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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...

4    It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m standing newly divorced on a roof in a town, we toast the rockets wobble on their way what a party what an opportunity, almost an imperative to think something and do something about what you’ve thought   I think   I’m here now   I think   What do I need   Consumption inspires strength of mind even though it’s mindless but that’s a bad sentence to start a new year with, even though it’s true   I need: new beginnings, new maxims, new year’s resolutions   Of others I know only that it sucks the life out of a human being never to say thank you and to thank too much you have to do your own thing, put yourself first   or precisely don’t think so much don’t follow your desires, but pursue them and hope you don’t turn into some kind of monster on the way a monster that pulls things off the shelves with a dead automation and is itself anderswo engagiert and moreover has been so for a long time a monster that rattles around with its shopping trolley   A new year’s resolution: Don’t listen to too much twaddle that separates you from yourself but that’s difficult to live up to that’s why you need a resolution   A new year’s resolution: Listen to much and many because you can’t know beforehand what you’re missing what you’ll miss due to prejudice and stupidity so let it be a new year’s resolution to be less prejudiced and lazy and stupid but that’s difficult to live up to   I’m here now in the midst of life   Life which like time shifts restlessly in the sofa but never goes away life which is the opposite of death and death which is a euphemism for somethingorother orgasm, happiness, peace at long last, some peace and quiet imagine! to be able to just lounge  in the big, silent house where only tiredness moves   A new year’s resolution: Try not to read everything as if it were entrails or coffee grounds try not to long for everything too much try not to apologise for everything the apology is like the thank you a stupid place to be conscripted fanaticism is so unbecoming   I speak to myself in the imperative: Remember! that everyone knows a handful of psychopaths who live their lives as though they were the only person in it these people aren’t capable of much apart from working and partying and

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...

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poetry

December 2016

Three Poems

Adelaide Docx

poetry

December 2016

ADVICE FROM BENJO CORTEZ GALLERY OWNER, CHELSEA THE RED CAT, NEW YORK, 2AM    When I feel something It...

Interview

September 2016

Interview with Garth Greenwell

Michael Amherst

Interview

September 2016

Garth Greenwell’s debut novel What Belongs to You has won praise on both sides of the Atlantic. Edmund White...

Art

May 2014

The Interzone and Dexter Dalwood

Sarah Hegenbart

Dexter Dalwood

Art

May 2014

‘Burroughs in Tangier’ (2005) has captivated me ever since its display in the 2010 Turner Prize Exhibition. The work...

 

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