I recently came back from El Camino, walking 87 kilometers with my dad from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela. Before flying back to real life, I stopped in Barcelona for a day. As I’ll do anywhere I am, I made my way to the bookstore. That’s why I ended up at the +Bernat Llibreria in Carrer de Buenos Aires. There were many shelves. And I stood in front of one for half an hour staring at the books, reading back covers, and flipping pages. Each shelf is a whole universe, so you might understand why I rarely manage to go through more than two or three when I encounter a new bookstore. To me, the behavior is entirely reasonable. However, the man at the bookstore, whether he was the owner or the person in charge for the day I don’t know, found it strange. He tapped me, and asserted: “You can sit down. It’s weird to just stand there for so long.” His bluntness was refreshing, to be honest. I kindly responded that I wasn’t ready to sit down. I was still looking.
Eventually, I came across Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas. I looked at the opening pages, turned to some random page in the middle to see if the qualities that had caught my eye in the first few paragraphs persisted, felt the weight of the book, and got that gut feeling I get when I know I’ve found the next addition to my personal library. The man at the bookstore asked me why I wanted a Vila-Matas book. I’d read some of Bartleby y compañia, I told him, I’d liked it, and I wanted to read more, that’s why. Imagine how excited I got when he let me know Vila-Matas lives just around the corner and often comes by! He’s a friend of the bookstore, he added. How wonderful the idea that we can be friends with books and bookstores.
After walking some more, sweating in the heat, getting hungry (or more accurately hangry), and eating a lasagna, I found a bench. It had enough shade, enough sun, and that ineffable vibe that makes it a perfect reading spot. As I read, one passage on the difference between the short story and the novel struck me. It was beautifully pedestrian. Merely days removed from El Camino, that feeling of transient presence, arriving to leave just as quickly, was still strong. So, Vila-Matas’ likening of the short story to a vagabond that arrives to leave just as quickly, and yet still leaves a trace, resonated wonderfully with me in that moment:
Aunque los asuntos del mundo me llevaron pronto por derroteros inesperados y nunca he escrito nada con intención literaria hasta hoy, siempre he sido un apasionado de la lectura. Primero, lector de poesía; mas tarde, de relatos, un aficionado a las formas breves. Adoro los cuentos. No simpatizo, en cambio, con las novelas porque son, como decía Barthes, una forma de muerte: convierten la vida en destino. Si un día escribiera una, me gustaría perderla como quien pierde una manzana al comprar varias en el colmado paquistaní de la esquina. Me gustaría perderla para demostrar que me importan un carajo la novelas y que prefiero otras formas literarias. Me marcó mucho un relato muy breve de Ana María Matute, donde se decía que el cuento tiene un viejo corazón de vagabundo, y llega caminando a los pueblos y luego desaparece… Y concluía Matute: « El cuento se va, pero deja su huella ».
I don’t have the book’s English translation. I hoped to find the passage translated online, but couldn’t. So, I’ve translated it myself. Keep in mind I’m not a translator. Hopefully, I’ve still managed to capture its essence.
Although circumstances soon took me down unexpected paths and although I have never written anything with literary intention until today, I have always been a lover of literature. First, I was a reader of poetry; later, of narrative, always a lover of the short form. I love short stories. I’m not sympathetic, however, to novels because they are, as Barthes says, a form of death: they give the impression of life as destiny. If one day I were to write one, I would like to lose it like one loses an apple after buying many at the Pakistani corner store. I would like to lose it to prove that I don’t give one damn about novels and that I prefer other literary forms. I was greatly moved by a very brief account from Ana María Matute, which said that the short story has the old soul of a vagabond, that it arrives to the villages walking and then disappears… And Matute concluded: “The story leaves, but it leaves its trace.”
Many encounters, between humans, between living beings, with trinkets and things and the vast, vast natural world, I think are like this, like short stories — fleeting and transient yet strangely meaningful.
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