Mailing List


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

feature

Issue No. 13

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. J. S. Tennant

feature

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...

You won’t be able to do it It is a call, and it is something you only know how to do by doing it over and over Birds practise their musical tunes Cows practise their ‘moo’ as they stroll through the fields But persons don’t know how to make a call, and so you will never be able to do it   ‘Oh you’ is sung It starts out a little bit lower and ends a little bit higher like the call for a Bob White bird, only slower You hold on to it longer And like the call of the Bob White bird, you do it over and over and over again The more you do it, the more you have to do it And you have to think of a 1% solution of WC Fields and little bit of bursting at the end ‘Oh you,’ ‘Oh you’   But anyway, you can’t do it You can’t do it because you hardened your voice around some sounds you heard once And now you can’t change it   You thought it would sound good to hold on to the ts at the ends of words with a breathy whistle that is held until the beginning of next word You make that whistle for every single word that ends with a t You like it, and your head jumps a little bit every time you say it You say ‘but’ or ‘but-uh’ a lot so that you can make that t sound a whole bunch more times You put it in everywhere: But-stah-aah But-stah-aah You put it in between words, at the end of sentences, and at moments when other people would have a chance to talk   Or you say ‘Sure, sure, sure’ while other people are talking like you already thought of everything they were saying a thousand years ago Sometimes you say the name of someone and then ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ Then sometimes you repeat the name several times together with ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ while holding your finger in the air so that they will stop talking and you can say all of your sentences

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

feature

Issue No. 9

Enrique Vila-Matas

feature

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

feature

Issue No. 15

A Weekend With My Own Death

Gabriela Wiener

TR. Lucy Greaves

feature

Issue No. 15

We all have tombs from which we travel. To reach mine I have to get a lift with some...

Art

December 2016

Bonnie Camplin: Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn

Bonnie Camplin

Art

December 2016

  The title of Bonnie Camplin’s exhibition at 3236RLS Gallery, ‘Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn’, brings...

fiction

January 2016

By the River

Esther Kinsky

TR. Martin Chalmers

fiction

January 2016

  For Aljoscha   ST LAWRENCE SEAWAY   Under my finger the map, this quiet pale blue of the...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required