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The Real and the Make-Believe: Hermeneutic Consciousness in Javier Marias' Negra Espalda Del Tiempo

Abstract In a recent piece in 'El Universal', Julio Ortega lists Javier Marias' Negra espalda del tiempo (1998) as one of the best Spanish novels of the twentieth century. While this may be a somewhat inflated view of the novel, the work is nonetheless an important one for turn-of-the-century Spanish narrative. Above all, Negra grows from premises which both embrace and defy narrative traditions. It proposes to control interpretation while claiming that interpretation always remains open; it seeks to pin down events and texts while asserting (and showing) that these are always elusive, beyond representation. Such oppositional tensions lead to a pervasive sense of uncertainty in Negra, which is precisely the point of the novel's double focus: writing and reading which pretend to precision bear within themselves the instruments of their own resistance, just as reading which seeks authority offends against the multiple meanings always inherent in texts, whether intended by authors or imposed by readers.