Javier Marías

Javier Marías
Born	20 September 1951(1951-09-20) Madrid
Occupation	Novelist, Translator, Columnist
Notable work(s)	All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me, Your Face Tomorrow
Influences William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Bernhard, Juan Benet
www.javiermarias.es

Javier Marías (born 20 September 1951, in Madrid) is a Spanish novelist, translator, and columnist.

Life

Javier Marías was born in Madrid. His father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco (the father of the protagonist of Your Face Tomorrow was given a similar biography). Parts of his childhood were spent in the United States, where his father taught at various institutions, including Yale University and Wellesley College. His mother died when Javier was 26 years old. Marías's first literary employment consisted in translating Dracula scripts for his maternal uncle, Jesús Franco. He was educated at the Colegio Estudio in Madrid.

Writing

Marías began writing in earnest at an early age. "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga", one of the short stories in While the Women are Sleeping (2010), was written when he was just 14. He wrote his first novel, Los dominios del lobo (The Dominions of the Wolf), at ge 17a, after running away to Paris. His second novel, Travesía del horizonte (Voyage Along the Horizon), was an adventure story about an expedition to Antarctica.

After attending the Complutense University of Madrid, Marías turned his attention to translating English novels into Spanish. His translations included work by Updike, Hardy, Conrad, Nabokov, Faulkner, Kipling, James, Stevenson, Browne, and Shakespeare. In 1979 he won the Spanish national award for translation for his version of Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Between 1983 and 1985 he lectured in Spanish literature and translation at the University of Oxford.

In 1986 Marías published El hombre sentimental (The Man of Feeling), and in 1988 Todas las almas (All Souls), which was set at Oxford University. The Spanish film director Gracia Querejeta released El Último viaje de Robert Rylands, adapted from Todas las almas, in 1996.

His 1992 novel Corazón tan blanco was a commercial and critical success and for its English version A Heart So White, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Marías and Costa were joint winners of the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His 1994 novel, Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, won the Venezuelan Rómulo Gallegos Prize.

The protagonists of the novels written since 1986 are all interpreters or translators of one kind or another, based on his own experience as a translator and teacher of translation at Oxford University. Of these protagonists, Marías has written, "They are people who are renouncing their own voices."

In 2002 Marías published Tu rostro mañana 1. Fiebre y lanza (Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear), the first part of a trilogy that is his most ambitious literary project. The first volume is dominated by a translator, an elderly don based on an actual professor emeritus of Spanish studies at Oxford University, Sir Peter Russell. The second volume, Tu rostro mañana 2. Baile y sueño (Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream), was published in 2004. In 2007, Marías the completed the final installment, Tu rostro mañana 3. Veneno y sombra y adiós (Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell).

Marías operates a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. He also writes a weekly column in El País. An English version of his column "La Zona Fantasma" is published in the monthly magazine The Believer.

Marías was elected to seat R of the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy) in 2006. At his investiture in 2008 he agreed with Robert Louis Stevenson that the work of novelists is "pretty childish," but also argued that it is impossible to narrate real events, and that “you can only fully tell stories about what has never happened, the invented and imagined.”

Redonda

Marías's novel, Todas las almas (All Souls), included a portrayal of the poet John Gawsworth, who was also the third King of Redonda. Although the fate of this monarchy after the death of Gawsworth is contested, the portrayal by Marías so touched the "reigning" king, Jon Wynne-Tyson, that he abdicated and left the throne to Marías in 1997. The island of Redonda, which occupies less than one square mile of the West Indies, is wholly uninhabited, and none of its monarchs has ever set foot on it. It was purchased in 1865 by a banker named Matthew Dowdy Shiell. As one version of the story goes, Shiell asked Queen Victoria to establish Redonda as an independent kingdom, something Her Gracious Majesty did without hesitation because it seemed to pose no threat to the British Empire. Over time the island fell under the control of various monarchs, some of whom sold the title several times, causing tussles among swarms of pretenders. In 1997 the last king, Jon Wynne-Tyson, abdicated in favor of Marias, who began to nominate dukes and duchesses right and left.

This course of events was chronicled in his "false novel," Dark Back of Time. The book was inspired by the reception of Todas las almas by many people who, falsely according to Marías, believed they were the source of the characters in Todas las almas. Since "taking the throne" of Redonda, Marías has begun a publishing imprint named Reino de Redonda ("Kingdom of Redonda").

Marías has conferred many titles during his reign upon people he likes, including upon Pedro Almodóvar (Duke of Trémula), António Lobo Antunes (Duke of Cocodrilos), John Ashbery (Duke of Convexo), Pierre Bourdieu (Duke of Desarraigo), William Boyd (Duke of Brazzaville), Michel Braudeau (Duke of Miranda), A. S. Byatt (Duchess of Morpho Eugenia), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Duke of Tigres), Pietro Citati (Duke of Remonstranza), Francis Ford Coppola (Duke of Megalópolis), Agustín Díaz Yanes (Duke of Michelín), Roger Dobson (Duke of Bridaespuela), Frank Gehry (Duke of Nervión), Francis Haskell (Duke of Sommariva), Eduardo Mendoza (Duke of Isla Larga), Ian Michael (Duke of Bernal), Orhan Pamuk (Duke of Colores), Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Duke of Corso), Francisco Rico (Duke of Parezzo), Sir Peter Russell (Duke of Plazatoro), Fernando Savater (Duke of Caronte), W. G. Sebald (Duke of Vértigo), Luis Antonio de Villena (Duke of Malmundo), and upon Juan Villoro (Duke of Nochevieja).

In addition, Marías created a literary prize, to be judged by the dukes and duchesses. In addition to prize money, the winner receives a duchy. Winners: 2001 John Maxwell Coetzee (Duke of Deshonra); 2002 John H. Elliott (Duke of Simancas); 2003 Claudio Magris (Duke of Segunda Mano); 2004 Eric Rohmer (Duke of Olalla); 2005 Alice Munro (Duchess of Ontario); 2006 Ray Bradbury (Duke of Diente de León); 2007 George Steiner (Duke of Girona); 2008 Umberto Eco (Duke of la Isla del Día de Antes); 2009 Marc Fumaroli (Duke of Houyhnhnms).

Bibliography

Spanish titles

• Los dominios del lobo (1971)
• Travesía del horizonte (Voyage Along the Horizon, 1972)
• El monarca del tiempo (1978)
• El siglo (1982)
• El hombre sentimental (The Man of Feeling, 1986)
• Todas las almas (All Souls, 1989)
• Corazón tan blanco (A Heart So White, 1992)
• Vidas escritas (Written Lives, 1992)
• Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, 1994)
• Cuando fui mortal (When I Was Mortal 1996)
• Negra espalda del tiempo (Dark Back of Time, 1998)
• Tu rostro mañana 1. Fiebre y lanza (Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear, 2002)
• Tu rostro mañana 2. Baile y sueño (Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream, 2004)
• Tu rostro mañana 3. Veneno y sombra y adiós (Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell, 2007)
• Los enamoramientos (Fallings in Love, 2011)

English translations

All English translations by Margaret Jull Costa and published by New Directions unless otherwise indicated:

• All Souls (1992)
• A Heart So White (1995)
• Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (1996)
• When I Was Mortal (1999)
• Dark Back of Time (translated by Esther Allen, 2001)
• The Man of Feeling (2003)
• Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear (2004)
• Voyage Along the Horizon (translated by Kristina Cordero and published by McSweeney's, 2006)
• Written Lives (2006)
• Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream (2006)
• Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (2009)
• Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico (translated by Esther Allen, 2010)
• While the Women Are Sleeping (2010)

Further reading

• Berg, Karen, Javier Marías's Postmodern Praxis: Humor and Interplay between Reality and Fiction in his Novels and Essays (2008)

• Cunado, Isabel, El Espectro de la Herencia: La Narrativa de Javier Marias (2004)

• Herzberger, David K. A Companion to Javier Marías. Rochester, NY: Tamesis Books, 2011. ISBN 9781855662308

External links

• Sarah Fay (Winter 2006). "Javier Marias, The Art of Fiction No. 190". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5680/the-art-of-fiction-no-190-javier-marias. 
• Interview with Marías, 30 November 2009.
• "Airships", Grants Summer 2009.
• BBC HardTalk Extra: "Javier Marías", 3 March 2006. Video
• "A Man Who Wasn't There", The New Yorker 14 November 2005.
• "Feeling London's bombs in Madrid", New York Times 11 July 2005.
• "Betrayal of a blood brother", Guardian 8 May 2005.
• "Looking for Luisa", Guardian 7 May 2005.
• "How to remember, how to forget", New York Times "Fewer Scruples"], November 1999.
• "The Limits of Human Memory: On Proust and Javier Marías" The Quarterly Conversation, Issue 17