Quim Monzo: "Gasoline" and PEN World Voices [Part I]

Not a lot going on in terms of publishing news today, so I thought I’d take a break from the usual posts about ebooks, Zen wisdom, and disturbing novels to bring you a bit of information about Catalan author Quim Monzo, whose Gasoline recently arrived from the printer. (If you’re an Open Letter subscriber, I’m working on the special letter right now, and you should get your copy by the end of next week. Or so.)

Quim is considered to be one of the greatest Catalan authors of his generation. He’s most well known in Europe for his short stories (three of which — Mr. Beneset, Honesty, and I Have Nothing to Wear — appeared in Words Without Borders), but in the States, the only book that’s currently available is the fantastically comic (and ultimately tragic) novel The Enormity of the Tragedy, which was actually one of the first books I ever reviewed for Three Percent.

When Catalonia was the Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair a few years back, it was Monzo who gave the opening statement. The link to the full pdf of his speech is broken, but here’s a funny, self-referential and self-deprecating bit that I copied out into an earlier post:

Won’t reading the names of all these writers (most of whom are unknown to the literary world that circulates in Frankfurt) just be tedious for the audience at the opening ceremony who will have to listen to so many unfamiliar names? Won’t they be looking at their watches and thinking, “What a bore!”? And so he decides he won’t mention any names (even though, in fact, he has already mentioned them in the very process of describing his doubts as to whether he should mention them or not). What’s more, he’s read that at the Frankfurt Book Fair there will be an exhibition that explains all this. Although—to be frank—how many of the persons who attend this inaugural event will later visit this exhibition with any more interest than a merely official show of etiquette? Let us be frank and optimistic: very few. Even if this is a Book Fair, where the least-known authors ought to be the ones who would most pique the reading appetite of those who were interested in discovering literary gems and not simply following the commercial drumbeat of what is in vogue at the time.

Monzo will be appearing in three events at this year’s PEN World Voices festival, including the New York Stories event on Thursday, April 29th, In Conversation with Robert Coover, on Friday, April 30th, and a roundtable on The Essay on Saturday, May 1st.

He was going to appear here in Rochester on Monday, April 26th, but schedules became complicated and he won’t be able to make it. (I will interview Quim and his translator, Mary Ann Newman during the Festival for an upcoming Reading the World podcast episode.)

Not to cram too much info into one post, but our April 26th event has morphed into a Celebration of Open Letter at which ten different readers (U of R folks, interns, fans) will read 3-5 minute segments from ten different Open Letter titles—including Quim Monzo’s Gasoline. I’ll post the section that’s going to be read separately . . .