Vila-Matas would prefer not to celebrate it

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o se nos ocurre mejor manera de empezar un artículo sobre Enrique Vila-Matas (Barcelona, 1948) que contradiciéndole. Es conocida la aversión del escritor shandy hacia los números redondos, pero sus lectores no podemos dejar de celebrar con alborozo los veinte años de Bartleby y compañía, uno de sus mejores libros. ¿Qué tendrán que ver los ordinales con la literatura del barcelonés? se preguntarán, por tanto, los más perspicaces. ¿Qué tendrán que ver los ránkings con una obra que no cesa de construir túneles submarinos con los que conectarse con la literatura universal? Y tendrán razón. Si lo pensamos bien, un libro de Vila-Matas acaso no sea ---como cualquier libro que merezca verdaderamente la pena--- más que una suerte de variación casi musical capaz de matizar con su peso específico al resto de textos existentes en la galaxia literaria.

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El caso es que Bartleby y compañía, con sus páginas llenas de luz oscura, de antimateria literaria, resulta una variación especialmente relevante, que ha redefinido no solo la trayectoria del propio Vila-Matas ---antes de ella parecía a estar condenado a la prestigiosa pero funesta categoría de "autor de culto"---, sino buena parte de lo que iba a ser la literatura en el siglo XXI. Llevando a la realidad con valentía y lucidez algunas de las lecciones que Italo Calvino indicó para el nuevo milenio. Además, a punto de cumplir los veinte años, sigue vivita y coleando, fresquísima en los anaqueles de las nuevas generaciones de lectores, resistiéndose a la categorización genérica de la critique, la critique. Más conforme en ser calificada por lo que no es ---no en vano su tema versa sobre los escritores del "no" estético--- que a lo que finalmente resulta, un libro que se resiste a ser etiquetado, que prefiere que no lo hagamos.

No es una novela, ni un ensayo, ni un diario, ni una antología de notas a pie de página sobre un texto invisible. O mejor, es todo eso pero de forma no exclusivista

Indeed, the book is not a novel, nor an essay, nor a diary, nor an anthology of footnotes on an invisible text. Or rather, it is all of that but in a non-exclusive way, it takes resources from each of those genres to establish itself as one of the works ---forgive the solemnity for a moment--- with which Literature written in Spanish fully enters the 21st century. And it does so in a transnational and asynchronous way, only concerned with the author's elective affinities, who, taking the office worker of anouvelleofHerman Melville ---one who to any vital or work requirement responded: "I would prefer not to"--- to review a hundred writers who stopped writing, or who never did or who suddenly ceased. A hundred characters ---among whom isRulfoandKafkaandPepín Bellowho know the tension between writing or being silent, who know withWittgensteinthat reality cannot be reflected in words and despite this we want to continue reading and writing.

We were saying that Bartleby is defined more by what it is not than by what it is. For not being, the work with which we consider the 21st century to begin in the Castilian language would not even be written in the correct century, nor almost in the previous one. The year 2000 is a year that should not exist ---just as year 0 does not exist---, the year of indeterminacy, when in Europe we were in the transition of currencies and the twin towers were not yet a symbol of destruction. What the book is, like all the author's work, is a feast for ironic intelligence, that very un-Hispanic tradition that Vila-Matas has managed to cultivate in lands that were supposedly infertile for such herbs.

In the courtyards and bars of the faculties, in literary gatherings for the most avid coffee drinkers, his name functioned among us like a password

It would not be out of place to remember that for the young readers and writers of Barcelona in the late nineties, Vila-Matas was a literary legend. In the courtyards and bars of the faculties, in literary gatherings for the most avid coffee drinkers, his name functioned among us like a password. Understand me, he was a legend perhaps even before he deserved it. I mean there was a time when for us Vila-Matas was the Milan ofArrigo Sachiand Barça ofJohan Cruyff. But it was a legendary team that still hadn't won any titles. We felt that we shared streets, drinks, dates with adream teamliterary that fit entirely in Vila-Matas's head, translated into multiple languages, winner of the Herralde and Rómulo Gallegos prizes, studied and celebrated. But the fact is that if we review the publication dates of his books and those awards, we discover that some with which he made the leap to his new way of writing – which inaugurates a new way of reading – were written after his acolytes thought he had already done so.

Some nights I like to think that probably a handful of readers imagined the excellence of Vila-Matas's Literature even before it materialized in the form of a media and cultural supernova. Sometimes I imagine that such a supposition is not impossible. Vila-Matas himself recounts that before writing – fascinated by the image of Mastroianni in a role – he wanted to become a writer. The anecdote is also well-known that when he said goodbye to his youth gang, in the dead of night in Boccaccio, he would say goodbye with a:

–Know that I have stopped writing.

To which his companions would reply: "But how are you going to stop writing if you've never written?"

Now we know that with the publication of Bartleby, the general public's reception began with a book about the end of writing. Now we know that, fortunately for all of us, Vila-Matas decided to be Vila-Matas, to live up to the myth, he decided to persist in writing, and what is more important, to persist in his writing. Now, once that young Rimbaudian who played at being cursed has changed his forms and style for elegance and extreme education, his work shines even brighter. Inventor of his own tradition, he ended up convincing us all. The Vila-Matian miracle is that of making a very personal literature popular, a system of his own, and that through multiple external quotes he constructs an original work that can only be his. Anti-solemn and transcendent, ironic but profound. Like Kafka's Prague, or Joyce's Dublin, Vila-Matas's Barcelona is now part of the literary universe. If you haven't read him yet, you're in luck. Prepare for what awaits you.