Το Παρίσι δεν τελειώνει ποτέ

by Enrique Vila-Matas, Νάννα Παπανικολάου (Translator)

Το Παρίσι δεν τελειώνει ποτέ είναι μια ειρωνική αναδρομή στην περίοδο της λογοτεχνικής μαθητείας του αφηγητή στο Παρίσι της δεκαετίας του '60. Θέλοντας να μιμηθεί τον Χέμινγουεϊ, που έγραψε εκεί την Κινητή γιορτή όντας "πολύ φτωχός αλλά και πολύ ευτυχής", ο ίδιος πηγαίνει στο Παρίσι για να γράψει το πρώτο του μυθιστόρημα, "πολύ φτωχός αλλά και πολύ δυστυχής". Προκύπτει το εξαιρετικό πορτρέτο ενός νέου που θέλει να ξεφύγει από τη μετριότητα και κάνει το ντεμπούτο του στη ζωή, θαμπωμένος όχι μόνο από την ομορφιά της πόλης, αλλά και από τη μυθολογία που αυτή σέρνει πίσω της. Συνδυάζοντας με δεξιοτεχνία την αυτοβιογραφία, τη μυθοπλασία και το δοκίμιο, ο Βίλα-Μάτας μάς παραδίδει ένα ακόμα βιβλίο που αποτελεί ύμνο στη λογοτεχνία, στους συγγραφείς, στο βάσανο εκείνο που γεννά νέους, μαγικούς κόσμους, αλλά και στην αιώνια πόλη, το Παρίσι των ονείρων και της ψευδαίσθησης.

Genres: Fiction, Spain, Spanish Literature, France, Novels, Contemporary, Literature

265 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Enrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish author. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a founding Knight of the Order of Finnegans, a group which meets in Dublin every year to honour James Joyce. He lives in Barcelona.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title Never Any End to Paris is an obvious allusion to A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway and, perhaps, very vaguely, to Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar for Enrique Vila-Matas hops from chapter to chapter and from writer to writer.
Exile, even voluntary, isn’t sweet…

In those days, I think I turned my back on the world, on everybody in it. Readerless, with no concrete ideas about love or death, and, to top it all off, a pretentious writer hiding his beginner’s fragility, I was a walking nightmare. I identified youth with despair and despair with the color black. I dressed in black from head to toe. I bought myself two pairs of glasses, two identical pairs, which I didn’t need at all, I bought them to look more intellectual.

Similar to so many before him young Enrique is in Paris to write his first novel… He meets throngs of intellectuals… He learns the irony of life and the irony of literature… He studies the ways of the world and the ways of the writers…

My youth was starting to look like what I called earlier, despair in black. This despair – at times feigned and at others genuinely endured – was my most loyal and constant companion throughout the two years I lived in Paris. Often, a sudden lucidity that seemed to arise from my least feigned despair told me I was burying my youth in the garret. Youth is extraordinary, I thought, and I’m suffocating it by living a bohemian life that’s not leading anywhere.
One day, through Cozarinsky’s book on Borges and cinema, I discovered the author of The Aleph. I bought his stories at the Spanish Bookstore, and reading them was a total revelation for me. I was knocked out, especially by the idea – found in one of his stories – that perhaps the future did not exist.

A quarter century later he revisits Paris… But now he hears other voices and lives in other rooms…
The days of our youth – our memories of them are the brightest.

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con Vila-Matas se hace necesario establecer un pacto previo cuya clausula principal (y, dada su magnitud, podríamos decir que única) aboca al lector a un juego sin normas en el que todas las fronteras se desdibujan en un aparente caos, en un laberinto de senderos de apariencia inconexa, de principio muchas veces azaroso y de final incierto o inexistente. El lector deberá dejarse arrastrar por la red de historias, personajes, anécdotas, reflexiones y citas que se van entretejiendo ante nuestros ojos y donde las posibilidades no son ni claras ni concretas, aunque en función de esa infinita permisividad no se elimine tampoco del elenco de posibilidades la simple literalidad, el simple placer de narrar y el simple placer de leer.

Es Vila-Matas un gran abridor de puertas hacia espacios no siempre claros pero siempre sugerentes para ese lector que, como el propio autor, siente que…

“Cuando leo algo que entiendo perfectamente, lo abandono desilusionado. No me gustan los relatos con historias comprensibles. Porque entender puede ser una condena. Y no entender, la puerta que se abre.”

Un escritor que consigue su deseo de dirigirse a nosotros “con la mayor claridad y sencillez posible” por muy raro que sea lo que nos diga y, más aún, lo que quiera decirnos. Un autor ambiguo que consigue dirigirse a nosotros, a ti y a mí, aunque leamos lo mismo que ya no será lo mismo. Un autor que nos ofrece un camino tan interesante que nos hace olvidar la ausencia de destino. Un autor diferente al que se lee con la sonrisa puesta, con una envidia que querría rebajarlo a nuestro nivel (cuesta perdonarle su posición social y económica que le permitió vivir en París a costa de sus padres y tener esos contactos que le permitieron codearse con la intelectualidad de la época) pero, sobre todo, con la envidia de querer alzarnos hasta el suyo, de llegar a conocer como él a todos esos autores que cita con tanta habilidad, de conseguir leer todos esos libros que menciona como nadie y que al traerlos a su hilo argumental, si es que se puede hablar de hilo con Vila-Matas y no de red, los trasforma sin desvirtuarlos.

Es Vila-Matas un escritor que consigue unir y separar vida y literatura sin dejar de comprometerse con la una y con la otra; un escritor capaz de reírse de sí mismo (este libro es un claro ejemplo), practicante de una desesperación burlesca, de una ligereza solemne, enfermo de un pudoroso exhibicionismo sentimental, exitoso escritor sobre el miedo al fracaso, autor de un solo libro que, alegrémonos, no se acaba nunca. Un autor de una excentricidad clásica que nos seduce y al que es inútil resistirse una vez entras en su mundo, porque…

“Nadie va muy lejos cuando conoce la felicidad de volver a entrar en su casa.”

[Emilio Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vila-Matas toma como punto de referencia el París era una fiesta de Hemingway para escribir esta fusion de autobiografía y ficción en la que nos cuenta sobre los años en los que vivió en Paris siendo joven y cuando aún no había escrito su primer novela.
Vila-Matas cuenta sus tropiezos, sus miedos como escritor, y como fue el difícil proceso creativo de su primer novela. Cuenta mucho sobre la movida cultural de aquellos años en Paris y no faltan anécdotas con personajes como Roland Barthes o Marguerite Duras, dueña del altillo donde él vivía en Paris.
Esta es la segunda novela que leo del autor luego de El mal de Montano, y aunque esta no me gusto tanto, quizás porque la segunda mitad se me hizo ya un poco monótona, Vila-Matas tiene un estilo propio que me es muy atractivo y me genera mucho placer leerlo. Y sobre ese estilo tan particular el propio autor deja en el libro alguna idea de donde viene cuando escribe:

En esos días, como no paraba de hallar ideas en Borges, no tardé en verle de nuevo asociado con Orson Welles la noche que fui a ver F for Fake. Los temas de la película era borgesianos: la falsificación, la hábil frontera entre realidad y ficción, por ejemplo. La película, aunque en ella nunca se nombraba a Borges, me descubrió tramas, fraudes y laberintos sobre los que podía escribir si continuaba queriendo llegar a ser un escritor de verdad.

A quienes ya hayan leído, y les guste Vila-Matas, esta mezcla de autobiografía, ficción y ensayo creo que definitivamente les va a gustar, y a quien nunca lo haya leído le recomendaría que lo haga, pero no se si este es justamente el mejor lugar para comenzar.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This paen to life in Paris is a well-written ex-pat story and was entertaining to read. I preferred its authenticity to the more slapstick ones like those by Stephen Fry. I never bumped into Mr. Vila-Matas in my own wanderings around Paris, but his book gave me a new appreciation for my adopted city.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy grande V. Matas, de lo mejorcito que le he leído. El gran maestro y precursor de la metaficcion, nos descubre aquí sus comienzos, sus inspiradores, sus angustias y dudas, todo ello con la prodigiosa imaginación y sentido del humor de este fenómeno.
A pesar de mezclar como solo el sabe la ficción más loca con la autobiografía, logra transmitir un sentimiento de sinceridad y humildad que difícilmente alcanzaría otro que escribiera de forma lineal y digamos que más clara.
Consigue un estilo único e inconfundible, si te dieran un párrafo sin indicar el autor, creo que se identificararía a Vila Matas sin dudar. He leído a más de un escritor español confesando lo imposible que les resultaría intentar esa forma de escribir, ese sello propio que lleva cada renglón.
En este libro, nos muestra a las claras sus influencias, no es la primera vez que juega y novela a Margarite Duras (que realmente fue su casera durante su primera estancia en París), también confiesa la enorme influencia de Hemingway y sobre todo sobre todo de Borges....pero como es posible que no me hubiera dado cuenta hasta que V.M. lo confiesa aquí lo que supuso para sus comienzos literarios el encuentro con los cuentos de Borges, el enorme campo creativo que se le abrió, derribar todas las fronteras en que tenía encasillada la composión literaria. Puede considerarse sin duda su alumno más aventajado.
Otras cosas interesantes: los comienzos de los libros de V.M. no tienen comparación. El sentido del humor a veces absurdo que sin previo aviso te saca una carcajada tampoco tiene igual. La explicación de la famosa teoría del iceberg de Hemingway (que ya había visto en otros sitios en un libro de Vargas Llosa etc) aquí aun gana en profundidad, y me recuerda que debo releer El viejo y el mar, o Las nieves del K.
Un 10.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speaking of pantheons, , the most ironic phrase I know—perhaps the ironic phrase par excellence--is the epitaph Marcel Duchamp wrote for his own tombstone:
D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent.
(After all, it’s always other people who die.)

Aaaahhh. What a delight both in itself and as relief after having just read a series of books infused with despair as they contemplate ‘real life’. Vila-Matas discusses despair and ‘real life’ extensively here, but in a philosophical manner. It is the despair of youth at not knowing how to lift mankind up to the higher level we aspire to, at being forced to interact on a quotidian level with ‘everyday’ people, at not knowing how to go about creating the art we know is in us. And now Vila-Matas can chuckle at his earnest despairing young self, knowing that kind of despair is universal and impervious, at the time, to the wisdom of age. It is a valid kind of despair, but one that can eventually be overcome by a more realistic sense of what can be achieved through art, and how to go about it. He isn’t chuckling at all at the despair I have been reading about, the despair of war, abandonment, and alcoholism.

So I was giddy with delight as I savored every page of Vila-Matas’s imaginary but semi-fact based autobiography of his literary apprenticeship in Paris in 1974 to 1975. Morphing his actual time in the garret formerly occupied by Marguerite Duras into fantasy-living in a garret above a landlady Marguerite Duras, he proceeds to fantasy-hang-out with, or encounter, the great writers and characters who spent time in Paris during these years. Javier Grandes, Adolfo Arrieta, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Perec, …He no doubt did know some of them, but which ones doesn’t matter as they flood his Paris and serve to provide him with conversational partners during endless hours in the Café de Flore and the Café Les Deux Magots.

But Vila-Matas pokes fun at his own black-clad, pipe-smoking, fake-black-rimmed glasses self, anxiously posing as an insider when he’s really a totally uncertain, self-conscious frantic first-time novelist. In the conceit that gives the book its second-layer structure, Vila-Matas has Duras, pressed for advice, give him a list of ten essential components of the novel, and the narrator proceeds to randomly tie his hapless encounters with the great writers of Europe and Latin America to each of these items. Is this what Duras meant by linguistic register? Is this what she meant by style? (The top-layer structure is the premise that the whole work is a set of three lectures on irony delivered by the mature Vila-Matas at a conference.) The ultimate question, perhaps, is the relationship of Duras’s cryptic ‘experience’ to art.

And there are so many other layers. There is the ambiguous attitude toward Hemingway layer; the young narrator obsessed with Hemingway the writer and the older writer obsessed with looking like Hemingway, with psychological sightings of Hemingway’s life and his relationship with Fitzgerald resurfacing alongside questions about whether Hemingway was a good writer or a phony. There are continual questions about ‘reality’ and ‘real life’, explored both philosophically and through the young Vila-Matas’s friendships with the Parisian transvestites. Most of all there is irony. Often Vila-Matas deals directly with irony, but mostly it pervades every page in a hilarious haze that affects the way we perceive the utterances by the younger (and often older) self.

Perhaps the ultimate irony involves the novel that the young Vila-Matas is stumbling through writing in his Paris garret (suitably chafed at by one of his literary visitors), The Lettered Assassin, which is actually the title of Vila-Matas’s first novel. His self-important gimmick is that the mystery will be written by the killer, and it will involve a book that kills its readers. With the obvious extension that Vila-Matas may write a book so bad it will kill off his own potential readers. Instead, I think it must be potential authors who are killed off by Never Any End to Paris; who can possible try to do all that Vila-Matas does in 200 pages?

The person who actually dies in the course of the book is Franco, who lurks in the back of the work to personify all of the dictators that so many of the foreign writers in Paris are evading. Yet the political irony doesn’t let up. Vila-Matas glances across 1968, already forgotten by 1974, in his ironic references to situationism and all the other -isms that his younger self tries to understand and keep straight. (Never Any End prompts many delightful hours looking up writers and isms: pataphysics, for example.)

As many dead as living authors people these pages. At Duras’s prompting, he reflects on the opposite approaches to life and writing of Mallarme and Rimbaud. He pays homage to his Spanish literary heritage, particularly to the generation of ‘98. Nerval, Rilke, Renard, Roussel, Stendhal wander through, and Benjamin’s observations on Paris pop up here and there.

One thread that extends beyond this book to touch others I’ve been reading is the Master to whom the callow, unbelievably dumb youth keeps asking questions about how to write and how to conduct his life. Here that role is filled by the pioneering performance artist Raul Escari. In an joke that runs throughout the older Escari says to the older Vila-Matas, during a telephone conversation in which he learns that Vila-Matas will include him in this reminiscence,

”Among the many fictions possible, an autobiography can also be a fiction”. Another silence followed. “But try,” he added, “to be as truthful as you can, so you can be seen as you really are. And if possible, portray me as I’m really not.

In fact, the portrayal of Escari ranges from assertion of his ‘unsurpassable intellect’ (in a lecture on irony, note) to both admiration of and sly digs at his earlier instruction on how to understand Duras’s ten elements of writing.

And, the book is about friendship, film, the decline of the artist’s powers, poetry, family, death, marriage, and …. I could write pages more, but better to just insist that you read it; laugh and reflect. It is a wonderful celebration of writing and writers. I’m going to reread it right now. First, though, I’m leaving you with Vila-Matas the elder on despair:

From that day on, I annoyed my friends less with this idea of dying by my own hand, but for a long time I maintained my belief—which wasn’t completely destroyed until August of this year—in the intrinsic elegance of despair. Until I discovered how inelegant it is to walk, sad, in despair, dead, through the streets of your neighborhood in Paris. I realized it this August. And ever since I’ve been finding elegance in happiness. “I have embarked on the study of metaphysics several times, but happiness always interrupted,” said Macedonio Fernandez. Now, I think going through the world without experiencing the joy in living, rather than elegant, is just so humdrum. Fernando Savater said that the Castilian saying to take things philosophically does not mean to be resigned to things, or to take things seriously, but rather to take them happily. Of course. After all, we have all eternity to despair.

[Eric Lundgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most serious writers, I imagine, come to a point in their writing lives when they think: "This literature thing is played. There's nothing to add. All that's left is embroidery." Enrique Vila-Matas, unlike most most writers, isn't reduced to despair or paralysis by this statement; his work takes indebtedness as a starting point and can be read as one immense acknowledgments page. This is his third book to appear in English translation, after "Bartleby & Co" and "Montano's Malady." We can only hope that more are on the way.

The text presents itself as a memoir of artistic youth in 1970s Paris, delivered as an academic lecture on irony many years after the fact. In short, not a typical bildingsroman by any means, although the young and somewhat naive protagonist is clearly a version of Vila-Matas himself: on hiatius from a legal career in Barcelona, living in a bohemian garret run by Marguerite Duras, and working on a first novel called "The Lettered Assassin," which centers around a fictional text that will kill its readers.

"I suspected that by killing off my readers, I was never going to find anyone who would love me," the narrator comments at one point, and this is typical of the way Vila-Matas undercuts his younger self. At the same time, the novel genuinely evokes the ardor, mortification, and occasional joy of being a young writer in a greatness-haunted city: Perec, Burroughs, Beckett, and Barthes all have cameos here. In some ways this book is about the older, deskbound writer forging an ironic distance from his unruly young self. But traces of that early passion remain and nothing escapes scrutiny, not even irony.

The book is beautifully built, beginning with a disqualification from a Hemingway lookalike contest and ending with an anecdote about Marguerite Duras and an unpaid electric bill that sums up everything Vila-Matas's work is about. This is maybe his most pleasurable book, and certainly a welcoming entry point to a body of work that deserves much wider recognition in this country.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man has traveled to Paris to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Never Any End to Paris’, and the text of this book is meant to be a transcript of that lecture. The man is a stand-in for Vila-Matas, and much of what he speaks about is based on Vila-Matas’s own time in Paris as a young writer in the early 1970s. Now, I have a high regard for Vila-Matas and agree with a lot of his philosophy on writing (e.g., ‘the literature of No’), but I found this book a bit of a slog to wade through. Not to say there weren’t points of interest. For example, the narrator/lecturer is renting a garret flat from Marguerite Duras, who owns the building. This is an actual fact from the time Vila-Matas spent in Paris. So, there are a lot of amusing and thought-provoking anecdotes about the narrator’s interactions with Duras, the validity of which are unknown, given Vila-Matas’s proclivity for mixing fact and fiction in his books. The book roughly follows the young writer’s experiences attempting to write his first novel, while distracting himself by hobnobbing with various literary/artistic characters (mostly all real, I believe), in the bohemian district of Paris. Occasionally, the narrator interrupts these recollections with present-day anecdotes of he and his wife’s time in the city. The narrator’s obsession with Hemingway permeates both the past and present to the point that it indeed begins to feel like there really is no end to Paris. I probably would’ve been fine with half the content of the book, but nonetheless I muddled my way through to the end. I still really like Vila-Matas, though, and will happily continue reading my way through his back catalog.

P.S. This is a great interview with Vila-Matas in Tin House, 2018.

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Hemingway look alike contest in the Florida keys. Before the end is to be reached he is disqualified. His outer impression does not match the contrived inner view where he does look like Ernest, and is or will be a great writer. Using a deft wave of the hand the narrator persists in replacing what is with what he wants to be. Life viewed through irony produces absence and absence is what is wanted.

In the guise of giving a lecture on irony in his work and life, the first person narrator, apparently, supposedly, Vila-Matas, speaks in the never ending smile of eternal youth. Light hearted is his literary bent revealing the true ache at the bottom of his hale words. He is and has been seeking his identity-the little boy in his dream playing soccer by himself in a courtyard in Barcelona yet surrounded by the imagined skyscrapers of New York. Later in New York he realizes that New York is not the essence of the dream but it is the little boy who he has either left or never discovered. Much like Papa Hemingway who it is theorized left the childhood where his mother had him wear dresses to the macho feats he pursued as a grown man.

Once in Paris as a youthful writer, he tells his audience in the lecture hall, that he takes on all guises. He rents the garret room from Marguerite Duras, thinks of, believing himself to be the young Hemingway, poses as a drinker on a cafe’s terrace, a pretentious youthful writer playing the role of a writer in despair, a radical intellectual with the correct book carried beneath his arm, two pairs of glasses when he needs none, a pipe waiting to be smoked. He is exorcising his youth by retelling it in the form of irony. The difficulty is that everything being written, including statements about how this entire lecture is an exploration of irony, may be ironic. Who are we to know? The reader who will possibly be terminated at the end of this book? Or the palpable irony is that Vila-Matas standing at the podium-this character, Vila-Matas in the book who rarely reminds us that what we are reading, listening to, is not spoken to us but to the seated patrons of the lecture hall-is trying to locate this youth. While needing to soften this journey through the use of irony as well as Vila-Matas’ singular style of lighthearted prose, he is in essence attempting to locate this censored pretentious amalgam. This is a map he is outlining of not only the momentous era of post war Paris in the twenties with its bursting number of artists and artists to be, but his journey through the obstacles planted by hiding behind pretensions? Being caught up in the conventions of those trying to be unconventional? The, Lost Generation. Others like him trying to flee from their personal nightmares, an all consuming war leaving indelible, enigmatic, scarring? Trying to convert their horrors and loves into literature? Was their overabundance of drinking, carousing, partying on a daily basis a necessary dosage from the medicine cabinet to create a false buoyancy required to reach a chemical and biochemical bridge to the literature they sought to create? Were they lost? Judging by the literary output they produced which not only was significant at the time but has provided a basis for literature’s further experimentation and growth.

This young Vila-Matas who the elder Vila-Matas is lecturing about, looking back, while the author Vila-Matas is writing the book held in our, the readers hands, asks, wanting to be told how to be a writer, how to write rather than writing. He lifts the style of his first attempt at a novel from Nabakov’s Pale Fire, The town and city from Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet. The book he is writing, his first, the narrator will kill the reader at its end. His literary friend in Paris, greatly admired, has not written anything in years which is looked upon as an achievement. He advises the young Matas that his writing voice will depend on the situation, the place, and who is there. Nothing, Matas later thinks is immutable. Everything can be changed. Proust said the past is unlovable. He meant the past of ourselves we carry in our mind. A gritty, learned account of the narrators development of his personal life wed to the stages of a writer becoming a writer.

Lecturing on, he recounts thirty years later his return to Paris, a return to Duras’s house. It was all different. He walked his favorite streets. It too being different. Feeling as a ghost, the horror of being dead and returning to where he had lived and now no one recognizes him. Knows him. In essence he is in two places at once and the disparity is true sadness. Not an act. Not something poignant. An essential despair of being human. One can avoid it by joining the tribes of convention, at odds with oneself and being what is remaindered; 65%. Or one can face the despair, suffer the inelegance, yet be completely oneself, the scars of shuddered tears, and be 100%. Vila-Matas is so open about his shortcomings, fears and pretensions. Yet during this lecture he is at face value trying to exorcise his youth through its retelling in the thick mist of irony. In irony he is absent. It may also be read that in this irony he is saying good bye to the false youth constructed to survive the childhood of finding himself untethered from a mother who sees him as, gray, and finds no pride in him-He’ll show her- but that is just another form of falsity to be killed off to uncover what is real but fled.

This is a remarkably brave book, its courage peeking out from behind his smiling eloquent style. Its depth only beginning to be understood as I type a review to understanding others who will be kind enough to point out where I have gone aground and appreciate to where I have foundered but remain at sea. Beneath my fingers I watch words appear on the screen describing Vila-Mata’s boldness only the herculean strong have to look back on their life now unfiltered. But is it unfiltered? For we, the reader?

Vila-Matas does what all novelists do, planting an incident or occurrence in the text. His deftness leading to the incident looking no different than others. Lost in the mulch of his prose. Its return was much, much later in the book and ended in an unparalleled moment of shock for this reader.

Point of view is the main aesthetic emblem of this text. Written in first person we are not being addressed. It is an audience the writer as himself is speaking to and the reader only gets to overhear, listen in. Although it is Villa-Matas doing the speaking to the audience, the true irony is that it is him as a character in the novel which Vila-Matas is writing and we are holding in book form. We are now at least three times removed and in a curious place. Lost within the woods of irony. The only beckoned call, light, is the authors smile, a grin, an ironic grin.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually, 3.5 stars...

París no se acaba nunca is a metafictional irony fest in which nearly every form of irony known to man comes into play and is layered into the narrative.

A pitiable narrator having much in common with Vila-Matas, including writing his first novel La asesina ilustrada in Paris, pretends he is giving three two-hour lectures at a literary symposium in Barcelona on consecutive days. But this pretense is immediately deflated by the content of the "lectures", not to mention the chatty language with which this content is delivered. The theme of the symposium? Irony. And in this frame the narrator rambles on about his earlier love for Hemingway and the extreme measures he takes in order to be like him (though he no longer thinks Hemingway is a good writer), the formative time he spent as a clueless and timid young writer full of ambition and dread and living in Marguerite Duras' garret, the books he's read, movies he's seen, people he's known, trips he's taken (mainly to Paris), one digression after another, with side remarks about different kinds of irony. Some of the many:

Irony, the only chance not to hit the wall of reality and fall stunned.

Irony, which allows us to avoid disappointment for the simple reason that it refuses to entertain any hopes.

Irony, the highest form of sincerity.

So, instead of writing a memoir about his apprenticeship as a writer, he has written a tower of self-referential irony shielding, distorting, enhancing this memoir. It is probably not advisable to look carefully at the structure of this tower, because I suspect that it is held together by spider webs and chewing gum. But the memoir is still there, groaning under all the irony, and it's very funny and sad and engaging. But it's also uneven - there are digressions which do not work; there are jeux d'esprit which fall flat; and the narrator definitely has more insight into his earlier and later selves than he has into the rest of the world.

But it takes place in Paris. The narrator and I certainly agree:

There is never any end to Paris!

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In life, there comes a time, and I think it is total, that we cannot escape, where we doubt everything: that doubt is writing.

4.5 stars. Easily the most fun I have had reading in a while. I am the first admit I have harbored a cliched longing for Paris most of my adult life. I have been there twice, though heartbreak, public intoxication, a general strike and seeing my wife's compatriots treated like thugs haven't reinforced that dream. Alas I turn to Moveable Feast again and again and my thoughts drift to La Maga and the ontology of toothpaste.

There's a time tested Tristram Shandy dimension to this novel, or is it a lecture? A Catalan novelist is invited to Paris to give a three day lecture on irony. The lecture he presents is the novel, or, maybe not exactly? The house of mirrors refracts and as soon as Orson Welles cracks a brogue, the reader, or is it the novelist/lecturer is encountering Perec and Beckett on the streets of the City of Light? Many digressions are but portals to further backtracking. There is a sinuous stream of citation. Erudition leaking to cocktail party aquifer.
The title is a line from Hemingway and the attendant context is how Papa was never as poor and never as happy as when he was in Paris. The protagonist counters that he was never as miserable as he was in Paris and then he name-drops---everyone. The final third of the novel (possibly the final day of the lecture) is one of despair. This is a novel about creation, the elusiveness of bohemian actualization.

[Stratos Ampatzis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο Μάτας στα πιο τρελά του κέφια! Το Παρίσι είναι μόνο η αφορμή...

[Théo d'Or]

Ritz - Paris ( or somewhere with good wine )


Dear Enrique

I have read your thoughts, those cynical reflections where you pull apart the grand myth of Paris - the myth that writers, dreamers, and lost souls have clung to for centuries. You say the city is no paradise. You mock those of us who believed it to be the seat of our inspiration, the haven for hungry minds, the sacred ground where ink flows more easily. And yet, I must tell you, Enrique - Paris is a paradise - not because it hands you anything, but because it takes nothing away. I arrived in this city with empty pockets and restless dreams. I walked its streets in the cold, drank its cheap wine, wrote in its cafés, and lived among the ghosts of greatness. Paris never promised comfort. It never promised success. But it gave what a writer truly needs - the weight of history pressing against your mind, the hum of conversation shaping your prose. The scent of old books and fresh bread filling your lungs as you stride towards an uncertain destiny. Paris is not the place where writers arrive fully formed. It is the place that shapes them.
Myths exists for a reason. They come alive when a writer wills them to. You write of disillusionment, of a city that failed to wrap you in warmth.
But Paris was never meant to comfort you - it was meant to challenge you, to expose your weakness, to make you question your own talent, so that, in time, you become worthy of it. You left Paris with doubt ? That means it worked.
Here, writers lived badly, so they could write well. I did not imagine Paris as a paradise - I built my paradise here with every word, every hardship, every reckless, wonderful mistake.
You have written your story, and I do not fault you for it. But the truth remains, Enrique : Paris nunca se acaba.
Come back when you're ready.


Yours,

Ernest Hemingway

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

witty and elegant, what makes enrique vila-matas’s NEVER ANY END TO PARIS something more than a (witty and elegant) memoir of his literary apprentice years is the transformational yet thin veneer of fiction that coats this ingenious novel. the book follows a spanish writer (with a more than passing resemblance to vila-matas) who recalls — in a lecture spoken during a three-day symposium on irony — how in the mid-1970s he had moved as a young man from barcelona to paris to work on his first novel in a garret apartment rented from no less a personality than marguerite duras.

in paris the young writer lives off an allowance from his father and nurses his despair with a hilarious and familiar tenderness. along the way he bumps into a host of literary notables (e.g. perec, barthes, beckett), but the writer who haunts him the most is the Ghost of Paris Past: ernest hemingway. specifically it’s the hemingway of A MOVEABLE FEAST who recalled his own years in the City of Light as “very poor and very happy” — so unlike our irony man who, looking backward, can only say he was “very poor and very unhappy.”

papa hemingway seems to enthrall our narrator’s imagination not only due to the virile charisma of his exploits and writing but perhaps more importantly because of the clear limits his talent impotently struggled to overcome. he quotes julien gracq who wrote hemingway “knows he will never bore us; he puts marks on paper as naturally as others walk down stairs. His mere presence bewitches us; then we go outside to smoke and stop thinking about him.”

this assessment on hemingway leads to a division of the world into two types of writers: the ordered and bourgeois manner of a writer like thomas mann versus the chaotic disordered hurricane of talent à la rimbaud. while aging is the historical force that implodes this dialectic (our narrator realizes with a glance at his obsessively ordered writing desk that he has become what in his youth he had once disdained) there remains a potent yearning for the virtuosic chaos of a poet like the young rimbaud. it’s this bittersweet longing for an imperfect past that gives the novel its emotion; and it’s the advantage of hindsight that allows it its wit.



is the book a lecture or a novel? the book asks itself this question repeatedly and while no doubt existing as a kind of conflation of the two, collage is the name that might most tellingly reveals its structure. like benjamin’s collection on 19th century parisian arcades or the late novels of david markson, vila-matas is determined to make a work of literature through quotation. and while in an extreme sense all acts of fiction are collages, here the items chosen – from autobiography and memory, from literary history and anecdote, from criticism and gossip – are arranged less for the illusion of plot or even movement but rather in order to present a portrait of the artist as a young man. or, more specifically, the portrait given is of the artist as an older man looking back at himself as a younger one. it serves vila-matas’s purposes to portray his younger (fictional) self as a struggling poseur and plagiarizer of stances, so he puts his most learned lines in the mouth of his chief foil and best friend raúl escari. and on the very notion of unity in the novel he has escari say the key truth: “[I]t’s not a question of unity or a degree of tolerance for digression. It’s a more profound or complex matter than it appears to be. The paragraphs should be connected to each other. Nothing more and nothing less.”

the third in a series of translations of vila-matas into english by new directions (a fourth, DUBLINESQUE, is just out), all with a meta-literary premise, NEVER ANY END TO PARIS seems to me the most successful so far. in part this is because of the graceful translation by anne mclean, which allows the humor to come across intact, but as well it is because vila-matas’s irony works particularly well in this fictional autobiography—because it seems here so sincere. our narrator admits as much: “Everything I’ve said about irony is not at all ironic. The fact is, after all, art is the only method we have of pronouncing certain truths. And I can’t think of a greater way of stating truth than being ironic about our own identity.”

*

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful fine for me. And to think of it, I only picked this book up because it had Paris in its title, and its published by New Directions. Such a beautiful start, and the end is just as wonderful. Enrique Vila-Matas' novel "Never Any End to Paris" is for me a mediative and hysterical look at a writer and the writing Parisian writing world, that exists in real life, but also in one's imagination.
It reads like a memoir, and for all I know it is a memoir, but alas, one can see this as almost an early Jean-Luc Godard film. Zillion of quotes, and literary & film references a go-go. And that is part of he fun of this novel.
The main character is an obsessed Hemingway fan who may or may not be a talented writer. And that in the end is not that important, what's the deal is the life one imagines. Everyone from Boris Vian to Guy Debord come through these pages, and one can write an endless amount of footnotes if that was the need. But alas, its a trip to a romantic notion of a writer drifting through Paris 20th century literary life. It was sad to see this novel ending...

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

never any end to paris (parís no se acaba nunca) is a fictionalized autobiographical work by the great spanish novelist, enrique vila-matas. only the third of his books to be translated into english (of nearly two dozen), this one recounts the author's youthful days in paris during the mid 1970s. it was during this time, while renting an attic room from french writer and director marguerite duras, that vila-matas set about working on his second novel, la asesina ilustrada (never translated into english, yet appearing in this work as the lettered assassin).

in never any end to paris, the narrator (always striving to bear an ever closer resemblance to ernest hemingway) recalls his formative days in the french capital over the course of a three-day lecture. taking as its title a derivation on the name of the last chapter of hemingway's a moveable feast, never any end to paris is set some half a century after papa himself sauntered around the city of light. vila-matas delves as much into the hardships he (or rather, his fictionalized narrator/lecturer) endured as an undisciplined and unsure writer seeking literary immortality as he does into the milieu of 1970s paris. with an overarching metafictional theme, an abundance of name-dropping, an obvious respect for the art of literature, and the blurring of the line between autobiography and fiction, vila-matas' book brings to mind the works of his close friend and fellow (adopted) countryman, roberto bolaño.

while broad in scope, much of the narrator's lecture, in addition to recalling the hardships of crafting the novel, the ongoing poverty that accompanied his writing of it, and the wealth of his social engagements with paris' creative elite, sets about considering the nature of irony (both in general and as it relates to the telling of his tale).

you'll see me improvise on occasion. like right now when, before going on to read my ironic revision of the two years of my youth in paris, i feel compelled to tell you that i do know that irony plays with fire and, while mocking others, sometimes ends up mocking itself. you all know full well what i'm talking about. when you pretend to be in love you run the risk of feeling it, he who parodies without proper precautions ends up a victim just the same... that said, i must also warn you that when you hear me say, for example, that there was never any end to paris, i will most likely be saying it ironically. but, anyway, i hope not to overwhelm you with too much irony. the kind that i practice has nothing to do with that which arises from desperation- i was stupidly desperate enough when i was young. i like a kind of irony i call benevolent, compassionate, like what we find, for example, in the best of cervantes. i don't like ferocious irony but rather the kind that vacillates between disappointment and hope. okay?

as the lecturer remembers his deliberation about how best to craft a novel (the lettered assassin) that will cause its readers to die immediately following their reading of it, the irony of writing what could be a successful book only to be left with no one living to admire it is not lost on him.

like vila-matas' other works (or, at least those already translated into english), never any end to paris is a smart, creative, and playful work; one that never deigns to take itself too seriously. it as much a quasi-autobiography as it is a celebration of literature, film, paris, irony, and the folly and determination of youth. if only la asesina ilustrada were already available in translation, then perhaps this book would resound with an even greater clarity than it already does. on its own, however, never any end to paris* is a fantastic book, one that surely bolsters enrique vila-matas' reputation as one of the finer spanish-language novelists at work today.

"among the many fictions possible, an autobiography can also be a fiction."

*translated by anne mclean, known for her english translations of julio cortázar, evelio rosero, javier cercas, and others.

[Terese · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy shit. There are people who enjoyed this? I guess I might be missing something essential. Maybe the tedious droning about irony (a word mentioned probably 800 times in these few pages) and continuous examples of it is supposed to be clever but... honestly this book felt like 73% quotes from other (better) authors, 15% telling already well-known anecdotes from Hemingway’s life, and the rest introducing new characters and bragging about how well he knows Paris. 7 hours wasted.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hooked immediately to this book after reading the first hilarious paragraph. The narrator had over-confidently entered the Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest held annually in Key West but he was the only person who thought he actually looked like Hemingway. Because he had a beard and was fat, and the fact that he was a writer I suppose, gave him reason to believe he qualified. Problem was nobody else did. The judges ruled him ineligible to participate as they determined him as bearing absolutely no resemblance to Hemingway at all.

Short synopsis of the book is the narrator attending some conference and giving a three day lecture about how he became a writer, how he began his writing career while living in a Paris garret he rented from Marguerite Duras in the early seventies, how he hung out with other eccentrics, writers, and artists, continually dropping the names and anecdotes involving personalities such as Samuel Beckett, Georges Perec, Roland Barthes, and more often than not, his beloved hero of the page as well as life itself, Ernest Hemingway. It was in Paris where the narrator completes his first novel that actually initiates the true beginning of his writing life.

Enrique Vila-Matas came to me via Roberto Bolaño's book Between Parenthesis where Bolaño championed the work of Vila-Matas. I immediately ordered the Vila-Matas Bartleby & Company novel that was nothing less than charming and gave me options aplenty for new and interesting Spanish-speaking writers to discover as well as an education regarding the preference of certain writers to decide not to do anything rather than write or publish their work. But this review is about Never Any End to Paris and as the story unfolds Vila-Matas draws you into his world. The experience feels natural and by fits quite delightful. Not as good in my opinion to Bartleby & Company, Never Any End to Paris is certainly worth the time, and money well spent.

[Domenico Fina · Rating 4 out of 5]

«”Non credere che per il fatto di essere rivoluzionario tu debba sentirti triste”. Ma nel periodo della mia gioventù a Parigi io credevo che la gioia fosse una stupidaggine e una volgarità e, con una notevole impostura, fingevo di leggere Lautréamont e non la smettevo di assillare gli amici insinuando in continuazione che il mondo era triste e che presto mi sarei suicidato, infatti pensavo solo ad essere morto. Finché un giorno ho incontrato Severo Sarduy a La Closerie des Lilas che mi ha chiesto cosa pensavo di fare quel sabato sera. “Uccidermi” gli risposi. “Allora ci vediamo venerdì” disse Sarduy.
A partire da quel giorno ho iniziato ad assillare un po’ meno gli amici con quell’idea della morte volontaria, ma per molto tempo ho continuato ad alimentare la convinzione dell’intrinseca eleganza della disperazione, finché lo scorso agosto non è stata polverizzata del tutto. Finché ho scoperto quanto poco elegante possa essere passeggiare triste, morto e disperato per le vie del tuo quartiere a Parigi. Questo l’ho capito ad agosto e da allora l’eleganza la trovo nella felicità. Ora penso che non solo non sia elegante stare al mondo senza sperimentare la gioia di vivere, ma che sia una cosa da autentici impiastri».

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encuentro últimamente con muchos libros que son ensayos literarios novelados. Esta es uno de ellos... me he dado cuenta de que me encanta leer sobre escritores, libros y sus vidas. A este paso acabaré enganchada a las biografías.
Altamente recomendable Vila-Matas. Altamente recomendable.
No es solo lo que cuenta, El Paris de los escritores, en claro homenaje a Hemingway. Es como lo cuenta. Esa narración pausada que nos lleva a sus comienzos, claro homenaje a Hemingway. Frases llenas de estilo, literatura por los costados. Grata lectura. Muy grata diría yo.

[Carlos Manzano · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé si fue la primera novela que leí de Vila-Matas, pero “París no se acaba nunca” me confirmó sin ningún género de dudas que estaba ante un escritor genial, un digámosle “escritor total” que desde entonces nunca me ha decepcionado. Su apasionante juego entre la ficción, la autoficción y la metaliteratura rebasa las características formales de la narración clásica a la vez que exige la participación consciente del lector, instándole a abandonar el despreocupado papel de simple receptor de historias.

[Mircalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

"La fama è fatta di mille mormorii e malintesi che solitamente hanno poca attinenza con la persona reale."

[Ana Correa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sobre los comienzos de Vila Matas como escritor en Paris, como inquilino de Marguerite Duras, en una bellísima narración.

[Vasileios · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.vintagestories.gr/to-pari...

Το Παρίσι δεν τελειώνει ποτέ, μπορεί να ακούγεται ένα τίτλος που να παραπέμπει κάποιους σε πιο ρομαντικά είδη λογοτεχνίας, αλλά ο αγαπητός Ενρίκε Βίλα-Μάτας έχει τον τρόπο του να το μετατρέπει σε κάτι πολύ ιδιαίτερο και μοναδικό. Άλλωστε, ο ίδιος είναι ένα χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα της μεταλογοτεχνίας.

Όπως και στο μυθιστόρημα του Με τον αέρα του Ντύλαν (ακυκλοφόρητο ακόμη στα Ελληνικά), στο Δόκτωρ Πασαβέντο (εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, 2010) αλλά και στα υπόλοιπα βιβλία του ο Βίλα-Μάτας γράφει για τον καθαρόαιμο βιβλιόφιλο αναγνώστη, αυτόν που λατρεύει να διαβάζει για συγγραφείς, για ατελείωτα συγγράμματα, για είδη γραφής… για κατεστραμμένες ζωές συγγραφέων κτλ. Αυτός είναι ο κόσμος του Βίλα-Μάτας και ένας λόγος που μου αρέσει η λογοτεχνία. Αυτό λοιπόν δεν αλλάζει ούτε και στο παρών βιβλίο Το Παρίσι δεν τελειώνει ποτέ (εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, 2008), μια ιδιόμορφη γραφή που συνδυάζει την αυτοβιογραφία, το δοκίμιο και το μυθιστόρημα.

Η αφορμή για το βιβλίο αυτό προήλθε από την Κινητή γιορτή (εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, 2004) του Έρνεστ Χέμινγουεϊ στο οποίο καταγράφονται οι αναμνήσεις του από το Παρίσι της δεκαετίας του ’20 όταν ακόμη ήταν άγνωστος και προσπαθούσε να βρει τον τρόπο να ξεχωρίσει. Ο Βίλα-Μάτας προσπαθώντας να αποδώσει το «πολύ φτωχός αλλά και πολύ ευτυχής» του Χέμινγουεϊ και αφού διάβασε το βιβλίο Κινητή γιορτή αποφάσισε επηρεασμένος από αυτό να μετακομίσει στο Παρίσι. Στο βιβλίο του Το Παρίσι δεν τελειώνει ποτέ, είναι διάχυτη η γεμάτη ενέργεια ατμόσφαιρα σε κάθε τι που αναφέρει το Παρίσι αλλά και η προσπάθεια ενός νέου να ξεχωρίσει σε αυτό.

Συνέχεια στο https://www.vintagestories.gr/to-pari...

[Cristians. Sirb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartea asta este ca un “film de citit”.

O carte (nu știu dacă-i chiar roman) despre un tânăr care acum nu mai e tânăr și care, cândva, la
Paris, încercase să devină scriitor, simulând că deja era un scriitor - adoptând gestica și recuzita specifice (în opinia lui) unui scriitor, iar acum, nemaifiind tânăr, dar fiind scriitor, scrie o carte despre hazardul de a deveni un scriitor.

Dar să nu mă credeți pe cuvânt.

Foarte antrenantă și foarte… altceva (decât consumați de obicei). Îndrăzneț, la vremea apariției cărții, pariul editurii RAO.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. An entertaining, funny, and casually profound novel about French literature, the romance of the city of lights, aspiring young writers, and the mooring of starting out. Docked a notch for impugning the great Gertrude Stein.

[Jorge Morcillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Yo la recordaré siempre como una mujer violentamente libre y audaz, que encarnaba en ella misma y a tumba abierta —con su inteligente uso, por ejemplo, del libertinaje verbal, que consistía en su caso en sentarse en un sillón de su casa y, con verdadera fiereza, despacharse a gusto— todas las monstruosas contradicciones que reúne el ser humano, todas esas dudas, fragilidad y desamparo, individualidad feroz y busca del desconsuelo compartido, en fin, toda esa gran angustia que somos capaces de desplegar ante la realidad del mundo, esa desolación de la que están hechos los escritores menos ejemplares, los menos académicos y edificantes, los que no están pendientes de dar una correcta y buena imagen de sí mismos, los únicos de lo que no aprendemos nada, pero también los únicos que tienen el raro coraje de exponerse literalmente en sus escritos —donde se despachan a gusto— y a los que yo admiro profundamente porque sólo ellos juegan a fondo y me parecen escritores de verdad”. 

Vila-Matas está hablando de Marguerite Duras en este párrafo, pero a través de su recuerdo lo hace extensible a la autenticidad de esos escritores al margen del academicismo, “los que no están pendientes de dar una correcta y buena imagen de sí mismos, los únicos de lo que no aprendemos nada, pero también los únicos que tienen el raro coraje de exponerse literalmente en sus escritos”. 

Marguerite Duras fue su casera durante dos años de juventud vividos en París “donde fui muy pobre y muy infeliz”, todo lo contrario a Hemingway, el papá literario de Enrique Vila-Matas en este libro, que pilla como modelo de vida (no como modelo literario), ya que la vida de Hemingway estuvo llena de riesgo y aventuras y precisamente Duras no era muy partidaria de su literatura. 

Dicho esto, la literatura de Vila-Matas siempre fluctúa entre la realidad y la ficción, entre la desilusión y la esperanza, y muchas de las anécdotas que cuenta son totalmente inventadas, porque lo más importante no es hacer una literatura memorialística, sino el juego creativo de crear más literatura a través de la literatura. Muchas veces se le ha tildado a este autor de ser repetitivo o de ceñirse a la metaliteratura; pero la literatura solo es la excusa que Vila-Matas utiliza para hablar de cualquier tema, y no hay libro suyo que no esté teñido de mucha ironía y de una visión filosófica y profunda del ser humano. En cuanto a lo repetitivo de su estilo también lo podríamos observar desde otro punto de vista: la de una coherencia de obra absoluta, alargada a través de décadas y multitud de libros, en lo que se ha convertido en un sello muy personal, lejos del academicismo y de la habitual mojigatería de la narrativa española, y en la que ha creado una especie de canon literario, hablando con frecuencia de escritores como Robert Walser, Kafka, Joyce, la misma Marguerite Duras, Julien Gracq, Sergio Pitol, etcétera. 

Leed este párrafo sobre la madurez: 

“Desde luego, es más bien complicado ser joven, aunque eso o implica ni muchísimo menos que uno deba andar desesperado. Claro que la madurez tampoco es que sea una maravilla. En la madurez conoces la ironía, sí. Pero ya no eres joven y la única posibilidad que te queda de serlo un poco estriba en resistir, no renunciar demasiado, con el paso del tiempo, a aquella húmeda imaginación del arcón de Neauphle-le-Château. Sólo te queda resistir, no ser como aquellos que, a medida que la intensidad de su imaginación juvenil va decayendo, se acomodan a la realidad y se angustian el resto de su vida. Sólo te queda tratar de ser de los más obstinados, mantener la fe en la imaginación durante más tiempo que otros. Madurar con obstinación y resistencia: madurar, por ejemplo, dictando una conferencia de tres días sobre la ironía de no haber conocido de joven la ironía. Y después envejecer, envejecer mucho y mandar al diablo a la ironía, pero aferrándose patéticamente a ella para no quedarte sin nada y ser el blanco espeluznante de la ironía de otros”. 

Es importante citar que la arquitectura de este libro se apoya en una conferencia sobre la ironía, si bien la estructura de los libros de Vila-Matas es siempre porosa y múltiple.  

Llevo leyéndolo treinta años y no he sido consciente hasta hace poco de la influencia que este hombre ha ejercido en la elección de muchas de mis lecturas de formación. Ahora que estoy más pendiente de mirar el retrovisor me he dado cuenta de este punto. De aquí la razón de esta reseña tan alejada de la promoción de los libros que pululan en la lista de las novedades por estas fechas de abril, pues estamos hablando de un libro que se editó por primera vez en 2003, hace 21 años, pero que veinte años después de su primera edición sigue siendo tan válido como el primer día. 

Nada más comenzar la relectura lo primero que me llama la atención es ese concurso de competición de dobles de Hemingway en el que nuestro héroe hace un ridículo espantoso. Como las grandes obsesiones siempre fracasan por partida doble (el Vila-Matas joven se parece un poco al coyote de los dibujos animados del Coyote y el correcaminos) nuestro protagonista acude a vivir a París a vivir su gran pasión literaria. Allí consigue a través de la intermediación de un amigo que Duras le alquile una vivienda, una “chambre”.  

Hay un punto muy curioso en la relación que se establece entre Duras y el joven Vila-Matas. Una es ya la gran autora de libros vanguardistas y personales (“Escribir” es, por ejemplo, un libro suyo que recomiendo a todo el mundo) y es también la casera de Enrique. Casi siempre se señala que Duras le hablaba en un francés superior. No sabemos si esto sucedía porque el francés de Enrique por esas fechas era muy pobre o porque Marguerite hablaba con una jerga que no se le entendía muy bien. Lo cierto, es que cada vez que Enrique le habla de sus proyectos literarios (algunos tan osados como el de matar al lector, recuérdese “La asesina ilustrada”, libro venenoso y criminal, según el propio autor) Duras escucha con gran atención al joven y lo aconseja. Como si Duras solo pusiera en alerta sus oídos cuando alguien le hablaba de literatura. Me transmite una gran ternura la visión de Vila-Matas hacia esta escritora. 

Unos días después de terminar el rodaje de India Song Marguerite Duras se sintió muy desorientada, he podido saberlo muchos años después, entonces yo no me preocupaba por saber cómo se sentía Marguerite, ni se me ocurría preguntarme cuál podía ser su estado de ánimo. Ahora sé que el final del verano del 74 fue espantoso para ella, fue un final de verano de calor y angustia, y también de soledad. Después del rodaje, todo el mundo había vuelto a su vida cotidiana, y Marguerite se sintió sola. Vacía, en estado de ingravidez, según cuenta Laure Adler en su biografía de Duras. Se fue a Neuphle-le- Château, donde yo la visité precisamente un día, al final de aquel horroroso verano, ignorando todo este drama”.  

Y también del intercambio literario entre ambos: 

Una noche de junio del 74, en un restaurante de la rue Saint-Benoit (Barthes ya había vuelto de la China y en París comenzaban los días a ser calurosos), quiso saber Marguerite Duras qué destino literario yo prefería. 

“¿Mallarmé o Rimbaud?, preguntó.  

Se me atragantó el café. 

No tenía yo idea de qué me estaba hablando. Había leído a los dos con cierta atención y deslumbramiento, pero estaba lejos de saber que el uno y el otro representaban dos opciones literarias distintas, la sedentaria y la nómada. 

Sin embargo, este libro no es ningún ejercicio a la añoranza. No tiene nada que ver con ese tipo de libros en el que París sale como un lugar romántico y de pasteleo, habitual de películas idiotas y siempre presto a la melancolía; tampoco es el París rimbaudiano y ensangrentado de antes y después de la Comuna (en el que por cierto Rimbaud nunca participó porque llegó tarde. Era tan pobre por esas fechas que siempre tenía que ir de un lado a otro andando, salvo cuando se colaba en los trenes). El gran andariego llegó a decir: “París es solo un estómago”.  

A lo largo de mi vida lectora he vivido muchos París y muy reconocibles: el París de Víctor Hugo; el París de Balzac y el de Zola (el de Zola es terrible); el de Rimbaud; el de Georges Perec; el de Proust, que es como el París de la Belle époque; el de Scott Fitzgerald y Hemingway; el de Santiago Gamboa, que es el más auténtico a la realidad de nuestros días, etcétera; y también el de Vila-Matas, que es muy especial. Con Vila- Matas siempre nos enteramos de qué escritor vivió en un determinado inmueble y de las calles y sus nombres. Todas las anécdotas culturales y de barrio pasan a través del filtro de su pluma a ser legado universal de literatura y creatividad. Yo esto lo veo como un sello propio y reconocible, una señal de distinción. 

“Doy un salto ahora y cambio tal vez de tema, pero no cambio de casilla. Las reglas del juego también están para jugar con ellas. Salto para confesarles ahora a todos ustedes que me siento afortunado de no añorar mis años de aprendizaje como escritor. Porque si yo, por ejemplo, pudiera decirles ahora ustedes que recuerdo de aquellos años la intensidad, las horas consumidas escribiendo en la buhardilla, consumido yo también a lo largo de todo un día y luego, por la noche, inclinado sobre mi mesa mientras el mundo dormía, sin sentir cansancio, electrizado, trabajando hasta la madrugada, y aún después... Si yo pudiera decirles algo de todo esto, pero es que no puedo hacerlo, no hay mucha grandeza, belleza o intensidad en los minutos de mi juventud dedicados a la escritura. Lo sé, es deplorable. Pero ésa es mi suerte, vivo sin nostalgia. No añoro ni mi pureza, ni mi entusiasmo estimulante, ni la intensidad. Es como si en París lo hubiera ido postergando todo con habilidad para sentir verdaderamente la seducción de la escritura en estos años de ahora, los de la edad tardía”. 

De todos los libros que he leído de Vila-Matas (que son muchos, pero no todos los que ha publicado) destaco este de “París no se acaba nunca”. También el Bartleby y compañía, que es un muestrario de escritores que abandonaron la literatura, los que decidieron un buen día no volver a escribir. Y luego ya en lo que yo considero su segunda etapa destacaría Doctor Pasavento, dedicado a desaparecer y a la figura trágica de Robert Walser; y Dublinesca, que es la obra suya con la que más me he reído, y cuya acción sucede durante el Blommsday (el día en que cada año la gente se reúne en Dublín para celebrar y recordar el Ulises de Joyce, justo el mismo día en que transcurre el libro: un 16 de junio).  

Se empiece a leer a Enrique Vila-Matas por el lugar por el que se elija siempre nos llevará al mismo sitio: al corazón indomable de la gran literatura. Todos sus libros son una gran invitación a eso. 

Hasta otra.

[Oier Quincoces · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tengo la sensación de que cuanto más lees de Vila-Matas más te das cuenta de que se repite: de que cada nuevo libro es muy parecido a los anteriores. Aun así, me ha gustado mucho cómo ironiza sobre la figura del escritor bohemio que frecuenta los cafés parisinos, que se expresa con grandilocuencia, que vive de las apariencias y de citar siempre a los cuatro autores que ha leído. Vamos, lo que hoy llamaríamos "postureo". Debería de ser lectura obligatoria en las carreras de Humanidades, porque de ser un pedante que solo vende humo también se sale.

Escuché el consejo de Queneau pero, abrumado al ver que debía pagar las luces de bohemia de como mínimo tres generaciones de artistas, no fui ni capaz de agradecerle ese consejo a Marguerite. La acompañé hasta el portal del inmueble de la rue Saint-Benôit y con una silenciosa reverencia le di las gracias por las gestiones en Électricité de France. Aunque no podía saberlo, era la última vez que la vería. Hice la reverencia y luego añadí con humor y tímidamente, recordando una frase del bohemio Bouvier: "Esta noche en la buhardilla, encenderé una cerilla para no ver nada."

[Lucía C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Después de vivir en París, uno queda incapacitado para vivir en cualquier sitio, incluido París». (John Asherby)

Hace algunas semanas empecé este libro y al principio me pareció maravilloso; luego fue perdiendo fuerza poco a poco y al final hasta me ha resultado difícil terminarlo.
En muchos momentos he visto en este París, que no se acaba nunca, mi París. Sin embargo, no he encontrado en estas páginas un gran libro. Es, en todo caso, una obra de fragmentos, en la que muchos pasajes son destacables, pero que carece de unidad. El autor salta de un asunto a otro sin más hilo conductor que la propia ciudad. Al final sólo me han resultado interesantes las imágenes de París y, especialmente, y las referencias y apariciones de Duras. Por lo demás, me ha parecido una lectura bastante mediocre.

[Manuel Gil · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3'5) Ainda que se me fixo bastante longo e un pouco pesado, non parei de rir en todo o libro e saio cun feixe de nomes e con moitas menos ganas de ler a Hemingway. Win win