Event Highlights: European Voices: A Reading & Conversation with Enrique Vila-Matas
On Tuesday, October 4th, the Boston University Center for the Study of Europe welcomed renowned literary figure Enrique Vila-Matas for a reading and conversation. Born in Barcelona, Vila-Matas is the recipient of international literary prizes such as the FIL Award in 2015, and has been both long and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His successes have led to the translation of his works into thirty-seven languages; his most recent publications in English include Because She Never Asked and Illogic of Kassel, with a collection of short fiction called Vampire in Love just gathered for the first time in English in September of 2016.
Hailed as “arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure” according to Joanna Kavenna of the New Yorker, Vila-Matas’ works intermix fiction, essay, and biography to redefine his own literary canon of contemporary Spanish literature.
“His work is a texture of real and invented quotation,” says Christopher Maurer, Professor of Spanish at Boston University. While Vila-Matas’ books cross genres and continents, he does still ascertain that he does not plan to abandon any one form of storytelling in favor of another.
“In March, I am going to come out with a book that is a mix of novel, short story, essay, and diary,” Vila-Matas shares. “In that book, the voice of the narrator has a lot of the characteristics of an essayist voice, an essayist who is influenced by poetry…in that sense, narrative supports essay and all of these different genres buttress each other mutually, but I will never abandon the pure narrative, if there is such a thing—because we can never abandon the narrative.”
“As a reader, I like poetry, but that’s not necessarily something I feel like I have at my disposal as a writer,” Vila-Matas shares. “I prefer to read (and read a lot more of) essays than narrative forms…when it comes to writing, I see something another author has written and notices the author’s tics, habits, quirks, and anything that I like I want to unlock and figure out how the writer accomplishes [their writing].”
Vila-Matas attributes some of this unconventional genre-bending style to his experience living and studying in Europe. “In the 70’s in Spain, there was this movement of experimental fiction that people protested against because they didn’t understand them that well, and in the 80’s, there was a kind of boom in Spanish narrative, which people thought was good,” he explains. “Around this time, I had been in France and was taking in a lot of literary theory, and didn’t necessarily agree that a good narrative had to include that narrative thrust, that it could include other aspects.”
The themes that Vila-Matas tackles include themes of otherness, art, and existential crises, which Vila-Matas attributes to his poetic and literary influences. “I read a lot of the poets of the Generation of ‘27 with a particular focus on Luis Cernuda, Garcia Lorca and Pedro Salinas.”
“I began by wanting to be original,” explains Vila-Matas. “There’s a caravan of anonymous literature, which speaks to that theme of the lack of originality…and to paraphrase Paul Valerie, one of the hardest things to think about is that there will be man after us.”
– Toria Rainey ’18
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