Toni Sala, thinking delirium

If the reader of this Punyalada is someone accustomed to confessional or autofiction narrative (namely, that type of literature that confuses writing with visiting the therapist, in which bores don't stop bothering us by turning menstruation, acneiform eruptions, or housing precariousness ---ugh--- into a whimper of apparent universalist will) I wholeheartedly recommend that they do not read Toni Sala's latest work. The writer from Sant Feliu de Guíxols is an old-fashioned man, who has no pretension of shaking consciences ---grr--- or stirring souls ---yuck---, as he merely understands the novel as an artifact that should be extremely well-conceived structurally in order to elevate itself to the pinnacle of philosophy. Put more bluntly, Sala does the damn favor of writing plausible stories (however far-fetched they may be), with very well-sculpted characters, who approach the pulse of the times through their miserable anecdote.

Closing of the trilogy that began with the masterpiece Els nois (2014) and the excellent Persecución (2019), Escenaris tells the story of Tomàs Niubò, an actor who has become extremely famous on television and in fantasy series by embodying a fictional character named Malicious. A prototypical victim of a crisis of overabundance and middle age, the protagonist decides to reorient his life towards theatrical monologism in the Barcelona off circuit, reciting texts he memorizes while traveling by car to the middle of nowhere. In one of these mountainous journeys, Niubò crashes into a wild boar and takes a tremendous hit; he will be picked up by Vadó, a chubby man of no apparent interest who works in an industrial park and eats frozen pizzas for dinner, but who will end up becoming his healer. There is also Olga, the nurse who acts as a bridge between the two men and, no spoilers, ends up suffering the tragedy of being able to generate life and death.

In a first instance, Escenaris takes advantage of its protagonist's dissociative amnesia to rise to the sky and tell us about a country that has forgotten the foundational rules of courtesy of the social contract and that has also chosen to gradually divorce itself from its language (also from its history), in order to forget and align itself semi-unconsciously with the politics of the last five years, full of impostors and caixacobris. At an even deeper level, I would say that this is above all a novel about three beings with a self-destructive impulse who try to think about the delirium of a country in tatters through strategies that mix agonizing survival and the impulse to kill themselves. From a foundational-violent beginning, the degeneration of this famous actor gives us a photograph of a world where we still don't know for sure why we want to continue configuring a community and how it will be able to survive in the soul of almost dying beings.

I solemnly affirm that, with Joan Jordi Miralles and Núria Perpinyà, Toni Sala is one of our best writers and also that if this novel bore the name of Ian McEwan or Miranda July on the cover, the catalanets would buy and praise it with great enthusiasm. I also maintain that the novel is the rawest of the trilogy mentioned; in an interview with colleague Bernat Puigtobella in Núvol, the writer confessed to having woven it in a kind of state of trance. I dare to put myself in the author's shoes and would say that he has rather suffered the dizziness of having to narrate a historical time where everyone goes through the world in a bad mood and -if they have enough money- fights to save themselves by illusorily cross-dressing their identity or, in case of leading a pauper's life, continuing the species with parsimony or embracing the darkness of the sea. The writer, brave as few, recounts the inertia that leads us to kill ourselves in truly anthological chapters.

This novel of monologal vomits ---ugh--- has a very clear stylistic father and his name is Thomas Bernhard. I don't know if Toni has been reading the Austrian lately, but Escenaris manages to remind me very often of my literary idol of all time, with that mix of anger and love for the things he tries to destroy through long diatribes without a single paragraph break. Also for an underlying attitude, through which our writer has decided to weave his career as an anchorite, far from the noise of the world and the supreme foolishness of social networks and cultural journalism. As a reader, I greet with great enthusiasm this new text that certifies L'Altra editorial as the heir of Quaderns Crema in terms of contemporary nostrada literature and the search for texts of foundational spirit (now, in Can Vallcorba they don't give a damn about Catalan anymore). Apart from the writer, we congratulate the editor.

I beg you, stop wasting time with shitty menopausal novels and rush to Toni Sala's new great text. You will suffer, because that is the only way to learn fundamental things, but ---when you finish it--- you will be tempted to get up from your armchair and applaud an excellent chronicler of his time. Well-woven prose, random lives that explain the world to us, contingencies that, in short, shoot us into the stratosphere of thought and question the castrated normalization of the spirit. A novel about how to digest delirium, in short. May the author rest and take his time before returning; we will patiently await his new vital accident.