The individual who does not read fiction usually considers literature to be futile and incapable of having a practical influence on his life. But whether he knows it or not, to deprive oneself of literature is to deprive oneself of the apprehension of possibilities, which practically means limiting one’s own life. Still in practical terms, the illiterate will always distinguish himself by taxing the old as new, and by standing in front of an infinity of trivialities without knowing how to react.
In Brazil, the Average Citizen Spends…
In Brazil, the average citizen spends his entire adult life without reading a single work of fiction. This cannot be normal, except in a culturally dead society. It is safe to say that no Brazilian writer today has the slightest influence on society, despite what the names of some streets and monuments might suggest. There is not a single literary work whose characters or moral lessons are present in the collective imagination, and so the most astonishing fact about Brazil today is that it has no cultural base to serve as a foundation and common heritage. It is not just an educational tragedy, but a human one.
The False Writer Gives Up His Individuality…
The false writer gives up his individuality in order to please, and for this he receives the prize of social acceptance. He is false, firstly, because he does not assert himself, and secondly, because he believes that social acceptance is a prize. How much easier things are for the true writer! He sees the dilemma as a wonderful win-win situation: he affirms himself by displeasing, and thus receives the benefit of social rejection.
It Is Hard to Gauge How Mediocre…
It is hard to gauge how mediocre a man has to be to not only adapt to, but take as his own an idea conceived by half a dozen bureaucrats, which directly confronts what is truly his. An idea, sometimes unprecedented in human history, sometimes grossly stupid, unequivocally nonsensical and infamous, whose application involves a drastic and sudden behavioral change, whose practical effect is to demean the past and break a long and honorable tradition, but an idea that is nevertheless swallowed up! Such success seems to indicate that a society can be physically destroyed by an external agent, but that it can only be corrupted voluntarily.