- Most viewed
- Last viewed
Valentí Puig: «Carlos Pujol was not interested in being famous, but in experiencing literature»
The journalist and novelist Valentí Puig gave a session as part of the cross-disciplinary workshop dedicated to Carlos Pujol and organised by the Faculty of Humanities. Puig gave an overview of the writer and talked about what his work has meant for Spanish literature.
Valentí Puig, journalist, narrator, poet, literary critic, novelist and essayist, was also Pujol’s student. “He knew and had read everything: it was practically impossible to reach the high level of his conversations - he explained, taking into account the audience he was addressing, who were students from the Faculty of Humanities-; even so, he had a great ability to adapt”. In fact, continued Puig, “he was an unfailing mentor, and he provided encouragement to a lot of young writers”.
During the conference, the invited speaker continued to describe the traits that characterised the longstanding member of the jury for the Planeta Award. “He did not write according to the trends of his century - Puig assured the audience - but instead he went against the grain. He respected the Western model, he followed the guiding lines of the tradition. In fact, remembering his greatness as a literary critic, he stated that “he knew how to find the golden thread running through both centuries and generations”.
On the other hand, Valentí Puig referred to Pujol’s most private side. “Carlos Pujol was not interested in being famous, but in experiencing literature. He paid more attention to his passion for literature than to methods”. Like other invited speakers participating in this seminar, he described him as a discreet person, who tried to stay away from literary life, “what most interested him were the long conversations which arose among the best literary circles of his time”. “I suppose - Puig said with a little sarcasm - that he would be quite shocked if he woke up in today’s world, where we have become used to writing sentences in 140 characters”.
Throughout the duration of the workshop, apart from the Carlos Pujol experts, students also had the opportunity to describe different aspects of this person who was a professor in their Faculty. Valentí Puig described him as “a master, a prodigy”.