Is there a great Barcelona novel? Who was the Dickens, the Dostoyevsky, or the Stendhal who, in unforgettable pages, has immortalized in literature – perhaps the most perennial art – its people, its streets, buildings, monuments, parks, and cafes? Are the questions that are asked
Andreu Gomila and
Diego Piccininno
in the foreword to the book
Barcelona: provisional title. A viatge literari per la Ciutat
(Barcelona City Council). To begin with, a city where two Nobel laureates have lived on the same corner (Caponata and Osi streets) already has a lot of livestock.
Gomila was born in Palma and works as a cultural journalist in Barcelona, and Piccininno is from Buenos Aires and also works as a designer in the Rosa de Foc, in the City
Count, in the City of Prodigies, in Cap i Casal … A city that, they consider, he didn’t just have his “great novel” and that is why the book they are now publishing sports that “provisional title”.
The eight chosen authors: Rodoreda, Monzó, Cabré, Marsé, Bolaño, Roig, Marçal and Vázquez Montalbán
But the publishers of the book are not satisfied and have invited a dozen authors to talk about other authorsLet’s say more classics, and that Barcelona or those Barcelonas that appear in their novels. They acknowledge that some of the commentators may also be commented authors; and, in fact, some are.
From the underworld to the upper part, Barcelona belongs to everyone and belongs to no one: “A city is a living, unstable organism that changes over the years, which changes in contact with the observer,” they say. anthologies. AND Marina Espasa, who in the last chapter talks about active writers, points out: “It is not only written about places, but also from places, or in spite of places, or against them.”
The editors consider that there are eight unquestionable writers, and apologize for all those left out of their selection. The book is “an unfinished journey because in any selection there are deficiencies that derive from the tastes of the anthologists ”. The eight magnificent of Barcelona, circumscribed to the last hundred years, are Mercè Rodoreda, Quim Monzó, Jaume Cabré, Juan Marsé, Roberto Bolaño, Montserrat Roig, Maria-Mercè Marçal and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. But it does not mean that the book only talks about them, because it includes four other chapters that deal with the Barcelona of vice, that of the years of the Latin American boom, that of the crime novel and that of the authors who published in the 21st century.
Perhaps there is no single work, but the authors confirm the literary strength of the Catalan capital.
The writer Marta Pessarrodona
approaches Mercè Rodoreda and consider that
Plaça del Diamant
“It is comparable, with respect to the relationship between novel and city, to the
Berlin Alexanderplatz
from Döblin, al
Ulysses
from Joyce, or
Mrs Dalloway
Woolf’s. ” Still, he vindicates the strength of
Mirall trencat
as Rodoreda’s own competence: “The status of being disputed the Barcelona novel ”, in an author who lived half her life, literally, lived it in exile.
Of
Jaume Cabré
,
Simona Škrabec
choose
Senyoria
, the novel that takes place in Barcelona still walled, which although it may seem like a dark and historical novel, is not: “The reading of this novel works like an analogy: in this past Barcelona we seek parallels with our own experiences in this same city and also anywhere else in the world ”.
How could it be otherwise,
Carlos Zanón is in charge of talking about
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
, whom he describes as “exceptional cicerone”: “I begin to believe that MVM wanted to be honest but not necessarily objective with his city.”
In its turn,
Ignacio Echevarría describes the Barcelona of Roberto Bolaño, first circumscribed to the microcosm that is created around its small apartment on Calle Tallers, which it later expands thanks to the editorials with which it works, located in the upper part.
Pessarrodona considers that there are two Rodoreda novels that compete to be the great novel in Barcelona: ‘La plaça del Diamant’ and ‘Mirall trencat’
Of Juan Marsé, journalist David Castillo He says that “the city appears in a poetic key within his prose”, with Carmel del Pijoaparte and Sant Gervasi de Teresa, or Plaza Rovira de las
aventis
.
The critic Julià Guillamon discover the urban utopia of
Quim Monzó
, an author who portrays insurmountable corners of the city that build his next utopia, that of the Sants neighborhood in the foreground, “that allows one to think that, under the indifferent city, there are things that are of interest”. Monzó captures a city from a new perspective never seen before, which made it a place “where it was worth living.”
The writer Irene Solà
it gets in the skin of Montserrat Roig and, in the Born neighborhood, he follows in his footsteps: “Reading with your feet. Walk the layers of memory and literature with your shoes. As if I were blind and the city was a braille text ”.
The poet Blanca Llum Vidal talks about the Barcelona of Maria-Mercè
Marçal thinking of the poem dedicated to the murder of Francesc Layret, “which did not separate the claims of Catalanism from those of the labor movement.” But she also remembers what the writer who grew up in Ivars d’Urgell says, and studied in Lleida and Barcelona: “La Ciutat
cimeja in the meva infantesa com a pol singularment lluminós, unique, l’altre extrem of the meva rural realitat of every day ”.
To the eight chosen authors we must add the four thematic chapters. Apart from the aforementioned of Marina Espasa,
Andreu Gomila analyzes a literary century of what was known as District V, from
The xava
, by Juli Vallmitjana, until the
Rue des Voleurs
by Mathias
Enard. It is time to talk about the Sagarra of
Private life
or the Casavella of
The day of the Watusi
. These underworld they are also the favorites of foreign writers who have written about the city, such as
Jean Genet (
Journal du voleur
) or André Pieyre de Mandiargues (
The marge
).
Xavi Ayén who dissects the Barcelona of the Latin American boom, that of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, but also of José Donoso and Jorge Edwards, with a common denominator, the literary agent Carmen Balcells
Journalist Xavi Ayén
, specialized in Spanish and Latin American literature, is the one who dissects the Barcelona of Latin American boomthe of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa
, who in Barcelona were friends and neighbors, but also from
Jose Donoso and
Jorge Edwards
, with a common denominator, the literary agent Carmen Balcells. In those years of
gauche divine
also add to Julio Cortazar and
Carlos Fuentes, who visited the city frequently.
Teresa Solana is in charge of the chapter dedicated to Black barcelona, of
Rafael Tasis to
Giménez Barlett
, going by Pedrolo
,
Jaume
Fuster
,
Andreu Martín
,
Sierra and Fabra
,
Maria Antonia
Oliver
,
Susana Hernández
,
Gonzalez Ledesma, Marc Pastor, Zanón, Llort, Anna Maria Vilallonga…
Perhaps there is no great novel from Barcelona, but it is evident that the literary strength of the city is unquestionable.
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