One of the most brilliant essayists of the moment, Jorge Freire (Madrid, 1985), philosopher, columnist and professor, is the author of excellent works such as ‘Agitación. On the evil of impatience’ and ‘The banality of good’ (both in Páginas de Espuma), ‘Make yourself who you are’ (Deusto) or the studies dedicated to the Hungarian Arthur Koestler, or to that great writer, Edith Wharton who certified and satirized in his magnificent novels and stories both the decline of the Old World and the turbulent emergence of a new configuration and new morality in post-Victorian society. But, above all, Freire, with one of the most captivating and lucid writings of our days, to which is added a splendid handling of both language and irony as well as educated quotation, wisely dosed, maintains in each work, and more than ever in the current, recently appeared, ‘The Strangers’, a very agile abolition of traditional literary genres. ESSAY ‘The Strangers’ Author Jorge Freire Editorial Libros del Asteroid Year 2024 Pages 218 Price 18.95 euros 4This is the case of the new essay, more mestizo than ever, built around an idea: the impossible belonging and the universal feeling of rootlessness and exile of the human being, from the moment one is born. Four penetrating and acute microbiographies; four exciting stories that show the non-place and estrangement that at a certain moment in their lives were embodied by four great writers of the last century: Edith Wharton, José Bergamín, PG Wodehouse and Blasco Ibáñez. Four geniuses, each in their field, trapped in the stormy maelstrom of History. A History of its time punctuated by two world wars and a civil war; for the defense of women’s rights and the defense of their private and public spaces; or by the fanaticism of isms and affiliation to schools and movements. To this must be added numerous pending accounts with a homeland betrayed, abandoned or mysteriously adored and reproduced, as on the set of a Hollywood movie, from afar. Moral crossroads, traps of conscience for those who always ignored it as an organ separated from their artistic trajectories Moral crossroads, traps of conscience for those who always ignored it as an organ separate from their artistic trajectories or silent rebellions that are not exhibited by launching paving stones or organizing riots in the streets. Throughout Freire’s book and his four biographies wrapped in continuous chiaroscuro, not always exemplary, many questions arise: Have the writers of each era necessarily always been a mirror in which their contemporaries can reflect themselves? Do they have to be forgiven, more than the most common of their compatriots, for their possible sins and betrayals of the national team? Hated, loved and envied in equal parts, monitored tirelessly, tenaciously attacked in the media and inquisitorial trials, with erratic and disconcerting actions or trajectories that sometimes tarnish admirable careers and stratospheric popularity, it gives the impression that each of these authors , separately, had to present an immaculate and permanent accounting summary of debits and credits, as if it were a public company. Quoted by Freire, Chesterton said that “each epoch ends up being saved by a platoon of untimely beings” called by Nietzsche “untimely.” Nothing better than exploring, with the splendid narrator that is Freire, this electrifying gathering of “untimely” people to get closer to its brilliant lights and its occasional and surprising shadows: to the North American Edith Wharton, the most famous writer of her time, the first woman who won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘The Age of Innocence’, a great reporter during the Great War and the only one capable of competing in her time with Marcel Proust or Henry James; to Blasco Ibáñez, the most internationally successful Spanish writer, whose works were continuously made into films in Hollywood, a fierce anti-monarchist and activist who incited revolts and loud conspiracies and duels, always going beyond himself, in search of success which he sought obsessively since he was a child.TraspiésTo José Bergamín, great aphorist and poet of the generation of ’27, who after his exile, would return to Spain, showing an angry disagreement with the Transition and choosing to spend its last days united with the ‘abertzale’ world, in the most savage years of ETA terrorism; and, finally, that disconcerting PG Wodehouse, a genius of British humor, of enormous popularity, who suddenly became an enemy of the country, to which he was never able to return. Someone who, in order to practice a few last unfunny jokes, in an inconceivable misstep, agreed to record some humorous broadcasts aimed at the North American public, in the middle of the world war, and from the very Nazi radio station in Berlin.
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