The art of wearing a trench coat : stories /
Pamies, Sergi, 1960-
The art of wearing a trench coat : stories / Sergi Pàmies ; translated from the Catalan by Adrian Nathan West. - New York : Other Press, c2021. - 121 p.
Originally published in Catalan as L'art de portar gavardina in 2018.
"A baker's dozen of short stories that hinge on three types of love: between couples, and toward one's parents and one's children. This slim, intimate volume of thirteen stories explores paternal, filial, and spousal love (and disappointment, and nostalgia, and panic) through a narrator who bemoans his inability to wear a trench coat well, and who finally accuses himself of being "pusillanimous." Yet in these encounters and these endings, in these details and these feelings, a compassionate, small portrait of a life emerges. Terse, droll, sometimes absurd but always lucid, Pàmies casts his gaze on the urge to write as seen through his mother's final days; on his teenage fantasy that his father was actually Jorge Semprún; and on situations such as adopting a dog to staunch a failing marriage, or a father asked to play the part of a corpse in his son's short film. In this phantasmagoria of failure and loss, Pàmies confronts us-drawing us in with his use of the second person address-with the omnipresence of well-intentioned lies despite which it may be impossible to ever make anyone else happy"--
9781635420784 (paperback) 1635420784 (paperback)
2020029876
The art of wearing a trench coat : stories / Sergi Pàmies ; translated from the Catalan by Adrian Nathan West. - New York : Other Press, c2021. - 121 p.
Originally published in Catalan as L'art de portar gavardina in 2018.
"A baker's dozen of short stories that hinge on three types of love: between couples, and toward one's parents and one's children. This slim, intimate volume of thirteen stories explores paternal, filial, and spousal love (and disappointment, and nostalgia, and panic) through a narrator who bemoans his inability to wear a trench coat well, and who finally accuses himself of being "pusillanimous." Yet in these encounters and these endings, in these details and these feelings, a compassionate, small portrait of a life emerges. Terse, droll, sometimes absurd but always lucid, Pàmies casts his gaze on the urge to write as seen through his mother's final days; on his teenage fantasy that his father was actually Jorge Semprún; and on situations such as adopting a dog to staunch a failing marriage, or a father asked to play the part of a corpse in his son's short film. In this phantasmagoria of failure and loss, Pàmies confronts us-drawing us in with his use of the second person address-with the omnipresence of well-intentioned lies despite which it may be impossible to ever make anyone else happy"--
9781635420784 (paperback) 1635420784 (paperback)
2020029876