Arquivo de literature | Page 110 of 110

Life As It Is, by Nelson Rodrigues

I threaten to press the key and, before pressing it, a wife cheats on her husband. My finger touches the keyboard and another consort repeats the action. I do not close the front line and thousands of wives — or would they be millions? — cheat on their husbands, on time, in various countries and several languages. Two thousand short stories Nelson wrote in series, day after day, for ten years, around the same theme: adultery. So it is just the question: would not he have exaggerated? Could not he perhaps have written a little less? From home, I hear the belt snap on the neighbor. No, no, no… Nelson undoubtedly got it right.

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About Dynamic Reading

I- Definitely, we cannot know more than the subject of a book by performing the techniques that make up so-called “dynamic reading”. I would say that this type of reading is exactly what Mortimer Adler called, in How to read a book, “inspectional reading” — the first of three readings that should be made in a book.

II- Books should be read slowly, calmly, while we annotate observations and highlight excerpts. A good book only delivers himself with effort.

III- Rodrigo Gurgel’s recommendation is worth: one should never advance in a book if something has not been understood. We should go back and reread as many times as necessary.

IV- “Dynamic reading”, however, can be used to decide whether or not a book deserves reading.

V- I read the above topics and i realize: nothing new; everything has been said and repeated exhaustive times by good readers. Why, therefore, there is still talk of “dynamic reading”?

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Ulysses, by James Joyce

I read, for these days, our Paulo Coelho saying that the whole Ulysses comes down to a tweet. It seems he made the statement in 2012. The book, to whom does not know, is almost unanimous in criticism. Our Folha de S. Paulo, for example, gave it the title of the greatest novel of the twentieth century. I confess: I am traumatized by Ulysses; a few years ago, I abandoned him on page 400. During the reading, I was tortured, from the beginning thinking of closing it; however, always granting one hundred new pages of credit to the author. Then I closed it, very angry and convinced: “this is not literature”. So I took something from Dostoevsky. It was really good years ago. And today I am rethinking: whenever I find myself convinced, I soon see myself an idiot. Ulysses is literature. I did not go back to the book, but I am sure it is, and that I just could not read it. “The book says nothing…” — says a lot. Leopold Bloom is despicable, that’s right. But how many are not? I think of Eça. Much has already been taxed the characters of Eça as frivolous. I look around. Literature is also the art of language. What about Eça and James Joyce in this regard? And I come back: what more reality looks like: frivolous or impregnated with meaning, almost bursting with meaning? Do people spend their days in banalities, dying like flies, or do they make history Monday through Friday? Do they perform useless functions or mark epoch every day? So I think of my texts: tragics, of fierce moralism. Am I not the opposite of Eça, the opposite of Joyce, and who knows, the opposite of an artist?

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The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe

I read Werther for the first time and — quote! — I didn’t like it. I came from I do not know what reading or, rather, from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and I felt the book being smaller than it is. And life, as usual, made my tongue burn. “Good, but mushy. At one point, it’s sick” — it’s what I’ve said at the end of the reading. I do not deny: I was in charm, drunk from the first contact with Mann. Shortly thereafter, I rethought: it’s very likely that the problem is in me, not in Goethe. I gave the book a new chance — a book, say, of “a sitting” — and the reading took place as follows: I felt chills, my eyes seemed to swallow the lines; sometimes I thought i’d pause, think calmly about everything I was feeling. Immersed in a whirlwind of feelings, thoughts, judging Werther while I was empathizing with the narrative. Almost crying, I close the book. The verdict: “Next to Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich , these were the best few pages I’ve read in my entire life”. And I almost forget the main one: “I will never forgive myself for saying this book is sick. I am forever an idiot”.

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