Between Eternities
And Other Writings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An exhilarating collection of critical and personal writings—spanning more than twenty years of work—from the internationally renowned author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White. • "The most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature." —The Boston Globe
Javier Marías is a tireless examiner of the world around us: essayist, novelist, translator, voracious reader, enthusiastic debunker of pretension, and vigorous polymath. He is able to discover what many of us fail to notice or have never put into words, and he keeps looking long after most of us have turned away.
This new collection of essays--by turns literary, philosophical, and autobiographical--journeys from the crumbling canals of Venice to the wide horizons of the Wild West, and Marías captures each new vista with razor-sharp acuity and wit. He explores, with characteristic relish, subjects ranging from soccer to classic cinema, from comic books and toy soldiers to mortality and memory, from "The Most Conceited of Cities" to "Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted," making each brilliantly and inimitably his own.
Trenchant and wry, subversive and penetrating, Between Eternities is a collection of dazzling intellectual curiosity, offering a window into the expansive mind of the man so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spanish novelist Mar as (While the Women Are Sleeping) draws from 20 years of weekly newspaper columns to assemble a collection that is often funny, sometimes wise, and always thought provoking. The essays tackle approachable themes with lan and even bombast, as when he declares that all cities are either "boastful" like Madrid, or "conceited" like New York, which "attracts by cultivating an ever closer resemblance to the preconceived image one has of it." In "The Invading Library," he describes how his childhood struggles to find space to play amid stacks of his parents' books resulted in his fondness for literature, as well as a "lack of respect for anyone who writes, myself included... individuals who partially soured my childhood and invaded the territory occupied by my thrilling games." But he also writes more emotionally, such as when reflecting on "the pain caused when something ends" while observing his friends mourn their children growing up and leaving home. Mar as says that he writes like he reads, and the same way life is lived without knowing what is going to happen in the end. This open-minded, playful approach permeates his delightful essays.