The pastoral Catalan

The pastoral Catalan .Julià de Jodar, Barcelona, Proa, 2010

On the last novel by Julia de Jodar, the first thing the reader does is say’s description Julià Guillamon on the book: “a book now has global ambitions, a psychological story with a historical perspective, a great novel.” Beyond the coincidence that a reader can have with some of the usual critical comments, sometimes very biased and prejudiced “, this time the undersigned. We sense, however, that over time, it will be recognized as one of the great works of the author of Badalona. Although it appears straightforward, with a basic plot gives us a lot of descriptions and reflections of Catalonia and the closest contemporary world. Since Franco’s struggles of the seventies to the inconsistencies of a democratic state back from the Barcelona Olympic Games with the consequences now are derived from the triumph of the Cuban revolution in Castro´s government, all these elements are realized in stories secondary parallel experiences of the characters in the novel. A prominent landmark is the triumph of the first African-American, Barack Obama, in elections in the United States of America, which closes, in parallel with recent events in the novel, an intense plot and full of detail.
Julià de Jodar, true to form critical reflection on society before it, encourages the reader with a series of rhetorical questions, put in the minds of the characters, which enhances the uptake of its essence. We are facing a psychological novel where the central characters, Paul, Erina, and Jack Àurea offer the nakedness of his inner world. A etopeya is remarkable in the case of the first couple, who travel to Miami, following interest from Erina to rediscover Aurea and her friend to help you in the impasse that has become their life together with Jack, that become the narrative elements of the writer to reconstruct the social and political events leading to the second half of the twentieth century. The portrait of the two protagonists, Paul and Erina, sometimes recalls the best works of Catalan narrative psychological, as the fragment of insight from both featured on pages 46 and 47, which refers, for example, the story of Carles Soldevila “An alarm.” The reader, a privileged spectator of the story, it absorbs both consciousness narratives and get complete information about reality.

Similarly, it should highlight the structural detail of the work. Fifty-four short chapters that impregnate the lively rhythm and latent in the story, the author incorporates various narrative structures, such as letters or emails, with descriptions, news, notes, among others. A lot of resources to alleviate a novel that is steeped in some cases, lack of agility discourse.
The writer teaches and shows willingness to analyze and offer, in the mouths of the characters, inconsistencies or hypocrisy that marked a generation, its own-born and raised with the desire to fight against the repression of freedoms and for obtaining their own voice: “Most of those who had twenty years in May 1968 have become friends of the enemy, have agreed with crocodiles, and they themselves have metamorphosed into reptiles.” (P. 107). Given these, Pablo Garcia is presented as “not a man of action, but one analyst, technically speaking, an intellectual, and historical terms, because he already has his age, a survivor of the heroic age of European youth of progressivism sixties of last century. “(p. 237). A critical sense which refers to a reading above made, the infidel (2000) Francesc Bodie, a portrait also bitter disappointment at the lack of realization of the objectives received during the transition to democracy in this country. Be free, autonomous, a latent desire in each of their performances, an objective of the characters in the novel by Jodar.

A generation that is represented, among others, the two texts that precede the novel, the poem “Little War” Ferrater Gabriel and the song “Future” by Leonard Cohen. A good introduction for the reader to understand the basis for discussion of the nearly four hundred pages later. A kind of soundtrack that can accompany the reading of the subplots of Peace and Erina.
In short, we can distinguish several judgments or reflections that can be very suggestive to the reader:
* “The passion brings us back to a primitive state.” (P. 20)
* “They are so, the generation of bolero. Much love to sing the impossible, until you trip over a banner that would leave them alone to die more than once …” (p. 114)