September 6th Book Fair
old and used in San Sebastian. Visited the fair for years around this time, and I always find, at a great price, things that I have not decided to buy before, such as solvents such as editorial Tusquets and Anagram. There is also a bookseller who usually offer very low prices, much of what has Ballantine Books published recently. Today, among other things, nine euros bought the first volume of the edition of the Circle of the complete works of Vargas Llosa, with stories of bosses , novels The city and the dogs and The green house the extraordinary Puppies, and a conference tasty, Secret History of a novel . Circle in the catalog I knew that sells for 45 euros. Of course, I have several editions of those books, but for nine euros I could not resist. I see
also that for five dollars I can take the latest novel by Thomas Pynchon, backlight. Too bad, I bought just last month at the club for thirty. And that is a book that is intimidating. More than a thousand pages, which require, insurance, an arduous and lengthy reading. I need lots of quiet and time to sink his teeth into Pynchon. Impossible to find with the life I lead, or we carry. When can I read?
In the preface to the volume that I purchased from Vargas Llosa (oh, what a wonderful clarity and elegance in his presentation!) I was surprised to find a reluctance by the author, repeatedly expressed, to his second novel, The green house . Vargas Llosa, who is remembered very differently in the remote and sixties, believed that this novel too complicated, drawn by the formal experimentalism. That risk, of course, as well as saved was getting bigger, and disappeared entirely for many years. The problem for me is that many years ago that his books are not interested, and every time you read worse. How long I have not really enjoyed a novel by Vargas Llosa? I think that since History Mayta, 25 years ago. Ah, yes, I was very interested in his memoirs, The fish in water. But novels ... For example, do not understand the almost universal reverence for The party the goat. I do not want to go weird, but I got so bored, it seemed so predictable ... Not a single page invited me to move forward.
PD. Today, when I'm about to give these notes (early October), Vargas Llosa has been granted the Nobel Prize. Seems fair. I just read to Javier Cercas, and says something that I share wholeheartedly: when one has written three novels as The the Hero, The Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral, has already won that prize. Whatever you type after his contribution already made worthy of the Nobel prizes and necessary. And, of course, to grant an award that is supposed to be literary, debería dar igual lo que opina sobre el comunismo o el liberalismo, o si cambia de opiniones políticas a lo largo de su vida. Todo eso son, en estos momentos, banalidades.
Justo hoy, también, leo en el blog de Alberto Olmos, Hikikomori , algo que relaciono inmediatamente con Vargas Llosa. A Olmos lo acaban de incluir, los de la revista Granta , en la lista de los veinticinco escritores en castellano menores de 35 años más prometedores. Y reflexionando sobre su edad, la ambición inmensa que puso en sus primeros esfuerzos literarios, y lo que supone la ambición en la literatura, dice: “Dudo mucho de que los autores mejoren con los años; estoy seguro de que worse. We have already published five novels and the more we realize that we had so much to say, and that every day there is less enthusiasm for saying. Beginner, you do not think more than from the history of literature in two, do not have to attend to minutiae like what editorial published or who writes or what critics criticize. It is written big, small. But then it is giving the impression that it is not worth, at least not worth the stroke, the peeling of the soul, give it all to a blank paper. Life is beautiful at times, says Francisco Brines. Good writing is not beautiful ever, is pain. And sometimes you want to stop hurting " . Vargas Llosa years ago that I wanted to stop hurting, though, so they say, they maintained a spartan regime of work.
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