Vila-Matas on Fiction as Melancholic Self-Abandonment

Enrique Vila-Matas's work navigates between other authors, notably Borges and Kafka, centering on fiction's status and genealogical weight. His translated novels "Bartleby & Co." and "The Vertical Voyage" (Christian Bourgois) intensify the link between these domains, driving toward profound melancholy. Vila-Matas adopts an ethical stance: fiction as a moral life, requiring self-abandonment for writing through others, first unveiled in "A Brief History of Portable Literature" (1985). He argues that our lives belong to us only when they escape us, allowing transfiguration through fiction. His characters, including real figures like Duchamp, Kafka, Salinger, Pessoa, and Borges alongside fictional ones, are "fictionneurs" who carry fiction within. "Bartleby & Co." catalogs writers with the "Bartleby syndrome" (agraphia), exploring how modern literature pursues non-literature. "The Vertical Voyage" follows Mayol, a Catalan bourgeois whose life collapses when his wife orders him to leave; his vertical journey from Barcelona to Madeira becomes a metaphysical plunge, transforming him into a fictionneur. Mayol meets Ribera, a hotel owner who writes a novel about Mayol's adventure, mirroring Vila-Matas's performative program: one is always written by another.