Comments on Montano’s Malady—-by Enrique Vila-Matas
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If you are reading this,, you are suffering from the illness which the book I am urging upon you is the only cure. Ok, the only palliative. Well, then, one of the best of currently available ameliorations.
We are all, dear reader, sufferers of what Enrique Vila-Matas has name Montano’s Malady. Literature-sickness.
The book is maddening and delightful, as it should be, I guess, since it purports so much about such important things as literature, art, sickness, death and time. All the usuals. And Vila-Matas takes the risk and manages to pull off a magnificent collaging of it all—perhaps a sort of Napoleon pastry of a book—multi-layered thin sheaves interlayered with creamy fillings that are too rich, sugary and overwhelming to be believed.
He gets “everyone” into his labyrinthine pantheon–Cervantes, Sterne, Kafka, Perec, Magris, Musil, Proust, Sebald, Cheever, Walser, Shakespeare, Mann, and Neruda. What about Nabokov? Probably, but my head seems to be too dizzy to be sure.
Pastiche, collage, homage, imitation, invention, allusion, quotation—encyclopedic, repetitive, irritating, fascinating, intriguing, attempting too much, being way too derivative, yet full of its own welter of surprise, original interpretation, admirable mastery. Vila-Matas wants to blur and blend all the writing forms—diary, essay, novel, autobiography, dictionary, criticism, poetry, interview, and lecture.
He divides the book into five chapters—the well-made five act play. He gives himself a wife, Rosa, a best friend-monster enemy, Tongoy, a pseudonym, and a few pet locations—Valparaiso,
—later — from an email—
so that was my first burst of enthusiasm—-later my opinion turned—
just finished a spanish novel Montano’s Malady by a barcelonan writer–Vila-Matas. I had really like an earlier one by him Bartleby & Co in which he lines up the lives of lots of writers who announced to the world that they were ceasing to write—Melville’s Bartleby, the clerk who says to all
queries—-”I would prefer not to. ”
This malady of Montano’s is literature-sickness—perfect for people who read and write too much, or at all— The book starts well–wittily enough—and then gets further into trying to merge and blend all forms of writing—diary, journal, novel, essay, travel essay, etc etc—which I think I will like— but after half way through the whole thing turned sour for me and the narrator just becomes a sort of fussy worrying pain in the ass. He name drops and imitates “everyone” he can think of—all the writers famous for great journals etc etc — but then it all becomes too much and too tedious finally. He doesn’t really have enough to say or discover on his own with all of this trickery. He tries too hard—you can see him performing for the cafe writerly society in Barcelona and south america. Borges and all that. He might have had an interesting book had he left out. All of that Altermodern stuff. Just a plain old narrative-diary-travel-novel with meditations on books read along the way.
But now I’ve swung too far in the other direction, haven’t I? I marked and underlined lots of places in the book—lots of fascinating and interesting things said and observed.
