"I cannot live without books." -- Thomas Jefferson

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Enrique Vila-Matas' "Never Any End To Paris"


A wonderful fine for me.  And to think of it, I only picked this book up because it had Paris in its title, and its published by New Directions.  Such a beautiful start, and the end is just as wonderful.   Enrique Vila-Matas' novel "Never Any End to Paris"  is for me a mediative and hysterical look at a writer and the writing Parisian writing world, that exists in real life, but also in one's imagination.
It reads like a memoir, and for all I know it is a memoir, but alas, one can see this as almost an early Jean-Luc Godard film.  Zillion of quotes, and literary & film references a go-go.  And that is part of he fun of this novel.
The main character is an obsessed Hemingway fan who may or may not be a talented writer.  And that in the end is not that important, what's the deal is the life one imagines.  Everyone from Boris Vian to Guy Debord come through these pages, and one can write an endless amount of footnotes if that was the need.  But alas, its a trip to a romantic notion of a writer drifting through Paris 20th century literary life.  It was sad to see this novel ending...

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