Chirbes Musings to Start Out the Week

Chirbes also thought that Vargas Llosa’s best novel was The War of the End of the World. I feel deeply vindicated.

Curiously, Chirbes was not nearly as widely read in contemporary Spanish literature as I am. He read a lot of European modernists, such as Musil and Döblin, writers that I have never managed to force myself to read beyond the first dozen pages. In contemporary Spanish literature, he really admired Alvaro Pombo’s Contra natura that I discussed recently in this blog. He read a lot of Antonio Muñoz Molina, and his opinions on this writer were identical to mine.

Just so that people know for how much longer I will be torturing them with Riafeil Chirbes’ diaries, I have read and copiously annotated the first two volumes. I have one more volume left. It’s a thousand pages long. I’m right now at the point where Chirbes is finishing his novel Crematorio, which will finally bring him massive recognition within his own country. I love that novel and have published extensively about it. Being able to read a day-to-day account of how the novel was created gives me an almost voyeuristic kind of pleasure.