Vivir no es tan divertido, y envejecer, un coñazo

Oscar Tusquets was writing a book "on the pain of aging and the acceptance of dying" when the pandemic broke out and, of course, he could not resist the temptation to include there some of his always insightful and politically incorrect reflections on the obsession to prohibit of the governments, on the aesthetic attack of the masks, against the conspiracy theories of those who maintain that the virus was created in a laboratory or against the apocalyptic and good-natured ecologist speeches. After concluding that we will emerge more foolish from the pandemic, we return to the subject of the book, a "rigorous but lighthearted pamphlet of a survivor" in his early eighties. A survivor who embarks on an agile autobiographical journey to the rhythm of "I remember..." -as in Joe Brainard's I remember and Perec's Je me souviens- and out there peeks out from a Barcelona that has already disappeared until the first meeting with Dalí, with Amanda Lear in the background, going through an early trip to Italy full of adventures or evocations of the world of Barcelona architects. There are sharp and not always comfortable reflections on aging, on its resignations (the senses that are failing, the decline of sex, the friends that leave...) and the necessary learning to die, with musings about euthanasia or the macabre cancer business in America's private clinics. However, how could it be otherwise in a born vitalist like Tusquets, the book ends with a celebration of life: "As long as we have some time and a minimum of health, we must not renounce the pleasure of conversing with a wise man, the beauty of people and works, laughter with friends, caressing a dog, in the shade of a trellised pergola, a sip of Chateau d'Yquem, a Joselito fish market, a vine peach... to sail Our Sea sailing".