Learn thanks to 'professor' Vicenç Pagès Jordà

Versatile writers, who relate to literature from multiple vocations (reader and fiction writer, literary critic and columnist, essayist and theorist and teacher), incorporate all the technical skill and accumulated knowledge into everything they do and every piece written by others, not so much as a question of genre conventions as of appropriateness and register. In the twenty or so articles collected in the volume entitled Prose course, which were published between 2018 and 2022 in the Girona Magazine, Vicenç Pagès Jordà (Figueres, 1963–Torroella de Montgrí, 2022) chose to prioritize his vocation as a teacher. I mean, before being imaginative and experimental, as he usually was when writing novels and short stories, before being striking and bold, as he usually was when writing literary criticism or articles about books or the world of literature, in these roles VPJ wants to be and shows himself, above all, analytical, clear, and explanatory. He taught writing classes.

As he himself explains in the inaugural article – and as his widow, Camila Massot Kleiner, recalls in the brief presentation that opens the book – the central interest of these texts is "the way of writing." This phrase includes everything from elements and resources of language and prose (sentence length, adjectives, descriptions, tone, rhythm, mastery of vocabulary...), and the very diverse ways writers use them, to specific aspects of the text (epigraphs) and also the analysis of some genres (diario). To present his lessons – let's say to make his explanations, which sound less masterful, what the author ofThe whist players It was nothing, VPJ takes specific works and authors, selected based on two criteria: that they are all (by birth or adoption or by intense relationship) from the Girona demarcation and that they have quality. Although its recognized model is The art of fiction, of David Lodge, VPJ also works with non-fiction works, an inevitable choice since one of its favorite writers was Josep Pla.

A literary endeavor of this nature can only be carried out through a versatility of tastes—a versatility of tastes, one that I would almost say is militant, unfettered or contaminated by any ideological dogmatism or aesthetic bias. VPJ demonstrates an absolute versatility of tastes: incorruptible. He shows the same sincere and lively interest in the work of two founding classics, Joaquim Ruyra and Víctor Català, as he does in the genre novels of two contemporary authors (science fiction, pulp by Sebastià Roig and the police thriller by Jordi Dausà), devotes the same complimentary attention to the opulent, adjective-filled prose of Adrià Pujol as to the bare prose constructed only with verbs and nouns of Damià Bardera, explores equally celebratory "the Attic prose of Maria Àngels Anglada" and "the synthetic art of Salvador Espriu", and equally recognizes the value of Miquel Berga's irony and the dramatic intensity of Toni Sala.

When I said earlier that this book above all shows the VPJ as a professor, I partly meant that, stylistically, the texts that are collected are more aseptic and scientific, less brilliant, than those he published in The Advance or in theNOW. Now, they are as careful, intelligent, and polished as all his published works. If he seems less brilliant, it's because his priority, as I've already said, is to be understandable and didactic, to the point that he isn't afraid to present evidence that almost borders on the obvious, as when he states that the texts that work are those that opt for the "most appropriate resources, taking into account the desired effect," or, also, that "... Of course, all this is only a small part of the book. VPJ's detailed insight and explanatory grace mean that the reader actually learns a lot from reading it.