Joan Pons, high literary sleight of hand

I discovered Joan Pons almost 35 years ago, with his narrative debut: the meeting of stories Don't believe what they say about me(Columna, 1991). I found it to be a more than promising literary baptism of fire. Since then, I've continued to follow him and have often commented on his work in the media: The Giraffe Maze(Proa, 1999), Single men(Proa, 2001), The Ice House(Bromera, 2009) or Heart disease(Univers, 2022) are some of his most outstanding books, vigorous novels. Pons excels in what could be called moral adventure novelHis stories always appeal to readers, but the underlying theme tends to probe, if not even accuse, us. As if he were the nephew of Baltasar Porcel or Jesús Moncada. He has experience, things to say. That's why I've never been able to explain why he enjoys so little attention. Why he is, in the country's literary scene, an almost invisible author. In 2016, he debuted as a poet with a commendable book: The Island of the Defeated Trees (AdiA). His titles are scattered across many publishing houses, too many. How is it that no publisher has seriously invested in him?

This book is a gem that should not go unnoticed by discerning readers. The author has created a very precise narrative device, with countless voices, which has two main plot lines: on the one hand, the unfortunate car accident involving Michel Gallimard and Albert Camus in Villeblevin, from which the publisher's wife and the dog, who had been tracking him down until his death in Camo de Camo, emerged unscathed; and, on the other, the story of Albert Sintes, a Menorcan who works as a gravedigger in the Provençal town of Lormarin (in the novel, always in French: Lourmarin); a child of the Spanish war who, unlike his parents, can flee the island on foot, embarks in extremisand reaches Algiers, to do all kinds of precarious jobs and suffer all the laws of deprivation, and finally, he will head to France. He will fall in love with Lucienne Cardinal, the librarian of Lormarin, and she with him, and they will live a love story that will allow the man to rediscover his roots, 23 years later.

A polyphonic novel

Describing a plot, as I have done, gives few clues about the beauty and depth of a novel. Because, beyond Pons's imaginative display, the essential, in my opinion, is found in other aspects. The novel is structured in four parts, and each is composed of relatively short fragments, represented by different points of view. Apart from that of the protagonists described, animals, objects, winds, rocks... and the sinister tree take part. They all have their say, and contribute to coloring the altarpiece. There are magnificent details, like this one that refers to the wild olive trees: "They looked like monks praying." The mention of the Naive, at the beginning of the work, is not at all gratuitous: Albert Sintes often seems like the revived image of the Voltairean hero.

The presentation is that of an adventure novel; the soul, that of a book that speaks of personal identity and the idiosyncrasies of peoples, of freedom and betrayal, of those who effectively win a war and those who, morally, end up as winners even if they've lost their skin. The two protagonists flee in search of a truth that, in the end, will be granted to them. Camus developed his entire philosophy around the concept of the absurdity of human life: Albert and Lucienne—let the reader judge—perhaps contradict this theory with their daring life example.