El viento ligero en Parma. (The Light Wind in Parma)

Reviewed by Catherine Rendón, Savannah, GA -- Críticas, 5/1/2008

Vila-Matas, Enrique.
Mexico: Sexto Piso, dist. by B&T. 2008. 214p. ISBN 978-84-935204-5-8. pap. $13.99. LITERATURE

Catalan novelist and essayist Enrique Vila-Matas (b. 1948) has won several prestigious literary awards, and, in the U.S., New Directions has published a number of his titles in translation, including Bartleby & Co. and Montano's Malady.  This re-edition (it was first published in Mexico in 2004) brings together anecdotes, essays, observations, and reflections about film, places, individuals, and books. As in Montano's Malady, Vila-Matas explores the territory that separates fiction from reality (and vice versa), and where sometimes both are indistinguishable from one another. This collection offers readers an opportunity to dip into Vila-Matas's prodigious knowledge of literature and the world.  He writes about Sterne with the same ease as of Beckett, Bertolucci, Robbe-Grillet, Pitol, Gallego, and Lampedusa as he does about his native Barcelona, Paris, Caracas, or Lisbon. Though readers unfamiliar or uninterested in the vast breadth of Vila-Matas's subjects may be overwhelmed, everyone will find something to their liking here. However, Vila-Matas does not linger anywhere too long, and can incorporate all sorts of associations that, though clever, can be tiresome and pedantic at times. Nonetheless, Vila-Matas has a strong following, and U.S. readers may find this of some use, or even pleasure. Recommended for all libraries with generalist collections


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