What was the book that destroyed your literary innocence and left you emotionally available only for fictional characters?
I’m probably not answering the question, especially since I would phrase it differently—I mean, when we start reading, everything is just fiction, nothing more than a story and fictional characters thrown into the story, extensions of its plot. You don’t get there, as the question suggests: you come out of it. That’s how you read as a child, for example, all of Salgari or all of Verne or certain Defoe or certain Stevenson. So if the question were what book made me aware of something beyond the fictional, an awareness of language that was ultimately alien to me, the first one would be the Kálevala. To be exact, the Kálevala in a pocket edition by Losada—I remember the edition and the discovery of that other thing much better than any of the story’s twists and turns, which should say something—next to Esenin and other favorite poets of my mother on the bookshelf (next to what children don’t read or aren’t interested in reading, I suppose). But that awareness must have been more of a glimpse, so shortly afterwards Schwob’s Vidas imaginarias must have put it in its place, or it became pure awareness there, then, with Schwob.
Which author would you like to kiss or hug and then hit with an 800-page edition for ruining you emotionally?
Littel, for The Kindly Ones.
What is the book that you say “marked you,” but you only read it because of aesthetic pressure?
Probably Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. In fact, I’ve never read it straight through, despite having set out to do so I don’t know how many times. The first time, in a multi-volume edition, I think it was Mexican—by Aldus México, perhaps, by Siglo XXI?—those unbound books where you can cut out the pages. I don’t know how many volumes there were, but I didn’t have them all, so I read it in bits and pieces, and to top it all off, The Man Without Qualities never really convinced me or worked for me, and it’s funny—I realize now—but to say or have said that not reading it made an impression on me doesn’t feel false; there’s at least some truth in it.
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?
Can I choose two? At the risk of trigamy: Katje Borgesius, from Gravity’s Rainbow, Snæfríður Íslandssól, from The Bell of Iceland, Ariane Deume, from Belle du Seigneur. In no particular order, what can you do? And while we’re at it: there are plenty of characters and books to choose from in Cohen, Laxness, and Pynchon, but these three are definitely in another league. Ada van Veen, from Ada or Ardour, raises her left eyebrow incredulously as she reads my betrayal.
What book do you consider “a necessary classic” but only because you’re anxious to admit that it bored you like a Latin mass?
Aquinas’s Summa Theologica and Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Both boring and necessary, I suppose. Both of them.
What is your secret shameful read?
Usually, books that I know no one or almost no one is going to read now, which you would probably hide in any conversation—or at least not bring up, much less use as an argument of authority—but which, for one reason or another, you appreciate and enjoy and hold in a very special place. Two examples: De Genesi ad litteram, by Augustine; Quod nihil scitur, by Sánchez. On a much more trivial or frivolous note, but where one also feels a certain shameful apprehension, there are those times when one looks for a particular passage in a book just for the pleasure of rereading that passage, and no other. Books where the latter happens to me, those passages where one sometimes goes back almost as if looking sideways at a part of a body (and the fact that they have little to do with each other is, I suppose, telling): there are some, for example, in Terra nostra by Fuentes, in La reprise by Robbe-Grillet, in 2666 by Bolaño, in Tristram Shandy by Sterne.
Which modern author do you find so brilliant that you detest them as you would detest an ex?
If brilliant here means all bark and no bite, that is, overrated and applauded for no reason but with whom one had at least a brief affair for whatever reason, then Robbe-Grillet. If brilliant means ingenious, tremendously ingenious and tremendously enjoyable for that reason but nothing more, then Boris Vian in L’écume des jours. If brilliant means magnificent in a way that you wouldn’t follow, because at some point separation becomes necessary or it falls under its own weight, then Borges.
At what point in your life did you discover that underlining sentences doesn’t mean you understand them?
The first time I underlined one I didn’t understand, of course (incidentally, anyone who has read in a language other than their own knows that not understanding something completely is the best and first reason to underline something). But beyond that, the truth is that marking or underlining phrases, at least in my case, usually obeys two reasons: either there is something there that I don’t understand and that I am interested in understanding better; or there is something there whose formulation is so full of meaning, works so well or fits so well that I am interested in understanding how it came about, what makes it possible.
What’s the most pretentious word you’ve used to talk about a book to sound more intellectual?
Entimematic, which I don’t know if it’s pretentious, but it certainly sounds like it to half of humanity. For the record, it refers to something very specific, but that something can be named or described in other ways, of course.
What edition of a book did you buy just because it had gold edges and looked like a piece of Victorian witchcraft?
I’m not crazy about gold edges, but in general I’m fascinated by facsimile editions—even of books I know I’m not going to read, or at least not in that edition or language—particularly those from the 16th and 17th centuries and especially those by classic printers of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Manuzio and Plantin-Moretus. It may even be simply because of the page layout or the typography, regardless of who wrote the book. If they include interesting engravings or initial capitals, we move straight into fetish territory.
Which literary character would you use to tell your ego the truth?
I’m willing to listen to anything Katje, Snæfríður, and Ariane have to say, of course. But if it’s a matter of a certain Socratic dialogue, who better than Socrates?
What book were you forced to read in school and now pretend to love out of trauma and habit?
I don’t think there are any, at least not in the literal sense—that specific book, that I read in school, and now, etc. But I wonder to what extent my relationship with Martí’s prose, for example, has something or a lot to do with that. Acceptance out of learned affection, let’s say quickly and badly.
Which physical bookstore is your financial ruin and your emotional sanctuary?
Any one with books in alphabetical order and a reasonably cozy space—if it also has stationery, even better. If, on top of that, it has paper—not stationery, but paper, sheets of paper sorted by manufacturer and weight—then we’re lost.
What was the last literary phrase that made you say, “Damn genius”?
There’s no such thing—I tend to be grateful to genius.
Have you ever had a relationship that ended because of irreconcilable differences over books?
No, but I must have had some that didn’t start or didn’t work out, perhaps because of that.
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?
Rain is always welcome; it makes good company. Trains—traveling while reading has a very particular charm that is probably difficult to explain, but it definitely exists and should have a name, and once you discover it, you can’t help but notice it—in the same way as reading in a place where there is a landscape in the distance—something you can look at from afar from time to time, whether it’s the beach or that valley down there. You only read in bed when you know you’re going to fall asleep at any moment, or at least soon. I’ve never understood what people find in reading in bed, except for that practical caution of falling asleep in a comfortable place.
What book do you use to impress cultured people and have never finished?
Are we talking about The Man Without Qualities?
Which literary character would you entrust your diary to?
None—you never know.
Which dead author would you invite to your funeral just so they could read something devastating and elegant about your mediocrity redeemed by your love of books?
Sterne or Rabelais, of course. Maybe—but only maybe—Kundera.
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?
The only thing I could say I feel is literary betrayal (bad endings or terrible adaptations or an author’s ideology are their problem, not mine: there’s nothing there to feel betrayed by, because there’s no prior connection) is imposture: an author writes very well and shows a certain universe with a certain logic of its own or certain values, etc. Then it turns out that you meet them in person—if they’re still alive, of course—or you read texts that contradict the other ones, and that universe collapses because it’s revealed to be fake or borrowed or simply opportunistic, a kind of facade designed to win the favor of readers. It’s betrayal with a certain bonus, because it continues to happen, it doesn’t stop: the text that you thought was good still seems good to you, even though you no longer feel it’s authentic. And vice versa, the imposture continues to grate on you because that text remains convincing, even though, etc.
What’s the most refined insult you’ve thought of for someone who says, “I don’t like to read”?
“I don’t like reading.”
“I understand, I wouldn’t dare doubt it.”
You have such a tall pile of books to read that if it fell, it could kill you. Even so, which ones did you buy yesterday?
The Books of Jacob, by Tokarczuk. It’s the first thing I’ve read by her—I’ve only just started, but it looks very promising.
What “profound” book did you find to be an elegant fraud full of smoke, random quotes, and hipster bookstore pseudo-mysticism?
Except for The Glass Bead Game, all of Hesse’s books on first reading and during—in fact, I’d have to reread The Glass Bead Game to see if the caveat still stands, or if I have to move on to the second reading, where the fraud is exposed. On second reading, when you discover it later (which makes it worse, because you feel hopelessly naive on the first reading, witnessing the fraud of the first reading as if you were watching yourself on tape), Rayuela and The Rite of Spring.
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?
Recently, some random notes in Serraud’s diaries, the Munich Notebooks—they’re not really notebooks, but they read like poetry.
What is your “fetish book,” the one you would never lend to anyone, even if they promised you their soul?
The edition is secondary; it’s more about certain books I’ve kept since adolescence or that have added sentimental value for some reason—not literary per se, but associated with someone or something.
Which author would you summon in a séance to ask why they left you with that ending?
A few, but if I had to choose one, Flaubert, because in his case there are two reasons: for Bouvard et Pécuchet—because of how unfinished it is, how unconvincing the supposed or intended ending is—and for Salammbô—because of how it ends like that. All questions, in both cases. Although I must say that I might swap Flaubert for Poe, as long as he told me the whole truth about why Arthur Gordon Pym ends the way it does.
What is your secret reading ritual that makes you feel that the world makes sense, even if only for ten pages?
Time and silence. Time—how much doesn’t really matter—that at that moment is outside of chronological time. That time that cannot be taken away, available for another dimension of things.
What literary phrase do you use to justify your addiction to reading instead of solving your real problems?
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction; and the greatest good is small, that all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams.
That one, or “I would prefer not to.” Either one is fine.
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?
I promise to finish The Man Without Qualities, wow. And reread Das Glasperlenspiel. No, I won’t do it anymore.
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?
Tolle, lege. Nec spe nec metu. It works for any reading challenge and for any reading that’s worth it, too.
