Reading No Country for Old Men in Puente Genil

This month we expand upon an earlier Noted Abroad installment, providing the full text of a piece that was initially stripped down in the interest of achieving a blog-friendly style. Subsequent events, notably a USA Today interview with romance author Nicholas Sparks, have made a reprise of the material seem appropriate.

The bookstore in Puente Genil has a wide selection of reference books, novels and biographies in Spanish, but, perhaps because no sensible English-speaking traveler would make Puente Genil part of their Andalusian adventure, English titles are few and far between. Even the proprietor isn’t always sure which books-in-English he carries, or where in his store they might be found. If you happen to find one, it is likely to be an American or British novel that has been made into a Hollywood blockbuster, which blockbuster has inspired publishers to repackage the book — NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! — and send shit-tons of copies, in various languages, out into the world far and wide, so far and so wide that some of them, somehow, land in places like Puente Genil. In short, a thorough combing of the bookshop revealed that if my student Macu wanted to study a novel in English, she would need to choose between Atonement, No Country for Old Men, and The Notebook.

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