Don’t argue with me, Hemingway….

       Enrique Vila-Matas Never any end to Paris  (New Directions, 2011)

 

There are few character failings worse, in Gert’s opinion, than humourlessness, and this Gertrude Stein had in spades, so Gert was quite pleased to read, in Enrique Vila-Matas’ Never any end to Paris:

…’a rose is a rose is a rose’, one of Miss Stein’s favourite phrases and irrefutable proof that even in the world’s literary hubs, people have always talked nonsense. (86)

“Writers, such strange, ludicrous beings …”

 

     Enrique Vila-Matas,  Dublinesque (New Directions,  2012 )

…it’s a well-known fact: writers are resentful, jealous to the point of sickness, always penniless, and finally a load of ungrateful wretches, whether they’re poor or completely poverty-stricken. (76)

…writers, such strange, ludicrous beings, so self-centered and complicated, and such idiots, most of them. (76)