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Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. His works include Bartleby & Co, Montano, Never Any End to Paris, The Vertical Journey, winner of the Premio Romulo Gallegos, and Dublinesque, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. 'February 2008' is an excerpt from his novel Dietario Voluble, published by Anagrama in 2008.

Articles Available Online


Writers from the Old Days

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Issue No. 13

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. J. S. Tennant

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Issue No. 13

Augusto Monterroso wrote that sooner or later the Latin American writer faces three possible fates: exile, imprisonment or burial.   I met Roberto Bolaño...

poetry

January 2015

Litanies of an Audacious Rosary

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. Rosalind Harvey

poetry

January 2015

FEBRUARY 2008   * I’m outraged, but I’ve learned a way of reasoning that quickly defuses my exasperation. This...

The first contact I had with Mary Ruefle was through her website Against a black landing page, five headings in yellow serif font float, suspended in HTML darkness Clicking on the ‘contact’ link redirected me to a cruel joke: ‘Surprise! I do not actually own a computer The only way to contact me is by contacting my press, Wave Books, or by running into someone I know personally on the street’ This message hovered next to an image of an empty stone font resembling a bird bath, over whose basin had been taped the words ‘The Unknown’ Since Ruefle lives in Bennington, Vermont, a chance encounter seemed unlikely Instead, I got in touch with her ‘people’ Doing so marked the beginning of a generous correspondence unfolding over several months, all via ‘snail mail’ A reflection of her devotion to the materiality of writing, Ruefle writes almost exclusively by hand, a habit which does nothing to inhibit her productivity She has published eleven books of poetry, two volumes of prose and one comic, alongside a collection of lectures She has also made some ninety-nine erasure books, a ritual to which she dedicates herself daily I was reminded of this each time she returned the transcript of our interview, cross-hatched with red ink, and little white shadows of Tippex   ‘Wite-Out’ forms a kind of scar, evidence of one formulation of thought deleted at another’s expense; it is also a gesture of illumination, of ‘burying and bringing to light’ Ruefle’s writing pinpoints little snags in the fabric of the ordinary – a woman suddenly too fearful of the light inside her refrigerator to access a pitcher of water, or that ‘feeling of frightening abundance’ that descends when you realise there is altogether ‘too much shampoo and too much toothpaste, too much pollution, dirt, rocks and grass’ in this world Rote gestures, like sweeping crumbs from the kitchen counter, gain dimensions of tenderness wilfully repressed in everyday life As Ruefle confesses: ‘I like to turn ordinary actions into an encounter’ A preoccupation with dust, dishcloths and petroleum jelly is a political preoccupation, with the

Contributor

August 2014

Enrique Vila-Matas

Contributor

August 2014

Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. His works include Bartleby & Co, Montano, Never Any End to...

Leaving Theories Behind

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Issue No. 9

Enrique Vila-Matas

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Issue No. 9

I. I went to Lyon because an organisation called Villa Fondebrider invited me to give a talk on the relationship between fiction and reality as...

READ NEXT

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November 2016

Hot Rocks

Izabella Scott

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November 2016

‘We have received around 150 of them,’ Massimo Osanna tells me, as we peer into four small crates stuffed...

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Issue No. 17

Ada Kaleh

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 17

When King Carol II of Romania set foot on the tiny Danubian island of Ada Kaleh on 4 May...

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Issue No. 5

Choose Your Own Formalism

David Auerbach

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Issue No. 5

1. ALL SQUARES RESIDE IN THE HUMAN BREAST In 2007 game designer and Second Life CEO Rod Humble wrote...

 

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