Ese montón de espejos rotos

Following the saga dedicated to his origins, ironically titled "An Exemplary Family," Gonzalo Celorio speaks of himself, delivering a dazzling memoir that is also a great literary work. We witness firsthand his private and public life, his literary vocation, his intellectual development, his institutional duties as a teacher, academic, editor, and promoter of culture… but also, in a magnificent, meandering structure, his most intimate life: "When I frequented Bar León with almost obsessive regularity to listen to lively music, the regulars couldn't believe that I was a 'respected' university professor who also held certain academic and administrative positions, while my students and colleagues at the faculty, with few exceptions, couldn't imagine that, after leaving the classroom following my 'learned' lecture or my office after fulfilling my bureaucratic obligations, I would hurry to visit such dens in the city's historic center." Here, then, are his exultant passions: the word, literature, theater, popular music, the party, the celebration, domestic rituals, the baroque, architecture, teaching, friendship, love and its simulacra.