Montois, this article explains with creat accuracy the situation that
I had alluded to. As to Pere Calders, a professional short-story
writer, he is the best short-story writer ever in Spain (taken as a
whole). Were he Italian, he would be celebrated like Calvino and
Buzzati. He lived essentially a life of obscurity, first in Mexico for
a couple of decades, then back in Barcelona, working for a publisher.
Pedrolo also survived working for a publisher and translating. The
writer forgot to mention poet Salvador Espriu, probably the best
Spanish poet after Lorca, totally denied recognition... because he
wrote in Catalan.
The Tirant lo Blanc, by the way, is on a level comparable to the
Quixote, and much sexier in all senses of the word. Unfortunately,
until recently you couldn't even find a complete version of it in the
original Valencian language. This has been rectified, fortunately.
In any case, whoever decided not to publish that Pedrolo translation
is a fool, as the author of the article points out... His books have
great appeal, they are not regional in any sense. It is ironic that
the most internationalist of Spanish writers is dismissed as a
regional guy!
Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff. For those who can read Spanish,
there are some translations of these great writers into that language,
but only some.
Best,
mrt
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