You ever have that situation where you have had a run of great book then have a reading slump straight after that well this was the last book in a good run of books since e I finished it five days ago I haven\u2019t finished a book in fact last night and this morning is the first time I got back into a book. This is a book that could be called a pandemic book. Evald Filsar is maybe the best-known and most well-travelled Slovenian writer. This book came out in 2020 it is perhaps a fever dream of a literary man stuck at home, imagining various writers and situations. I am not sure of this, but given that it came out in 2020, the book\u2019s first part is about the writers\u2019 conference in Kolkata, then it moves on around the world,d various famous encounters along the way.<\/p>\n
\nI never dreamed that I would find myself among the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of the world\u2019s short prose writers. The congress was attended by John Updike, Susan Sontag, John O\u2019Hara, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, Jos\u00e9 J.<\/p>\n
Veiga, Joyce Carol Oates, Chang Tien, Jasar Kemal and I could go on. A dwarfish participant whispered to me that, in spite of the general conviction that he would not, even Jorge Luis Borges had turned up. I pushed my way to the front.<\/p>\n
And it was true, at a table by the wall sat the blind Argentine of whom Andr\u00e9 Maurois wrote that he \u201ccomposed only little essays or short narratives, yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style.\u201d<\/p>\n
The guest at the conference<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The book follows a writer who suffers from writer\u2019s block at a conference in India. This was years earlier, and Borges opened the conference. He is. Recurring character in the story, where he spends time with several great writers, there is a theme of East European writing and various themes. Then, he is sent by his publisher to a Swiss clinic due to his writer\u2019s block. He meets a collection of writers who also suffer from writer\u2019s block. These are the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of the writers from Filsar and my generation, Graham Greene, Amis senior and junior, and Borges, all there as they all talk about their writing and try to help our writers by telling their stories. I loved that he includes Infante here, a writer who should be better known. He then talks about being a Booker judge in a year that was very famous for a speech by Fay Weldon. Then he wins the Nobel. I love how he drifts and mixes real characters around his narrator and writer\u2019s block. But also mixes past and present.<\/p>\n
\nThat\u2019s not true, shouted a fat lady from Italy. What about Chekhov, what about Katherine Mansfield and other impressionists, whose stories are often merely extended expositions, emotional locks that are only unlocked in the last sentence? And Moravia, whose stories are notes on the mental state of a handful of characters, often just one?<\/p>\n
And Borges, whose stories are, at least on the surface, naked formalistic games, mathematical experiments? (We all looked round the auditorium, but Borges was not present.) Wasn\u2019t it clear, she continued, that there were as many stories as authors? That some were not better than others because of a different creative approach, but because of a better connection between intention and effect? In short, some stories achieve their goal, while others, exhausted and distorted from excessive effort, fall by the wayside.<\/p>\n
and so on<\/p>\n
The swiss clinc and the writer with short story writers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I can see this being framed by a writer who loves talking about books and travelling, like Filsar, who has been the head of PEN in his country. This is maybe him escaping his own writer\u2019s block, or a book written in the early. Months of the pandemic. I\u2019m not sure it is an ode to the generation of writers he grew up with, Amis, Borges, Greene, Infante, and all of them are writers I grew up with, but some of them are mentioned less than they were, Bellow, for example. Graham Greene is another writer who was huge maybe twenty years ago, but I rarely see people singing his praises now. This is a must-read for anyone who is a fan of these writers or what it is like to be a writer, the chances they have, like the conference to be a prize judge. It is an excellent book from a writer who loves writers of his generation so much it drips off the pages. Do you have a favourite book about writers?<\/p>\n
\n
Like this:<\/h3>\n
Like<\/span><\/span> Loading…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nRelated<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/winstonsdad.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/IMG_4393.jpg?resize=656%2C875&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c17c84a2077f396145cf2492b6a36cdcf5e528db1a9d10da2aa9f9acc8c42c37?s=60&d=identicon&r=g\")
\t\t\t<\/div>\n