The Gray Notebook
By: Josep Pla ; translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush ; introduction by Valentí Puig
Contributors: Bush, Peter R., 1946- translator
Series: New York Review Books classics; New York Review Books classics
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 638
ISBN-13: 9781590176719
Subjects: Catalan Authors; Biography; Diaries
Work titles: Quadern Gris
Description: The first part of the book, which begins on March 8, 1918, is a story of family life on the Costa Brava and the coming-of-age story of a young man torn between an old-fashioned ideal of a life of quiet dedication to work and family and the intellectual seductions of European culture. Pla's enthusiasms and uncertainties, friendships and crushes, his reading, the drama and politics and absurdity of family life-we are drawn into all these as we also follow Pla in his wanderings through town, scrutinizing his fellow citizens, or out under the magnificent skies of the still-unspoiled countryside of the coast. In January 1919, Pla returns to Barcelona to complete his studies, and the book's second part paints a hilariously revealing picture of student life. He learns next to nothing from his teachers, a good deal more from the writers and artists he meets in cafés and salons, and most of all from Barcelona itself, with its night life and ramblas, the city of Gaudi and Modernisme, where just outside the city limits the seemingly timeless life of the country still went on as before.
Notes: Translation of: El quadern gris.