Benjamin Jarnes (1888-1949) stands at the center of the avant garde Spanish novel, with near ten hybrid fiction, critique and autobiographical works. Escenas junto a la muerte, originally released in 1931, is a most illustrative example of modern narrative, and may be placed along the best literary examples of the genre (Proust, Joyce, Musil, Dos Passos or Giradoux). The novel starts with its main character, a young Literature aspiring professor, already decided to commit suicide. Stopped by a friend, and asked about the reasons for this dramatic decision, the young professor explains his story. The successive chapters constitute a flashback on his diverse misfortunes, that may be characterized as those of a modern Don Juan who sees reality through the eyes of literary myths. Even today Escenas junto a la muerte stands thoroughly modern due to its provoking writing, its transformation and reuse of literary historical tropes and themes, its vigorous advocacy for a full experience of present without bondage to memories from the past, and its firm support of literature as a subtle and unique knowledge experience. This novel, as many of Jarnes', makes for a joyful reading. Its prose constitutes a rhythmic, precise, crystal clear experience, studded with surprising metaphors and carefully crafted aesthetics imagery. Prof. Juan Herrero-Senes' foreword sets a clear and explanatory background for the novel, that complement the footnotes to assure the modern reader a full experience of the extraordinary Jarnes modern narrative.

Between wars (1918-1939) Benjamin Jarnes (1888-1949) was considered among the most appreciated Spanish writers, and his novels were distinguished by the European critiques of the time. "Locura y muerte de Nadie," along "Paula y Paulita," "Escenas junto a la muerte" and "Teoria del zumbel," belong to a fiction cycle, unique in the peninsular narrative of those years; novels in which Jarnes experiments with the new forms of metafiction to highlight the existential condition of the human being in the newly technified mass society. "Locura y muerte de Nadie," simultaneously "agonic" and "carnivalesque" fiction, was written -in its first version- on the verge of the great depression (1929), and its second version dates from the Spanish civil war (1937). In his novel Jarnes sets his focus on the main role, a "nobody," and the mass characteristics individuals display in our society. But also, with the female character, Matilde, Jarnes explores the individualistic characteristics that may still remain. The second version was left unpublished until 1962, and Jarnes both forgotten in his Mexican exile and devalued by the Spanish literary post-war critiques. Finally, and due to the new literary theories, specially after the '90s, a growing number of critiques, the "new jarnesians" are restablishing Benjamin Jarnes' works their prominent standing, clearly among the best Spanish literature of the XXth Century. This Victor Fuentes, annotated edition of "Locura y muerte de Nadie," is aimed both at the general reader as well as the scholar and student, and makes a great reading for courses on modern and avant garde peninsular literature.