What book ruined your ability to enjoy “light” literature forever?
2666 made my world a little denser. And then I needed to ruin that density, lighten the weight. If I remember correctly, I then read Todos se van. Honestly, I have found that books that are often feared have given me indescribable pleasure. That happened to me with Bolaño, but not with Lispector. After reading La pasión según G. H. (The Passion According to G. H.) and trying to understand from page one to I don’t know how many why and how the narrator, phenomenologically, decides to eat a cockroach, I found Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives) almost light, friendly (this is my favorite novel).
Which author would you like to invite to dinner, just to argue with them for three hours?
Javier Marías. I would call him the Freud of literature. The way he imagines women in his novels unsettles me. Sometimes his sharpness disarms me, but sometimes his arrogance petrifies me, and that’s why I would devise a plan similar to the one the protagonist of A Heart So White foists on the Cuban woman he petulantly observes from his hotel room in Havana. It would be, let’s say, a novelistic plan: I invite Marías to dinner with his protagonist from Corazón… and I become the murderer of both of them; I leave the author for last, whose opening speculation in his most notable novel is that a Cuban woman, and not her foreign lover, seeks to get rid of his sick wife. My murder would be a literary thrust, of course (metaliterary irony). Javier Marías is already dead, and even if he were still alive, I wouldn’t dare to do such a thing.
What book did you pretend to have read with the most conviction?
None. I’m one of those people who, if they haven’t read something, says so without embarrassment. Although I think I once claimed to have read Naked Lunch. I haven’t even started it yet.
Which literary character would you kill yourself?
I think I already said that. And now, I can’t kill anyone else. They’d accuse me of being a serial killer. You have to be careful these days.
What “classic” book do you consider a punishment to read, yet you still defend it in public?
To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf). I can’t stand modernism and its stream of consciousness. It suffocates me.
What is your guilty literary pleasure, the one you hide behind a fake copy of Proust?
I’ve read The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón), and I don’t feel guilty. I read it with pleasure almost to the end, curiously exploring that majestic Barcelona that was suddenly swallowed up by shadows. Light literature, you might say, but the characters are well thought out.
Which book do you treat as a sacred object, but whose first page remains more pristine than your new Kindle?
If I consider it sacred, I at least get to the first thirty pages, even if it’s hard.
Which author would you trade lives with, even if only to get a scholarship to the Sorbonne?
I’d be canceled if I mentioned them.
Which bookstore has stolen the most money from you with your consent?
Amazon. Before, in Cuba, I was the one stealing. A professional taught me how at the book fairs in Havana.
Which books have you started more than three times without getting past page 40?
The Grapes of Wrath.
What Latin phrase do you use to sound profound, even though you don’t really know what it means?
I don’t usually use Latin phrases.
Which literary character would you like to have as a therapist, knowing that they would ruin you emotionally?
Tomas (The Unbearable Lightness of Being). I am captivated by his intelligence and playful attitude—the desire for (in)consistency. If he were my therapist, the following would happen, in this order: first, I would try to seduce him, and then, when I failed (I’m past the age when he would find me attractive), we would engage in a dialectical game that would lead nowhere. It would be the logical outcome; I’ve never believed in therapy.
What is the most absurd edition you bought just for its aesthetics?
I don’t buy books for their aesthetics. I’ve never bought a luxury edition. I was given a luxury series of the British Hispanic encyclopedia and I lost it (for reasons that are irrelevant).
What literary genre do you pretend to despise because your intellectual friends do?
I don’t care what my intellectual friends think.
Which contemporary author do you pretend to be uninterested in but secretly wish you had written their books?
I think this questionnaire is forcing me to give a lot of negative answers. I don’t have an author I pretend to be uninterested in (that kind of envy isn’t productive). I would have liked to have written several poems by Raúl Hernández Novás and Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, two authors who are almost opposite in style and attitude.
How many books do you have waiting to be read, and how many do you continue to buy each month?
There are several authors on the list who give my intellectual friends orgasms: Pynchon and Thomas Bernhard. What I was saying before about fascinations that define an era (in this case, somewhat elitist). However, I haven’t bought them yet.
I buy on impulse, depending on my mood, and sometimes very disparate styles and themes end up in my Amazon basket. For example, last week I bought For Whom the Bell Tolls, just like that, in English—I hadn’t read it in the original language and wanted to savor the most succinct form of a language that is, in itself, succinct. I bought it with The Sound and the Fury in Spanish, because I don’t have the discipline to read Faulkner in English.
What literary scene made you close the book and look at the ceiling as if you had experienced something?
It wasn’t a novel or a story, it was the letters between Paul Celan and Ingeborg. The lack of communication, the (dis)hope.
What book would you give away just to test whether someone is worthy of you?
I don’t give books away to test people.
What is the most heinous literary crime? Dog-earing pages, underlining books, or not reading?
Not reading. It’s a crime, I don’t know if it’s heinous.
Do you read the author’s blurb before starting a book, or do you prefer to ruin the experience later?
Yes, I read the blurb, even if I already know the author’s career. I’m interested in how publishers categorize, classify, squeeze, and sell books.
What fictional library do you deserve according to your level of literary neurosis?
The Library of Babel (perhaps an expected answer).
Have you ever stolen a book? Which one(s)?
Yes, I said so before. The last one was Rigodón, but not in Havana.
What is your greatest achievement as a reader: surviving Ulysses or finishing Don Quixote?
I decided to start reading Ulysses in English. I had just arrived in the United States, 18 years ago. I got past page 40. I never went back. I have embraced Don Quixote, I have fallen asleep with it, but it is a novel that I have read in no particular order.
What book would you have liked to write just so you could sign it and show it off?
I choose two: The Savage Detectives and Ficciones (the latter being a repository-dialogue of the former). The first, Los detectives… seems to me the funniest book ever written, especially after the transatlantic journey begins, although the episode of Tlatelolco reconstructed from a university bathroom is absolutely brilliant. Each supposed testimony is equivalent to an intensity, something like dying a hundred times. For its part, Ficciones is as copious in its brevity as the metaphor of circular ruin—that of memory.
At what age did you realize that reading didn’t make you a better person, just more unbearable?
I don’t know if it was the books; I think the neurosis of doctoral studies turned me into something of an island. Although I’m still bearable.
Which secondary character deserved more prominence than the main one?
I can’t think of any. I’m not interested in rewriting literature or “speaking back” as Jean Rhys did.
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 actually use whatever is handy. I keep bookmarks as little treasures.
Which author do you think is brilliant, but would rather not have around at a dinner party?
I think Borges is brilliant, it would be a pleasure to have him around and listen to him talk about the Kabbalah and unthinkable literary associations; however, I don’t think I’d want him for company at dinner (and here I’ll give a completely non-intellectual reason): I imagine him splattering his food with saliva (unintentionally, of course).
What phrase do you use to justify not finishing the books you start?
I’m busy reading others.
If your life were a book, on which shelf in the bookstore would we find it: “unnecessary drama,” “pretentious fiction,” or “essay on disappointment”?
The first shelf.
