What book ruined your ability to enjoy “light” literature forever?
I’ve never stopped enjoying certain types of “light” literature, whatever that means. As a child, I started reading adventure stories and moved on to fantasy and science fiction, which I still read today when something interesting comes along. But at some point, when I was around 15 or 16, I opened a battered copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude that I found somewhere. The “polished stones, white and huge as prehistoric eggs” dazzled me. I can’t say that García Márquez’s novel ruined my enjoyment of “light” literature, but it opened up a new territory for me.
Which author would you like to invite to dinner, just to contradict them for three hours?
Right now, Paul Auster comes to mind, although I suspect we would end up reaching some kind of agreement.
What book did you pretend to have read with the most conviction?
Once, in a university class, I pretended to have read Hamlet. I think I was successful. Just in case, I ran home in embarrassment and read the play. At that time, I could easily spend my afternoons reading.
Which literary character would you kill yourself?
I never liked Raskolnikov, but don’t ask me why.
What “classic” book do you consider a punishment to read, yet still defend in public?
I’ve never been able to get into Ulysses. We all have our limitations. I’ve tried (without much enthusiasm), but I don’t usually get past three or four random pages at a time. However, it’s clearly better that it exists.
What is your guilty literary pleasure, the one you hide behind a fake copy of Proust, Kafka, or Joyce?
I have no problem admitting that I’ve read all kinds of things. Harold Robbins and Dan Brown come to mind, which I read when I was younger. They’re not guilty pleasures, they’re part of my reading history. If I enjoy a book in some way, I don’t hide it behind anyone or anything.
What book do you treat as a sacred object, but whose first page is still more pristine than your new Kindle?
I’ve never gotten past leafing through Gargantua and Pantagruel, but it’s a must-have in my library.
Which author would you trade places with, even if only to have a scholarship at the Sorbonne?
I think I would, as long as I could return to mine at will, with lots of authors. But never during plagues, gulags, battles, or episodes of psychosis.
Which bookstore has stolen the most money from you with your consent?
Second-hand bookstores in Barcelona. I used to browse them every week.
Which books have you started more than three times without getting past page 40?
Ulysses, Paradiso, Buddenbrooks…
What Latin phrase do you use to sound profound, even though you don’t really know what it means?
None.
Which literary character would you like to have as a therapist, knowing that they would ruin you emotionally?
I don’t know if as therapists, but a chat with Settembrini and Naphta…
What is the most absurd edition you have ever bought just for its aesthetics?
Once, when I was a child, I made my mother buy me a book by Leibniz in a bookstore in Santiago de Cuba, where we were visiting a great-aunt, because I really liked the color of the cover and the solidity of the volume.
What literary genre do you pretend to despise because your intellectual friends do?
I don’t despise genres, books, or authors because others do. Fortunately, I’ve always read what I wanted to read. For example, for most of my life I ignored travel literature. Today, however, it’s a genre I enjoy.
Which contemporary author do you pretend to be uninterested in but secretly wish you had written their books?
I have a genuine disinterest in all the authors who flood the bookstores, but if they make a living from literature, I would love to have written their books.
How many books do you have waiting to be read, and how many do you continue to buy each month?
The number of books to read is infinite, but I’m quite disorganized and unsystematic. I don’t have a list. I read whatever takes my fancy at the time. I used to buy between five and ten books a month (second-hand, I insist). Lately, I’ve slowed down a bit. I don’t have as much time as I used to for hunting. But I usually download several books a month onto my Kindle.
What literary scene made you close the book and stare at the ceiling as if you had experienced something?
There’s an episode in The Magic Mountain that I read when I was about 18, when I was in the military: the snowstorm in which Hans Castorp has visions or a dream. I haven’t reread it in a long time, but in my mind it’s perfect. It makes me think of Achilles’ shield. Something similar happened to me with a few pages of The Tin Drum. I felt like I was on that street in Danzig or Gdansk.
What book would you give as a gift just to test whether someone is worthy of you?
I would never do such a thing.
What is the most heinous literary crime? Dog-earing pages, underlining books, or not reading?
I stopped underlining many years ago. In fact, I never did it enthusiastically. I prefer to take notes. Dog-earing pages seems truly criminal to me, although to each their own. I suppose it has to do with those editions of Verne or Dumas that were in Cuba. If you dog-eared a page, it turned to dust. As for not reading, it’s inconceivable to me, but for others it’s a blessing.
Do you read the author’s blurb before starting a book, or do you prefer to ruin the experience for yourself?
I usually read them.
Which fictional library do you deserve according to your level of literary neurosis?
The same libraries come to mind as anyone else: the one in the monastery in The Name of the Rose, which I would visit with great care, given what I’ve seen, and Alonso Quijano’s, which, had he lived in our time, would probably contain all kinds of commercial and popular books. But the best library is the real one, the one I build every day with what I find and the memory of where, when, and how I found and read it, and what I’ve lost along the way.
Have you ever stolen a book? Which one(s)?
I once stole some poetry books because they were small, at a book fair in Havana. I remember one by Auden that slipped out of my trouser leg before I left the scene of the crime. As a child, I used to borrow books by Salgari or Verne from friends of my parents whom we visited on weekends. I never returned them. Nor did anyone ever ask me to return them.
What is your greatest achievement as a reader: surviving Ulysses or finishing Don Quixote?
Perhaps being able to read during my year of military service without going crazy. I remember that year I read, among others, The Magic Mountain, 1984, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Sun Also Rises, The Steppenwolf, some memoirs by Gauguin, and a biography of Byron (no idea why).
What book would you have liked to write just so you could sign it and show it off?
The Sun Also Rises. I find it irresistible. Kundera’s The Joke is another one I would have loved to have written.
At what age did you realize that reading didn’t make you a better person, just more unbearable?
I’ve never considered reading to be something that necessarily makes you a better person. But I have come to understand that it makes you unbearable to some people.
Which supporting character deserved more prominence than the main character?
Sam Gamyi, from The Lord of the Rings?
How many bookmarks do you own, and how many do you actually use (apart from the lottery ticket that you didn’t win, of course)?
I’ve never used bookmarks. I have a few, the ones they give you with new books you buy in some bookstores. Second-hand books sometimes come with old movie or football tickets, bookstore receipts, and things like that. I keep them. And now that I usually read on a Kindle, I don’t need bookmarks.
Which author do you think is brilliant, but you’d rather not have around at a dinner party?
Hemingway, Joyce.
What phrase do you use to justify not finishing books you start?
I rarely start a book that I’m not going to finish. There’s too little time to waste on books I don’t enjoy. To a friend who sometimes suggests I read certain things, I say that what he’s recommended is “cockroach poison.” He calls it “strychnine.” If it’s strychnine, I don’t read it.
If your life were a book, on which shelf in the bookstore would we find it: “unnecessary drama,” “pretentious fiction,” or “essay on disappointment”?
I’d like it to be in the travel section, next to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books.
