A Brief History of Portable Literature

by Enrique Vila-Matas, Anne McLean (Translator), Thomas Bunstead (Translator)

Overview

A reader’s fictional tour of the art and lives of some of the great 20th-century Surrealists

An author (a version of Vila-Matas himself) presents a short “history” of a secret society, the Shandies, who are obsessed with the concept of “portable literature.” The society is entirely imagined, but in this rollicking, intellectually playful book, its members include writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp, Aleister Crowley, Witold Gombrowicz, Federico García Lorca, Man Ray, and Georgia O’Keefe. The Shandies meet secretly in apartments, hotels, and cafes all over Europe to discuss what great literature really is: brief, not too serious, penetrating the depths of the mysterious. We witness the Shandies having adventures in stationary submarines, underground caverns, African backwaters, and the cultural capitals of Europe. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811223379
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	06/09/2015
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	814,673
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS was born in Barcelona. He has received countless prizes and written numerous award-winning novels, including Bartleby & Co., Montano’s Malady, Never Any End to Paris, and Dublinesque.

Anne McLean lives in Toronto and has translated the works of authors including Javier Cercas, Julio Cortázar, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and Enrique Vila-Matas.

Thomas Bunstead lives in England and has translated the works of Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, and Rodrigo Fresán

Editorial Reviews

…a cult classic that established Mr. Vila-Matas as one of the most original voices of the generation that emerged during Spain's transition into democracy…The thrill of being someone else, playful insouciance and literary high jinks, engaging the ghosts of artists past as if they were contemporaries in a continuing metafictional conversation—these essential elements thread throughout Mr. Vila-Matas's body of work, creating an atlas of episodes in the life of a peripatetic writer. The genesis of this can be found in A Brief History of Portable Literature.

The New York Times - Valerie Miles

03/23/2015
Vila-Matas (Dublinesque) bends borders between authenticity and fabrication in this account of a short-lived (and fictional) secret society of notable artists that includes Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Aleister Crowley, William Carlos Williams, Georgia O’Keeffe, Tristan Tzara, and many others. Chapters follow the group’s efforts to produce and champion “portable” literature, the kind of writing that exhibits the “arrogant velocity of the lightning bolt of insolence.” In a collage of endnotes, quotations, and imagined moments, an unnamed narrator chronicles the covert collaborators: their formation in Nigeria during the summer of 1924, incidents in New York City, events leading to member Jacques Rigaut’s suicide in Paris, stealthy celebrations in Vienna, gatherings in Prague and Trieste, an exploration in a submarine, and attempts to escape their doppelgangers. Describing characteristics of the work by the portable collective, Vila-Matas defines his own writing: “impulsive, puerile, sweet and jumpy, hungry for destruction, and, at the same time, possessed of a lucid experimental intelligence.” His intelligent playfulness and his fervor for written language are visible on every page and highlighted by this excellent translation. Vila-Matas is a master, one of the most gifted contemporary Spanish novelists. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Arguably Spain's most significant contemporary literary figure."

The New Yorker - Joanna Kavenna

"Vila-Matas's work made a tremendous impression on me. I was so fascinated by his humor, the incredible knowledge he has of all kinds of literature, his compassion for writers, and his fearlessness in taking on literary subjects and making that part of what he is writing about."

Paul Auster

"Vila-Matas's touch is light and whimsical, while his allusions encompass a rogue's gallery of world literature."

Time Out New York

06/01/2015
Multi-award-winning Spanish author Vila-Matas (The Illogic of Kassel) has a singular talent for making the cerebral wonderfully entertaining; that talent is nowhere shown to better effect than in this slim but packed novel. The prolog introduces a fictitious society, founded in 1924 and dissolved three years later, that celebrates the concept of "portable literature," driven by new technological possibilities. Members, who include Marcel Duchamp, Federico García Lorca, and Georgia O'Keefe, must demonstrate "an innovative bent, an extreme sexuality, a disinterest in grand statements," and more. Not a standard narrative, exactly, this chronicle of the society's meetings and discussions throughout Europe provides a deep slice of intellectual history. VERDICT Absolutely sublime fun for lovers of novels of ideas.

Library Journal