43 years ago, on April 23, Sant Jordi’s Day, Josep Pla died. On Book Day in 2024, one of the main volumes will undoubtedly be the extensive – more than 1,500 pages – and detailed biography Un cor furtiu, which the professor and specialist Xavier Pla has dedicated to him. Any lover of this great Empordà writer, one of the indispensable signatures of the 20th century, will do well to have it on hand, if not to read it in one sitting, then to calmly enjoy it through thematic chapters. Discovering professional experiences, such as when Pla served as deputy director of this newspaper for a few months, from two days after his return to Barcelona on January 26, 1939 until the imposition by Serrano Suñer of Luis de Galinsoga as director in April of that anus. And browsing through the countless literary and private stories, something that the structure of the book favors.
Pla was a voracious reader since his high school years in Girona, and a compulsive book buyer since the beginning of his university years in Barcelona. Montaigne’s Essays, acquired early in a 1912 edition, accompanied him throughout his life. Some time ago another important figure in our literature, Valentí Puig, immersed himself in his oceanic work and from it he compiled a Pla Literature Dictionary, collecting an anthology of comments that the man from Llofriu had dedicated throughout his career to the staff. of European writers, from past eras and contemporaries of his career.
And good creation does not come from nothing.
In recent years, writing workshops have proliferated. There are many people who want to perfect their prose and aspire to capture their experiences, their evocations or their fantasy. At the height of digital communication, the desire to write is more alive than ever within very diverse groups. However, as the Italian Vanni Santoni has recalled in a delightful text, To write you have to read. Without this continued practice there are no techniques that are valid. Santoni, who teaches writing classes, laments that “a very high percentage of those who want to write have not read and do not read enough,” and if he is asked for advice for aspiring writers, he responds: “Read, read, read.” .
Something that the protagonist of another key volume does regularly do in the upcoming Sant Jordi. Ana Magdalena Bach, before, during and after her trips to the island, is a devotee of El lazarillo de Tormes, The old man and the sea, The stranger, Dracula, the Anthology of fantastic literature by Borges, Bioy y Ocampo, Crónicas Martians, The Ministry of Fear… It is hard to think that Gabriel García Márquez arranged these references by chance in what constitutes his exciting farewell to the narrative, recovered posthumously, In August See You.
To write you have to read. Two greats – by the way, so closely linked to Barcelona – like Pla and García Márquez made it clear throughout thousands of pages. It is also advisable to do it to enrich daily life by opening windows of curiosity, culture, spirituality and beauty. And to ward off the danger of progressive idiocy that Quim Monzó warns us about in his new work Ments preclares. El llibre dels idiotes, another essential recommendation for next Tuesday.
Like every year, La Vanguardia’s Cultura/s supplement proposes its selection of new releases, encouraging our readers to go to bookstores and purchase the ones that interest them, because a good part of the future is at stake today in the survival of bookstores in solid health. of our culture. And because for almost everything you have to read.
