It is easy to imagine Julià Guillamon (Barcelona, 1962) as one of those little animals that he often talks about in his texts, perhaps a forest insect, one of those with many legs, even a pair of wings. One of the legs would be that of a literary critic, which he exercises firmly and rigorously in this supplement. Another could be that of curator of exhibitions, often dedicated to writers, but not only. There is also Guillamon with his article writer leg, which we can read in the pages of La Vanguardia, or that of a scholar and analyst of culture –and counterculture–, reflected in books such as La ciutat interrompuda (2001). Different legs but we could say they keep pace, so that the animal makes its way with determination, with sense, although someone may think otherwise.
Julià Guillamon's wings would be his books of what we could call literary creation, the ones that allow him to go further, more freely. With which he has also made his way for quite a few years now, since he premiered with La fàbrica de fred (1991) until now, with this Les hores noves that he has just published.
It goes without saying that with Guillamon, when he begins to write, everything is creation, be it a review, an exhibition catalog (the most recent on toys and writers) or an essay on, for example, Joan Perucho. But it is when he decides to flap his wings that Guillamon unleashes this creation. And with each flight, he goes a little further. And, paradoxically, this going further is done by looking inward.
He already did it in La fàbrica de fred (recently rewritten and reissued as La fàbrica de gel ), an urban memory in the form of mini-stories. Later he took a great leap in El barri de la Plata (2018), where the memory of childhood spaces in Barcelona's Poblenou opens the door to the investigation of family memory. And, following these scenarios, the author has finally plunged into the mountain. Arbucies. The Montseny. He did it in Les cuques (2020), disguised as an entomologist who, while observing insects, also observes humans and builds the story of his own life and that around him. The life of today and that of yesterday that is disappearing.
Now with Les hores noves Guillamon has changed entomology for botany. But deep down he follows the same path. That of the observer-notary. That he leaves evidence, sometimes more melancholic, other times more rebellious, of that world that escapes us unstoppably. That world of those who lived connected to the earth. A world that the author knew as a child in Arbúcies where he spent long summers because his mother was in charge of the hostel. A world to which he has reconnected.
Guillamon explains that a book like this has been around his head for a long time, in some way inspired by Les hores by Josep Pla, who traveled – like Guillamon now – the course of a year leaving evidence of a world that disappears, or has disappeared Already. And there are certainly some things that Pla writes about in the preface to Les hores that would serve perfectly for Guillamon's Les hores noves: "This is a book about the land, about the country," says Pla. "He is placid, simple, peaceful and modest"...
Thus, we could say that Guillamon is a bit like a contemporary Pla, precise in writing but who also tweets, watsapes and takes photos with his cell phone that he then takes to his book next to phrases that the writer from Empordà would surely have liked. Like that "mystical poma que s'ha aprimat d'un disgust". Or those butterflies that fall into a pool and die like "poor amniotic ofèlies." Or the hazel branches that are “like a Calder mobile”.
We now call books like Les hores noves nature writing. Books that in times of climate change are committed to the preservation of the natural environment, whether through fiction, essays or any other literary form. Nature writing even has its old popes, like Henry David Thoreau. But as Guillamon himself said to Xavi Ayén in La Vanguardia, "this boom is nothing new, the Catalan tradition is intimately linked to nature, from Verdaguer, a village gentleman who knows the names of plants and rocks, to Maragall and pantheism, or the modernists and their Nordic vision of landscape, up to today, to Perejaume or Irene Solà”.
Regardless of the label, you have to taste Les hores noves little by little, slowly, savoring the words –because it is not only nature that needs to be preserved–, discovering the names of plants and animals, admiring the adjectives, savoring the metaphors, allowing ourselves to be carried away towards that world which, habitual of the asphalt as we are, perhaps seems distant to us. Traveling at these suspended hours is rewarded. Although sometimes they lead us to discover "a posthuman world" where, like the author, we will feel like "desperate Quixotes".
