One of the Dilemmas Faced by the Modern…

One of the dilemmas faced by the modern novelist stems from the realization that, in many respects, today’s daily life would be incomprehensible to men of the past. When we read stories from five hundred or eight hundred years ago today, we can easily understand the activities, customs and societies of those times, even though the contrasts are obvious. Planting, harvesting, celebrating, sailing, fishing, fermenting, weaving, riding, praying, building, marrying, painting, playing… all of this is very old and very current, making possible countless scenes and entire books whose meaning will never be lost. On the other hand, modern tasks such as “surfing the internet” or simply operating a computer, something on which one makes a career and spends a lifetime, certainly do not have the same timeless quality. The novelist, looking at them, that is, looking at a considerable part of the material of his time, has to decide how much he can use them, and although he knows that to hide them might be to falsify himself, he experiences the impression that, if incomprehensible to the great men of other times, his story will probably be worthless.