1st LITERARY GATHERING OF THE YEAR: “THE SMALL LIFE. THE ART OF THE ESCAPE”, BY J.A. GONZALEZ SAINZ
“Little life. The art of fugue “ by J.Á. Gonzalez Sainz.
The work is much more than a set of the author’s reflections on life, it is also his thoughts and experiences. It uses a very rich language, but also a bit difficult that requires, in some cases, to read the text. Of course, the writing style shows the high erudition of the author.
For his portrait of life, González Sainz draws on the thoughts and phrases of great writers, such as the Austrian Zweig, the German poet Hölderlin and the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián. The latter in the seventeenth century with the “Oracle manual and art of prudence” showed his manual to make a person right. Gracián says: “to mature the judgment, to purify the will, to elevate the taste and refine the ingenuity”. Without a doubt, they have been a source of inspiration for the work of González Sainz.
Regarding the opinion of the participants in the gathering, some of them were deeply touched by the work, feeling that they found such a real description of life that reading moved them, while others found it repetitive and incoherent, and they the moral is missing.
“Our first gathering of the year: “Little life – The art of escape” by J.A. Gonzalez Sainz. He enjoyed this gathering in particular because of the diversity of opinions and sensations that we have shared about the same work. For me that is art. And personally I think that the author has masterfully captured his most personal reflections without any intention of convincing or imposing unique criteria. I thank Bea for the proposal of this reading because it has touched me, it has moved me inside at a very special personal moment” Mercedes Martínez, mother of Bachillerato student.
“Disparate opinions and feelings, but we all agree that it was a different book and that none of it has gone unnoticed” M.Mar Pérez, mother of Secondary student.
Indeed, it was a gathering of very different opinions, and as we always comment, these gatherings are the most enriching, because they are the ones in which we see that literature as art does not arrive in the same way, and yet, how interesting it is to see how something can be perceived in such different ways depending on who.
It has been an immense pleasure, as always, and we repeat next February 21 at 4:00 p.m. This time it will be a Japanese author, Haruki Murakami and the novel “Kafka on the shore”.
Beatriz Dapena
Library Manager
