We are in December of 1997. I’m living in Barcelona, but I’ve gone to Girona to write an article for El País about an exhibition of work by a childhood friend, David Sanmiguel. At the same time as the opening, in Llibreria 22—right across the street from the art gallery—Ponç Puigdevall is presenting the book Last Evenings on Earth, by Roberto Bolaño. By now, Bolaño has in quick succession published Nazi Literature in the Americas and Distant Star, and his name is beginning to resonate in certain literary circles. But I, who am totally outside these circles despite having published three novels, have not yet read him, and have heard of him only from Enrique Vila-Matas, who is a mutual friend. Before the exhibition opens, I have a coffee with Bolaño and Puigdevall. Bolaño tells me he lives in Blanes, that all he does is write, that he makes a living—“a very modest one,” he emphasizes—through literature. Suddenly, while listening to him talk, I have a hunch. I ask Bolaño if he was living in Girona in the early eighties; he says he was. I ask him if he knew Xavier Coromina; he says yes. Then I tell him of our fleeting encounter outside the Bistrot and, once inside the Llibreria 22, I show him the passage in my second novel where a character says his thesis is going, but who knows where it’s really headed. Bolaño laughs; I laugh too.
From Javier Cercas’s memory-essay “Bolaño in Girona: A Friendship.”
Biblioklept 