What was the book that destroyed your literary innocence and left you emotionally available only for fictional characters?
None in particular, or at least I don’t think so. It was with Illumination, a film by Zanussi. Of course, I became aware of it much later, but the scientific and rational position of the protagonist triggered in me the need to challenge certain limits, especially those of reason. Not a beatific ecstasy but an intensification of thought, said Professor Tatarkiewicz in his prologue; a literary (and extra-literary) awakening.
Which author would you like to kiss or hug and then hit with an 800-page edition for ruining you emotionally?
Blanchot, if possible, hitting him and hugging him at the same time. As you can see, I’m fascinated by continuous subjectivities.
What is the book that you say “marked you,” but in reality you only read it because of aesthetic pressure?
Let’s say that Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of those essential books that you could perfectly well do without. A trench book written in the trenches, logic and philosophy of language generating an ontology of interpretation, as if it were about wars or paradoxes. The gesture of introducing (sachverhalt after sachverhalt) a wormhole into reality is as unbearable as it is revealing… Where are we, or why do all these people want my peace and quiet?
Which literary character would you like as a partner, even though you know you’d end up crying in a bookstore with jazz playing in the background?
Kinski in female form. From that naive-phallocentric identity, she gives the impression of being able to become almost anything. Especially a minor character in a soap opera (even Tele).
What book do you consider a “necessary classic” but only because you’re too anxious to admit that it bored you to death?
Herodotus’ history books. I’ve barely skimmed them, but I firmly believe that history is a collection of systematized fixations prone to manipulation. Stein’s Soft Buttons offers a much more elegant and reliable (historical?) economic view, for example.
What is your secret shameful read?
When I graduated from college, at the graduation ceremony (Karl Marx Theater), the diploma came with a copy of Che’s Diary in Bolivia, and I read two or three pages right there.
Which modern author do you find so brilliant that you detest them as you would detest an ex?
Gottlob Frege, a true transgressor, delves into mathematics in order to push the limits of thought a millimeter or two. At that very point, and as a sign of expropriation, I listen (remembering) for the umpteenth time to that album by Freddy (Ella cantaba boleros).
At what point in your life did you discover that underlining sentences doesn’t mean you understand them?
I’ve always underlined things I understand and things I don’t, consciously and randomly, without conflict.
What’s the most pretentious word you’ve used to talk about a book to sound more intellectual?
Burdégano, and it was to annoy people in a pretentious way, obviously, the climax of the conversation (argument) warranted it.
What edition of a book did you buy just because it had gold edges and looked like a Victorian witchcraft object?
Gold edges: Victorian witchcraft objects.
Which literary character would you use to tell your ego the truth?
If it were possible to merge Gaspar Hauser and El Parmigianino from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror into one, it would definitely be him.
What book were you forced to read in school and now pretend to love out of trauma and habit?
The only thing I read in school was an essay by Ballagas about some Russian dancer, and I did it willingly. Since then, I’ve read a lot and with the same subversive spirit. Or as someone once said: do whatever you have to do.
Which physical bookstore is your financial ruin and your emotional sanctuary?
When it comes to bookstores, sanctuaries (emotional) and financial matters, it depends on who ruins whom. If I lived in Buenos Aires or Madrid, the list would be endless.
What was the last literary phrase that made you say, “Damn genius”?
The deepest rivers are not really rivers at all.
Have you ever had a relationship that ended because of irreconcilable differences in taste in books?
Irreconcilable differences in taste in books sounds like resignation; I wish!
Where is your favorite place to read as if you were a character in a Murakami novel? A hipster café, a rainy window, an existentialist bed? Anywhere else?
I read under pressure, even non-places are appropriate for me. Appropriate rather than favorite, Béla Tarr rather than Murakami.
What book do you use to impress cultured people and have never finished?
It is with Mederox, the antithesis of the cultured and refined (Ra-Hoor-Khuit), that I usually get involved in situations of this nature, more or less, that is to say: about impressive and unfinished readings, generally theosophical, and with no other pretensions than the exercise of hypothesis itself. Our “mecca” is Isis Unveiled, a place which, I believe, one should approach with a sporting spirit, as if entering an image. Certainly not to impress, much less educated people, two things (or rather aptitudes) to which I expose myself very little (not to be absolute), and with no seriousness whatsoever.
Which literary character would you entrust your diary to?
Josef Knecht, I’d be too busy to take it into account.
Which dead author would you invite to your funeral just to read something devastating and elegant about your mediocrity redeemed by your love of books?
Houellebecq would be ideal, it couldn’t be anyone else.
What was the worst literary betrayal you ever suffered? A bad ending, an atrocious adaptation, or your favorite author professing an ideology incompatible with your principles?
Something about Ferdydurke is “in tune” with Gargantúa y Partagruel; betrayal, like that, in lowercase.
What is the most refined insult you have thought of for someone who says “I don’t like to read”?
Teetotaler!
You have a pile of books to read so high that if it fell, it could kill you. Even so, which one(s) did you buy yesterday?
Micro Politics: Cartographies of Desire, by Félix Guattari.
What “profound” book did you find to be an elegant fraud full of smoke, random quotes, and hipster bookstore pseudo-mysticism?
A technical book on the work of Sergei Eisenstein, whose name I can’t (and don’t want to) remember.
When was the last time you read something so beautiful that it revealed something about yourself and you wanted to gouge your eyes out like Oedipus?
In Deleuze, I have found a kind of territory where all states of mind converge without evil influences. A father (or something like that) whom I have no need to transcend. Not what I read revealing anything specific, but Deleuze! That and nothing else.
What is your “fetish book,” the one you would never lend to anyone, even if they promised you their soul?
Autobiographical Stories, Editorial Anagrama, by Thomas Bernhard.
Which author would you summon in a séance to ask why they left you with that ending?
Aleister Crowley (Dominus Liminis), something spectacular would surely happen.
What is your secret reading ritual that makes you feel that the world makes sense, even if only for ten pages?
It comforts me to bring up the time when I went from fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides to A Barbarian in Asia (Michaux) like a stereotype. Not anymore, it’s a shame, now multiplicity and chaos have taken over my reader self, but if we’re talking about rituals.
What literary phrase do you use to justify your addiction to reading instead of solving your real problems?
If external action is sterile and rhyme is outdated, I will return to you, Habakkuk… Ecstasy provides the subject, and convenience determines the form.
What book slowly burns your conscience because you never finished it and yet you still talk about it as if you were a critic for the Paris Review?
Heidegger’s Being and Time, although it’s obvious that I just ramble and prattle on about dasein (being-there), its fundamental concept.
If you were a book forgotten on a dusty shelf, what phrase would you put on the back cover so that someone would finally choose you?
To be born very young into a world that is already very old.
