A resounding story about male desire

"It will be a decent novel, which is the saddest thing a novel can be," thinks one of the three protagonists of this story. I don't think this is the saddest thing that can be said about a novel, considering that we can dedicate the most insulting comments to it. But I understand what the narrator wants to express: by summing up the spirit of a book with the adjective correct We are sparing his life (in reality, we are concluding that this is a dispensable work). Many pages earlier, that same character, Miquel Rovira, awaits the trial of his rival, Ramón Balaguer (Ramón with an accent, a Catalan writer with a Castilian expression), about his latest novel, still unpublished.

The war within the war is, in many ways, a metaliterary novel. But the point is that readers who aren't up for this whole set of issues won't find it tiresome. And, conversely, experts will find many elements of wit and reading enjoyment. The speculation about the boundary between fiction and reality, for example, is very well conducted. I don't think it's a brilliant novel, but it's much more than a decent book. I don't think it was a work promoted by the muses, as Rovira believes happens with great works. However, Casajuana's craft means that we have a not inconsiderable title, one that not only makes you read it, but also makes you underline it.

The opening quote—the only one in the book—is from Vassili Grossman: "Sometimes men who go into battle together detest each other more than they detest the common enemy." It's the same thing Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote, referring to the fellowship communist: "Body on the ground, our people are comingThe story takes place in recent times, between the rise and fall of the independence movement and the outbreak of the pandemic. Rovira is a Barcelona writer with pro-sovereignty convictions. His opponent, Ramón Balaguer, also from his own country and his own, embraces so-called constitutionalist positions. Doubts about what they write, and even about the viability of their work, gnaw at them. Given his interest in the Spanish Civil War, Balaguer recommends that he meet with Rovira, who is writing something about it. A love triangle begins.

Casajuana never stops playing: Rovira has published a book with an identical title to one of his own (The last man who spoke Catalan). The manuscript of the novel he is working on has the same title as the novel we are reading. These two are not the only nods between the author's previous work and the present novel. The thesis of The war within the war Roviriana (not Casajuaniana) is that a parallel can be drawn between the disputes between anarchists and communists during the events of May 1937 and those maintained by the Catalan separatists during the process: "The most destructive disputes are always within the home or with those closest to them." Balaguer severely criticizes this.

And, in the middle of these two characters, who sometimes display certain caricature-like traits, there is the fascinating role of Chantal, who ends up imposing herself with her feminine vision of things, arbiter of male desire. So, more than about the creative whims of writers, more than about the political antagonisms of Catalans, this seems to me to be a resounding story about male desire (I mean: about a certain obsolete way of understanding that desire), in which the character of Chantal ends up passing her hand over both of their faces: jealousy.