One fine day, a writer, let's say Valentí Puig, sits down to write about his environment, his life, about what he observes. The result is Divided House (Destiny / Proa): pages where what has been lived is noted, the daily triumph and failure, with reflections that go from the Trump government to Ukraine. The essay is that: observe and analyze from the self what is around. And that's what Paul Auster did in A country bathed in blood (Seix Barral), where he analyzes the United States' fondness for weapons and mass shootings. But let's soften our existence in partnership with Xavier Febrés in L'Empordà per a mitòmans (Cal·lígraf), where he presents the attractions of this region and the passage of great artists through it.
Also courteous is what Luis Antonio de Villena presents in La dolce vita (Fórcola). It is a personal dictionary of Italian culture through writers, artists and musicians. Continuing in Italy, it is well worth remembering Roberto Calasso who, in Memè Scianca (Anagrama), evoked his childhood in Florence against the background of his first literary readings. Also of a personal color is what is published by Juan Eduardo Cirlot. In Fairs and attractions (Wunderkammer) the reader will find a detailed tour of an amusement park without a specific location.
These cited authors could have perfectly written Cartes a un jove escritor (L'Altra), as Colum McCann has done; In them, he offers 52 texts on the profession of writing: how to face the blank page, how to choose a literary agent... But how do you learn to read? This is key if we consider that "we live as we read", as Gregorio Luri says in On the art of reading (Platform). And a good reading will be that of Francisco Rico, The first century of Spanish literature (Taurus), around various medieval genres: the troubadour song, the epic songs or didactic poetry.
Such didacticism can be seen in The Art of Resisting (Debate), by Andrea Marcolongo, which explores the verses of the Aeneid; for him, it is a useful poem for one who struggles to present the resilience of a hero without a homeland to return to. And Roger Bartra knows his stuff about mythology and classical letters, who in The Myth of the Wolf Man (Anagram) talks about this character in folklore, popular tales, nineteenth-century narrative and cinema.
If the reader is looking for something more contemporary, they will be interested in Escenas de la novela argentina (Eterna cadencia), by Ricardo Piglia, the result of the four classes that the author gave in a television program in 2012 and in which he spoke of Arlt, Borges, Manuel Puig or Aira. And if you are curious about the origin of Catalan, you should go to Jesús Alturo and Tània Alaix. These, in Lletres que parlen (La Magrana), take a tour of the fundamental points that have marked the evolution of this language, and find the oldest written testimonies that have been identified up to now.
Next to these studies, we find two very particular books. One is Emilio Pascual's El gabinete mágico (Siruela), about imaginary libraries. The other is signed by Jorge Carrión: Electromagnetic fields (Black Box), made via automatic writing with a GPT-2 artificial intelligence system to, in dialogue with a GPT-3, generate two literary texts.
Let's move on from this technological intelligence to a human one: Marisol Salanova, in Artistic Intelligence (Platform), says that you don't have to be an artist to have it, and proposes discovering how to develop our potential to get to know ourselves better. On an erudite level, it is worth contemplating Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth (Atalanta), by Algis Uždavinys, about how a total interior transformation, a rebirth, was produced in the spiritual initiate. Also addressing Greco-Roman antiquity, Charles Senard stands out, who in Being a Stoic is not enough (Rosameron) resorts to Epicurean wisdom to explain the benefits of his legacy.
On philosophy of the twentieth century we have great news: Reflections on the philosophy of Hitlerism (Alpha Decay), by Emmanuel Levinas; Ortega y Gasset. A Spanish philosophical experience (Guillermo Escolar), by José Luis Villacañas; Un Sartre muy distinto (Ediciones del Subsuelo) by François Noudelmann; and Hannah Arendt: the world at stake (Arcadia) by Fina Birulés.
But what would thought be if it did not look at the future from the present: Gregorio Luri, in In search of the time we live in (Deusto), analyzes our world to diagnose the sign of the time in which we live. Agustín Fernández Mallo, in The Shape of the Multitude (Galaxia Gutenberg), traces a genealogy of capitalism and explains how the network acts on the individual. Alain Finkielkraut, in La posliteratura (Alliance), denounces the political correctness of today's society and the culture of cancellation. And finally, a very particular work: The Last Days of Roger Federer (Random House), by Geoff Dyer, which delves into the critical moments of geniuses who gave in physically or mentally when their careers reached the peak, such as Nietzsche, William Turner or Beethoven.
