What was the book that destroyed your literary innocence and left you emotionally available only for fictional characters?
Without a doubt, and not the first “great” book I read, but the first one I misread, it was the Iliad. An adapted edition (Biblioteca Billiken, 1993, I was about 10 years old at the time), short, but enough to imagine battles between ancient warriors and draw them merged with the Knights of the Zodiac. The green armor on the cover made them look like aquatic warriors (covered in seaweed, perhaps). I called it “The War of the Iliad” (with a grave accent). Was it possible to reimagine a classic? What connection could there be between the Greeks and “aquatic warriors”? I think that, after all, literature germinates in these kinds of detours.
Which author would you like to kiss or hug and then hit with an 800-page edition for ruining you emotionally?
I’m not sure how to interpret the idea of “ruining you emotionally,” but I could mention John Fante. I love his Arturo Bandini saga, but in some cases, such as in Wait for Spring, Bandini, I would have preferred a different ending. But can a reader dare to prefer something? In literature, what is, is fine. However, we can allow ourselves a little sentimental impropriety.
What is the book that you say “marked you,” but you only read it because of aesthetic pressure?
I would say Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I started it dozens of times and gave up almost every time. I guess I must have finished it on one of those attempts. But I’m not saying that Faulkner marked me. Or did he mark me to prefer Hemingway and that wilder style?
Which literary character would you like to have as a partner, even though you know you’d end up crying in a bookstore with jazz playing in the background?
The subject of Mary Ruefle’s poems.
Which book do you consider “a necessary classic” but only because you’re too anxious to admit that it bored you to death?
Glosa by Juan José Saer.
What is your secret shameful read?
I’m not ashamed of it anymore (after 40, few things make me ashamed): Chico Carlo, by Juana de Ibarbourou. I reread it often. And I can argue that it’s a sensational book, superior to many classics.
Which modern author do you find so brilliant that you detest them as you detest an ex?
Anne Carson.
At what point in your life did you discover that underlining sentences doesn’t mean you understand them?
Never. I always underlined to rethink.
What is the most pretentious word you have used to talk about a book to sound more intellectual?
In my essays I’ve invented some, the kind you can’t believe don’t exist in the RAE dictionary. Not to sound more intellectual, but because they were necessary for the idea.
What edition of a book did you buy just because it had gold edges and looked like a piece of Victorian witchcraft?
Not so much for the gold edges… but out of fetishism, the hardcover edition of Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter. One of my favorite books, without a doubt.
Which literary character would you use to tell your ego the truth?
Frank Bascombe.
What book were you forced to read in school and now you pretend to love out of trauma and habit?
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.
Which physical bookstore is your financial ruin and your emotional sanctuary?
Factotum, the only one in my city that has interesting things, with literary discernment.
What was the last literary phrase that made you say, “Damn genius”?
One I used as the epigraph for a book I’m editing: “A poet sometimes acts as an error” by Gabriel Pantoja. Pure genius.
Have you ever had a relationship that ended because of irreconcilable differences in taste in books?
I’ve never had a “relationship” with those kinds of people. I’ve managed to avoid them in time.
What 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? Any other suggestions?
An armchair next to an open window.
What book do you use to impress cultured people that you’ve never finished?
Infinite Jest by Foster Wallace.
Which literary character would you entrust your diary to?
Frank Bascombe, without a doubt. Or Alonso Quijano, that perfect grandfather.
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?
Charles Baudelaire, the supreme master of the devastating and the elegant.
What was the worst literary betrayal you ever suffered? A bad ending, a terrible adaptation, or your favorite author professing an ideology incompatible with your principles?
My words were misrepresented after an interview. Why? If they had just left what I actually said, no one would have read it anyway!
What is the most refined insult you have thought of for someone who says, “I don’t like to read”?
It shows.
You have a pile of books to read so high that if it fell, it could kill you. Even so, which ones did you buy yesterday?
The last ones I bought are Las primas by Aurora Venturini and Cuadernos de lengua y literatura by Mario Ortiz.
Which “profound” book did you find to be an elegant fraud full of smoke, random quotes, and hipster bookstore pseudo-mysticism?
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
When was the last time you read something so beautiful that it revealed something about yourself and you wanted to tear your eyes out like Oedipus?
This week, a poem by Jorge Orlando Correa (a fabulous Mexican author).
What is your “fetish book,” the one you won’t lend to anyone, even if they promise you their soul?
Several, some not because they’re expensive but because they’re sentimentally valuable. For example, the edition of Prosas profanas, the first one I had, from the 1944 Austral Collection.
Which author would you summon in a séance to ask why they left you with that ending?
John Fante.
What is your secret reading ritual that makes you feel like the world makes sense, even if only for ten pages?
Getting up at 6 a.m. to read. From 6 to 9 is when literature happens.
What literary phrase do you use to justify your addiction to reading instead of solving your real problems?
Ars longa vita brevis.
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?
Death and Transfiguration of Martín Fierro, by Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. I’ll read it someday.
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?
Go back where you came from. We’re fine here. Sincerely, Words.
