Because she never asked
By: Enrique Vila-Matas ; translated by Valerie Miles
Contributors: Miles, Valerie, 1963- translator
Series: New Directions pearl -- 1337; New Directions pearl -- 1337.
Publisher: New Directions; New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 89
ISBN-13: 9780811222754
Subjects: Fiction; Older authors; Women artists; Reality; Meaning (Psychology)
Work titles: Porque ella no lo pidio
Description: "Because She Never Asked is a story reminiscent of that reached by the travelers in Patricia Highsmith's Stranger on a Train. The author shall write a piece for the artist Sophie Calle to live out: a young, aspiring French artist travels to Lisbon and the Azores in pursuit of an older artist whose work she's in love with. The second part of the story tells what happens between the author and Calle. She eludes him; he becomes blocked and suffers physical collapse. "Something strange happened along the way," Vila-Matas wrote. "Normally, writers try to pass off a work fiction as being real. But in Because She Never Asked, the opposite occurred: in order to give meaning to the story of my life, I found that I needed to present it as fiction" --
Notes: "A New Directions Pearl."

Translation of a story that appeared in the Enrique Vila-Matas collection, Exploradores del abismo, published in Barcelona by Editorial Anagrama, in 2007.