The Discourse of Flânerie in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Texts by Richard Sperber (review)

Richard Sperber, in The Discourse of Flânerie in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Texts, analyzes Antonio Muñoz Molina’s texts written between 1987 and 2009. In the five thematically organized chapters that are divided into sections, Sperber provides the readers with a thorough introduction to flânerie and underscores the ways in which Muñoz Molina’s literature diverges from its Parisian roots. Flâneur comes from the French noun “flâneur” which means loafer, lounger or stroller. Traditionally, flâOFSJF entails a character who, from their surroundings, thrives off aesthetic pleasure (Baudelaire) and then alienates himself (Benjamin). Sperber, on the other hand, illustrates the ways in which Muñoz Molina breaks ties with the traditional template of flâneur literature and provides a new way of understanding it. Muñoz Molina incorporates foreign cities, which demonstrates a more global rearticulation of the genre. He also interweaves aspects of Baudelaire and Benjamin’s work with three recurring themes: alienation, defamiliarization and the engagement with foreign-cultural signification. The third element of his literature refers to the desires of the protagonist to absorb the intercultural aspects of the urban space being perambulated.

Chapter 1, “Lisbon Flânerie,” focuses on the novel El invierno en Lisboa (1987). Sperber’s analysis of El invierno en Lisboa supports the belief that flâneur literature is no longer tied down to or specific to a time and place. Sperber, with the following sections: “San Sebastián,” “Lisbon,” and “Saint Victoire,” illustrates, respectively, how the protagonist alienates himself from the Spanish nation. Sperber shows how the protagonist elaborates on the complexities of racial identities and explores his relation to the urbanistic design of Lisbon. The protagonist depicts his engagement with a painting that portrays jazz which, according to Sperber, permits Santiago Bilbao, the protagonist, to be more mobile between San Sebastián and Lisbon or more precisely “between the media of music and painting” (Sperber 70). For instance, the full immersion that the protagonist experiences with the painting allows him to alienate himself from his jazz music in San Sebastián. In this chapter, Sperber effectively demonstrates how Muñoz Molina modifies flâneur literature with El invierno en Lisboa and breaks ties from the traditional Parisian template.

Chapter 2, “Moroccan Flânerie,” exemplifies, once again, how Muñoz Molina revolutionized contemporary European flâneur literature. Sperber details the discourse of flânerie in three of Muñoz Molina’s works from the early ninetie, two of which have been overlooked: the preface of Córdoba de los omeyas (1991), Ardor Guerrero (1995), and lastly, one of his most renowned novels, El jinete polaco (1991). In the first work Muñoz Molina’s flâneur, according to Sperber, experiences alienation and seeks to manage it through a process of defamiliarization. However, according to Sperber, the preface of Córdoba de los omeyas “does not escape from what contemporary scholarship has called the ambivalence of intercultural flaneur literature” (13). The flâneur, on the contrary, desires “social formation different from technological and capitalist modernity” (13).

Chapter 3, “Chinese Flânerie,” focuses on Ventanas de Manhattan (2003). Comparing and contrasting Baudelaire’s and García Lorca’s work with that of Muñoz Molina supports the notion that Muñoz Molina’s literature diverges from its traditional roots by highlighting the defamiliarization from the architecture and the inhabitants of Manhattan. Sperber analogizes and distinguishes Baudelaire’s essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” as well as Baudelaire’s prose poems Spleen of Paris and Federico García Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York (1940) from Muñoz Molina’s flânerie. This chapter contains sections titled “Baudelaire,” “Lorca,” “Primitivism,” and “China”. Throughout this chapter, Sperber effectively demonstrates how Muñoz Molina modifies and adds complexity to the traditional flâneur literature of Paris by Baudelaire. He does so by illustrating how the protagonist does not aestheticize the architecture or...