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WORK TITLE: Bookshops
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1976
WEBSITE: https://jorgecarrion.me/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Spanish
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1976, in Tarragona, Spain.
EDUCATION:Pompeu Fabra University, M.A., Ph.D.; attended the Goethe Institut of Buenos Aires.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, travel writer, educator, and curator. Former instructor at schools and universities, including the Spanish College of Guatemala, the Aula European School, Pompeu Fabra University, Los Andes University, and L’Ateneu de Barcelona. Curator of the exhibition “Las variaciones Sebald,” Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona.
WRITINGS
Contributor to journals and magazines, including El Pais, La Vanguardia, and Letras Libres. Author’s works have been translated into English, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, and Polish. Lateral, former member of editorial board; Quimera, former editor.
SIDELIGHTS
Spanish writer, novelist, and educator Jorge Carrion is an instructor in creative writing at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He manages the master’s degree in creative writing program there as well.
Carrion was born in Terragona, Spain, finally settling with his family in a village near Barcelona. He earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities from the Pompeu Fabra University, then studied Spanish contemporary literature at the University of Barcelona. He finished his Ph.D. work in comparative literature eat the Pompeu Fabra University. His dissertation, on the subject of travel in the work of Juay Goytisolo and W. G. Sebald, was published as the Spanish-language book Viaje contra espacio.
As an educator, Carrion worked as an instructor in the Spanish College of Guatemala, in the European School Aula (where he taught Spanish literature), and at Pompeu Fabra University. He also served as a museum curator of an exhibition at the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona.
Carrion writes primarily in Spanish, and has contributed to journals such as El Pais, La Vanguardia, and Letras Libres. His fiction in Spanish includes the novels Los muertos, Los huerfanos, Los turistas, and Los difunos, a set of connected stories. His works has been translated into English as well as Italian, German, French, Polish, Portuguese, and Chinese.
In Bookshops: A Cultural History, translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush, Carrion “explores the place of bookshops (and books) in Western intellectual and consumer history,” commented a writer in Publishers Weekly. Carrion, like many of those with a literary inclination, recognizes the appeal of bookstores and the many pleasures associated with buying, reading, collecting, and accumulating books. His book takes a more academic approach to the “gentle madness” of bibliophila, creating a careful examination of how bookshops and libraries function in a social context. He make a “philosophical inquiry” into the place of literature in the world and what it means not only to the bookish but to the culture and society of a place.
As part of his exploration, Carrion provides a discussion of the many bookshops he has visited. He also talks about famous bookstores in places throughout the world and in the United States, including The Strand in New York; the Tattered Cover in Denver; Powells in Portland, Oregon; and City Lights in San Francisco. He considers how physical bookstores have been affected by online shopping and what it could mean to the concept of the bookshop in the future. “This is no mere travel guide but rather a philosophical, reflective, wide-ranging inquiry into the world of books,” commented a Kirkus Reviews writer.
The Kirkus Reviews writer called Carrion’s book an “insightful, educational, and erudite paean to bookshops.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, December, 2017. review of Bookshops: A Cultural History.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of Bookshops.
Publishers Weekly, August 21, 2017, review of Bookshops, p. 103.
ONLINE
Jorge Carrion website, http://www.jorgecarrion.me (July 3, 2018).
[english]
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jorge Carrión was born in Tarragona in 1976, but he has lived in Mataró and Barcelona most of the time. He has a PhD in Humanities from the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, and manages the Master in Creative Writing of the same institution. He has lived in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Chicago. He uses to publish in several journals and magazines such as El País, La Vanguardia or Letras Libres. He is the author of a tetralogy of fiction (that includes Los muertos, Los huérfanos, Los turistas and Los difuntos) and is also the author of various non-fiction books, such as Australia. Un viaje, Teleshakespeare and Librerías. He was the curator of the exhibition “Las variaciones Sebald”, in the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona (CCCB). His work has been translated into Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, Polish and English.
EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY
1976: He is born in Tarragona (Spain), because of the job of his father, who works there in Telefónica, the Spanish public phone company.
1977: The Carrión Gálvez family moves out to Mataró, a village close to Barcelona.
1979: He starts his elementary education in the Balmes School of Mataró.
1990: He starts secondary school in the Alexandre Satorras Institute of Mataró. Two teachers will be crucial in his literary training: Llorenç Soldevila and Pilar Vidal. He wins some short story municipal awards.
1994: He begins the recently created degree in Humanities in the Pompeu Fabra University.
1998: He gets his bachelor and spends two months teaching in the Spanish College of Guatemala.
1999: He begins his PhD studies in Spanish contemporary literature in the University of Barcelona. First journeys across Europe. He starts publishing literature reviews in the journal Avui.
2000: He teaches Spanish literature in the European School Aula, managed by Josep Maria Lluró. He joins the editorial board of Lateral, a cultural magazine directed by Mihály Des, which is and will be formed by different writers such as Juan Trejo, Juan Gabriel Vásquez or Mathias Enard.
2001: He continues his PhD studies in Comparative literature in the Pompeu Fabra University. He discovers California, Mexico and Central America. He publishes the short novel Ene.
2002: He visits Australia to write a book about his family, who emigrated there in the sixties. He starts collaborating with Letras Libres.
2003: He wins a KRTU grant to develop his project GR-84 about the German writer W. G. Sebald and the artist Francesc Abad. He changes Spain for Buenos Aires in order to travel the world from there. He travels all around Argentina, Bolivia, Perú and Chile. He begins to publish in the pages of the cultural supplement of the Spanish journal La Vanguardia.
2004: He travels around Uruguay and Brasil. He collaborates with the cultural supplement of the Montevidean journal El País. He lives in Buenos Aires and Rosario. He studies German in the Goethe Institut of Buenos Aires. He is invited by Julio Ortega to the FIL, the international book fair of Guadalajara, among other writers such as Antonio Ortuño or Guadalupe Nettel.
2005: He receives a PhD grant and he researches and teaches some courses in the University of Chicago. He travels around China. He comes back to Spain.
2006: He starts giving lessons of contemporary literature from Spanish America in the Pompeu Fabra University. He publishes La brújula, a compilation of articles and essays related to his American voyages. Lateral closes. The magazine’s editor-in-chief on its last years had been Robert Juan-Cantavella, and different writers like Gabriela Wiener or Jaime Rodríguez Z. were part of the project.
2007: He gets his PhD with a thesis on travelling in the literature of Juan Goytisolo and W. G. Sebald, directed by Antonio Monegal. This academic text will become a book, the essay Viaje contra espacio. First of many voyages to Venezuela and to the Near East.
2008: His book Australia. Un viaje appears after six years of work. He becomes, together with Eloy Fernández Porta, one of the founding teachers of the Master in Creative Writing of the UPF, managed by José María Micó. He curates the exhibition “Travelling Circular” in the museum Ca l’Arenas in Mataró. He publishes El lugar de Piglia. Crítica sin ficción (Candaya), a critical anthology presented in Buenos Aires together with Graciela Speranza and Piglia himself.
2009: After three years at charge of the cultural magazine Quimera –along with Jaime Rodríguez Z. and Juan Trejo–, he leaves the direction. He writes reviews about books and TV series in different media. He travels around Latin America and the Middle East. He teaches travel memoir in the Writing School of L’Ateneu de Barcelona.
2010: His novel Los muertos, a polemic work due to his audiovisual nature, appears in Literatura Mondadori, a division of Penguin Random House. This work has many editions in different countries: Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela (Lugar Común) and Italy (Atmosphere Libri).
2011: He publishes Teleshakespeare (Errata Naturae), one of the first essays on tv series criticism to be written in Spanish, which will see several editions in foreign countries, specially in Latin America: Mexico (Tintable), Costa Rica (Germinal) and Argentina (Interzona). He organizes the meeting “Performative Literatures” in La Casa Encendida, Madrid. Los muertos is awarded by the Festival du Premier Roman, in Chambéry. Some of his texts appear in anthologies from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, France and Germany.
2012: He publishes Mejor que ficción. Crónicas ejemplares (Anagrama), an anthology that collects texts by twenty-one chronicle writers from Spanish America. He takes part in a translation workshop concerning his novel Los muertos, in Melbourne, run by Peter Bush. He voyages to South Africa.
2013: He’s the finalist of the Anagrama Award on Essay with Librerías. In a few months the book reaches six editions in Spain, and in the following years it is translated into Italian, French, English, Polish and Chinese. He is the guest writer in the course imparted by Cristina Rivera Garza as part of the Creative Writing Master of the San Diego University.
2014: Galaxia Gutenberg decides to publish his whole fiction work and releases the novels Los muertos and Los huérfanos. The collection “Lo Real”, from the publishing house Malpaso, starts under his direction. He holds some conferences in the universities of Berkeley and New York. He publishes, with Reinaldo Laddaga, the collective remake Riplay. He gives a course on TV Series in the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA).
2015: He publishes his novels Los turistas (Galaxia Gutenberg) and Los difuntos (Aristas Martínez), completing the four parts of his tetralogy. He curates the exhibition “Las variaciones Sebald” in the CCCB. He interviews the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo for a documentary in TVE, the Spanish public television. He teaches a course in Los Andes University, in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, and becomes an instructor in the workshop of journalistic books managed by Martín Caparrós in the FNPI (Ibero-American New Journalism Foundation), in Oaxaca. He publishes his first graphic novel Barcelona. Los vagabundos de la chatarra (Norma), with the artist Sagar.
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Print Marked Items
Bookshops: A Cultural History
Publishers Weekly.
264.34 (Aug. 21, 2017): p103.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Bookshops: A Cultural History
Jorge Carrion, trans, from the Spanish by Peter Bush. Biblioasis (Consortium, U.S. dist.; UTR Canadian
dist.), $24.95 (296p) ISBN 978-1-77196-174-5
Spanish novelist and travel writer Carrion's English-language debut explores the place of bookshops (and
books) in Western intellectual and consumer history. He weaves together an investigation of the different
social functions of bookshops and libraries, a travelogue of bookshops he has visited, and a philosophical
inquiry into the role of literature in the world. For Carrion, contemporary readers find in bookshops "the
remains of cultural gods that have replaced the religious sort." He is alive to the contradictions inherent in
reading and book collecting, activities that are simultaneously consumerist and spiritual. The idea of books
and bookshops as sites of resistance to totalitarianism is discussed but not blindly romanticized; he notes
that Hitler was a bestselling writer and Mao an erudite reader. Discussing destination bookshops, including
Shakespeare and Company in Paris, the oldest bookshops in the world, and several that claim to be the
biggest, Carrion explores the fine lines between pilgrimage destination, touristy gimmick, and decent
bookshop. This is the perfect book for those who feel compelled to visit every bookstore they see. Agent:
Nicole Witt, Mertin Agency. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bookshops: A Cultural History." Publishers Weekly, 21 Aug. 2017, p. 103. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501717358/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f53a5f78.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501717358
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Carrion, Jorge: BOOKSHOPS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Carrion, Jorge BOOKSHOPS Biblioasis (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 10, 17 ISBN: 978-1-77196-174-5
A literate mappa mundi to bookstores.This is the first of Spanish author Carrion's books to be translated into
English. He writes that "every bookshop is a condensed version of the world," this book like a "cartography
of a bookshop." Entering this Borges-ian labyrinth of books, readers will encounter bookshops as
"archaeological sites or junk shops," police censorship, the lives and works of booksellers, reading as
"obsession and madness," and the "bookshop as the world." This is no mere travel guide but rather a
philosophical, reflective, wide-ranging inquiry into the world of books. Carrion began the first of his many
voyages in 1998 at a bookshop in Guatemala City. He reminds us that the "oldest bookshop in the world" is
in Lisbon, not far from his home in Barcelona. Along this journey, readers are guided by Montaigne and
Diderot epigraphs as well as wisdom from a vast array of writers, including Goethe, Mallarme, and
Benjamin. The bookseller is a "critic and cultural activist," and since ancient Rome, bookshops have been
"spaces for establishing contact." Carrion is excellent discussing Paris' most famous shops, American Sylvia
Beach's Shakespeare & Company, where Joyce's Ulysses was born, and Adrienne Monnier's La Maison des
Amis des Livres. Both also functioned as lending libraries, art galleries, hotels, and cultural centers. Carrion
sees bookshops as political bastions and recounts The Satanic Verses uproar, Hitler as bestselling author,
Mao Zedong's bookshop/publishing house, and book burnings. His trip across America includes visits to
New York City's Gotham Book Mart and the Strand, Denver's Tattered Cover, Portland's Powells, and San
Francisco's City Lights. The author also discusses the impact of the brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon,
the "supreme Virtual Bookshop," as well as the sad story of a 100-year-old Barcelona bookshop that became
a McDonald's. An insightful, educational, and erudite paean to bookshops.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Carrion, Jorge: BOOKSHOPS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572608/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f576344e.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572608
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Bookshops: A Reader's History
Internet Bookwatch.
(Dec. 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Bookshops: A Reader's History
Jorge Carrion
Biblioasis
1520 Wyandotte Street East, Windsor, ON N9A 3L2, Canada
www.biblioasis.com
9781771961745 $24.95 / $9.99 Kindle amazon.com
Literary critic Jorge Carrion presents Bookshops: A Reader's History, an extraordinary tour of bookstores
worldwide, from Shakespeare & Company in Pans and Bertrand to Strand Bookstore in New York City,
City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco, and a multitude of others. Carrion draws upon twenty years of
journeys to personally investigate bookshops around the world, offering a connoisseur's combination of
travelogue and bibliophile's celebration. Highly recommended.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bookshops: A Reader's History." Internet Bookwatch, Dec. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A523688983/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6eb00389.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A523688983