Η τέχνη της φυγής

Trilogía de la memoria #1

by Sergio Pitol, Αγγελική Βασιλάκου (Translator), Μαργαρίτα Ζαχαριάδου (Editor)

«Αυτό που μένει κυρίως από κείνον είναι η μαρτυρία μιας ανυποταξίας. Το παράδειγμα μιας ατομικότητας που αντιστάθηκε σε κάθε έξωθεν επιβεβλημένο κανόνα. Παραμένει η υπέροχη πίστη ενός αποστόλου που αντίκρισε φευγαλέα τη σωτηρία μέσω του πνεύματος και μετέτρεψε το βιβλίο σε αγαπημένο του εργαλείο».

Ως διπλωμάτης καριέρας ταξίδεψε ανά τον κόσμο. Ως αφοσιωμένος εραστής της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας διάβασε, μετέ­φρασε και έγραψε αριστουργήματα: ο Σέρχιο Πιτόλ, ένας γίγαντας των λατινοαμερικανικών γραμμάτων, κατάφερε όσο ελάχιστοι άνθρωποι να συγχωνεύσει τη βιωμένη εμπειρία με τη ζωή της ανάγνωσης, να μετατρέψει τη μία σε τέλειο αντηχείο της άλλης.

Σε τούτο το βιβλίο, τον πρώτο τόμο από το κύκνειο άσμα του, την Τριλογία της μνήμης, τα διαβάσματα και οι τόποι, τα βιβλία και οι πίνακες, είναι ήρωες της αφήγησης όσο κι ο ίδιος ο αφηγητής. Η ηδονική περιπλάνηση στον κόσμο των βιβλίων, το αέναο ταξίδι στο χώρο, το χρόνο και τις ιδέες, αποτυπώνονται στην Τέχνη της φυγής σαν ψηφίδες μιας ιδανικής πνευματικής αυτοβιογραφίας.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Essays, Literature, Latin American, Travel, Novels

445 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Sergio Pitol Demeneghi was a prominent Mexican writer and diplomat. In 2005 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world.

Pitol studied law and literature and served in the Mexican foreign service at Rome, Belgrade, Warsaw, Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Budapest and Barcelona. He started publishing novels in the late 1960s.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sergio Pitol himself is a protagonist of The Art of Flight – he, the globe and books…

We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by different times, hobbies, and creeds.

Sergio Pitol is blown all over the world like a fallen autumn leaf… And all his luggage is the past, memories and nostalgia…

Memory works with the same oblique and rebellious logic as dreams. It rummages in dark holes and extracts visions that, unlike those of dreams, are almost always pleasant. Memory can, at the discretion of whoever possesses it, be colored by nostalgia, and nostalgia produces monsters only by exception. Nostalgia lives off the trappings of a past that confronts a present devoid of attraction. Its ideal device is the oxymoron: it summons contradictory incidents, intermingles them, causes them to merge, and brings order in a disorderly way to chaos.

Sergio Pitol is a global rover – fleeing, writing and reading are his creed… And those occupations have become his art… He knows where to run, how to write and what books to read…

I have always resisted consuming books that are trendy or fashionable. My map of readings has been drawn more or less at random, by fate, temperament, and very much by hedonism. I am fascinated by the eccentrics.

Books shape and reinforce individuality and they sculpt imagination.

[Oscar Calva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuando se habla de los grandes escritores latinoamericanos de la generación del boom se habla de Fuentes, Cortázar, García Márquez, Onetti. Rara vez se habla de Sergio Pitol. Pero incluso en México, al hablar y hacer antologías de los grandes escritores nacionales se recuerda el trabajo de Paz, del mismo Fuentes, de Arreola, Poniatowska, Monsivais. Casi nadie incluye a Pitol en esos listados, una gran parte del público lector ni siquiera lo conoce, no se lee en las escuelas, sus trabajos publicados parecen reliquias difíciles de encontrar, en un puñado de editoriales y ediciones, y un muy reducido numero de ejemplares en una que otra librería. Es una verdadera pena.

Hace poco leí un articulo publicado en junio de este año sobre la enfermedad mental en etapa terminal en que se encuentra el autor, la que soporta en la mas completa soledad, sin amigos que lo visiten, sin el mundo de politicos, escritores, autoridades culturales que llegaron a rodearle en sus años de diplomático, catedrático, editorialista, apenas rodeado de su familia mas cercana. Un escritor olvidado, de trabajos olvidados, conocido en gran parte solamente por el mundillo cultural y literario. Aquí mismo en Goodreads, ésta que es su obra más popular tiene apenas unos 200 reviews, y no se entiende porqué uno de tan sólo 6 mexicanos que ha ganado el Premio Cervantes, el máximo reconocimiento de las letras hispanas (el tercer mexicano en lograrlo después de Paz y Fuentes), sea un verdadero fantasma en el mundo y en su país.

Y para mi lo mas lamentable es que de esos 6 escritores, probablemente sea Pitol el escritor más talentoso, si bien no el más prolífico, probablemente sea el escritor más innovador de los 6 aunque nunca haya obtenido la mitad siquiera del reconocimiento del gran público que se le extiende a los otros, a pesar de los múltiples reconocimientos y premios literarios que ha recibido.

A Pitol hay que leerlo. Y hay que leerlo no solamente por conocer su trabajo, o por sus reconocimientos y premios. Hay que leerlo simplemente porque leer a Pitol es una delicia, un verdadero agasajo. Y El Arte de la Fuga es probablemente un buen lugar para empezar a leerlo si no se ha hecho. A manera de memorias compuestas por ensayos y ejercicios narrativos breves como en un diario, Pitol escribe de sus experiencias como escritor, diplomático, traductor, y eterno viajero. Escribe también de los libros y del arte de escribir, de Chejov, de Henry James, de Gombrowicz, de las múltiples ciudades donde vivió por todo el mundo, de su amistad con Monsiváis, de la hipnosis, de los comics de la Familia Burrón. Pitol es también un alquimista de la escritura, en estas entradas de diario mezcla sin el mayor esfuerzo de una manera muy fluida y apenas perceptible ensayos, ficciones, ejercicios periodísticos, crónicas, su mente y su pluma viajan por todos lados, se fugan, van y vienen, pero el resultado es una obra bastante digerible, que se lee fácil, se disfruta, se vive. No importa que sus textos estén llenos de temas y referencias culturales y literarias, o que el lector no conozca medio cacahuate de los autores sobre los que escribe, el lector promedio puede sumergirse en un ensayo sobre Thomas Mann con la facilidad de estar viendo una película de guerra, y aunque Pitol es un verdadero erúdito el texto no suena pomposo o pretencioso como sucede con otros escritores de ensayos literarios que escriben más para si mismos que para sus lectores.

5 estrellas, y sólamente porque no se le pueden poner 6.

[Katia N · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions.”

Sergio Pitol, a Mexican writer who died in 2018, is well known in the Spanish speaking world. But until quite recently he was not translated in English. Fortunately, at least some of his work has been translated now and published by Deep Vellum. I’ve read and enjoyed Mephisto's Waltz: Selected Short Stories his collection of short stories before. This trilogy is different. It is a genre defying work, a mix of his memories, essays and thoughts. He himself calls it “record my journey, the history of still unfinished education”. One would call it auto-fiction nowadays. But it is a very different from someone like Knausgaard who dwells of his real life with its minute and mundane details. Pitol lives in reading. There is no details of how many cigarettes he smokes, no single romantic relationship mentioned apart from the attachment to his dog. The main subject of this work is the books he reads, his travels and meetings with his friends who are inevitably the other writers. I cannot see that people who do not like a writer as a character or a book about other books falling in love with this trilogy. But i found it immensely enjoyable. It is the one of those book that, mind the cliche, is the conversation with an older, knowledgable and charming friend.

There is a defined literary form to this work, however. The book is written as a diary, if only without the dates assigned. I think, this form has been popularised by Gombrowicz who wrote his diary while in Argentina specifically for publication. That one famously started with three days of a single entry: Me, Me, Me. Gombrowicz was writing in Polish. But the tradition somehow took the hold more between the Latin-american and Spanish writers. Some of them raised to perfection like this one and another similar project by Piglia The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years. Vila-Matas as well constantly plays with the idea, albeit in less auto-fictional form. And, Mr Knausgaard himself obsessively reads Gombrowicz in the The End, the 6th volume of his opus.

Often such work raises the question what proportion of it is “true”. In this book, Pitol says “I am aware that a large part of what we believe we remember are in fact inventions after the fact, and that this condition makes them indispensable for analytical work.”. And that is the real spirit of this book.

So what is he talking about in this volume? He talks about his first visit to Venice when he has forgotten his glasses and saw the city through the eyes of a myopic, slightly out of focus. He talks about his time in Warsaw, his meetings and translations of Polish authors in the 60s, notably Jerzy Andrzejewski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. He talks about facing poverty in Barcelona. And always about the books. Quite often he mentions arriving at a city and staying in a hotel to read instead of venturing straight out. He talks about the death of a novel foretold many times but never happened. It allows him to muse about a few favourite beginnings. He tells the story of Paul Valery who refused to write a novel “because he is incapable of anything as banal as “Marquise went out at five o’clock.” He talks about different kind of readers, some of them who would be delighted to read a novel starting like that. He mentions how Cortazar 30 years later has subverted the whole story with Marquise. To find out, read the first line of The Winners.

He talks about his favourite authors (Thomas Mann, Henry James, Galdos, Borges, Chekhov) and their way of writing. Interestingly for me, as I’ve just finished the Ambassadors, this is what he has to say on Henry James and i find it totally fitting to my experience:

“James validated for me a trend that was present in my very first stories: a furtive and sinuous approach to a fringe of mystery that is never entirely clear and that allows the reader to choose the solution he believes most fitting.”

He also reveals in a beautiful prose how he approaches his writing:

“From the very beginning, what I had always done was scatter a series of points onto the blank page as if they had fallen there by chance, with no visible relationship between them; until one suddenly began to spread out, expand, sprout tentacles in search of others, and then the others would follow its example: the points would become lines running across the page to find their sisters, either to subordinate or serve them, until that initial group of solitary points morphed into an increasingly complex and intricate character, with gaps, creases, ironies, blurrings, and glaring darkness. That was my writing or, at least, the ideal of my writing.”

There are many other things in the book starting from his experience of hypnoses and finishing with his looking at Max Beckman “Triptych Departure (1932-5)” and trying to create a story which would fit it:



He later finds out how Beckman interpreted it himself. Pitol is saying: ‘If someone who had not read Beckmann’s explanation stood in front of the triptych and translated that fragment (the right part with the woman and the body) similarly, I would slit my throat.” Does anyone want to guess what Beckmann said?

 “Reading is a secret game of approximations and distances. It is also a lottery. One arrives at a book by unusual means; one stumbles upon an author by apparent coincidence only never be able to stop reading him.” That is exactly my case with Pitol. Though there were a few moments when i needed to push through, I’ve just finished the second book of this trilogy and feel sorry already that eventually I would finish the third one and it will be no more, at least from this cycle. It might bore some people, but it is a gift for the right reader.

4.5 strs rounded upwards

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been holding this back thinking I was going to right a review worthy of the book, but life has intervened. I’m just saying that it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful; a bibliophile’s delight. It is going on my favorite’s list, and only two or three books a year make the cut.

Now on to the next two volumes of this trilogy, also published/to be published by Deep Vellum. Just about anything you buy from them will be a good investment.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Each poet is only a heartbeat in the river of language.” Octavio Paz

I am always impressed with Mexican writers. They are brilliant writers that encompass a wide field of interests. Often they travel widely with open eyes and yet, reflect on their own culture and history. Sergio Pitol falls into this category.

At 85 Pitol died in 2018 and was widely praised for his writings. Like other compatriots Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, he served as ambassadors in Europe, spending almost thirty years abroad. While in Europe, he met with many writers, playwrights and artists, keeping abreast of what was current in all the countries he lived. The breadth of who he knew astounds me.

In 1988, he returned permanently to Mexico. He moved back to his home of Xalapa in Veracruz state where he wrote these reflections on his life.

“Writing comes like the wind, it is naked. The ink, that is what I write. It passes like nothing happens in life. Nothing, except that this is life.” Marguerite Duras

His topics cover the personal, such as how Mexican politics in the early 1960s, along with his fellow writer and friend Carlos Monsiváis, got him into working as an ambassador. He begins translating the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and meets the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi along the way.

After the incidents of Tlatelolco in 1968, he ends up in a seedy flat in Barcelona trying to write his first novel. During this time he meets Beatriz and Oscar Tusquets, where he does some translation of The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford for Planeta, then in turn meets Carlos Barral (Seix Barral) and Carmen Balcells, all of whom publish the Latin American Boom writers. What revelations!

He covers writers as Galdos, Borges, Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann and a host of lesser known writers like Czech writer Jaroslav Haskek and the Polish author Jerzy Andrzejewski. There is something interesting in all. He reflects, quotes and tells anecdotes. One of things that interested me was his reflections of his own trilogy of books consisting of El desfile del amor, Domar a la divina garza y La vida conyugal were influenced by Max Beckmann’s trilogy Departure. It was painted from 1932 to 1935 in pre-Nazi Germany and is now in the Museum of maiden Art in New York. His thoughts on the painting and in particular, how he created El desfile del amor are an enlightening look into the writer’s mind.

https://www.moma.org/collection/works...

He includes several essays after his recollections, one of which is on Tabucchi’s “Sostiene Pereira” or “Afirma Pereira” in Portuguese, which I had read recently. The story tells the story of Pereira, whose wife had died, himself suffering with health issues, and the country is embroiled under Salazar. Life in 1938 Portugal was challenging to say the least. Pitol’s focus was on the challenges of dealing with death just as the young man Montero Rossi wrote obituaries for the paper. Pure symbolism in 1938, a year before the big war.

Finally, the last essay was on the uprising of Chiapas state under Subcommander Marcos in 1994. He personally made a trip to the state and was very moved by the sad state of the people living in such poverty in his own land, and of course how the government dealt with this uprising. His moving account where at first he thought of it being some Leftist propaganda switched to a more empathetic mind shows the power of “being there” really matters. In our maligned world today, these are powerful reminders that we all need to keep an open mind about the others.

The title of this book, the art of escape, reveals Pitol himself. He was very good at leaving things behind, escaping his country, the issues and dwelling in the world he found solitude in, the world of literature.

Anyone who is interested in literature, how it is written, it’s effects and why we write, should read this book. I was so impressed.

And the Malevich cover...woah!

[Nick Grammos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pitol named this book Flights. He moved around because the world was vast and full of possibility. He lived his interesting times as though they were exciting times. He writes about his life and his reading as though inseparable. His politics were socialist, the exciting politics of the 20thC, inhabiting a world of possibility. He read everything like a libertine. Wonderful introduction to 20thC Latin American ideas.

Only two memoirs/collections to go.

[Jim Elkins]

The Literary Life as a Cocoon

I bought this because Vila-Matas wrote the introduction. He calls Pitol "the greatest Spanish-language writer of our time," says he has a "passion for confusing life and literature," and that the crucial marker of his style is the idea of "fleeing anyone who is so dreadful as to be full of certainty."

But this book is disappointing. Saying Pitol confuses life and literature makes it sound as if the book is a mixture of life (meaning, I guessed, politics, society, perhaps nature) and literature. But it's another kind of mixture. What counts for Pitol as "life" is his own life in literature -- the books he knows, the publishers, the successes and failures. "Literature" is the contents of the books, which are hardly glimped in The Art of Flight. Pitol's mind is populated mainly by the names and lives of hundreds of authors. In that The Art of Flight is like Vila-Matas's Dublinesque and his other books. But an indifferently veiled autobiography of the author whose imagination consists entirely of other authors is not an easy subject. One thing it requires, I think, is real engagement with the ghosts, the literary voices, the contemporaries. Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co. does that, because it is about paralysis, inaction, abnegation, and the lack of words. Here the names are just a cavalcade of Mexican and other authors, as in some of Bolaño's work, but without his interest in mixing literature, imaginary stories and real politics.

Pitol is safe inside his world of authors: they are a comfort to him, they're the air he breathes, they nourish his imagination. The authors he thinks of do not haunt him as writers haunt Pessoa, Borges, Bolaño, as they bewitch Bartleby & Co.. In fact the novels Pitol has read seem barely to talk to him except in generalities and stray remembered quotations that serve more as decorations than insights, and this novel's philosophic moments are mainly asides that come up when Pitol has a temporary respite from the continuous rain of thoughts about publishing, fame or its absence, literary lineages, schools, manners, communities, and histories.

This is the literary life as cocoon. Sometimes the threads of an author's cocoon can spun be so fine that they seem like the air itself. The cocoon seems to disappear, and the author imagines himself in touch with the raw world. But this is not life, it is embalmed, becalmed, and proof against any intrusion. Pitol reminds me, in that respect, of the late Bellow, who was so warmed by his self-regard and the praise of the friends and readers he'd chosen.

The only parts of the world that intrude are clichés. The book opens with some awful pages about Venice, in which the narrator rehearses all sorts of commonplaces about the city: he knows they are episodes from the history of the city, because he's read so much fiction and poetry set in Venice, but it doesn't seem to occur to him they are all, every last one of them, comforting clichés, received knowledge, the sort of thing Bouvard and Pécuchet would have tried and abandoned, the sort of thing Pessoa or Beckett or Bernhard would never go near.

2015, revised 2024

[Alberto Delgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,9 en realidad. Una autentica maravilla, esto es una obra maestra y no le doy 5 estrellas porque por mi forma de puntuar solo se las doy a los libros sobresalientes como este pero que ademas considero que son de obligatoria lectura para cualquiera sean cuales sean sus gustos lectores y en este caso el libro de Pitol por su estructura y los temas que trata no creo que cumpla esta segunda condición. Este libro es por encima de todo un homenaje a la gran literatura con el amor hacía los libros que demuestra Pitol con un portentoso diluvio de conocimientos que muestra en cada página, realmente impresionante. Pero también es un libro de viajes, un libro que nos traslada a la Europa del siglo pasado ya desaparecida antes de la llegada del turismo de masificación cuando se viajaba de otra manera y en los centros de las ciudades vivían personas y no eran parques temáticos llenos de turistas. También nos traslada a su México natal para poder conocer un poco mejor la historia de ese país y también es un libro de memorias excepcional que me ha servido para conocer a este autor que he descubierto con esta lectura y desde luego tengo ganas de seguir descubriendo el resto de su obra. No tardaré en leer sus otros libros de la trilogía de la memoria. Y por último no os perdáis la fantástica reseña de Oscar Calva de este mismo libro.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pitol’s project of hybrid books gives pause to the potential reviewer. It is almost an anthology of sorts and I suppose the success of such depends on a subsequent harmony of the elements. I found the tone of this much more artful and palatable than the next volume which of course I read first.

Galdós was the focus of intense readings and I appreciated the candor by which Pitol reveres Tabucchi especially the nervous anecdote about Pitol incessantly talking during his visit with the Italian. Insecurity is a prominent leitmotif throughout. As are the influence of Chekhov and Mann. The reading of Mann’s diaries is especially charged.

I might wait a day or two before reading the concluding book.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills)]

So, I'm not going to give The Art of Flight a rating as it is part of a trilogy, and I have yet to see the bigger picture in all of this. It appears that the three books in The Trilogy of Memory need not be read in the order that Deep Vellum presents them, but I figured I would follow their suggestion. We can only have deep respect for this publishing house. It is also recommended that we save the best for last, so The Magician of Vienna will be our last read, with The Journey being our next read. This for #Pitol23 playing out on #booktwitter and on Goodreads. It must be noted that Pitol was awarded the Cervantes Prize for The Magician of Vienna. Good things ahead!!

So, reading Pitol, one is cognizant that one is like Pitol a reader, and while it is pleasing to recognize books we've already read, we later realize the vast void in our reading of Mexican and Latin American literature. This serves as a reminder that we need to remedy this deficit!! We must read widely!

I have to say that I was most intrigued by the section READINGS that reads like a book review but also like listening in on a conversation. Definitely interesting. Let's see where Pitol is going with all of this!!!!

[John Darnielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A life-changingly great book, both a world unto itself and a door into the worlds frequented by Pitól both physically and intellectually. Pitól writes with wit, clarity, and great style, illuminates texts dear to him and the authors of said texts, their pertinence to his own work and life…just a joy through and through.

[Aaron (Typographical Era) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve just finished reading Segio Pitol’s The Art of Flight and my head really hurts. I’m not talking about one of those standard issue migraine headaches, with temples throbbing like they’re about to burst through my skin while I fumble with the child-proof cap on a bottle of painkillers, desperate for relief. No, this is something different, something a tad on the painful side, but mostly pleasurable in nature. My brain feels as though it’s literally expanding inside my skull from the sheer weight of the massive amount of knowledge that’s been imparted to it by this book. I love this feeling. I want to make it last for as long as I can. I’m also about to physically collapse in exhaustion from it. Beware the side effects.

How am I supposed accurately describe the contents of this book to people? I feel that other kind of more traditional headache muscling its way in as I agonize over this very thought. Perhaps it’s a task best left to the book publishing professionals and their publicists, but even they seem to struggle with this, placing the work squarely on the shelf labelled unclassifiable. Surely there has to be a way though? Once, for lack of anything better, I referred to as a historicaltraveldiaryessaybiography, but now, having finished the book, I realize that classification doesn’t even begin to do it justice.

READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/the-a...

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sergio Pitol, who I admit I've never heard of, was maybe an insightful thinker and maybe a wonderful novelist, but to me this "memoir" wasn't a great read. For one, marketing it as a book that "defies genre" is simply a cover for what felt like a hodgepodge of totally miscellaneous writing (diaries, articles on literature, some travelogues, some misc. thinking) put together haphazardly and sorted in only a semi-meaningful way. If you're reading this book to gain insight on the life of Pitol, you're likely to be disappointed. Besides a few episodic notes from his travels in Poland, Spain and Italy, there isn't much introspection into Pitol as a character - more his musings on Mexican and European culture. Furthermore, much of the literary articles are focused on works that are too obscure to the American reader to make sense of or appreciate in any meaningful way.

There's one short essay about the development of his ideas for his novel Love Parade - but of course that is not published in English, so it was of little value in relation to my readerly life.

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Από τα βιβλία που βγαίνεις κερδισμένος

[Paromita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately this book grew on me.
I really liked the references to books and authors from the literature of different countries.
Some very nice writing, kudos to the translator George Henson and the publisher Deep Vellum for bringing this project to fruition.

[George Rosanera · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5

[Guillermo Castro · Rating 3 out of 5]

En fechas recientes (2018) falleció Sergio Pitol, escritor, traductor y diplomático mexicano ganador del premio Cervantes. Su época de mayor auge corresponde a finales del siglo XX, y sus obras más aclamadas son dos trilogías; la primera es narrativa y se le conoce como “El tríptico del carnaval”, mientras que la segunda es autobiográfica y se titula “Trilogía de la memoria”. Esta última inicia con el que podría ser el libro más famoso del autor, “El arte de la fuga”, publicado por Editorial Era en el año de 1996 y que comentaremos a continuación.

Este libro no puede clasificarse dentro de un genero definido; acaso habremos de llamarle “híbrido” pues en su contenido encontraremos elementos de ensayo, relato de no ficción, autobiografía, crónica y nuevo periodismo. Si bien, su propósito fundamental es el de fungir como un libro de memorias, la informalidad del estilo y la innovadora prosa nos obliga a considerarla una obra ecléctica y posmodernista. Las referencias más cercanas podrían ser las novelas de Enrique Vila-Matas y algo de la parte central de “Los detectives salvajes” de Roberto Bolaño.

El título “El arte de la fuga” se refiere al gusto (o la urgencia) del escritor por viajar, conocer lugares emblemáticos y alejarse de la problemática de la propia patria. Pero también se refiere a la evasión de los recuerdos dolorosos; en especial la traumática muerte de la madre, ocurrida en plena infancia del escritor y que será tema recurrente en sus escritos autobiográficos.

El estilo es informal y "metaliterario"; una amalgama en la que todos los géneros parecen fusionarse. Además la estructura de sus escritos resulta bastante inusual (más que relatos parecen “entradas” de una bitácora personal), pues el escritor utiliza un extraño esquema en el que el tiempo avanza y retrocede de manera premeditada. A pesar de todo, Pitol posee la gran virtud de la transparencia y el lector se acostumbra rápidamente a su estilo decididamente disperso y a su manejo del tiempo no lineal. Por supuesto, ayuda mucho que haya dividido sus escritos por temas, de otra manera estaríamos hablando de una obra que carece completamente de estructura.

Veamos los tres apartados en los que se divide “El arte de la fuga”:

-El primero llamado “Memoria” es el más narrativo de los tres y nos habla de las experiencias de juventud del escritor, así como de su paso por países como España, Italia y Polonia, lugares en donde cumple su trabajo como traductor y agregado cultural. Los mejores momentos quizás sean el relato epifánico “Vindicación de la hipnosis” y las remembranzas de “Con Monsiviaís el joven”, en donde Pitol hace los honores a sus dos grandes amigos (y también estupendos escritores) Carlos Monsivaís y José Emilio Pacheco.

-En el segundo apartado titulado “Escritura”, el autor muestra su faceta más ensayística, pues habla sobre sus propios escritos, el arte en general y también sobre los escritores y libros que le inspiraron. El mejor aporte pudiera ser “La marquesa nunca se resignó a quedarse en casa” en donde Pitol parafrasea a Cortázar y revalora la literatura narrativa.

-El tercero llamado “Lecturas”, se asemeja mucho al anterior, pero ahora se refiere a temas más específicos. Aquí encontraremos estupendos mini-ensayos sobre Chéjov, Andrzejewski, Thomas Mann, José Vasconcelos e incluso un homenaje al caricaturista mexicano Gabriel Vargas. El libro cierra de manera brillante con la interesante crónica de un viaje a Chiapas, México, durante la insurrección indígena ocurrida en enero de 1994.

Con “El arte de la fuga” Sergio Pitol logró incrustarse en la modernidad sin caer en los excesos y la pedantería de otros autores con pretensiones similares. En su prosa se siente la sinceridad, la veracidad y la autenticidad que todo escritor debería ofrecer y que pocos logran. Al no ser un libro estrictamente de narrativa, lo recomiendo sólo a aquellos que gustan leer sobre biografías, libros y autores. Sin embargo, me pareció un primer tomo muy unteresante (la trilogía se completa con “El viaje” y “El mago de Viena”), de modo que habrá mucho más por descubrir.

[Tonymess · Rating 5 out of 5]

It embarrasses us to be pilfering through other people’s lives and at the same time we cannot help but do it.

Readers of Spanish language fiction would know of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. An annual award that currently carries a prize of €125,000 The Miguel de Cervantes Prize is considered the most important award in Spanish language literature (according to the spain.info website it is!). It is awarded to a writer for their literary oeuvre, not a single work and although some citations state that it is announced every year on 23 April, the date which commemorates the death of the author of Don Quixote, the 2015 winner was announced in November with Spanish King Felipe VI presenting the award to Fernando del Paso on the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ death. In fact Cervantes actually died on 22 April 1616 however the Spanish commemorate his death on 23 April as it was the date he was buried (coinciding with the date of Shakespeare’s death).


The Miguel de Cervantes Prize was created in 1974, although the first award was made in 1976. The candidates are nominated by the Spanish Royal Academy, by the Academies in Spanish-speaking countries and by former prize-winners. The chairman of the jury is the Spanish Minister of Culture and since 1980, it can only be awarded to a single candidate.


In 2005 Sergio Pitol became the third Mexican to win the award (Octavio Paz in 1981 and Carlos Fuentes in 1987 being the first two Mexican’s to win the award), and for Pitol’s work to remain unavailable in English is yet another example of the small representation that translated works hold in the English speaking world. New independent, not-for-profit, publisher Deep Vellum from Dallas Texas came to the rescue in 2015, bringing the first two volumes of Pitol’s “Trilogy of Memory,” to the English speaking world. The explanation by George Henson in his “Translator’s Note” at the rear of “The Art of Flight”; “these three autobiographical volumes, comprised of diary entries, personal musings, travel writing, and literary essays”, gives you a short idea of the make up of the initial offering in the trilogy. How to review what is basically a notebook? As Daniel Saldaña Paris says in his recent article “10 Essential Spanish-Language Books”: “To call The Art of Flight autobiography, essay, or memoir is an understatement. Life, fiction, memories, and readings intertwine in this book with astonishing ease, and the result is a volume that reads like a novel.” (see full list of the 10 “essential” books here http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by... )


With a short introduction by friend and fellow Spanish language writer Enrique Vila-Matas, the work begins with Pitol travelling and misplacing his glasses, he is in Venice, blurry eyed with mists descending. Within a couple of pages you know that the theme of a blurry memory, shadows, snippets is about to pervade throughout

For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/20...

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, it's a lovely book, masterful in every respect...but then it seemed serendipitous in my reading because I've been thinking about these fragments that we shore against our ruin but then again (and a lot lately in re: to me) these fragments with which we create ourselves (and, yes, they are very nearly the same thing) and that is what Pitol does, creating himself through his travels, his relationships with books, friends, movies, politics, language...he emerges out of his writing and reading (and they are fragments, often essays, critical appraisals, ideas on writing, remembrances...)...there is also as opposed to a few other writers who Pitol brings me to mind - sebald, murnane - more of a propulsive and triumphant tone....while maybe all art is a papering over the abyss, The Art of Flight moves at a speed where you don't notice- you stare forward and keep going, I remember a few years K2Doggo saying something about mann at a time where Mann was being piled on, and it was something that stuck with me...he said something like love him or hate him Mann was one of last centuries true practitioners of literature even if it was always capital L literature and it was always important to him...well, I"ve read no mann (and this book will have your tbr or to buy list growing...) but Pitol seems to look at art in a similar way (and he loves Mann); literature is deadly important to him it has shaped his life and made him the being he is and that's what he wants to communicate to you, to me, the reader...it's ok to say this book changed my fucking life, and it is, I agree and it brings me joy, it's a balm...I also appreciate the way time is dealt with throughout, and the way you can see Pitol's mind working...the ridiculousness of certainty, I guess or maybe I am projecting, but life is short and time goes too fast and we know very little, how can we be certain, we try to be, we can try to learn and dig into the subtleties of a situation but our minds are limited, we must always be open, and Pitol is, even in the midst, he digs, remains uncertain, learns, gets a better feel, moves closer but never quite gets there...there are a great many things to take from this wonderful book and it lets you (me, the reader) supply some of them, many of them...and I did....but it's a beautiful book (a novel, essays,...?) and the translation by Henson is great. Pitol puts you in mind of a good companion and you can often disagree with him but he not only talks, he listens...and it's important and beautiful....generous and lively...deep Vellum: one of the best new small presses around...

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful collection of essays by a writer of whose existence I had been unaware less than a year ago. Although he has been translated in several other countries, the English=speaking world has been slow to translate him. And here I thought I knew something about Mexican literature!

Sergio Pitol's The Art of Flight can only be described as coruscating with its four sections beginning with "Memory," followed by "Writing" (including some short fiction), "Readings" (reviews), and an intriguing "Ending" about a journey to Chiapas at the time of the Zapatista insurrection.

Now that I have read two of the books in Pitol's "Trilogy of Memory" series (this and Journeys), I plan to see if I can read some of his novels.

[Vilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daudz foršu (drīzāk erudītu nekā emocionālu) eseju par daudzām dažādām tēmām - varbūt pat pārāk dažādām, jo beigās radās sajūta, ka šeit kopā saliktas četras dažādas mazgrāmatas.

[Liberis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πρώτο μέρος μια τριλογίας, που ταξιδεύει τον αναγνώστη, τουλάχιστο στο πρώτο μέρος, σε μεγάλα λογοτεχνικά αριστουργήματα, διηγείται μικρές κρυφές στιγμές πολιτικής και διπλωματίας, ένα ανάγνωσμα συναρπαστικό και ελπίζουμε να δούμε στα ελληνικά και την υπόλοιπη τριλογία, καθώς τέτοια βιβλία δεν είναι εμπορικά εύκολα, αλλά είναι συναρπαστικά για όποιους ξέρουν να τα διαβάσουν! Εξαιρετικά μάλιστα μεταφρασμένο, δε θα σε κουράσει καθόλου φίλε συν-αναγνώστη!

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, but I'm not sure what to say about it or how to review it probably.

Its writing feels musical (and in fact, the spanish word "fuga" translates to both 'flight' and 'fugue', as the translator's afterward points out).

Its certainly not for everyone, but the people that will be drawn to it will likely love it. Its soft and gentle in a way, and it meanders like a river or a long walk does. Some of the sections disguise itself as literary criticism, so if you don't enjoy criticism, you might not like it. But even in these sections, it feels both intensely personal and also slightly mysterious and dreamlike. I picked the book up, almost on accident, after finishing Don Quixote. I hadn't heard of it, but saw it won the Cervantes Prize, so I thought it would be an appropriate book to follow that read. I have to admit it took me a while to start it though.

It presents itself as a memoir, but its a creative and "literary" memoir, and therefor should not be read as an autobiography. There are not many events -- but there are many themes. They are presented with a subtlety & confidence than only a great craftsperson can get away with. His writings on memory somewhat reminded me of WG Sebald, although I'm not sure if that's an appropriate comparison. The style and writing itself seems soft, blissful, and musical. The text flows like water.

Each chapter contains the date it was written, and the result is sort of a collage of journal entries, placed out of order. It is divided into four bigger sections. It will inevitably add a long list of books you want to read to your list. Pitol is passionate about reading, was a translator, and writes about literature as much as he writes about his life. The most touching story, for me, was about his seeing a hypnotist. There are many stylistic shifts in the book, but they are unified by his voice.

This book is the first of a "trilogy of memory" and they are all being translated by George Hensen and published by Deep Vellum. Picking up this book was a discovery for me of the translator and publisher as well as the writer. Deep Vellum is a non profit based in Texas. Hensen, who I had never heard of, did a great job with the translation -- the language works well in English, and I feel a poetry to the movement that reminds me of other translators I love Chris Andrews and Margeret Jill-Costa. (Disclaimer: I do not read any other language than English, so my assumptions on what makes a good translator might be inaccurate, and at the least aren't informed of the nuances of its craft. However, I've definitely noticed liking some translators more than others, particularly when reading widely translated writers).

Pitol has many fans in the Spanish language, including Bolano & Villa-Matis. I am very excited to have just learned about him, grateful he is starting to be translated while simultaneously disappointed he wasn't translated until now. Both this book and Roberto Bolano's Between Parenthesis discuss a novel Pitol wrote that I really, really, really hope gets translated next.

[Eduardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El arte de la fuga" es uno de los mejores libros que he leído en lustros. Pitol era simplemente un genio, un erudito. Su prosa es simplemente exquisita, pues es capar de mezclar crónica, entradas de diario, ficción, análisis literarios, historias de viajes, etc., con una facilidad increíble. En este libro se aprende de literatura, de historia, de pintura, de ciudades, de cultura... Siendo mexicano me pareció muy interesante, e incluso chusca, la descripción y la narrativa de la vida y obra de Vasconcelos. El libro también invita y motiva a releer y repensar ideas y obras de escritores clásicos como Berenson, Borges, Tabucchi, Nabokov, Mann, Gogol, etc. Le pondría más de 5 estrellas de ser posible.

[Alaíde Ventura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo es una maravilla, pero tengo algunos favoritos:

1. El cariño con el que habla de Monsiváis.
2. Que el famosísimo pasaje de "uno es los libros que ha leído" este precedido por un recordatorio de la felicidad que encuentra en su casa de Xalapa.
3. El ensayo sobre Sostiene Pereira.
4. En ensayo sobre el levantamiento zapatista y que incluya casi íntegro el comunicado de Marcos: ¿De qué nos van a perdonar?
5. Su paso por Barcelona: pobreza y desesperación.
6. El ensayo sobre el soldado Schveik.

[Desirée · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Qué puedo decir sobre Pitol que no se haya dicho ya? Leí este libro por primera vez cuando tenía 13 años, obviamente no logré comprenderlo en su totalidad. Vuelvo a este libro 5 años después, después de haber leído a varios de los autores mencionados y viajado a algunas ciudades por las que el autor relata su paso. Sólo puedo afirmar que Sergio Pitol es completamente increíble. Estoy entusiasmada por continuar leyendo la trilogía de la memoria.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Art of Flight is the first of three memoirs by the Mexican writer Sergio Pitol, and the first of any of his books to be translated (quite ably) into English. Unfortunately, we’re meeting Pitol at the end of his career, when illness now prevents him from writing. Fortunately, however, we are meeting Pitol. How can I not like a writer who translated Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, quotes Julien Green (why have his books been allowed to go out of print?), and finds the movie Johnny Guitar laughable junk? Pitol (for whom The Art of Flight is his first book translated into English) has the imaginative digressive quality of César Aira, the amiable literariness of Enrique Vila-Matas, and the sensibility of both for the absurd, told in conversational tones. Pitol, Aira, and Vila-Matas are writers who could turn a description of a sidewalk crack into a Scheherazadean fugue.

Beyond the whimsical is his intelligent analyses of numerous authors, many new to me—Benito Pérez Galdós, Chekhov, Jaroslav Hasek (primarily The Good Soldier Svejk), Gabriel Vargas (cartoonist), Thomas Mann, Marcel Schwob (The Children’s Crusade), José Vasconcelos, and Antonio Tabucchi: highbrow, lowbrow, in between; comic, dramatic, melodramatic; Russian, Italian, Polish, Mexican, German: Pitol’s tastes range widely, and his explications of their works is compelling. Although he doesn’t say so, I wonder if in reading and thinking about Vasconcelos, Pitol ever squirmed about the parallels between the two: both authors spent their careers in politics (Pitol as an ambassador) and their avocations as writers; both authors garnered enormous respect at home as writers. Vasconcelos, however, became increasingly angry, racist, and elitist over time. Pitol—as especially the last essay of the book (on Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army) makes clear—never went in that direction.

George Henson’s translation of the book is seamless. I don't speak, write, or read Spanish, but the Pitol he’s captured here is a writer who effortlessly shuttles among varying rhetorical registers—usually of an intimate yet bright, easy manner—subtleties that surely require a deft ear and vocabulary to capture.

[Luis Reséndiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

conforme lo leía me daba cuenta de la mucha falta que me hacía leer a pitol. no solo porque encuentro alguna afinidad con él ─irse lejos de casa pronto, o nacer y crecer en veracruz─, sino porque su prosa, diáfana y transparente, es un logro en sí misma; la forma ─esta búsqueda incesante a la vez que huida de la definición─ le hace transitar por muchas veredas; del ensayo a la autoficción a la crónica de viaje. lo mejor, creo, es el recuento de largo aliento del levantamiento zapatista y todo aquello en lo que aparece monsiváis (incluyendo ese magnífico y desafortunadamente breve ensayo dedicado a la familia burrón). un libro al que, lo sé desde ahora, volveré en innumerables ocasiones.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

En este punto, ya no sé cuál de los dos volúmenes que he leído de la "Trilogía de la memoria" me gustó más, si éste o "El viaje". El punto es que las piezas de monumental prosa contenidas en "El arte de la fuga" son enciclopédicas, amenas, apasionantes. Sergio Pitol era grandísimo. Salgo de aquí con una lista interminable de lecturas por hacer y con el corazón henchido de buen estilo.

[Víctor Esparza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un compendio de ensayos de corte experiencial y un tanto didácticos, rebosantes de la humilde sabiduría acumulada por su autor tras décadas volcado al oficio de lector preponderantemente; por su buen contenido se volvió por años compañero de viaje, del cual resulté muy edificado.