Sudden Death

by Álvaro Enrigue

Novels demolish monuments because all novels, even the most chaste, are a tiny bit pornographic.

P

The first truly modern painter in history was also a great tennis player and a murderer.

M

Maybe all books are written simply because in every game the bad guys have the advantage and that is too much to bear.

B

Not that it matters: nothing matters. Species are extinguished, children leave home, friends turn up with impossible girlfriends, cultures disappear, languages are one day no longer spoken; those who survive convince themselves that they were the most fit.

M

Descriptions of works of art, like descriptions of dreams, halt stories and sap their strength. A work of art can be part of the story only if it alters the line of history as it’s being drawn, and yet if a work of art, like a dream, is worth remembering, it’s precisely because it represents a blind spot for history. Art and dreams don’t stick with us because they have the capacity to move things along, but because they stop the world: they function as a parenthesis, a dyke, a moment of rest.

A

background, he felt that he could hear the plea of an ancient soul, a soul from a dead world, the soul of all those who’ve been fucked by the pettiness and stupidity of those who believe that winning is all that matters, the soul of those who’ve been undeservedly obliterated, the lost names, the dust of bones—his

W