Reading

Novelist and poet Cristina Rivera Garza has an excellent essay out in the anthology Palabra de América (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2004), in which she discusses her blog writing ("Blogsívela. Escribir a inicios del siglo XXI desde la blogósfera"):

"Me intrigaba en ese momento, así lo quiero creer, la democracia irreverente de la blogósfera--el hecho de escribir a la par y junto con hombres y mujeres para quienes la escritura no era una profesión ni un oficio sino un gusto, un ejercicio, acaso un reto, algo encontrado al azar en el ciberespacio. Me tentaba el anticapitalismo mordaz de la blogescritura--su gratuidad, el hecho irreversible de que cualquier signo inscrito en el blog se encontrara, tal como lo sustenta Kathy Acker, << más allá del terreno del copyright, tal y como éste existe hoy en día >>. Me subyugaba completamente la inmediatez y la antijerarquía de la publicación y la posible, y a fin de cuentas real, inmediatez de la lectura y la respuesta."

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This anthology of essays by young Latin American writers includes a prologue by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and an essay by Roberto Bolaño. Another author included is the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, whose fantastic quantum physics spy-thriller En busca de Klingsor (Seix Barral, 1999) I'm reading right now (along with the usual half a dozen other books).

Reading, and the endless procurement of books, is definitely my obsession. I've probably said it before here but I remember David Ferry at BU mentioning that for him there is no real difference between reading and writing. They are two versions of the same act. A common enough idea, but one which allowed me to better understand this obsession of mine for certain books. Their talismanic nature and my life-long devotion to their pages.

I remember my grandfather in Caracas sitting for hours in the back yard or living room with his pulp fiction and Western novels. He had been a "serious" reader most of his life, and my father told me that in later years he chose to stick to pulp fiction instead, perhaps as an escape or for relaxation. Andy Warhol probably already filmed it, but I've often thought about a film which would consist of a poet sitting on a back porch somewhere reading. How would the viewer know she is a poet? Well, she'd have a notebook beside her, where she'd stop occasionally to write down something.

I write here mainly so I can read all of you. I think the beautiful silence of reading is what I enjoy, as well.