Questo andar per luoghi (3) Mi piace sedermi ai tavolini allaperto dei caffè di Parigi, e mi piace anche molto camminare per la città, camminare a volte per un pomeriggio intero, senza una meta precisa, ma nemmeno a casaccio, né allavventura, cercando comunque di lasciarmi portare. A volte prendo il primo autobus che si ferma (come diceva Perec, non si può prendere lautobus al volo). Oppure imboccando deliberatamente rue de Seine per affacciarmi allarco che dà sul quai de Conti e lì intravedere la figurina sottile della mia amica La Maga ferma contro la spalletta di ferro del Pont des Arts. Mi piace Parigi, la place de Furstenberg, il 27 di rue de Fleurus, il museo Moreau, la tomba di Tristan Tzara, le rosee arcate di rue Nadja, il bar Au chien Qui Fume, la facciata azzurra dellHôtel Vaché, le bancarelle dei libri del lungosenna. E soprattutto una strada secondaria, vicino al castello di Vincennes, dove cè un modesto e antico cartello attaccato a un palo che segnala, come se fossimo appena arrivati in un paesino, che stiamo per entrare a Parigi. In questa città mi piace molto passare per posti che non vedo da tempo. Ma anche il contrario: passare da uno in cui sono appena passato. Mi piace così tanto quello che cè a Parigi che la città non mi finisce mai. Mi piace molto Parigi perché non ha cattedrali né case di Gaudi.Ho visto davvero anche Perec in persona. Fu a metà del 1974, lanno in cui pubblicò Specie di spazi. Lo avevo visto in molte fotografie, ma quel giorno, in una libreria del boulevard Saint-Germain, lo vidi arrivare alla presentazione di un libro di Philippe Sollers e fare cose assai strane che adesso non centrano. Fatto sta che per un po, impressionato dal fatto di vederlo davvero, lo spiai con grande attenzione, talmente tanta che, a un certo punto, mi ritrovai la sua faccia a un palmo dalla mia. Perec osservò quellanomalia - un estraneo a un palmo dal suo mento - e reagì commentando ad alta voce, come per suggerirmi di andarmene con la mia faccia da unaltra parte: Il mondo è grande, giovanotto.

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.

Over the course of a three-day lecture on irony, the narrator of Never Any End to Paris (who has certain things in common with Enrique Vila-Matas, such as appearing in the movie Tam Tam and having absolutely no resemblance to Hemingway) recounts the two years he spent in Paris, living in Marguerite Duras's house, imitating his literary hero Hemingway, and trying to write his first book, The Lettered Assassin. It's his sort of "portrait of an artist as a foolish young man," and walks the line between irony and nostalgia. Millions of great bits in here, like the performance by "Georges Perec" in the hidden bookstore, or the instructions Duras gives him on becoming a writer, or the references to Macedonio Fernandez. Vila-Matas's novels all explore what materials can be transformed into fiction and they all play games with the reader's expectations, creating a certain scene, a certain "reality," and then toying with it. And although that may sound cerebral (shit, the whole thing probably sounds cerebral what with the references to authors of pure literature and famous French directors), it's actually the perfect blend of brilliance and warm humor. Something about those sun-soaked Spaniards . . . There's a certain enveloping glow to their writing that seems to come naturally . . . BTW, the third Three Percent podcast is all about this book, so be sure and check that out when it goes online. (Or simply subscribe here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/th...)

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!

há um distanciamento por explicar na minha relação com o livro, sobretudo porque lhe reconheço a arquitectura perfeita, a erudição absoluta, a sageza na montagem da personagem. são tantas as piscadelas de olho literárias que o leitor militante não pode deixar de sentir-se seduzido e desafiado em partes iguais. e no entanto não consegui estabelecer empatia com este "paris nunca se acaba". como se sentisse a falta de ruído, sangue, nervos. a dado momento, e embora o estilo e a verve de cada autor sejam sempre uma forma de exibição, mesmo talentosa, aqui incomoda-me uma certa prosápia que pode muito bem não estar lá. aliás, o autor que é personagem pode bem nem ter estado naquelas situações que acabaram aborrecendo-me. e isso no fundo faz todo o sentido.