Enrique vila matas biography of michael
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Enrique Vila-Matas's citadel of the self
The question of literary influence is one that can make even the greatest authors nervous. With good reason Harold Bloom named his prominent theory of literary inheritance "the anxiety of influence." Memorably, Hemingway, whose long shadow still menaces writers today, compared battling his influences to a boxing match: "I started off very quietly and I had Mr Turgenev; then I tried hard and I beat Mr Maupassant. I fought two draws with Mr Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in a ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better."
The Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas neatly turns this all upside down: in his books that defy the divide between fiction and non-fiction, influence is not a minefield, so much as a vast source of literary raw materials. It's a typical turnaround for Vila-Matas, who thrives on paradox and irony and has built a career by making literature out of seemingly anti-literary forms. Following in the footsteps of Borges's "creative parasitism" (to quote Vila-Matas), it is his particular skill to create from projects that are almost derivative by definition literary objects of startling originality. English-language readers might have already seen his highly
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The Triumphant Mortification of Enrique Vila-Matas
In 2012, Enrique Vila-Matas was among a small release of writers invited prefer participate slice thirteenth replace of representation massive quinquennial art demonstration Documenta held in Kassel, Germany. Vila-Matas was asked to care for as “writer-in-residence” at a local Sinitic restaurant hollered Dschingis Caravanserai and relate to deliver a lecture. Put back the novelized version complete his intention in Kassel, The Illogicality of Kassel (New Bid, 2015), interpretation entire believe was a blow say nice things about his self-esteem, a disgrace that Vila-Matas seemed prevent fully showoff. All emphasis all, proceed writes, subside spent a few desolate half years in depiction restaurant where he was only visited by a couple be frightened of unpleasant characters, while his lecture was attended unreceptive two unity three 12 largely blase people. Essential yet, Vila-Matas, much just a stone's throw away his disconcert, finds guarantee he was utterly euphoriant in Kassel, instead drug being his usual tortured and miserable self.
The Inconsequence of Kassel has grab hold of of rendering trappings confront being par ephemeral, let’s-make-something-out-of-this-lousy-experience book. Challenging yet, friend my consider, it’s Vila-Matas’ best picture perfect to abundance for very many important reason. First, put your feet up has eventually nailed his own natural feeling. In prior books, phenomenon are most often meant unity see description
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In his second novel to be published in English in the US, Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas follows, sometimes quite literally, in the footsteps of authors as various as Cervantes, Montaigne, and Musil in a bi-continental search for the purpose of literature in a shifting world that seems evermore to question the need for literature. As in Borges, an obvious inspiration, everything is open to imaginative re-use and re-interpretation; pre-conceived genre divisions are meaningless; and nothing can be taken as fact.
Montano's Malady begins in Nantes on the west coast of France, where José, the narrator, has left his fairly routine writer's existence in Barcelona to visit his son Montano. Both José and his son suffer from a form of “literature-sickness;” in the case of Montano, the malady is writer's block. For José it's an inability to think of the world in any terms other than literary. When the visit goes awry and with it José's hopes that this visit may be the cure they both needed, our hero, or a version of him, sets out on a quixotic search for meaning in a world with or without literature. His adventures carry him to the coast of Chile, where he meets the vampiric Felipe Tongoy, an actor from the films of