ficción; en una cita del libro, que incluyo en la portada, sagazmente determina que todo es auto-ficción, porque proviene de uno mismo e incluso ficción, ya que las palabras modifican los hechos reales. Vila Matas rescue his troupe of writers, musicians Y artists of reference, in addition to incorporating new voices. It is noteworthy how he delves into the fantastic, reinterpreting one of his favorite tales of cortazar. But what is most appreciated in the narration is that the writer it's been fun Y we enjoy it with a text filled with clever humor.
Marianne Faithfull:
As of 2018, Negative Capability, is an autobiographical reflection, where he addresses the loss of old friends, his loneliness living in his adoptive city of Paris and love. One of the best of his career, and it is that Marianne he surrounded himself with a select group of musicians and composers: Nick Cave, Ed Harcourt, Warren Ellis, Rob Ellis, Rob McVey Y Mark Lanegan; little to add.
Foto: Marianne Faithfull (2008), De Andrew34 – Trabajo propio, Dominio público, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4587907
Among the musical references in the book of Enrique Vila-Matas —which, by the way, has exquisite taste—, Marianne Faithfull appears with the excellent song, “No Moon in Paris”, belonging to the aforementioned disc, “Negative Capability”:
Marianne Faithfull could be heard at that moment in Bergamo singing No Moon in Paris. And when young Desdini told me that this was the song that helped him the most to think about life and, as a consequence of this, to sadden and, from there, "unleash" when exposing mathematical problems, I was truly expectant. .
I think I can explain something to you," he said, and, with his permission, I recorded his response, "random walks are walkers who decide to wander randomly in a given maze.
Canción con la letra y el vídeo de “No moon in Paris”:
"No Moon in Paris" Negative Capability, Lp (2018) Marianne Faithfull There's no moon, no moon in Paris And it's very lonely here tonight Everywhere else there's a full moon But not here, not now, and nothing's going right What can I do but pretend to be brave? And pretend to be strong when I'm not? There's no moon, no moon in Paris tonight And it's lonely, and that's what I got No moon, no moon in Paris And it's very lonely here tonight When I think of all the moons that shone for us so distantly All through the full moon night It always made me gasp, gasp with love to see But that was when I still loved you, and you loved me There's no moon, no moon in Paris tonight And it's lonely, and that's all I've got Everything passes, everything changes There's no way to stay the same As we love, and so above The only thing that stays the same is love I've seen the moon in Morocco And I've seen the moon in Brazil Oh, I've seen it in the darkest times Coming over the hill In Martinique, it shines on the sea But in Paris, it usually shines on me There's no moon, no moon in Paris And it's lonely, as lonely as can be.
"There Is No Moon In Paris" Negative Capability, Lp (2018) Marianne Faithfull There Is No Moon, There Is No Moon In Paris And It's Very Lonely Here Tonight It's A Full Moon Everywhere But Not Here, Not Right Now, And Nothing Is Going Right? What can I do but pretend to be brave? And pretend to be strong when I'm not? There's no moon, there's no moon in Paris tonight And it's lonely, and that's what I've got Moonless, moonless in Paris And it's so lonely here tonight When I think of all the moons that shone for us so far All through the Full moon night It always made me gasp, gasp with love to see But that was when I still loved you, and you loved me There's no moon, there's no moon in Paris tonight And it's lonely, and that's all I have Everything passes, Everything changes There's no way to stay the same How we love, and so high The only thing that stays the same is love I've seen the moon in Morocco And I've seen the moon in Brazil Oh I've seen it in the darkest of times Coming over the hill In Martinique, it shines on the sea But in Paris, it usually shines on me There is no moon, there is no moon in Paris And it is lonely, as lonely as can be.
