Tag: writing

There is a piece of advice that would please readers very much, but has never been given to any writer, and it consists of the following: the author whose pages of the books he has are not enough to satisfy his need to comment on them does well to allocate the excess, or the whole of his comments to a work designed specifically for this purpose. By doing so, he avoids, firstly, these comments getting in the way of a narrative that has nothing to do with them, interrupting it and hindering it. Secondly, if such a work exists, it will be good for the author himself, who will have a stimulating store of comments in it, if he does not have a friend or any other real person to perform this function.

The advantage of a novel with a well-defined dramatic arc, even if the succession of events, being exaggeratedly cohesive, borders on artificiality, is that it keeps the sense of the whole alive and intense in the reader’s mind, something that, in short, sustains his interest. On the other hand, novels that are, say, more “natural”, that reflect the natural futility of the characters and the natural triviality of their lives and concerns, quickly become tedious and, even if they appear less forced, often they do not resist the constant temptation to close them.

The most difficult thing about portraying the temporal circumstance in a literary work is to specify it to the point where it becomes special, while at the same time synthesizing its action as an external agent in a scheme that goes beyond time. Tend to either side, and the artist will fail to make the work arouse lasting interest, which is only possible when different but inseparable layers of meaning are built up, connecting the comprehensive to the particular.

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.