One Week Anniversary

Today we are celebrating the one week anniversary of last Monday, when we went to the Círculo de Bellas Artes to see famous Spanish author Juan José Millás present his latest novel, Laura y Julio. The presentation was presided over by the author, a professor of Spanish literature named José-Carlos Mainer, and the Argentine-Spanish supermodel Martina Klein. No wonder there were so many photographers there. And we were thinking that in Spain novelists are treated like rock stars. We had to go home and type "Martina Klein" into the old google search engine to figure out that she was a supermodel. But that still doesn't answer why she was there. To be honest, she really didn't add much to the conversation. But Millás seemed to listen to her very attentively, while Mainer was, well, the odd man out.

The really interesting part of the evening happened about ten minutes into the presentation. A hush spread across the room, and everyone started to titter as the one and only Pedro Almodóvar sneaked in and found a chair in the fifth row, guided by his personal assistant. Then he sneaked out about fifteen minutes before the end of the presentation. He was too far away for the amagomundi photographers to get a shot at him, but it was a cool moment. Later, while we were having a beer and some ham, we saw famous Spanish historian Julian Casanova, author of La iglesia de Franco, walk by. Madrid can sometimes feel like a small town.

So, anyway, S is still reading his copy of Laura y Julio by famous Spanish author Juan José Millás and wondering whether or not he should be marking up the pages since the book now has the author's autograph. But then he thinks that it probably doesn't matter since he won't be selling the novel on ebay or anything. It's not like it's worth more than the 17.50 euros that he paid for it at the Casa del Libro. We guess that the signature just adds sentimental value.


One view of Gran Vía from the fourth floor of the Círculo de Bellas Artes.

And another view from the same floor, with advertisement for palindromic Spanish dancer Sara Baras.

For those intrepid readers who have made it all the way down to this portion of our fine blog entry, we thought that you might like to know about another book that came out last week. If you like the fiction of famous Spanish author Juan José Millás, you might be interested in pre-ordering a copy of True Lies, by famous Spanish literary critic Samuel Amago. He has a really great chapter on Juan José Millás. You can order True Lies on amazon.com: Boom. We have it from a pretty good source that you will probably qualify for free shipping.

Or better yet, you can contact Bucknell University Press directly and order a copy from them: Boo-ya. The book is so new that it hasn't actually appeared on their website yet, but we are certain that you can order your copies without any problem. Indeed, you can be the first on your block to add this handsome edition to your library.

And in anticipation of the inevitable question: No. True Lies makes no mention of the eponymous 1994 film starring Arnold Strong. But you can really help the author out by buying a copy. Or maybe you'd like to buy two? That way you can keep one copy at work and another at home so that the kids on the bus won't make fun of you for reading literary criticism.