La cena de los notables

In this discourse, one of Spain’s most prominent editors and literary critics offers his singular view of the state of the Spanish publishing industry and literary criticism itself. In an assertive but conversational style, Constantino Bértolo argues that literature is a pact of mutual responsibility: the responsibility of the speaker and the hearer, of the writer and the reader. It should be, he posits, a common space marked by the individual fingerprints of each reader. Criticism, in turn, should be a generator of public discourse, an interlocutor that questions itself and the public about the texts they read. In examining works such as Martin Eden, Madame Bovary, and Treasure Island, this consideration proposes a much more visceral way of experiencing literature, but one that is always open to discussion.