From a mind once described as an endless labyrinth in which all forks lead to literature,Insistence as a Fine Arttrades the ekphrastic form for passage through a hall of interlocutors, mirrors, and guides (Nietzsche, Gadda, Calvino, Orson Welles). Thus Enrique Vila-Matas study of an artwork, Romero de TorressLa Buenaventura(The Fortune Teller) from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museums permanent collection, swiftly becomes much more, spinning out with signature erudition into a whirlwind meditation on painting, history, and the opacity of the present tense. As one turn folds into another, voices rise and drift into a keenly elliptical flow.

Barcelonan writerEnrique Vila-Matasis among the most prominent contemporary Spanish authors, a renown that makes him no less avant-garde. He studied law and journalism, worked as an editor on the film journal Fotogramas, and lived in Paris between 1974 and 1976. Vila-Matas is the author of the prize-winningDublinesque(2010), which along with his numerous short stories, essays, columns and articles, conveys a deeply intertextual commitment to the construction of writing. Vila-Matas work has been translated into 32 languages and awarded numerous prizes, including the 2001 Premio Rmulo Gallegos and the prestigious Prix Mdicis for the best foreign novel in France, in 2003. The author belongs to the Orden del Finnegans, whose members are committed to veneration of Joyces masterpiece Ulysses.

Kit Schluteris author ofCartoons, a collection of stories and drawings, andPierrot’s Fingernails, a book of poems. Among his recent and forthcoming translations are by Rafael Bernal, Copi, bruno daro, and Marcel Schwob. He lives in Mexico City and designs books for a living.

Paperback | 80 pages | 4.125″x2.75″x0.2″ | Hanuman Editions