The New Yorker: A Man Who Wasn’t There

Vladimir Nabokov, upbraiding a poet friend for writing a newspaper column, declared, “I am writing my novel. I do not read the papers.” Though it wouldn’t have been out of character for Nabokov to tax the truth for the sake of a memorable line, it is true that American literary novelists, whether they read the papers or not, typically do not write for them, except in the book-review pages. An op-ed by Michael Chabon may pop up now and again, but it is hard to imagine Philip Roth or even Norman Mailer supplying a weekly column on politics or current affairs.
In Madrid, however, the Spanish novelist Javier Marías does just that. Every week for more than a decade, he has addressed a readership of millions, on politics or art or whatever else might have caught his eye.