Àlex Rigola recommends the twelve hundred pages of David Foster Wallace

BarcelonaThe theater director Àlex Rigola does not conceive of summer readings as light readings. "Light literature just doesn't get to me. Books like The Girl on the Train seem unbearable to me, very hard to read, because there are only actions," he explains. What seduces him is more the "how it is told" than the "what." That is, the style, the voice, in short, high-flying literature. "I look for art in the narrative of writing more than in cinema. Sometimes emotional cinema takes me away, and on the other hand, in literature, I need the text itself to have quality," says the director of the Heartbreak Hotel theater.

That's why his recommendation is the twelve hundred pages and four hundred footnotes of Infinite Jest (Random House) by David Foster Wallace (1962-2008). "I like these long stories where you spend a few months of your life with a novel. If they are of quality, they stay with you," he assures. In this case, it is one of the great American novels of the 20th century, published in 1996. An exuberant, critical, dark, funny, and reflective account of contemporary society. The author draws an almost unattainable fresco on addiction in an imaginary and turbo-capitalist world, where even the name of the years is sponsored by a company. "It's fascinating writing, with several plots. At the end of a street there is a detoxification center with all sorts of very special fauna, and at the top, there is a high-performance tennis center, where they have their first experiences with narcotics," explains Rigola. There is also a political plot about the president of the country and the organization of a coup d'état. And a family story, that of the Incandenzas, who are the managers of the sports center on the outskirts of Boston. "When in writing, in addition to the events that happen, the characters make you reflect and learn about life... That's what captivates me," says Rigola.