Never Any End to Paris Author:Enrique Vila-Matas A splendid ironic portrayal of literary Paris and of a young writer?s struggles by one of Spain?s most eminent authors. — This brilliantly ironic novel about literature and writing, in Vila-Matas?s trademark witty and erudite style, is told in the form of a lecture delivered by a novelist clearly a version of the author himself. The ?lecturer? ... more »tells of his two-year stint living in Marguerite Duras?s garret during the seventies, spending time with writers, intellectuals, and eccentrics, and trying to make it as a creator of literature: ?I went to Paris and was very poor and very unhappy.? Encountering such luminaries as Duras, Roland Barthes, Georges Perec, Sergio Pitol, Samuel Beckett, and Juan Marsé, our narrator embarks on a novel whose text will ?kill? its readers and put him on a footing with his beloved Hemingway. (Never Any End to Paris takes its title from a refrain in A Moveable Feast.) What emerges is a fabulous portrait of intellectual life in Paris that, with humor and penetrating insight, investigates the role of literature in our lives.« less