Quimi Portet likes unknown worlds and explorers’ journals. For example, those of Captain Cook, or those of Dr. Livingstone, or those of Lewis and Clarke. Maybe that’s why his library has a scattered order. Because looking for a book becomes an adventure, he finds others and says it’s like a mystery. They are spread over three bookshelves, in a cozy living room, where there is a recording booth similar to an elevator (he says it is temporary), the work table in front of a window that overlooks the old town of Vic, and twenty-seven guitars that want heat; those prior to his 29 years were loans. He turned 65 in October. She has lived here for twenty years, and the first bookstore – behind the television – was the work of an architect friend. Shortly after, the carpenter, Garriga, made the main one, on which there is a framed drawing by Pilarín Bayés and a collection of caganers. It was small, and another one was needed under the stairs that lead to the loft, where there are CDs and more books, these by na Miu, “my lady”; he smiles when he says that.
On the center table, between the sofas and next to some metal-framed glasses, there is History of 20th Century Music (Electronics), by Pau Riba, and Contact Journalism, by Miquel Bonet; Portet and the cook Maria Nicolau accompanied the author during the presentation, at Foster
Read the abstract of everyday things. He comments that, with the amount of information and stimuli we are bombarded with, it has something romantic and surreal. If Nintendo and PlayStation had existed at the time of El Último de la Fila, I would certainly not have spent so many hours in the van reading during the tours. I discovered a country there. He read Josep Pla, Pere Calders, Manuel de Pedrolo, Terenci Moix, Gabriel Ferrater, Montserrat Roig, who signed a book for him; also Francesc Pujols, who does not always understand and with whom he laughs a lot, and quotes: “Poor boy, something as sad as life and having to earn it”. I had previously discovered surrealist poetry, Breton, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti. And when he was at school, a friend from university recommended Vercoquin et le Plancton, by Boris Vian.
On the main shelf there are books in French (Rabelais, Proust), in English (Sharpe), in Italian (Umberto Eco, Giovanni Verga), many dictionaries. He likes languages. He has tried to study German many times. The last one, just before the pandemic. It has an ex-libris made by a Neapolitan gentleman, and notebooks where there must be songs. He has maps from when he was traveling by motorbike and two Beatles tapes; when I was a kid I thought they had released a record called Part 2 because that was what was running around the house. Yes, the Complete Works of Santiago Rusiñol are located under the stairs. It is the book he has given to friends the most times. The copy he has, from the publisher Selecta, was published in 1956, and seems to be dedicated by about twenty students to a teacher whose name is illegible. He likes to leave books and, because he lives surrounded by good people, they always return them.
He says that reading gives value to memory and longing, and when you’re young you miss the future. For this reason, his interest in adventure books may be due to an entangled part of his childhood, he adds. He also likes astronauts, but the ones who traveled to the Moon, not the ones who travel the same distance from Barcelona to Mallorca upwards. His genre would be the trips in time and The planet of the apes, with Charlton Heston; science fiction wins with image. He suddenly remembers a book from 1896 entitled In Abyssinia. Alla Terra dei Gaia. The author, Gustavo Bianchi, was sending letters from his expedition through Africa to the Geographical Society of Milan. Until the letters stopped arriving. According to the illustrations in the book, a tribe stole it. On showing it to me, Portet exclaims: “Colossal freak”.
