Never Any End to Paris

Originally published in 2003 and re-issued this year by New Directions in a new translation, Never Any End to Paris by Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas is a tenderly ironic portrait of the artist as a young wannabe. Presented as the text of a lecture, the book chronicles Vila-Matas' "literary apprenticeship" during the two years he spent living in a garret owned by French writer Marguerite Duras. But instead of a dreary intellectual recollection, Vila-Matas delivers a monologue that is both gossipy and philosophical, and that also exposes his youthful pretensions, many of which are funny — wearing fake glasses and smoking a pipe in public in order to appear more serious, for example — all of which are forgivable. When not worrying about what kind of writer he'll be or what kind of books he'll write (rather than actually writing), Vila-Matas fills his days with unexpected encounters with other writers, filmmakers, and actors, all of whom he pumps for information about what writing really is. Naturally, the advice he receives only creates more confusion, more uncertainty. As much an investigation into inspiration and creativity as it is a window into one writer's development, Never Any End to Paris is finally a bittersweet farewell to Vila-Matas' younger self, and to the loss of his fleeting innocence.