The Art of Fiction No. 247
Notes for Never Any End to Paris. The Art of Fiction No. 247 ENRIQUE VIL A-MATAS he writing of Enrique Vila-Matas is marked by a dazzling array of quota- tion, plagiarism, frames, self-plagiarism, Tdigressions and meta-digressions: an intense and witty textual delirium that has made him one of the most original and celebrated writers in the Spanish language. Born in Barcelona in 1948, he published his first novel—a single, sternly uninterrupted sentence—in 1973. Continuing his fidelity to the myth of the avant-garde writer, he then moved to Paris, living in a garret rented from Marguerite Duras, before returning to Barcelona, where he spent the next decade publishing novels, a story collection, and literary essays. It was with his sixth book, however, A Brief History of Portable Literature (1985, translation 2015), that Vila-Matas transformed into a true 63 original. The book poses as a history of a secret society of twentieth-century artists and writers, including Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, Kafka, and others. Its reckless linking of real names to imaginary quotations and vice versa, its mingling of fiction with history, made him notorious—and represented a new moment in European fiction. Reality can only be apprehended through a comical, dazzling network of texts—that was the book’s basic proposition, and its implications and complications are what Vila-Matas has continued to explore in wildly deconstructive novels like Bartleby & Co. (2000, 2007), Montano’s Malady (2002, 2007), and Never Any End to Paris (2003, 2011), as well as in critical fictions that include Chet Baker piensa en su arte (Chet Baker thinks about his art) (2011), The Illogic of Kassel (2014, 2015), and Marienbad électrique (Electric Marienbad) (2015).
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