Writing it all
MY STRUGGLE KARL OVE KNAUSGARD ANAGRAMA 629 PGS I like Knausgård. I liked his two novels. That is why I am recommending them. Karl Ove Knausgård has insanely decided to tell us all his life. Or, at least, use it to write six novels. Six. Six independent stories, or that is what you might say...
A classic for the decade (of Mad Men)
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit Sloan Wilson 370 pages At a moment in his life, Tom Rath decides that the time has come to forget everything and start over from scratch. He tells himself that the fact that one has killed a lot of men in the war does not mean anything, because...
A family in convulsion
Dissident gardens Jonathan Lethem 412 pages Literatura Random House To gather the American counter-culture of the second part of the 20th century –and the beginning of the 21st – in a single novel, from the first pre-McCarthy communist cells which used to take one step forward two steps back, to the Occupy Wall Street movement,...
Life support
The Extra Man Jonathan Ames 375 pages Principal de los Libros There are days when the sun shines with such benign intensity that it seems as if nothing bad can happen. When you are walking down the street, imagination flies and you become the main character in your own movie; imaginary dialogues that would almost...
Hedonism and alcohol: a hilarious theory
Everyday Drinking Kingsley Amis 324 páginas Malpaso Do not get confused: the consumption of alcohol is glorified here. But not in the way an adolescent ends up peeing on himself before being admitted to hospital for alcoholic coma, and after having wet his whistle with foul drinks, typical of every awful watering hole. No, nothing...
Falling and laughing
Lost in Music. A Pop Odyssey Giles Smith 310 pages Contra When Giles Smith wrote this book, he never imagined that twenty years later it would be translated into other languages. The writer’s first creative drive was not writing but pop music. It did not work out though. The bands he founded never achieved the...
Will to offend
Lionel Asbo: State of England Martin Amis 352 pages Anagrama That is the way Lionel is, a real lad: the tracksuit, the dogs, the beer hangovers, muscle-building as a lifestyle, awful diction and the innate tendency to do evil. Lionel hates people who yearn to learn, he believes in the annihilation of talent, and the...
Dangers of being a rock star
LA CALLE GREAT JONES Don DeLillo 293 pgs Seix-Barral Don DeLillo (New York, 1936) wrote Great Jones Street, his third novel, the same year as Carrero Blanco was flying through the air here. Maybe in 1973 Spain was not in the mood for stories about rock stars who ended up consumed by their own fame,...
Moral tales
Published in their day by several media like The New Yorker or Harper’s, the ten stories that make up Tenth of December confirm George Saunders’ (Texas, 1958) good condition. The author plays with genres, points of view and syntax to create astonishing voices; dubious minds and damaged consciences we get to know in depth, from...
Chris Killip – Pictures of the working class
If photography, like writing, is a tool that can be used to do politics, then Chris Killip (Isle of Man, 1946) would be the perfect opposite to Margaret Thatcher. Considered a key figure in postwar British documentary photography, Killip lived the photojournalism boom during the seventies, when his career was directed toward advertising and the...
Palahniuk in Hell
Madison Spencer is thirteen years old and she is dead. She is the daughter of a Hollywood celebrity couple, and she died of marijuana overdose – or so she believes. The thing is that now, just like that, she lives in hell with four new companions: a punk-rocker called Archer, a nerd Leonard, Babette the...
Death Lane
Beto deAlva is one of the members of the group Death Lane / The Black Mass, a project that was created to document the fixed gear scene in Barcelona. They have a website and a fanzine, and they also organize races (some more legal than others). They do it for the sake of art. Well,...
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