Books and Reading Year News Eva Muñoz
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Books and Reading Year News Eva Muñoz FEBRUARY 01.02.05 A call to read and travel Travel and adventure books are protagonists of the exhibition ‘Looking at the World’, organised by Círculo de Lectores and RBA, and which can be seen until 27th February at the cultural centre of the Círculo de Lectores Foundation. The exhibition, inaugurated by the Managing Director of Círculo de Lectores, Fernando Carro, and the Managing Director of RBA, Oriol Castanys, is a call to read and travel, to travel and read. It consists of a selection of images from four photographic books related with travel ―Rostros del mundo, Lejana África, El mundo en imágenes and Desiertos― and a section of classical and contemporary titles of this genre. The books, enclosed in showcases like the treasures that they undoubtedly are, seem to establish an ongoing dialogue with the surrounding large scale photographs. As Jacinto Antón writes, “does not the portrait of Russian countrymen featuring Tolstoy’s former coachman powerfully suggest a stage in the mission of Michael Strogoff? Does not the native from Micronesia showing off fish as an ornament recall an image from Stevenson? Could anyone overlook the troubling close up of the African warrior with bloodshot eyes as a reference to Conrad?” “The history of mankind could not be understood without travel, without this compulsion that makes us go further,” stated the journalist and traveller Xavier Moret in the presentation of the exhibition. “If we look back in history, we find Ulysses and Marco Polo ―one fictional character and another real―, two great examples of literature based on travel.” A Books and Reading Year that commemorates the 400 years of the publication of Don Quixote, “a major road movie that illustrates with humour and great style the misadventures and adventures of a traveller when following new paths,” could not be complete without an exhibition devoted to travel, “an exhibition where, through the lure of beautiful photographs and books, we can become both spectators and accomplices in the discovery of other worlds.” 02.02.05 The exhibition reviews the aesthetic, the language, the influences and the work of the two Majorcan poets The “modernism” of Alcover and Costa Llobera in an exhibition The two brought decisive elements to modernise Catalan literature and their literary trajectories were parallel. The Majorcan poets Joan Alcover and Miquel Costa i Llobera were two influential intellectuals during the period of the Catalan movement of the Renaixença, and the exhibition that can be visited at the Palau Moja emphasises their importance in the renewal of the aesthetic of the literary contest known as “Jocs Florals” and in the consolidation of literary Catalan language. Previously presented in Palma de Mallorca, the event, organised by the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes in collaboration with the Government of the Balearic Islands and the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, forms part of the Books and Reading Year and, after its exhibition in Barcelona, it will travel to other towns of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. Curated by Professor Llorenç Soldevila, the exhibition seeks to break with “half a century of inertia and oblivion” regarding the two authors. It offers a parallel view of the training background of Alcover and Costa i Llobera, their relationship with the masters of the Renaixença, their early publications in Spanish and their decisive contributions to literary aesthetics as well as their participation in the 1st International Congress on the Catalan Language (1906). The two writers materialised their adoption of Catalan as their only language of literary creation with important poetry books: in 1906 Costa published Horaciones, “a work linked to the formulation of the literary movement known as Noucentisme,” and in 1909 Alcover released the work Cap al tard, “one of the major books of 20th century Catalan poetry.” The exhibition also highlights the influence that writers such as Tolstoy or Leopardi had on Alcover, and that of Manzoni or Carducci on the poetry of Costa i Llobera. The main object of the exhibition, which also features the Majorcan landscapes immortalised by the two poets, is to stress the prevalence of their work. 03.02.05 – 04.02.05 Under 40 The Books and Reading Year gives voice to a generation of writers who have entered the literary scene with strength The writers under 40, who on 3rd and 4th February met at Fort Pienc Library to talk about their own work and reflect with critics and readers, are the representatives of a generation forging ahead. In the words of the curator of the Books and Reading Year, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, “since the emergence and consolidation of writers such as Quim Monzó and Miquel de Palol, there had not been in the field of fiction any other group of authors of such importance that had in common the stylistic aim, the gradual construction of a personal world and the degree of aesthetic commitment.” Thirteen authors were invited to this meeting on new trends in Catalan fiction entitled ‘Under 40’. On the first day it was possible to listen to Marc Romera (Barcelona, 1966), Toni Sala (Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1969), Neus Canyelles (Palma de Mallorca, 1966), Pere Guixà (Barcelona, 1973), Cristina Masanés (Manresa, 1965) and Albert Sánchez Piñol (Barcelona, 1965). But what are the signs of identity of this generation of authors? For Professor Jordi Cerdà, coordinator of the meeting, these thirteen writers ―a choice that, as pointed out before, was agreed with critics and strictly guided by criteria of quality, far from publishing interests― represent the new trends of Catalan fiction. “They have in common certain melancholia (with exceptions ―pointed out Toni Sala. Or perhaps Mercè Rodoreda was more vital?) and a background of uneasiness in relation to the surrounding reality. Moreover, it is the first generation that has been brought up in a state of perfect bilingualism and that has not experienced the fight against the Francoist regime.” Or, as Cristina Masanés pointed out, “we have not known fascism but rather its generational effects: we grew up listening to stories of resistance but, at the same time, we saw how the same people who had fought clung to power in the 1980s and 1990s.” Jordi Cerdà stated that another feature of this generation “is the establishment of strong links between reality, autobiography and fiction.” But beyond the aforementioned common characteristics, there are well differentiated personalities. Thus, Marc Romera, poet and author of the story book Amanida d’animals (2004) and the novel Mala vida (2002), confirms himself as an author truly concerned with language. If his issues could bring him closer to authors in Spanish such as Loriga or Mañas, he insists that what interests him less are “youth issues” while of greater interest is the desire for style. Toni Sala, author of Crònica d’un professor de secundària (2002) or Rodalies (2004), his most recent novel, is an example of an author closely linked to reality, which in his narrative he asserts for its descriptive power, an aspect questioned in one of the roundtables, in which reference had been made to the “crisis of description”. “I write because I don’t like talking,” stated the Majorcan writer Neus Canyelles, author of the novel Cap d’Hornos (2003), who talked of literature as a “great defence” and salvation from the horrors of daily life. “I write to be free,” she concluded and she then praised silence in literature, the value of the unsaid, as important as what is said. Canyelles’ desire to break the frontiers between genres and the precision and wide scope of Guixà’s register were others of the topics dealt with. And as a colophon, Sánchez Piñol, author de Cold Skin (2003), revealed to the audience the secret reasons that led him to write a moral fable on a man exiled on an island and faced with unknown powers. “It was the result of an intellectual failure.” It was one alternative to his frustrated doctoral thesis on a tribe in Africa, explained this best-selling ―in the strictly literal sense― anthropologist of Catalan literature. The second day of the meeting was attended by Jordi Puntí (Manlleu, 1967), Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972), Josep Ll. Badal (Ripollet, 1966), Empar Moliner (Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana, 1966), Francesc Serés (Saidí, 1972), Manel Zabala (Barcelona, 1968) and Jordi Cabré (Barcelona, 1974). It was a day characterised by a critical spirit and sense of humour (both so healthy). Discussion focused on tradition and the need to understand it and recognise oneself in it, but consecrated names were also questioned; on traditions and ballasts; on awards and grants and their virtue and evil; on criticism and critics. Let us take one thing at a time. Following his criticism of Josep Carner, who Alzamora considers a “mediocre poet”, the most recent Pla Award called for the right to dissidence, proof, moreover, of the health of a literature. “If Catalan literature is so fragile that it does not admit that one of its humblest representatives makes a negative criticism, we’re stuffed,” he said, while taking into account that each generation is responsible for “facing tradition, which means understanding it.” Let’s remember that when Alzamora had made this statement about Carner for which he was taken to task by some of the audience, he had a public position of importance in the world of books, and Empar Moliner wondered where these two things were compatible, the public position and the rather critical comment on Carner. In his turn, Puntí criticised “the policy of indiscriminate grants” which, according to him, has existed in the last twenty years in Catalonia. “Subsidising is not bad and it is a way of promoting culture that exists throughout Europe,” Alzamora replied.