Montano's Malady is a novel about what it can mean to be consumed by literature, obsessed by literature, overwhelmed by literature. Right from the first pages, Enrique Vila-Matas plunges his narrator into the frustrating predicament of finding his total immersion in literature more and more stifling, so much so he continually laments, "I am literature-sick."
The novel consists of five distinct parts. And here's the trick: each ensuing part can be seen as undercutting or at least recontextualizing the previous part or parts. It's as if Enrique Vila-Matas is playing a labyrinthine literary shell game with both the readers of his novel and the characters within his novel.
So, the prime question: How should I go about reviewing such a novel in a way to share a tang of its spiraling rasa? After sizzling up the old brain cells, here's my answer: focus on the first section, Montano's Malady (yes, the same title as the book itself), along with a few comments on the second section, Dictionary of the Timid Love for Life, as per -
MONTANO'S MALADY
First off, our narrator tells us his son Montano has just published his "dangerous novel" about writers who give up writing. Tragically, Montano snared himself in the net of his own fiction - he currently suffers from writer's block.
Unfortunately, literature has also snagged the narrator in another form of what he terms 'Montano's Malady'. "I live surrounded by quotations from books and authors. I am literature-sick. If I carry on like this, literature could end up swallowing me, like a doll in a whirlpool."
Rather than a synopsis or making generalizations, at this point I'll zero in on juicy quotes from this provocative first section as I follow the narrator's tumultuous odyssey, forever peppering his reflections with literary references and quotes from numerous authors such as Pessoa, Kafka, Twain, Flaubert, Verne, Diderot, Stern, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Walter Benjamin.
"I have realized that in 1994 Sergio Pitol wrote a story called "The Shadowy Twin Brother," which he opened with a quotation from Justo Navarro: "To be a writer is to turn into someone else, into a stranger. You have to begin to translate yourself. Writing is a case of impersonation, of adopting a new personality. Writing is pretending to be another.""
One wonders if writing fiction contributes to the narrator's Montano's Malady. Such a curious observation coming from a writer since many authors of fiction experience a sense of liberation, of exhilaration, of freedom when entering the minds of their characters.
"And yet here I am now, in the Hôtel La Perouse, more book-sick than when I left Barcelona. Rosa (the narrator's wife) may have been right when she told me that Nantes - with Montano suffering from a different strain of the same literary disease - was not exactly the best place for me to rest for a few days from my fearsome reviews and my sickly obsession for books and my habit of seeing everything from a literary viewpoint."
What to do with a man who has read himself into a box? Perhaps it's time for him to take up a non-literary hobby like butterfly collecting or playing tennis. I wonder if Enrique Vila-Matas has ever suffered from a "sickly obsession for books" and has had times when he can not escape from observing life through literature. If so, it is really all that bad? I can think of a lot of other worse things - porno, video games, food, gambling, the stock market, one's aging body, to list several - to be obsessed about.
"I am sure that, had I stayed a few hours longer in Nantes, I would have ended up - if I haven't already - turning into the most literary being on earth....At least for a time, I need to have a complete break from literature to rest in whatever way I can. Also, even if it is only for a short period, I am going to shelve the diary that was turning into a novel."
Good thinking, man! You might not find it easy to rid your mind of thinking about literature but at least you can give your writing a diary a rest. Sometimes taking a break can be the best thing for writing. That way, when you return to your work in progress, chances are, you'll be infused with fresh energy - and you might even enjoy the ways your diary is turning into a novel. Echoes here of Enrique writing the very novel we're reading.
"Rosa would follow me to the kitchen and, as soon as she caught me with a bottle of something, she would tell me that I was in a very bad way, that it would even be better for me to start writing reviews again and to think about literature."
The narrator has shifted from thinking about literature to thinking about death. If that's the problem, no better way to improve one's brooding and mood than to write a book review. I speak from firsthand experience here!
"I think - that it really wasn't a bad idea to stop trying to diminish the influence of literature in my life and to pay greater attention to the obvious threat closing in on literature in today's world."
Now that, my main man, is a legitimate concern. Time to shift focus to something that really counts.
"Both for the increase of my honor and for the good health of the republic of letters, for me to embody literature itself in the flesh and blood, to embody this literature that lives with the threat of death at the start of the twenty-first century: to become literature incarnate and to try to save it from possible extinction by reviving it, just in case, in my own person, my own sorrowful face."
I can't help thinking Enrique Vlla-Matas wrote these words with his tongue deep in his Spanish cheek. It's quite something for one literary man to proclaim he will himself transform into the physical embodiment of literature in order to save literature from the clutches of the unwashed semi-literate ruck.
DICTIONARY OF A TIMID LOVE FOR LIFE
In this section, the narrator makes comments on specific diaries of famous authors such as André Gide, Witold Gombrowicz, Franz Kafka and Henri Michaux. He also relates that much of what he wrote in the first section is pure fiction, especially because he has no son.
Really? Might we have an unreliable narrator? Recall I mentioned the author playing a labyrinthine literary shell game. This is one move among many. Pick up a copy of Montano's Malady and behold Enrique Vila-Matas in action.
Enrique Vila-Matas, Spanish novelist and man of letters, born 1948
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