- The author intervenes, supported by art critic Franck González and the official chronicler of Telde, Antonio María González Padrón, on May 8, at 7:00 p.m., with free entry to the Telde museum
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 6 May of 2024.- ‘The Night and Other Texts’ (Ediciones Idea, 2023) offers us highly personal writing, very different from the fiction that the well-known philologist Jonathan Allen is used to, in the form of a novel or short narrative. The professor and director of the ‘Parallel Experiences’ series presents his new book at the León y Castillo House-Museum in Telde on May 8, at 7:00 p.m. Entry is free until full.
The author attends the presentation supported by the art critic and current director of the Antonio Padrón House-Museum-Indigenist Art Center, Franck González, and the historian and official chronicler of the city of Telde, Antonio María González Padrón. Both have in common the fact that they have been directors of the House-Museum managed by the Department of Culture of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria at different times.
In ‘The Night and Other Texts’, Jonathan Allen collects memories of youth and current conversations, which share pages with the memory of lost beings who are still present in the time-space of literature. In them he interweaves autobiography, but also autofiction, biography and local history, placing them between genres and making their definition difficult.
“I always present my books in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or La Laguna,” explains the author. “This time I wanted to do it in Telde, as a first presentation, since two of the stories arise from my adventures in Telde, as a result of the workshops dedicated to the reading and interpretation of the fifth series of the national episodes of Galdós,” the author clarifies. . “Later, on May 24, I will present the book in Arucas,” the writer takes the opportunity to announce.
Fact and fiction
In ‘The Night and Other Texts’, memories of youth and current conversations share pages with the memory of lost beings who are still present in the time-space of literature. They interweave autobiography, autofiction, biography and local history, placing them between genres and making their definition difficult.
Saving the long story ‘The Tribute’, a satire that deals with the poetic vocation and its ghosts, the texts, written between 2019 and 2023, ponder death and the afterlife during a series of rural walks and urban journeys. The intense experience of reality, the evocation of the past and the celebration of art, be it music, painting or photography, give a particular bias to this book that unifies the aesthetic characteristic of this writer.
The first texts narrate different experiences, following different itineraries in Gran Canaria and England. Included in the heading ‘The Night’, they are, according to their author, ‘nocturnal’ in the musical sense, as they occur during those hours in which the spirit crosses the threshold of another dimension. They recreate walks through Firgas, Arucas and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with descriptions of the places and mental states that connect with memory, history and thought.
The fourth text, ‘Firgas’, links to the longest story in the book, ‘The Tribute’, since one begins where the other ends. It is a ruse or trick by the author to rescue an unpublished long story that resurfaces thanks to chance. The central story, ‘The Tribute’, projects the fictional biography of a poet who tells, with comic accents, the life of a Gran Canaria creator and the future of his work.
Death marks this writing and continues as a leitmotif in the texts that follow ‘The Tribute’: ‘The Coat’, ‘The Shadows’ and ‘The Bookstores’. The last two stories symbolically represent a journey through the city of Telde. In addition, ‘The bookstores’ is about the destiny of books and their importance in the author’s life, and can be read as a kind of complement to the novel ‘A los que leen’ (2017). The Night and Other Texts becomes the fourth book of stories that Jonathan Allen publishes with his usual imprint in the Canary Islands, Ediciones Idea.
Jonathan Allen’s career
Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1963, Jonathan Allen Andrew is studying Medieval and Modern Languages at Saint Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, specializing in medieval French literature and 19th century French literature.
In 1991, he began to collaborate with the Atlantic Center of Modern Art, as an assistant to the Department of Debate and Thought, and will be coordinator of the Atlantic Magazine of the Arts. He will be English and French editor of Atlántica until 1995. In 1992 he is appointed programming coordinator of the Filmoteca Canaria, a position he holds until 1995, when he enters the Faculty of Philology of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he currently He teaches as a professor of French Comparative Language and Literature.
Between 1990 and 2004 he has written more than forty catalogs for local, national and international solo exhibitions. In total he has signed more than 1,500 articles. He has curated important regional exhibitions and is responsible for the biographies of several artists such as Máximo Riol or Luis Arencibia. Author of several books, his novel ‘Julia and the Guillotine’ has been translated into French.
