Retrats de passaport

Obra completa (Destino) #17

by Josep Pla

Paperback

Published January 1, 1991

About the author

Josep Pla i Casadevall (known as José Pla in Spanish) (March 8, 1897, Palafrugell, Girona - April 23, 1981, Llofriu, Girona) was a Catalan journalist and a popular author. As a journalist he worked in France, Italy, England, Germany and Russia, from where he wrote political and cultural chronicles in Catalan.

The most important characteristics of the “planian” style are simplicity, irony, and clarity. His works show a subjective and colloquial view, “anti-literary”, in which he stresses, nevertheless, an enormous stylistic effort by calling things by their names and “coming up with the precise adjective”, one of his most persistent literary obsessions.

Pla lived completely dedicated to writing. The extent of his Obres Completes - Complete Works (46 volumes and nearly 40,000 pages), which is a collection of all his journals, reports, articles, essays, biographies and both long and short novels.

His liberal-conservative thought, skeptic and uncompromising, filled with irony and common sense, keeps sounding contemporary, completely current, even though it seems to contradict the current cultural establishment same as it did with its completely opposed antecessor. His books remain in print and both Spanish and Catalan critics have unanimously recognized him as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[joan]

Un llibre sense més. Vull dir, és Pla, que sempre és sinònim d’excel·lència. M’han agradat tots els retrats, però especialment aquells que eren de gent desconeguda (el Doctor Quim Borralleres, o el dinuixant Pere Ynglada). Està bé per dos motius: primer, aquest home té una capacitat d’observació fantàstica, quasi tan fantàstica que em dona la impressió que es deu inventar la majoria de coses, és impossible recordar-ho tot amb tanta exactitud. Suposo que part de la gràcia del Josep és no saber si allò que explica és 100% real o hi ha barrejada una mica de literatura. Segon, fa una espècie de fotografia de la literatura del moment que ell va viure i les anteriors: parla del modernisme, el noucentisme i la literatura de després de la guerra, i fa gràcia veure com han anat canviant les concepcions… Bertrana, per exemple, no el considera modernista sinó més aviat realista. Vaja, interessant en moltes sentits. Pla, en definitiva.

[Raquel M.]

Hauria de ser lectura obligatòria per a tothom que vulgui fer periodisme o literatura (o editar-ne) en català