Mac and His Problem

by Enrique Vila-Matas, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator), Sophie Hughes (Translator)

Enrique Vila-Matas’s new novel is perhaps his greatest: 'playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists' (Colm Tóibín)

Mac is not writing a novel. He is writing a diary, which no one will ever read. At over sixty, and recently unemployed, Mac is a beginner, a novice, an apprentice – delighted by the themes of repetition and falsification, and humbly armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature. Mac's wife, Carmen, thinks he is simply wasting his time and in danger of sliding further into depression and idleness. But Mac persists, diligently recording his daily walks through the neighbourhood. It is the hottest summer Barcelona has seen in over one hundred years.

Soon, despite his best intentions (not to write a novel), Mac begins to notice that life is exhibiting strange literary overtones and imitating fragments of plot. As he sizzles in the heatwave, he becomes ever more immersed in literature – a literature haunted by death but alive with the sheer pleasure of writing.

Intricate, erudite and practically fizzing on the page, Mac and His Problem is a masterpiece of metafiction and a testament to the power and playfulness of great literature.

Genres: Fiction, Spain, Contemporary, Spanish Literature, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction

214 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2017

About the author

Enrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish author. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a founding Knight of the Order of Finnegans, a group which meets in Dublin every year to honour James Joyce. He lives in Barcelona.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Mac's Problem will be a treat for readers who enjoy stories about reading, writing, novels, journals and short stories. I should undoubtedly add two more to the list: Rewriting and Repetition (caps for emphasis). To learn why this is the case, please read on.

“I'm fascinated by the current vogue for posthumous books, and I'm thinking of writing a fake one that could appear to be “posthumous” and “unfinished” when it would, in fact, be perfectly complete.” So begins the tale's narrator, Mac, a gent in his sixties, a lifelong obsessive reader who now has abundant free time following the financial collapse of his construction company. Hey, Mac, how will you spend your days? Answer: Mac plans to sit at his desk in his den and do something completely new: write, specifically, to keep a diary (not for publication in his lifetime).

You're a newbie writer, Mac? That's hard to believe since your writing skills appear to be at the level of an accomplished author, say, someone like Enrique Vila-Matas. And, besides which, halfway through your diary entries, you tell us all that stuff about a construction company is untrue; you're really a lawyer who was sacked from the law firm where you spent your entire professional career.

Whoa, Mac, are you taking on the role of the ultimate unreliable narrator? Hey, Enrique Vila-Matas, similar to Montano's Malady, are you playing a labyrinthine literary shell game with us, your readers? One thing's for certain: exactly what's true and what's not, what's fact and what's made up, will mostly be left to each reader.

Mac obsesses over the act of writing and he laces his quizzical observations and judgements throughout, as per this example: “if he's honest with himself, that this activity (writing) has nothing to do with the vulgar idea of believing himself to be a writer, because – and I want to say this now with no more beating about the bush – in order to write one must cease to be a writer.”

What to make of this remark? My sense is Mac understands a writer is best attending to the writing at hand, simply putting words on paper rather than being continually preoccupied with one's identity and status as a writer.

Yet, is Mac violating his own rule when he tells us: "I wonder why it is that today, knowing myself to be a mere novice, I worked my fingers to the bone trying in vain to begin this diary with a few impeccable opening paragraphs." Hey, Mac, don't drive yourself crazy by being too tough on yourself. Whoops! Such self-analysis could prove a foreshadowing of things to come. Poor, Mac.

Sidebar: Mac's name comes from a famous scene in John Ford's My Darling Clementine involving a bartender by the name of Mac. And Mac refuses to divulge the name appearing on his birth certificate since that name amounts to no more than an awful, tyrannical imposition set down by his paternal grandfather.

Repetition counts as another one of Mac's obsessions, with references to the likes of Søren Kierkegaard, (repetition and recollection are the same movements only in opposite directions), Alejandro Zambra (a character in one of his short stories is a repeater) and Peggy Day (writer of a daily horoscope Mac takes seriously).

Mac's obsessions reach a peak with his interactions on the Barcelona streets with famous author Ander Sánchez – and especially when Mac decides to rewrite a novel Sánchez wrote years ago when mostly drunk, a novel Sánchez considers pure garbage, a novel with the title Walter's Problem.

This brings us to the heart of Mac's Problem: Mac detailing chapters of this Sánchez novel where the author devoted sections to imitating (or parodying) short stories in the style of various authors such as John Cheever, Djuna Barnes, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges. And we're also given samples of Mac, in turn, rewriting Sánchez's stories.

Will such a diary project drive Mac crazy? That's exactly what Mac's wife Carmen thinks is happening. And with justification. For instance, one afternoon Mac returns home drenched in sweat. When Carmen asks Mac what happened, he tells of narrowly escaping death, a chase, karate chops and a possible corpse. And further on, at one point Mac accuses Carmen of carrying on an affair with Sánchez and at another point thinking Carmen plans an escape to Mars.

Are these bizarre exchanges and events happening not out in the world but rather within Mac's mind and diary writing? Let's not forget Mac noting how one character “believed in a fiction that admits to being a fiction, in the knowledge that nothing else exists and that the exquisite truth lies in knowing that it's a fiction, and yet believing in it all the same.”

Enrique Vila-Matas has done it again, writing a novel about the nature of literature that can be read and appreciated on multiple levels.


Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas, born 1948

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020

I found this a bit of a struggle. It is undoubtedly clever and erudite, full of references to other writers, but its mapping of the mental disintegration of Mac, a man with time on his hands after losing his job, is circling, repetitive and not at all easy to follow.

The book purports to be a diary, and Mac's first attempt at writing. He considers updating and rewriting an obscure novel "Walter and his Problem", an thirty-year work by a writer neighbour, the fictional Ander Sánchez. This novel consists of short stories, each taking stylistic leads (and epigraphs) from a different short story master - these are all real writers. Mac's interpretation of these stories becomes increasingly personal and paranoid, and this mirrors Walter, the murderous ventroliquist without a voice of his own at the centre of Sánchez's novel.

[Paula Mota · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*
#enabrilleemosenespañol

Porque, contrariamente ao que julgam alguns frustrados que odeiam a criatividade, para levar a cabo desafios criativos não é necessário renunciar-se a ser humilde. A criatividade é a inteligência a divertir-se. No meu caso, justamente, tentar saber habituou-me – ao longo deste diário – ao encanto das sombras e foi-me tornando, dia após dias, um leitor divertido a quem por vezes agrada a invisibilidade, o oculto, o nublado, o secreto.

Estou de tal forma embevecida com “Mac e o Seu Contratempo” que nada do que eu escreva poderá transmitir a experiência que foi lê-lo. Sabendo que Enrique Vila-Matas gosta de usar outros livros e outros autores como ponto de partida para a sua obra, sempre achei que seria demasiado pretensioso para mim, visto que nem sempre tenho paciência para mil referências literárias nem para metaficção. E nas recensões desta obra muitos o acusam de “name dropping” e de pedantismo, mas para mim todas as menções fazem sentido na estrutura e no propósito ficcional de Vila-Matas: Mac, desempregado, escreve um diário, com a ressalva constante de que não está a escrever um romance, mas ao mesmo tempo desconstrói e explica como reconstruiria um livro de início de carreira de um vizinho, esse sim, escritor publicado. Quem conhece a obra de Vila-Matas de certeza que extrairá mais do que eu desta narrativa; e quem quiser analisá-la minuciosamente, tem aqui pano para mangas. Contudo, tudo o que retirei dela aponta para um escritor extremamente inteligente, com uma cultura imensa, que não se leva demasiado a sério, que goza consigo mesmo através da ideia sempre aqui presente da repetição, da autoficção, de usar a obra alheia para criar o seu próprio universo e fazer exercícios de escrita.
Apesar do final um pouco murcho, acho que fiquei viciada neste que já alguém considerou o mais português dos escritores espanhóis.
Uma nota também para a tradução de Maria Manuel Viana, que simplesmente desliza de tão natural que é.

Tentando sempre saber o que escreveria se escrevesse: dia após dia a costurar o meu imaginário, a tecer uma estrutura que não sei se alguma vez darei por terminada; dia após dia a construir um repertório que intuo infinito e eterno como todo o léxico familiar: um diário onde poderia alongar-me bastante, mudando, pouco a pouco, cada excerto, cada frase, até repetir tudo de tantos milhares de maneiras diferentes que esgotaria o repertório e acabaria por chegar aos limites do nunca dito, ou melhor, às portas do indizível.

[Gorkem · Rating 5 out of 5]

2.OKUMAYA DAİR:
Yavaş yavaş bitirdiğim bu 2.okuma da şunu bir kez daha anladım ki Vila-Matas'ı cidden çok seviyorum. Takıntılı şekilde ele aldığı konular, sunduğu kavramlar, yarattığı evren ve müthiş bir espri anlayışı tek kelimeyle şahsına münhasır.

Mac'in Problemi aslında hepimizin problemi özellikle pandemi sürecinde olan bizler adına. Sürekli aynı şekilde devam bir alanda kendimizce bir şeyler yaratabilmeyi hayal edip, aynı kısır döngüne sürekli dönüp duruyoruz.

Mac unutulmayacak bir karakter. Dünyanın sonunu anlatmayı planladığı kitabının taslağını tekrarlarla sürekli başa dönüp bir Sisifos Söylencesi etkisi yaratarak günlüklükleri vasıtasıyla kendisini tekrardan keşfetmeye çalışıyor.

II.Sonuç
Vila-Matas'a karşı farklı bir fanatik duruş içinde duruyormuş gibi gözüksem de, ki biraz da gerçeklik payı var sanırım, kendisinin vermiş olduğu okuma keyfi bende hep çoşkuyla bitiyor.

Kendisine alışamayan birçok okur, yarattığı evrende okura oluşturduğu entellektüel dünyayı çok küstahça anlattığından dolayı yazarı kibirli buluyor. Aslında bu his Vila-Matas'ın kendi karakterlerinin içinde de mevcut olan bu durumu tiye aldığını bir şekilde okura hep gösteriyor. Umarım Türkçe'ye daha çok Vila-Matas çevrilir.

Okuma şansınız olursa ya da ingilizce okuyabileceğiniz bir şeyler arıyorsanız veya benim gibi Vila-Matas hayranıysanız kaçırmadan okuyun.

---

Enrique Vila-Matas her romanında oluşturduğu meta-roman tarzı ile kendisine olan hayranlığımı hep bir öteye taşıyor. Edebiyatı edebiyattın kendi içinden kişi ve olaylar ile eşleştirip merkezine koyduğu yazar-okur ikilisini her kitabında bir küratör ustalığıyla karşımıza çıkarıyor ki, her kitabında ithaf ettiği yazarları, ressamları ve romanları inanılmaz bir merak duygusu ile sunuyor. Bu tarz da kendisini benim açımdan diğer yazarlardan hep özel bir yerde durmasını neden oluyor. (bkz: Dublinesk, Montano Hastalığı, Kassel'de Mantık Aramak ve Bartleby ve Şürekası)

Konu:
Mac 60larında işsiz, karısının parasıyla geçinen hevesli bir okurdur ve günlük tutmaya karar verir.Ta ki yazar olan komşusuyla tanışıp onun öykülerini okuyup düzeltme durumuna girene kadar. Mac'in kendisini buluşunu ve yeniden var etme çabasını okuyoruz.

Vila-Matas bu yeni kitabında Bartleby ve Şürekası zıttını karşımıza koyan bir karakter ile karşımıza çıkıyor. Bartleby ve Şürekası'nda bir şey yapması istediğinde yapmamayı tercih eden Bartleby yerine, bu sefer Mac ile her şey yapmak isteyen ve tekrar eden bir karakter ile karşı karşıyayız. Fakat bunun yanında tüm karakterlerinde olduğu gibi Mac'te de edebiyat ve yaşam ve gerçeklikten kopma temaları karşımıza çıkıyor. Ve bu durumda Vila-Matas'a özgü inanılmaz bir komedi meydana getiriyor.

Bu romanda Alexandro Zambra,Gogol,Bolano, Faulkner, Perec, Cheever, Djuna Barnes, Borges, Hemingway,vs bize eşlik ediyor.

Sonuç:
Vila-Matas herkesin hemen bir çırpıda seveceği bir yazar değil, fakat okumaya başladığınızda sizi bir kez yakalarsa da kendi özgünlüğüne, mizahına hapseden bir yazar. Mac's Problem uzun zamandır okuma sıkıntısı çekmeye başladığımda elime alıp bırakamadığım bir kitap oldu.

Türkçe'ye ne zaman çevrilir, çevrilir mi bilemem ama eğer bir şekilde okuma şansınız olursa, kesinlikle önereceğim bir kitap.

İyi okumalar!
10/8

""I am one and many and yet I do not know who I am".

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by the current vogue for posthumous books, and I'm thinking of writing a fake one that could appear to be "posthumous" and "unfinished" when it would, in fact, be perfectly complete.

Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vita-Matas was published in 2017, and was translated into English by Sophie Hughes and Margaret Jull Costa and published in 2019 as Mac's Problem by New Directions in the US and as Mac and His Problem by Harvill Secker. In the latter form it has been longlisted for the Booker International.

The UK title seems a better rendering both literally, and in its greater ambiguity, although changing the title does create the scope for confusion, and the spellings elsewhere in the UK version of the novel haven't been corrected (we still have 'neighbors' for example).

As with Houellebecq, from the International Booker list this is my 5th novel by the author. I’ve read Bartleby & Co (in 2004), Montana’s Malady (in 2007), Never Any End to Paris (in 2011), and Dublinesque (in 2012). I loved Bartleby & Co but I stopped reading his new books in translation after Dublinesque. In part it was simply I was struggling to keep up - his output is prolific - but in part as I was suffering diminshing returns and felt Dublinesque in particular lent a little too heavily on its source text, Ulysses, rather than adding to it in the same way as say The River Capture or Dedalus.

The translation team are something of a superstar duo, and the quality of their work is as high as would be expected.

Sophie Hughes appears twice on this year's International Booker longlist and was shortlisted last year, and this is the 5th of her translations I have read, all strikingly different in style, the others:

From the 2020 Booker: Hurricane Season by Fernando Melchor
From the 2019 Booker: The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán
The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse by Iván Repila
An Orphan World by Giuseppe Caputo

And Margaret Jull Costa, translator of Saramago, Marías, Coelho, de Queiroz, Lobo Antunes, Tabucchi, Atxaga, Pessoa, Giralt Torrente, Chirbes and many others, is my most-read translator - last time I tried to count I got to 30+ books before I stopped.

This novel comes with an epigraph from Joe Brainard I remember that I almost always went dressed as a hobo or a ghost. Once I went as a skeleton, but I think the English original, from I Remember (at least as included in The Collected Writings) is actually I remember usually getting dressed up as a hobo or a ghost. One year I was a skeleton," a function one assumes of translation tennis to Spanish and back (Vila-Matas renders the line Me acuerdo de que casi siempre me vestía de vagabundo o de fantasma. Un año fui de esqueleto.) that seems rather fitting for Vila-Matas's project. But with two expert translators I was originally surprised they hadn't checked back to source - but now I suspect they may be playing a deliberate game.

Later on, at a crucial part of the story, the narrator cites epigraph from Bolaño’s Estrella distante (Distant Star). He says Bolaño cites this as being from William Faulkner but as far as I know, no one has yet been able to locate this line in Faulkner’s work ("A día de hoy nadie ha sabido localizar esas palabras en la obra de Faulkner"). And Vila-Matas himself, not just the narrator, thought that was the case.

The Bolaño version of the line is "¿Qué estrella cae sin que nadie la mire?” And Chris Andrews the English translator of Distant Star rendered it as “What star falls unseen?”. But the two English translators of this novel pointed out to the author that the line does indeed appear in a Faulkner poem, from A Green Bough. And the English original is actually “What star is there that falls with none to watch it.?” So in the English version the translators now give the original Faulkner version of the line. And they also added the “as far as I know” qualification (which wasn't in the Spanish original) to make it the narrator’s mistake. Vila-Matas tells the story here (although English speakers will need their own translator!): http://www.enriquevilamatas.com/texto...

The narrator of Mac and His Problems takes his nickname, Mac, from the movie My Darling Clementine (whose theme song brings back horrible memories to me of guitar/singing lessons as a child, and even more horrible memories for my teacher who told my mother she could no longer cope with teaching me after my mangling of this ditty).

His family construction company having gone bust, economically he relies on his wife's income while he, a dedicated reader, decides to begin writing. The book that we are reading starts as a daily exercise that allows me to try my hand at writing -- preliminary literary scraps with my sights on the future -- while saving me from losing all hope in the depths I've been left in by my financial and professional ruin.

One of his neighbours in Barcelona is a writer Ander Sánchez, whose admits to a mutual friend that his one relative failure was a book he wrote some time ago, Walter and His Problem. Mac decides to revisit this book and perhaps even to write his own version. And Walter and His Problem in turn is something of a re-write - the purported memoirs of a ventriloquist, told as a series of connected short stories (whose connections only emerge over time or have to be inferred by the reader), with each short story introduced with an epigraph by, and told in an approximation of the style of, a master of the genre (Cheever, Djuna Barnes, Borges, Hemingway, Carver, Malamud, Schwob, Rhys, Chesterton, Poe).

The narrator at one point, in his novel which he insists is not a novel but a diary, praises, quoting Borges, the short-story, the key here being the need for a dialogue between writer and reader:

Borges always considered novels to be nonnarratives. They were, he said, too far removed from oral narratives, and, as a result, had lost the direct presence of an interlocutor, the presence of someome who could leave gaps for the reader to fill in, and had, therefore, lost the concision of short stories and folk tales. One had to remember, Borges went on to say, that althogh the presence of the listener, the presence of the person listening to the tale, is, indeed, a kind of strange hangover from the past, the short story has survived, in part, precisely thanks to that archaism, thanks to having preserved the figure of the listener, that ghost from the past.

This beneath-the-surface-novel Walter and His Problem is in turn, and in reality, based on Vila-Matas's own yet-to-be-translated-into-English 1998 work, Una casa para siempre, although I believe in that book some of the source authors were fictitious). And the 1998 novel was inspired by the 1929 movie, the Great Gabbo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gre...).

Many other authors feature in the text, from Thomas Bernhard (Sanchez has a nephew who Mac compares to Wittgenstein's Nephew, which is turn links to Diderot’s ) to Philip K. Dick, and there are a couple of neat connections to other Booker longlisted authors. A reference to Sánchez wanting to emulate a certain Norwegian writer whom some misguided critics were comparing with Proust, is a clear nod to Karl Ove Knausgård, who in turn provides the blurb for the UK edition of Serotonin ("One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading Houellebecq's work") and at one point Mac proposes an alternative to an epilogue in Walter and His Problem from Djuna Barnes: "I'd replace it with a piece of dialogue taken from Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin:

Carla, a child is for life

the same Schweblin who is author of Little Eyes. (And in the published English translation of Fever Dream, incidentally, the line is “Carla, children are forever.”)

Perhaps the key reference is Perec's 53 Days, the unfinished novel he was writing when he dies, but which Mac claims (with some logic) is actually a "finished" and perfectly thought-out novel, therefore, which Perec planned down to the very last detail, including the final interruption of the author's death.

It all makes for a tangled tale - repetition, imitation, ventroloquism, alteration and re-attribution are all key to Mac, and Vila-Matas's, literary project.

But to me it didn't make for an entirely satisfactory read - I couldn't help feel at times I'd rather read essay by Vila-Matas than have his thoughts filtered through a thin veil of fiction.

3.5 stars

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i still don't know quite what made me think of all of this, but a diary exists as a lasting record of what we were thinking on any given day, just in case, in the future, on rereading whatever we told ourselves that morning, we discover that the things we wrote down without a second thought are now the only rocks we can cling to.

the ninth of enrique vila-matas's books to be translated into english, mac's problem (mac y su contratiempo) may well be the spanish novelist's liveliest (dare i say friskiest?!) work yet. mac, a newly unemployed builder, sets about keeping a diary (in lieu of a fake posthumous book he'd actually like to write). from there, mac decides to rewrite a novel originally authored by his insufferable neighbor (now a successful writer himself), in which each chapter is written in the style of famous author.

with all of the literary references, stellar prose, erudition, and meta-referentiality that populates his other books, mac's problem is sheer pleasure from beginning to end. musing on themes of repetition, vila-matas's new novel might also be his funniest. faint whiffs of perec and calvino permeate these pages. vila-matas is criminally under-read in english, but mac's problem may well be the best place to start for anyone interested in delving into the unforgettable writings of the barcelona-born master.

sometimes, a few sidelights shining in from the wings can make all the difference center stage.

*translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa (saramago, marías, pessoa, de queirós, et al.) & sophie hughes (hasbún, jufresa, et al.)

**4.5 stars

[Tommi · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the confluence of literary criticism and the novel, Enrique Vila-Matas’ Mac’s Problem is a story of an unemployed 60-year-old aspiring writer. Seemingly a diary (Mac refuses to call it a novel), we follow his attempt to rewrite a short story collection written three decades a go by a now-famous acquaintance of his. As Mac rereads the collection, he realizes the stories mirror his own life in various ways.

Vila-Matas’ extensive literary career becomes apparent through Mac, in good and bad: it’s interesting to read Mac’s thoughts on a wide variety of authors including more recent names such as Alejandro Zambra and Samanta Schweblin, but it is also a little too evident that it is Vila-Matas speaking, not his narrator who has allegedly spent his life as a construction worker.

After a promising, lively start, Mac’s Problem soon dives into rather overwrought metatextual trickery that tests his readers’ patience. It is at times gruesome to follow Mac / Vila-Matas paraphrasing or quoting from an imaginary collection of short stories and muse what he would change to make his version better. On the other hand, Vila-Matas is often funny and clever, and the novel is superbly co-translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes, no small feat.

[Jean Ra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pues después de nueve años sin leer una sola hoja de Vila-Matas, tras el afortunado reencuentro del mes pasado, descubro que son sus libros lo que necesito para dotar al día de colorido y viento fresco, saciar y a la vez fomentar el hambre de literatura, ensanchar horizontes y que, en resumidas cuentas, tengo acumulado una golosa lista de pendientes con la reaparición del nombre de Enrique Vila-Matas.

Como ya comenté en la reseña de Esa bruma insensata me sorprende la riqueza de sus recursos formales, la amplitud de sus ideas y la notoria profundidad de su prosa, capaz tanto de humor muy grueso como de cincelar al milímetro textos literarios firmados por él o por otros autores. Lo que sí que reencuentro desde entonces en este escritor es un talante docto pero a la vez juguetón, eso no ha cambiado, y que puede conducir al lector por numerosos escenarios literarios e inesperadas escenas.

Trata de la historia de Mac, un hombre afectado por la crisis financiera, y que al verse sin trabajo decide de una vez zambullirse en sus intereses literarios, por eso comienza a escribir un dietario, dónde ensaya sus armas literarias y termina madurando la idea de reescribir Walter y su contratiempo, firmada por Ander Sánchez, uno de sus vecinos del Eixample, un afamado escritor cuya persona aparece de forma tangencial, pero su libro se convierte en el centro gravitacional de Mac y su contratiempo.

Las derivas urbanas de Mac permiten a Vila-Matas retomar el tema del flaneur, potenciado y acuñado por grandes nombres como Baudelaire o Edgar Alan Poe, y adentrarlo por esas crisis psicológicas, frecuentes en su obra, y que son catalizadores para explorar los límites de la realidad a través de un amplio abanico de escritores, que Mac demuestra conocer muy bien, tales como Georges Perec, Deleuze, David Foster Wallace, David Markson, William Gaddis, Ana María Matute, Gombrowicz, Hemingway y muchos más, piezas para recomponer esa realidad paralela que sirve para sobrellevar los disgustos de la realidad empírica.

Al contrario que otras obras, dónde ese nihilismo fácil de la realidad ocupa la cumbre del relato, aquí Vila-Matas no se conforma y afirma que para conquistar la literatura primero hay que afirmarse en la vida. Precisamente esa tensión entre esas dos esferas constituye una de las capas que el escritor desarrolla, dónde escarba con su gustosa prosa, bien surtida de ingenio cervantino.

También retoma cierta idea que Vila-Matas nombraba, como una boutade, en algunas entrevistas de hace años, también inauguró sus primeras novelas, la idea que la lectura de una novela provocara la muerte al lector. No es más que una metáfora, claro. La idea que se oculta tras esa máscara no es otra que el afectar al lector, no sé si tanto conmoverlo como impactarlo en el imaginario y en el intelecto. El último segmento de esta novela se encarga de tomar esa idea y elaborarla, convirtiéndola en un motor dramático, conduciendo a ese urbanita neurasténico, prácticamente al borde de una crisis, por sendas muy distintas y que supone un cambio de rasante significativo, constituyéndose así la lectura como una metamorfosis para Mac.

Lo cierto es que, en líneas generales, respecto a Esa bruma insensata reconozco que Mac y su contratiempo me ha encandilado un poco menos. Aún y así me ha gustado más que otras novelas que también me han agradado últimamente. Incluso iré más allá y afirmaré que es una novela más arriesgada que Esa bruma insensata, por lo tanto una de las apuestas más aventuradas de la obra de Vila-Matas. Porque en verdad la trama es prácticamente inexistente, el desarrollo temporal está muy dosificado y sin embargo el ritmo y la tensión narrativa se sostienen muy bien, no existe apenas la sensación se estancamiento en el progreso y a cambio Vila-Matas se vuelca en hacer de su relato una suerte de taller de escritor, en digresiones magistralmente ejecutadas para pasearse por las bambalinas de una novela imaginaria, en verdad desarrollando ese imaginario Walter y su contratiempo de una forma oblicua, y consigue con ello envolverlo todo en su mundo de ficción, aportando un clima que a mí me resultó embelesador.

Está claro que no queda otra que la expedición por los libros de Vila-Matas no puede pausarse aquí, hay que seguir, hay que ir en busca del tiempo perdido.

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has a great opening - Mac wants to write a novel that would be left unfinished because of his untimely death or disappearance but, only he would know, that the novel was actually complete. He got this idea from the fascination that readers have with books left unfinished in this way. The first chapter had made me feel that I am in for some real good stuff but it goes down very quickly.

The novel is shaped like a diary and it has the problem which ensures that most diaries aren't art - it has no plot to it. Nothing intersting happens in the book. The only reason I get any satisfaction from reading it was all the art trivia. And it has lots and lots of that; so you would love it if you are into knowing more about authors or artists than books or art.

[Abbie | ab_reads · Rating 1 out of 5]

(#gifted @thebookerprizes) This International longlist is going to turn me grey, the ups and downs are real! From a rich and vibrant magical realist novel and a queer retelling of an Argentinian epic to this DRUDGERY. I swear. I’ll never get those four hours back I spent reading this.
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It sounds bad (and it was, for me) but I do think there is a readership out there for this book. Vila-Matas references authors such as Hemingway, Carver and Bolaño a lot and I feel like if you enjoy those authors you’ll enjoy this too. At one point I did get excited because Mac started praising the work of Samanta Schweblin, but then he spoiled the plot of Fever Dream so I went back to being annoyed.

I really don’t think Mac is supposed to be a particularly likeable protagonist, although maybe he’s meant to be an ‘everyman’, in which case I don’t care for every man. After his construction company goes under he has to rely solely on his wife’s income from her furniture restoration business. He simultaneously complains about her working longer hours to make ends meet and then contemplates leaving her but decides against it because then he’d be in financial trouble. Just a top notch guy.
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This is one of those novels that’s fully aware of how clever it’s being and as a result comes off as pretentious. With a few exceptions including If On a Winter’s Night, A Traveller, meta-fiction is just not my bag at all.
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I didn’t hate it all though. I liked the parts where Mac obsessively read his horoscope at the end of every day and tried to convince himself it applied to his life that day in his effort to discern whether our lives really are controlled by external forces. And the translation & writing itself was fine, I just did not enjoy the content - which is a shame as I’m sure Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes (one of my fave translators) worked so hard on this. But that’s about it really!
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One of the main points of the novel is Mac insisting it’s NOT a novel, just a diary never to be read by anyone. I wish he’d actually followed through with that.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dejémoslo claro desde el primer momento para a partir de ahí pasar a explicarlo con más detalle: Mac y su contratiempo es soporífero.
Enrique Vila-Matas escribe como los ángeles. Es de esos genios de la literatura de nuestro país capaces de elaborar artificios literarios que te dejan con la boca abierta y una vez más lo ha hecho con esta novela. Aquí elabora una caja china en la que nos habla de un libro que no existe, que ha debido crear en su imaginación para elaborar la novela, y es más, luego nos habla de las modificaciones que sobre cada capítulo de ese libro ficticio iría haciendo. Mientras tanto va desgranando sus ideas sobre la creación literaria, sobre autores, relatos, el proceso creativo, el momento de escribir, la opinión de los críticos, de los demás escritores, incluso de uno mismo enfrentado a la tarea de redactar. Para ello utiliza a un protagonista que se presenta como un hombre gris y desempleado que mata sus muchas horas muertas en un diario pero no te dejes engañar, sólo acabamos de rascar la superficie de este personaje que se revelará como alguien muy diferente a lo que nos había hecho creer.
Hasta aquí quizás estás pensando que todo esto suena muy interesante, y lo es, desde luego, el problema es que el conjunto resulta tan aburrido que es difícil mantener los ojos abiertos cuando intentas leer más de dos páginas seguidas.
No deja de haber cierta pedantería en las citas, los autores, los fragmentos de relatos igual que en las opiniones que el autor va dejando caer a través de su personaje. Ese ejercicio literario en el que nos presenta con detalle un libro y luego lo va modificando al fin y al cabo nos da igual. Da igual el libro que no conoces, da igual como se cambie, tanto párrafo explicando lo que ese capítulo decía y lo que dejaba vislumbrar y como el protagonista era tal o pascual. Aburrido, aburrido hasta la desesperación.
Pero aún hay más. Si como yo pensaste que este libro "pintaba bien" gracias a su sinopsis, esta no podría ser más engañosa. Todos esos apuntes sobre humor y sorpresas e ¡investigación criminal! están completamente alejadas de la realidad, no encontrarás nada de eso. Creo que quien escribió ese resumen jamás había leído este libro.
Sólo te puede interesar esta novela si te gusta disfrutar de artificios literarios, si la forma te atrae haya lo que haya en el fondo, si eres escritor y quieres aprender de los grandes. Si quieres leer por entretenerte o disfrutar, busca otra cosa, aquí sólo encontrarás un buen somnífero para la hora de dormir.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps my new favorite among Vila-Matas's works available in English—the usual extensive literary references, allusions, quotations, and paraphrases, couple with an inane but simple plot allowing for / requiring frequent diversions, anecdotes, and essays in which Vila-Matas's narrator weaves fiction and "reality" together in multiple, fugue-like ways: theme and variations, playing to the narrator's stated love of repetition, never the same way twice. "Mac's Problem" is a celebration of the human imagination, and an encouragement to readers themselves to create.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discrepo en que sea uno de sus mejores libros
http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...

[Huy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huhu, ước gì mình siêng update Goodreads hơn. Sách đọc từ thuở International Booker mới công bố Longlist mà đến giờ mới add. Sách viết đẹp nhưng gần như không có cốt truyện và đôi lúc cảm giác như một cuốn tiểu luận của tác giả mà thông qua nhân vật Mac - một người đàn ông 60 tuổi quyết định đọc lại để viết lại cuốn tiểu thuyết của một nhà văn Tây Ban Nha đồng thời là bạn của ông - tác giả như muốn thể hiện những quan niệm của mình về văn chương và nghệ thuật nên từ đó bao nhiêu nhà văn và tiểu thuyết từ cổ chí kim được phân tích mổ xẻ hoặc xuất hiện thoáng qua, vì vậy cuốn sách này cần một kiến thức nhất định về văn chương để đọc mà khỏi tốn thời gian tra cứu, nhưng mà bởi vậy nên cuốn sách trở nên lan man, mà đôi lúc khiến người đọc ước gì đây là một tập tiểu luận về văn chương của tác giả thì sẽ dễ chịu hơn.

[Vilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man joprojām dikti patīk stāsti par ego izšķīšanu stāstos, pat ja reizēm to uzaustajam džemperim ir redzami pārāk daudzi diegu gali

[Lucas Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vila-Matas no deja caer el balón. Cada libro suyo me deja con buen sabor de boca, particularmente por el alegre ejercicio de inteligencia intuido en la construcción de su escritura. Tras este ¿falso? diario palpita una especie de manifiesto donde los ecos de Benjamin (el placer de la reescritura, la cita como creación, la repetición mecánica como mecanismo de desautomatización...) marcan las reglas del juego. Si uno está dispuesto a jugar, va a pasarla en grande.

Reseña pendiente.

[Alysson Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tenho quase zero de paciência para pirotecnias e malabarismo metanarrativos, mas achei Mac e Seu Contratempo divertido e interessante – exceto quando o autor fica no exibicionismo típico do gênero citando escritores, escritoras e obras para mostrar como ele é culto (possivelmente bem relacionado também). O protagonista é um homem de classe média alta que resolve reescrever uma coletânea de contos antigas de seu vizinho. Boa parte do romance consiste dele descrever e comentar os contos, e dizer o que irá mudar. Outra parte é a paranoia em que mergulha enquanto avança em sua leitura e projeto de reescrita. Não deixa de ser também uma investigação do conto como forma – o que, obviamente, é bem irônico uma vez que se trata de um romance.

[Nathanimal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm starting to have read a fair amount of Vila-Matas. I like some of his books more than others, but they are always good. I always feel like I'm spending time with a bookish, garrulous friend. This is an interesting one, reminded me in some ways of the nouveau roman. Its main theme is narrative repetition and variation and how, if you do this enough, stories tend to all lead back to the same source. There are a lot of warped mirrors in the book. It's a subtle read and I wished at the end that I hadn't been so distracted by other things while trying to read it. It deserved closer attention than I gave it, or maybe I just wasn't equipped for it. I didn't have the right shoes to keep up with Vila-Matas. That happens sometimes, more often than I'd like to admit.

[Karellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know you’re in trouble when everyone seems to rate some book and you just don’t get why. This one is a case in point.

Don’t get me wrong, I usually like this author, I’ve read four of his previous novels, enjoyed them all, but this just seemed like a pointless meandering with no end result.

Maybe I’m losing the plot and I can’t seem to read properly anymore. Either that or I’m right and this is a bunch of self indulgent crap.

After this I need something good to drag me out of the mire. This was such a Fucking struggle.

[Val · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mac is writing his diary and considering how he would have written an early novel by another writer, who wrote in the style of other novelists. He also spends quite a lot of time walking around his home town, mainly wandering in and out of various bars. The initial story Mac tells about himself turns out to be untrue and his narration becomes increasingly untrustworthy even as he reveals more about himself. (He probably has mental health problems as well as a drink problem.) The result is clever and funny, but not really worth the amount of time I spent looking up all the literary references.

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Y si lo mejor que podríamos hacer con nuestra vida literaria fuera reescribir lo que ya existe?

No escribir, sino reescribir. No inventar, sino corregir, ajustar, pulir, como quien se enfrenta a un manuscrito ajeno y decide que puede hacerlo mejor. Ahora imagina que ese manuscrito es la propia realidad, tu vida entera convertida en un borrador lleno de tachaduras y anotaciones al margen. ¿No es esa, en el fondo, la gran tentación de todo lector? ¿Y no es también la condena de todo escritor?

En Mac y su contratiempo, Enrique Vila-Matas juega precisamente con esta idea, pero a su manera, es decir, con el ingenio de quien disfruta desarmando los mecanismos de la literatura mientras los sigue usando. La novela se estructura en forma de diario y sigue a Mac, un abogado de unos sesenta años cuya empresa ha cerrado por la crisis financiera y se encuentra sin trabajo, que decide llenar sus días reescribiendo un viejo libro de un famoso escritor vecino, un tal Sánchez, al que profesa cierta antipatía. Un libro, Walter y su contratiempo, que se estructuraba en diez capítulos escritos en el estilo de diez autores distintos —de Cheever a Hemingway, de Carver a Malamud— y que, según Mac, estaba lleno de fallos y que, por tanto, merece una versión mejorada. Hasta aquí, todo parece una historia sobre la arrogancia del aficionado. Pero Vila-Matas no da puntada sin hilo, y lo que empieza como un simple ejercicio de reescritura pronto se convierte en un juego de espejos, donde lo falso se confunde con lo real, la copia con la originalidad y el protagonista con su autor.

Porque Mac es el narrador perfecto para esta historia: un tipo deliciosamente perdido en su propio laberinto, que no sabe si está escribiendo algo nuevo o simplemente regurgitando lo que ha leído, si es un creador o un parásito, si está construyendo una obra maestra o un disparate. Y mientras él se enreda en su propio proceso creativo, Vila-Matas se divierte dejando trampas para el lector, jugando con la memoria, la autoficción, la metaliteratura y la fina línea entre el plagio y el homenaje.

Pero aquí hay algo más: Mac no solo es un escritor amateur, también es un urbanita peatón que deambula y se desliza por las calles del Eixample de Barcelona como si estuviera descifrando un texto oculto en la ciudad. Mac encuentra en la deriva urbana una forma de pensar, de construir su propio relato. Sus paseos son tanto un acto de escritura como de lectura, y en cada esquina parece estar reescribiendo su propio destino, aunque ni él mismo sepa hacia dónde va.

Lo brillante de Mac y su contratiempo es que no se limita a ser una novela sobre literatura, sino que también es una reflexión sobre la vida misma, esa constante reescritura de lo que somos. Porque, ¿no estamos todos, en algún momento, corrigiendo lo que fuimos ayer? Vila-Matas convierte esa idea en un juego literario, casi como una broma privada que, sin embargo, nos llega al fondo: la duda constante sobre si lo que hacemos tiene verdadero valor, la sospecha de que nuestras ideas están más influenciadas por lo que hemos leído que por nuestra propia voz, y la lucha —a veces absurda, pero siempre necesaria— por encontrar algo original en un mundo plagado de ecos ajenos.

Pero Vila-Matas no se detiene ahí. Teje su relato como una caja china, pero no de esas con sorpresas previsibles que se desvanecen rápidamente. No. Cada capa aquí es un giro inesperado, una invitación a dudar sobre lo que estás leyendo. En vez de avanzar, la historia parece devolverte una y otra vez al mismo punto, una encrucijada de referencias y ecos literarios que se reflejan una y otra vez en los pasillos de la novela. Y, sin embargo, te dejas llevar, atrapado por la sensación de que, tal vez, nada de lo que ocurre es lo que parece.

Lo más interesante de todo es cómo Vila-Matas convierte su novela en un auténtico laboratorio literario, donde cada digresión, cada vuelta inesperada, no solo amplía la historia, sino que reconfigura la propia narración. Mac, perdido entre los laberintos de su mente, reimagina desde ángulos imposibles el texto de Sánchez, ese Walter y su contratiempo, jugando con los reflejos de lo que es real y lo que es pura reescritura. Y en ese vaivén, el lector también cae en la trampa: ¿qué es real, qué es reescritura, qué es solo un eco dentro del mundo que Vila-Matas despliega como un prestidigitador literario?

Porque cuando parece que todo es juego literario, Vila-Matas mete el acelerador en el tramo final y nos recuerda que la literatura no solo se escribe, sino que se padece. Mac, atrapado en su propio delirio literario, acaba experimentando en carne propia lo que significa que un libro pueda devorarte, cambiarte, tal vez incluso destruirte. Y aquí Vila-Matas nos deja con la sospecha de que la literatura no es solo un pasatiempo inofensivo: es una máquina que transforma, y a veces, quien se sienta a escribir no sale siendo la misma persona.

Y aquí viene la gran pregunta que queda en el subconsciente del lector: ¿se puede reír mientras se reflexiona sobre el sentido de la literatura? Vila-Matas no solo cree que sí, sino que lo convierte en un arte. Mac y su contratiempo es la prueba de que la metaliteratura no tiene por qué ser un ejercicio solemne y plomizo, sino que puede ser tan divertida como un vodevil intelectual. La novela se construye sobre un mecanismo de repeticiones y variaciones que haría sonreír a Kierkegaard: recordar y reescribir, dice el filósofo danés, son un mismo movimiento. Y Vila-Matas lo lleva al extremo: Mac no solo reescribe, sino que se enreda en su propio bucle narrativo con una ingenuidad tan deliciosa como absurda. Lo fascinante es que esa espiral de versiones y revisiones, lejos de volverse tediosa, tiene el efecto contrario: nos atrapa, nos desconcierta y nos hace reír.

Porque Mac y su contratiempo no es solo una gran novela sobre la literatura: es también una gran novela sobre el equívoco, el delirio y el gozo de perderse en una historia sin final fijo. Como un jazzista que retoma un viejo tema para improvisar sobre él, Vila-Matas nos recuerda que la literatura es un arte de variaciones infinitas. Y que, al final, la única manera de sobrevivir a esta madeja de recuerdos y repeticiones es reírse.

Así que ahí tienes: una novela que te deja dándole vueltas a la idea de si alguna vez has tenido un pensamiento realmente original o si, en el fondo, solo eres el eco de las lecturas que te han formado. Pero, bueno, ¿acaso importa? Quizá la clave no esté en la originalidad, sino en la manera en que repetimos, transformamos y nos apropiamos de lo que amamos. Al final, quizá escribir —y vivir— sea eso: un intento infinito de corregir lo que ya está escrito, de buscar sentido en el desorden, de reescribirnos a nosotros mismos. Un eterno y necesario contratiempo.

[Gerardo Velázquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hay cuentos que se introducen en nuestras vidas y prosiguen su camino confundiéndose con ellas.

Es la segunda novela que leo de Vila Matas, y mi impresión ha sido: ¿Porque no están hablando de él en todos lados como el maestro de la narrativa? Sinceramente es sorprendente. Lo primero que hay que aclarar, es que es una novela incatalogable, al menos para mí. Es una historia que se cuenta a sí misma, pero que a la vez es una crítica en forma de ensayo. Aunque también tiene mucho de autobiográfica, a lo que le suma un montón de anécdotas y datos de escritores clásicos y no tan clásicos. Además de ficción, en forma de relatos y a su vez de novela. Pero de ahora en más me dirigiré como "Novela", a este libro
La novela comienza con una declaración de que escribirá un diario para practicar su narrativa.

Comencé mis ejercicios en el diario sin un plan previo, pero no desconociendo que en literatura uno no empieza por tener algo de lo que escribir y entonces escribe sobre ello, sino que el proceso de escribir propiamente dicho es el que permite al autor descubrir lo que quiere decir.

Pero a medida que avanzamos, el diario comienza a convertirse en novela:

Esto es un diario, es un diario, es un diario. Y también es una reivindicación secreta de la “escritura de literatura”. Así que no veo del todo bien que la realidad de la calle conspire para que tenga un rumbo novelesco lo que escribo, aunque debo agradecerle que me esté dando material para escribir, pues, de lo contrario, quizás no tendría ninguno. Pero no. Me es imposible ver con simpatía que la realidad de la calle conspire, y menos aún que haya esta incómoda tensión entre novela y diario, tensión que debería acabarse ya.

Mac nos pone en esa disyuntiva desde el comienzo, dejando bien en claro, que no quiere escribir una novela. Como su odiado vecino. Dicho vecino, ha escrito una novela hace más de treinta años, de la que se avergüenza. Haciendo referencia a la novela que el propio Vila Matas ha escrito hace treinta años: "Una casa para siempre", donde un ventrílocuo, a través de varios relatos, intenta encontrar su propia voz imitando otras voces de autores clásicos, como Hemingway, Borges, Pessoa, etc. Mac, relee esa novela llena de "momentos mareantes", que ha escrito su vecino, en una época en la que bebía muchísimo, y esa es su escuza para tales errores. Párrafos enteros de cuestiones que no vienen a cuento componen la historia.
Por esto, Mac toma aquella novela y se pone a reescribirla, como si supiera escribir, porque al final, como decía Sarraute, escribir es tratar de saber qué escribiríamos si escribiésemos. Bajo esa premisa siempre presente en todo el libro, y la idea de que la repetición es parte de la escritura y de la humanidad en general, nos lleva en paralelo a una demostración del oficio de la escritura, pero a la vez, a una novela maravillosa dentro de otra novela. Una parábola increíble y muy original. Disfraza de sugerencia algo planificado tan al detalle, que es imposible no sonreír al encontrarle sentido a los supuestos divagues de Mac.
También tiene pasajes filosóficos, pero me interesa destacar un mensaje que da a todo el mundo literario, no porque sea un inconformista de lo actual, sino porque tiene toda la autoridad y el derecho para hacerlo:

No escribimos, pero quizás no se trate de llenar de signos un papel, sino de saber o, mejor dicho, intentar saber. Y crear sin complejos. Porque contrariamente a lo que piensan algunos frustrados que odian la creatividad, para llevar a cabo retos de la imaginación, no es necesario renunciar a ser humilde. La creatividad es la inteligencia divirtiéndose.

Enrique Vila Matas se ha ganado un fiel admirador, y lo recomiendo como un fanático que recién ha encontrado a su admirado. Y me reprendo por ello en silencio. Tal vez, para un escritor que comienza con sus primeras armas como yo, es una voz de aliento. Un punto de conjunción donde se pueden encontrar muchas herramientas para escribir, a medida que se disfruta de un gran libro.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel about a diary which becomes a re-working of a novel, dedicated to repetition and falsification. Brilliant ❤📚😀

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first half of the book, but soon the novelty Mac’s/Vila-Matas’ meta-/autofictional game of the novel-that-shall-be-called-a-diary wore off and it began to feel like a lack of a better idea. His reflections on form and writing, the self-imposed challenge of including (name-dropping, at this point) as many references into the rewriting of another’s stories felt more like literary navel-gazing than actual plot. Perhaps that was the point, given the protagonist’s (the author’s) obsession with repetition, but it makes for a dull read, even for someone like me, who is all for literary theory!

[Leopoldo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leí dos terceras partes y lo abandoné. Un libro bastante inventivo en concepto, pero que a la larga se extiende más de lo que le conviene. Seguramente Vila-Matas ha escrito mejores. Iré después por Bartleby, que dicen que es su obra maestra, es decir, la versión más pulida de su fórmula.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

This guy has a ton of clever ideas about Literature but I didn't really enjoy reading about them.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mac’s problem in this novel is that he can’t really decide what his problem is, or how to solve it, whatever the problem is that comes to mind. Mac is an unemployed contractor/ attorney who now has unlimited time. His wife still works so he has no financial concern. He feels himself “marooned on the gray plains of the quotidian,” and looks to his real passion and interest, writing and literature to rescue him.

For Mac the two are inseparable; he is widely read and so anything he writes is going to be influenced by what he has peviously read. It will, in fact, only be a repetition, possibly altered of what has been written. What follows in a relatively short 200 pages are Mac’s free-flowing thoughts about how he might improve on a collection of stories titled “Walter’s Problem,” in which the title character is a ventriloquist who not coincidentally has improved on a series of short stories by famous authors. Mac, named after a character in a John Ford movie, thinks about his reasons for writing and favors short stories as opposed to novels. He recalls Borges who considered novels to be too closed in and complete, leaving no gaps for the reader to fill in, as short stories do.

Then the question arises of whether writing a a diary might be preferable to writing fiction. Diaries have no plots, and might not a random expression of thoughts and experiences be closer to life, to reality as it happens, rather than trying to encapsulate it in some kind of fiction? Metaphorically, this could well express the idea of the ventriloquist, and who is speaking, the puppet of fiction or the master of the diary?

Even a diary, though, is at a remove from reality, and Mac wonders about the reasons why many writers he can think of abandoned their writing. Could it have been because they felt they didn’t have truly appreciative and sensitive readers? Or, he speculates, the idea coming from something Mac read in “Walter’s Problem, it is that the “artist’s finest work is his daily routine.” Following up on this notion, Mac spends a lot of time walking around his neighborhood and stopping in bars.

Near the end of the book, though, Mac writes, “Each day I took greater and greater pleasure in repetition, a pleasure closely bound up with my diary, which, from the very start has taken repetition as its theme. “ He becomes less and less connected to his neighborhood in Barcelona, and is influenced by a line from the American poet, Wallace Stevens, who wrote ”From this the poem springs: that we live in a place/That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves . . .” If we don't identify with a “place”, and that might include the words we write to identify ourselves, then that’s another reason to free ourselves, and Mac ends by fleeing Spain and “traveling the earth”, writing in his diary, yes, but only of coincidences and chance eventsi, and memories.

You could conclude that Mac has gone mad, and in some sense he has. The relationship between life and literature, is the concern (a “theme” seems too strong a word to use) of this book, as it is in the other Vila-Matas books (in translation from Spanish) I’ve read and it’s one that’s never satisfied for Mac. Obviously, his preoccupation with this problem appeals to me or I wouldn’t have read the book , but I’m sure for many readers, it would seem an obsessively self-absorbed exercise in tedium. Of course, Mac considers the question of what kind of readers should read his writing, but that trails off . . . as everything in Vila-Matas does.

[Bert Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review-Mac’s Problem by Enrique Vila-Matas

A retired lawyer fancies himself a writer and decides to keep a notebook in which he writes his observations. Living in Barcelona, in the section he calls Coyote, he wanders the streets meeting with neighbors, merchants, street beggars and strangers.

One of his neighbors, Sanchez, is an accomplished novelist who often hangs out at the local bookstore flirting with its attractive storeowner like he was a “puffed up peacock.”. Mac decides that one of his writing projects will be a rewrite of Sanchez’s best-known work. His entangled thoughts and fantasies result in an internal dialogue which drives the narrative.

In several of his books Vila-Matas explores the creative process. In Mac’s Problem he is focused on the short form. Mac prefers poems and short stories to longer pieces of fiction and sites Ana Maria Matute: “the story has an old vagabond heart that wanders into town and then disappears…the story withdraws but leaves its mark.” This is a good description of the book Vila-Matas has written here.

The book has numerous epigraphs, and he mentions dozens of creators whom he obviously admires and models himself after - Marcel Schwob, Alfred Hitchcock, Rimbaud, Roberto Bolano, Faulkner, Poe, Ray Bradbury, Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Perec, Raymond Carver, Ben Hecht, Kafka, Borges, Malamud (“whats next isn’t the point”), Hemingway, Robert Walser, Pessoa, Proust and many more. From this list one can gather the interests and contexts within which Vila-Matas concocts this piece of work.

Writing in his notebook serves as an antidote to Mac’s aimlessness. His wife berates him as a “do nothing” person. Yet he ignores her lack of support, imagines her having an affair with first Sanchez and then the local tailor, and decides that “reality doesn’t need anyone to organize it into a plot; it is itself a fascinating, ceaseless creative center.”

He imagines there being a group – The School of Difficult Writing – in which David Markson and William Gaddis are practitioners: “authors who, without actively seeking consensus, share the idea that the narrative is a process with no end point, no destination…the aim is to create a whole program of renewal for the game of the novel, a transformation in line with the need to give the novel a form that fits with our current historical circumstances.”

He sees writing and “the history of literature as a kind of succession of works, a sequence of short story collections, that never stop in one place, which means they’re all susceptible to being given another turn of the screw”. This best sums up Vila Matas’s career and this book. Rewriting, referencing other creators, human history and the creative process is an ongoing process over time.

As with his earlier books: Montano’s Malady, Bartleby and Company, and Dublinesque, Enrique Vila-Matas is a master gamer, a juggler, encyclopediator and student of fiction and life. Mac’s Problem carries on this theme and is a most enjoyable read.

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vila-Matas de volta à boa forma. Quase Sophie Callesco em sua obsessão com as possíveis fusões entre arte e vida. O livro dentro do livro, um conto por vez, remete à estrutura de "Se um viajante..." do Calvino. Good old V-M.

[Mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

a cleverly folded, elliptical novel peppered with wry humor and moments of genius, but ultimately relies too heavily on external and internal reference and ends up tripping over its own feet