This brilliantly ironic novel about literature and writing, in Vila-Matas's trademarkwitty and erudite style, is told in the form of a lecture delivered by a novelistclearly a version of the
author himself. The "lecturer" tells of his two-year stintliving in Marguerite Duras's garret during the seventies, spending time with writers,intellectuals, and eccentrics, and trying to make
it as a creator of literature:"I went to Paris and was very poor and very unhappy." Encountering such luminariesas Duras, Roland Barthes, Georges Perec, Sergio Pitol, Samuel Beckett,and Juan
Mars矇, our narrator embarks on a novel whose text will "kill" itsreaders and put him on a footing with his beloved Hemingway. (Never Any Endto Paris takes its title from a refrain in
A Moveable Feast.) What emerges is afabulous portrait of intellectual life in Paris that, with humor and penetrating insight,investigates the role of literature in our lives.
