The talent and literature of the self

BarcelonaI often hear criticism about the literature of the self. “Current authors only know how to talk about themselves,” “hardly anyone does real exercises in fiction,” “there is too much egocentrism,” etcetera. When I hear these comments, the first thing I think is that I agree, of course. It may even be that I myself have said it out loud: “I’m fed up with reading stories about people who only talk about themselves!”. In recent years, autofiction has occupied many shelves in bookstores. Perhaps too many. Perhaps it is a fad and perhaps we have tired of it, it is true.

But if I keep thinking about the debate, I realize that when an author interests me, it is not because of the topic they deal with, but because of the talent they have. For the skill in creating a story, for the use of language, for the depth of reflections, for the mastery of rhythm, for the sentences I can't help but underline. It doesn't matter to me at all, when I read, whether something really happened or not; whether the author wrote that book as therapy or as entertainment. Fortunately, reading is an individual act. The author can say whatever they want, because when I read, I only look for that concrete and revealing pleasure that we call “reader’s pleasure”. The voyeurism of the experience is irrelevant to me.

So, there is literature of the self that I think is shit, and literature of the self that I enjoy with all my heart. Several positive examples come to mind: La història dels vertebrats, by Mar García Puig (La Magrana, 2023); Materials de construcció, by Eider Rodriguez(Periscopi, 2023); or, recently, the book Famesick, by Lena Dunham, an American screenwriter who marked an era with the series Girls (2012) and whom I follow everywhere blindly (the book is not available in Catalan, I am reading it in English in an edition by Fourth Estate; Debate will publish it in Spanish). They are personal, honest voices, but, above all, talented. Even, and not to mention only women’s names, The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig (Quaderns Crema, 2001) is also literature of the self, and it is a cornerstone of European literature.

In reality, I reflect on this because I have read Live or Die, a book of poems by Anne Sexton (Massachusetts, 1928-1974) that Godall Edicions has published in Catalan, and which in 1967 received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Sexton has often received the criticism “of the self.” That she is too confessional, that she only talks about her dramas… But, on the other hand, her poems are universal. She was a person who lived with bipolar disorders, postpartum depression, suicide attempts, and serious mental health problems, and who, because she had the gift of words, has bequeathed to us her entire existence transcribed in a good handful of verses of those that, once you have read them, you can no longer forget. Verses of no return.

The pleasure of reading a good translation

Godall’s edition is bilingual, English-Catalan, which I celebrate, because it makes you enjoy the reading twice as much. The translation has been carried out by Núria Busquet Molist and Mireia Vidal-Conte, who have done a considerable exercise in abstraction. Their translations are not always literal, which I, personally, found amusing, because I read both versions in parallel and I entertained myself thinking if I, in Catalan, would have chosen that word or not. It is priceless that each language gives you a different layer of meaning. The translators themselves explain, in the footnote of the poem I una per a la meva dama, that they have decided to respect a wish that Sexton expressed in an interview in 1970. He said: “When they translate me, I only want the images, I don’t care about syllables or rhyme.” Thus, in many cases, the decisions of Busquet and Vidal-Conte are more personal or creative than exact or faithful. It is another of the pleasures of the book, the great game of translation.

Viu o mor is a harsh, unsettling poetry collection, in which Sexton describes moments of her life, always marked by incomprehension, by violence, by the feeling of inability and lack of control in front of others and in front of oneself. It is a poetry collection by someone who never saw the limits between life and death very far, as happens to so many people. In fact, one of the poems is what the author writes when she receives the news that Sylvia Plath has committed suicide. She says: “Thief! / How did you drag yourself there, / to the death that I wanted so much and for so long, / the death that we both said we had overcome / […] the death for which we drank, / the reasons and, then, the silent act?”. The literature of the self can saturate us, but, in fact, it is as old as humanity, and if it is well written, like Anne Sexton’s, it is not about self-help or egocentrism at all. After all, if we are honest, the human experience is anything but therapeutic.