Quim Monzó returns for Sant Jordi with an original proposal: a book that includes all the articles in which he has written the word idiot or one of its derivatives. Julià Guillamon, who curated the exhibition about the writer and has collaborated with him on two other titles of Libros de Vanguardia, has organized those eighty-odd articles into six chapters, with titles such as “It is ok to think that we are idiots” or “Encara no “I am a total idiot.” The happy result is Ments preclears. The Book of Idiots, published by Libros de Vanguardia.
In the epilogue Guillamon recalls an interview with Josep M. Puyal, where Monzó already points out his vision that clichés fry the intellectual capacity of many people, that “it is an immense drive to think.” Precociously, Monzó discovers that there are as many idiots among moderns as among progressives, thereby inadvertently reaffirming the Second Fundamental Law of Human Stupidity formulated by Carlo M. Cipolla in The basic laws of human stupidity, “The probability that a certain person being an idiot is independent of any other characteristic of that person.”
Cipolla distinguishes these types of people: the stupid (they benefit others and harm themselves), the intelligent (they benefit others and themselves) and the thieves (they harm others and benefit). The fourth type is the one we are dealing with, idiots, who harm others and themselves at the same time.
The book includes cases such as benches shaped like books to encourage reading, with no proven effect other than a noticeable discomfort when sitting on them; or the motorcyclist who, in a march against the use of motorcycle helmets, dies in an accident precisely because he was not wearing one; or the result of always smiling in photos, forgetting that smiling for no reason is a sign of stupidity in many cultures, which also leads artificial intelligence to generate unreal images such as that of medieval warriors all smiling; or a Lloret regulation to sanction balconing practitioners (assuming they survive) and the hotel that is not to blame for the cretinity of its clients.
There is no shortage of criticism of the stupidity of restaurants where diners have to suffer loud music or perversely dark environments. One of the texts, already accepting the inevitable, details specific recipes to obtain the vomitous dishes that we often find there.
The book is hilarious and another example of the precise writing of an author who uses magnificent Catalan, despite predicting a “dark future”, which while it does not materialize continues allowing him to make “uns calerons”.
