Seven books, a well-laid table, and a question that always comes back: does writing well mean following advice—or rather, staying alert for the moment when literature decides to turn up.
Would you give me a trick, a secret, a good piece of advice for writing well? Who, in our line of work, hasn’t heard that question at least once?
“Just one? Only one? If you’ve got something to write with, I’ll give you hundreds!”
That is more or less what I answered this morning to a friend and—before she could react— I sprang up from the sofa and went to my shelves to fetch my latest acquisition: Comment écrire, by Pierre Assouline. A compendium of tips, techniques, and secrets from the best French and foreign writers (Éditions Albin Michel, 2024).
“Yes, fine…” she murmurs, leafing through the book’s three hundred-plus pages. “But it’s a bit long, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never met a good writer who wasn’t, at the same time, a good reader,” I reply. “More or less what Rilke used to say.”
“Aren’t you getting a bit… pedantic?” she shoots back. “Be concrete: who do I start with—someone easy?”
So I open Assouline’s book at the very first page and show her a photograph of a young Oscar Wilde. Beneath it is a sentence that could summarise the whole volume—usually credited to Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Am I being too much of a snob? I turn towards the nymph stretched out on the sofa. The look on her face suggests the answer. To soften the tension, I invite her to a literary workshop that Sara Montero Aneeren is running later this afternoon at Comestibles Barea, on Embajadores 38, in Lavapiés.
We are in Madrid, and my attempt at winning affection has not worked.
I will have to go alone.
It seems pedagogy isn’t my gift—but what can one do?
As I take the green line on the Metro, I remember the famous scene in The Godfather: Johnny Fontane begs Don Vito Corleone to help him land the part that will relaunch his career. Don Vito scolds him, tells him to behave like a man, and—after consoling him—promises to speak to the film’s producer. Hollywood will give Fontane whatever he asks. When Fontane insists it’s too late, that shooting starts in a week, the Godfather replies, referring to the producer:
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Iconic, isn’t it? A stroke of Mario Puzo’s genius? Not at all: the scene is lifted from Le Père Goriot, by Balzac.
Writing well, sometimes, is also knowing how to steal with style.
Comestibles Barea is part tavern, part delicatessen. It has a Provençal air: distressed rustic furniture, the produce arranged with intelligent, chromatic flair, and frescoes of still lifes in vivid colours. For a moment, it makes you feel you are in Antibes.
At the back they have set up an oak table; the glossy varnish serves as a tablecloth and, on top of it, a tasting of appetisers. We are invited to sit.
There I run into many friends: Chufa, Jesús, Olga…
Sara is already a well-known writer in Madrid. She published with the legendary Huerga y Fierro Tres vagones, a novel of introspection and family conflict set during a train journey—quickly noticed in Madrid’s literary air for its quality. She now has, with the same publisher, a poetry collection and her second novel at the printers.
But she has not come to talk about her own work. She has prepared a small booklet with extracts from different novels. The idea is simple and enticing: read a brief passage that introduces a particular dish and wine; while we taste the culinary proposal, let the conversation go where it wants.
Vermouths of various kinds, cured meats, cheeses, wines, oils, charcuterie, pâtés, and preserves of every description begin to circulate at speed. I listen—as if to a background murmur—to Sara’s reflections and the workshop’s comments, while the oysters’ intense taste of sea and their metallic edge sink in; the white wine rinses it away with the sweetness of a wave.
By the fifth course I sprawl, loosen my belt, and give up on the remaining half of the menu. Tomorrow, remembering it, I will regret it—but one is no longer twenty.
Until now I haven’t spoken. They are talking about Hemingway and his A Moveable Feast.
When Hemingway enters Paris with the American army in 1944, he first heads for Shakespeare & Company where, amid the Wehrmacht’s retreat, he manages to rescue its owner, Sylvia Beach—his friend from the interwar years—from a serious predicament. She had refused to leave Paris throughout the Occupation.
And here a parenthesis: yes, I mean the bookseller who first published Ulysses, by James Joyce, and whose book could only be bought in her shop. I would add that the current Shakespeare & Company opposite Notre-Dame—now packed with tourists—is little more than a pastiche imitating the original. So don’t take photos there: of the real one, only a commemorative plaque remains at number 12, rue de l’Odéon.
But let us continue. With the lady saved, Hemingway goes to celebrate at the Ritz, to revisit his youth. And what does he find there? A trunk they had kept for him for almost ten years—one he had left himself, promising he would return soon to collect it.
And what did the trunk contain, besides useless clothing? An infinity of notes about his life in the Paris of the twenties.
In short: at a moment when Hemingway himself—drunk as he was—imagined he would never again be able to write even a short story, he had in front of him—half written by his own hand—an entire novel.
A gift from heaven, really.
By the time I step back onto the asphalt, the streetlights have turned into supernovas, and on the Metro I navigate more by feline instinct than anything else. My cat has trained me well; he is the only one waiting when I open the front door. The ritual—on pain of endless miaows—I know by heart: fresh water, food. “Guccito,” too, is a gourmet.
On the bed someone has left a parcel; my nymph must have taken it from a courier before leaving. I tear the wrapping clumsily: I already suspect it’s a book, but curiosity itches—what book?
It is Fugitives, by Danny Orbach: a novel-essay about how Nazi hierarchs repositioned themselves after the war, integrating into various intelligence services or brokering arms deals.
It comes highly recommended, but I will begin it tomorrow. Tonight, all my efforts will be devoted to the great enterprise of finding my pyjamas.
Eire.
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