In 2010, Jordi Llovet published a small essay dedicated to friendship with Katz Editores. It is precisely titled La amistad + Conversación con un amigo (entrevista de Llàtzer Moix). It is a passionate eulogy to friendship throughout time, full of historical, philosophical, and literary references. He explains, for example, that Aristotle formulated the first great political theory of friendship which, in practice, is found in the constitution of the ideal city of Catalan noucentisme. For the philosopher, according to Professor Llovet, two good friends are nothing more than the first consistent, intelligent, and mature model for the constitution and strengthening of the polis, the city. In other words, friendship is the foundation upon which the city is built.
Of city and friendship, of love and sex, Andrew Holleran also speaks in Dancer from the dance, a gay novel about wild and libertine New York in the seventies. I especially remember a beautiful passage in which Holleran explains that New York becomes the space where, finally, young people from all corners of the country can be who they are: "Many of those young men were extremely attractive, whose mysterious disappearance in New York their families (ignorant of their homosexual condition) understood less than if they had been taken by a traffic accident." Last week, we commented with the bookseller Josep Vitas from Antinous (Casanova, 72) that it is a shame that a classic like this has never been translated into Catalan and that, in Spanish (El danzarín y la danza. Odisea Editorial, 2006), it can now only be found in second-hand bookstores.
One book always calls to other books, and for me, reading Diguem-ne amor (Ara Llibres, 2022), the literary debut of Marta Vives (Reus, 1976), has made me think of Professor Llovet's essay and Holleran's novel. I have known Marta for more than twenty years because both she and I have spent half our professional lives at Catalunya Ràdio. To debut as a writer ---although she thinks that this word, writer, is too big for her, I am convinced that it is the one that corresponds to her---, Marta has written a collection of twelve real love stories with more wasabi than sugar. Although the title might lead us to think that we are facing an excessively sweet book, I get the impression that her stories have a powerful flavor, because they sting, because they cook inside. Like wasabi, you know.
A book always calls for other books and, for me, reading Diguem-ne amor (Ara Llibres, 2022), the literary debut of Marta Vives (Reus, 1976), made me think of Professor Llovet's essay and Holleran's novel.If Marta wants us to call it love, we will call it love, but, in most cases, we could also call it friendship, which, after all, is still a form of love.Although he surely hasn't done it premeditatedly, his book is an ode to friendship and also to the city because it perfectly reflects how a network of affections among friends ends up vertebrating the city.Let's call it loveit is a 100% Barcelona book. That is why I think it could also be calledLet's call it love (in Barcelona). The city, ours, is not only the setting where the twelve stories it tells us mainly take place, but Barcelona plays a decisive driving role. In many of these stories, the provoking agent, to put it in Pere Gimferrer's way, is the city. Barcelona is the meeting point for people from Catalonia and around the world.Women and men who, sometimes, leave family behind to build new ties with strangers. Who network. People with whom they share joys and sorrows. Bonds of friendship with neighbors, classmates and co-workers, and even with the homeless person under their house...
I really like that Marta has written such a radically urban book. About love in the city and perhaps also for the city. I think it was about time someone did it! It's as if for some time now everyone wants to dance with the mountains. I think of all those urbanites who, during the pandemic, inspired by Thoreau or Quim Masferrer, have left the city to settle in villages in search of a more authentic life and who then write books about their experience. As if everything in the city were faker: the tomatoes, the air, friendships or love. In Diguem-ne amor, the city is not a hostile setting but, in most cases, the beloved space, the setting that its protagonists have chosen to live and try to make their dreams come true. The city, in short, as a setting for loving each other. Read it. And may Cesc Gay make the movie soon.