Josep Girós (1968) debuted —and surprised— with the novel No robaràs (La Segona Perifèria, 2023), the chronicle of a child stolen during Francoism who grows up surrounded by secrets. Now the author repeats publisher and publishes Teoria dels gèneres.
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Given the dates in the previous paragraph, one might think that the man is a late writer. This would make him an anomaly in our literary palace, full of people with indispensable novels before turning thirty, but the fact is that Girós has been running a blog since 2005, Otearai. There are hundreds of entries about books, music, and cinema, notes that are often stories —and quite a few ramblings.
Teoria dels gèneres —the subtitle is A practical approach— opens with an original summary. Of more than twenty entries, we find some titled, for example, “On narratives that never get anywhere,” “On narratives that have been translated more than once into Catalan,” or “On narratives whose protagonist laments how difficult it is to write.” It is evident that we are facing a singular work, because, moreover, we are told that it is the transcription of a lecture.
Indeed, the tone is oral, very well done, and we quickly grasp that the lecturer is a bit scatterbrained, but you don’t have to go far to see that this is due to his complete lack of vanity. He acts like Manolo Hugué —in Pla’s words— who, when he let out a very good idea, hurried to attribute it to someone else and never tired of saying he knew nothing. We have a man, then, who tells us a personal theory about literary genres, and we sit among the audience. This deliberate positioning of the reader is a good find by Girós: after four pages we no longer read him, we listen to him, and what a way.
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The lecturer is a slightly iconoclastic anti-academic. However, he has read everything and therefore does not let himself be caught. In any case, it serves Girós to sing a memorable song to the act of reading freely, far from canons, official quirks, and fossil rules. As he unravels the genres of his own making, the speaker composes an ode to personal instinct, finds unsuspected connections between books, and points out reverberations that sometimes brush the imagination of Athanasius Kircher. Meanwhile, he gives advice to the audience or pauses, sometimes going back and sometimes announcing aspects he will address later, and from time to time launches a merciless critique of a particular author. During the talk, the heavyweights of universal literature and other no less interesting writers parade by, all filtered through the reading sieve of this indomitable tribe. There are also metafictional winks, to the point that the editor of the book we are reading is forced to intervene in a footnote, saying that he hardly shares any opinion of the speaker.
One of the most illuminating genres that Girós invents is the so-called “On narratives that have won some literary prize,” following a procedure summarized on page 50 as follows: “My theory […] aims not only to destroy traditional classifications but the very idea of classification, so that they dare to eat anchovies with sweet potatoes.” And to remain striking, about a third of the final part of the book consists of notes, bibliographic records, and some excursuses that recall the scent of his blog. Teoria dels gèneres does not completely blow our minds, but it unearths it.
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Teoria de gèneres
La Segona Perifèria
176 pages. 18 euros
