Dublinesque

Dublinesque - Enrique Vila-Matas
(Translated by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean)
"'Dublin?' she asks, surprised. 'And what are you going to do there? Start drinking again.'"

When #SpanishLitMonth was brought to my attention it was Bloomsday so this was an obvious choice, concerning, as it does, a visit to Dublin for June 16th to hold a funeral for "the Gutenburg Galaxy" - the world of the printed book. I was also eager to read more from Vila-Matas as I had enjoyed Bartleby & Co so much. This was also sitting on my shelves in three-dimensional, ink on paper form...

The central character is Samuel Riba, retired publisher, sober alcoholic. He "has published many of the great writers of his time" but, we learn, is not great with figures and his company went under. Drink almost pulled him under with the company and threatened to bring his marriage to a painful end. With little to fill his time Riba has developed an unhealthily close relationship with his computer screen and feels that he is becoming like the "hikikiomori, young Japanese people who suffer from IT autism, and who in order to avoid outside pressure react by withdrawing completely from society." I felt a certain fellow feeling...

Bartleby & Co

Bartleby & Co - Enrique Vila-Matas

On the evidence of this book and Tony's review of Dublinesque
this is another writer to add to the expanding list of writers I need to explore in depth. Bartleby & Co is an essay thinly disguised as a novel, thinly disguised as a series of footnotes to the ongoing death of literature.

Firstly, my disappointment, just to get it out of the way. That is, a disappointment with regards to the book rather than with the inability of man to assign any kind of adhesive meaning to the ongoing story of our species.

When I realized what this book was about - writers who say NO to writing - I felt that I was sure to meet again the great American writer Joseph Mitchell who is mainly known for his last decades when he still continued to come to his office in the New Yorker but published nothing¹. However he remains as elusive as his own copy became.