Jordi Puntí

Jordi Puntí (Manlleu, 1967) has translated Paul Auster, Amélie Nothomb and Daniel Pennac, among others. He is currently the editor of the literary supplement, Quadern, published by the newspaper El País. Jordi Puntí has received public and critical acclaim and is considered one of the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature.

The main feature of the character of Jordi Puntí (Manlleu, 1967) is restlessness. He is possessed of a fidgetiness that has led him, since he was very young, into a lively and intense intellectual activity that has enabled him to become not only a leading young Catalan fiction writer with a bright future but also an outstanding figure in the cultural life of the country, in different spheres and with resounding public success. Since obtaining his degree in Romance Philology in 1991, he has worked in major Barcelona publishing houses (Edicions 62, Quaderns Crema and Columna), has co-directed the collection of medieval poetry "La flor inversa (The Inverse Flower)" along with professors Jordi Cerdà and Eduard Vilella, and has produced a great number of literary translations, notable among which are texts by Daniel Pennac, Amélie Nothomb, Paul Auster and even the well-known comic books of Asterix. Jordi Puntí, who is now working on his first novel, writes articles for the Barcelona edition of El País on cultural and sporting matters (especially football, one of his great passions) and is a regular speaker on the radio station RAC-1. He is part of the facetious literary group Germans Miranda; with whom he has published Aaaaaahhh (1998), El Barça o la vida (Barça or Life) (1999), Tocats d'amor (Touched by Love) (2000), Contes per a nenes dolentes (Stories for Naughty Girls), (2001), La vida sexual dels Germans Miranda (The Sex Life of the Miranda Brothers) (2002) and Adéu, Pujol (Goodbye Pujol) (2003). However, the most outstanding feature of his professional biography consists, without a doubt, of two collections of stories that have been very well received indeed, by critics and public alike. These are Pell d'armadillo (Proa, 1998), winner of the 1995 Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana Prize and Serra d'Or Critics Prize, and Animals tristos (Empúries, 2002), three stories from which have served as the basis of a screenplay for a film by Ventura Pons entitled "Animals Ferits". To all this must be added the publication in 2005 of the novella Set dies al vaixell de l'amor (Seven Days on the Love Boat) (Mobil Books).

It should be said that Jordi Puntí forcefully represents a plausible and reasonable way of understanding the professional harvest of Catalan literature at the threshold of the twenty-first century. This literature intentionally distances itself both from the transcendentalist vacuum inspired by Romanticism and from the well-known political instrumentalisation of Catalan resistance-style writing. His is literature that asserts itself in practice rather than in theory, showing its autonomous identity in managing to consolidate the territory that is proper and exclusive to it, that of human stories, called into being by working with everyday language without forgetting that of books. This is writing understood as a craft, like any other, ancient in its roots and of infinite possibilities, a profession that demands, more then anything else, constant work and practical reiteration and to be convincing through its results. It is a craft that, in this case, accepts and continues the rich tradition of literary engagement in the mainstream mass media, one that goes from Jacint Verdaguer to Quim Monzó via names such as Josep Pla, for example; a tradition that also reveals a fully contemporary conception of literature, which is more open than ever to permanent communication and dialogue with the literatures of other traditions, which end up mingling with that of the author in a natural way. To be specific, in the case of Jordi Puntí, this is the Anglo-Saxon tradition in particular. His literature has been able to set up connections with all sorts of creative and artistic innovations, in particular in the audiovisual sphere. Its focus goes beyond the cultural and academic mores because it is through aesthetics, which has the etymological meaning of "keen or sensitive perception", that one can discover the emotional experience of the human being. Continue reading...