Paperback, 192 pages
English language
Published May 23, 2007 by New Directions.
Paperback, 192 pages
English language
Published May 23, 2007 by New Directions.
A Spanish office worker wants to be a writer but struggles to follow up his obscure first book. He takes a sick leave and starts to write footnotes to a non-existing text. He comments on writers whose careers stalled, such as Herman Melville, Robert Walser, Felipe Alfau and J. D. Salinger. He turns the improductive central characters from Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Letter from Lord Chandos" into role models. He goes through various reasons to not write.