Reasoning literary passions. Interview with Juan Villoro
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Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
One of the main tasks, and every writer is to read through which may establish and compare their own style. The enrichment that derive from that contact is invaluable, whether from a critical perspective or from the attempt to emulate.
Some authors have also dedicated texts to critical appreciation and to share the enthusiasm that they generate the books of his colleagues, ranging from blame to praise. This share their way of reading the literature and, not infrequently provide clues to appraise their own work. In
That's what (Mexico, Anagram, 2008), one of his most recent books, John Villoro contains a series of trials in reviewing aspects of the work of several authors. In this regard, as he himself notes in his foreword, "the key challenge is to argue the virtues essayist." In this way the book is a journey where we guide readers through the author.
With Villoro held a conversation in which we address some of the key issues raised in the book: the passion for reading, Hamlet and Don Quixote, multiculturalism and literature, authors and travelers and the role of journalism in academia and the literary life, among others.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why collect and publish these essays and post them today?
Juan Villoro (JV): I think one of the necessary reflections of a person who writes is: how do we read? I think that reading is an underlying theme in all forms of writing: you can not write fiction if you have not been read. The authors we admire have been, above all, readers. I am very interested, when an author appeals to me, not only to read his work, but also know the authors who are passionate about. Reading is, somehow, the preseason training, boxing Shadow of an author to get to write his works, and, somewhat, the originality of an author is nothing but the way it is personally appropriate the things he has read.
Not all authors write essays, even practice writing, do not feel the need to reason their enthusiasm as readers. It is not my case I like from time to time seek to establish a connection between authors and readers interested me. I would think that in That is what has been an incentive for authors who have interested me to read. It is a book designed for people who has not been approached by these authors do, or for people who may have already done find a new fact in these perpetrators.
I think it's this: a reflection on the reading from some authors that I love. I try to explain why these authors have captured me. Many times we are witnessing an aesthetic fact, we feel a deep emotion, but we argue our passion, we do not know why this has moved us this way. Then I tried to reason these passions That's it.
AR: I was very attracted to the first part of his book, which talks about the course she took with Harold Bloom. You talk about the negative critical task, and mentions that you can criticize a bad book up to show off. On the contrary, says the work of the essayist, reviewer is to argue virtues. Would you say that this is a distinction between the critic and reviewer?
JV: No, they are very different functions. On one side is the critic, who is in an observatory of reality, trying to establish what is worthwhile and what is not, to help shape the taste of a time, and gradually it will become in tradition. That is the role of someone who publishes in a magazine or a newspaper, and he is following daily reading. But when you write an essay on an author, is a bit lazy to write a long essay to say that is not worth it.
At the same time, is not only more profitable but much harder to argue the virtues of a writer. Say what is wrong with a work, its imperfection, is very simple. We can put El Quijote : write an essay about him is negative easiest thing in the world: we can say that it is arbitrary work, including novels that have nothing to do with the subject, the author has many blind spots, losing Sancho's donkey and not recovered, which use very confusing for the time and that includes people in an indiscriminate manner, or holding the whole story from a delusional type who does not know what is going on. For many readers, was Don Quixote funny novel, but it was a classic novel until two centuries after publication.
Then, write what one sees in a work, you can not find, is the simplest and most useless, it is difficult to argue the virtues that are there and share them with others. This is much more complex, and I think the big test, in this sense, try to share those passions, not just say "because I have read the complete works of Proust and did not understand, I saw nothing."
AR: The book begins with two essays on two of the greatest writers, Shakespeare and Cervantes. You readers are two characters: Hamlet, reading words words and words, even as a poisoned dagger, and the radical reader, Don Quixote. What would you say are the nuances of these characters readers?
LV: I wanted to start the book with a review to the trial, wanted to play with the possibility that the reader understand how to write these essays. Let's say if the book were a play, the first part happen in the intrigue, which is behind the scenes, the process of makeup, costume fitting, testing voice, all that. Then, that first test is less a reflection on Shakespeare topic that much has been written, "but is a chronicle to the test: story time I am writing, how the reading of his work is about the year 1994-when I was at a seminar on it, and that was a very estrujante in Mexico's political life for the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio and the Zapatista uprising, and how these events are related to a seemingly distant in time, as are the plots of Shakespeare, who suddenly become forthcoming.
Then there is the case of the seminar I took at Yale University with Harold Bloom, when I taught there. I saw a man says to Shakespeare, I took notes of the seminar, some of which do not appear in his book The Invention of the Human, because he was preparing, was improvising, and said very interesting things.
there is the translation of Tomas Segovia, surprisingly to us about Shakespeare, and finds the formula "That one is" to Hamlet's monologue, which had previously been translated as "To be or not to be. Here is the dilemma "or" That is the question ", translated right, but a little forced and artificial, and suddenly this release so close to us. Then, say, the endless harassment of a play I wanted to write in the tone of an intellectual review that the reader would first clear from the text what the coordinates the test as to be influenced by his time trying to relate how his time with distant authors, how come looking for mediations that, as the translation of Tomas Segovia, "how is based on the interpretation of the other, as is the If Harold Bloom. That is, for that matter, to approach things.
So this is the first trial, and others, if this were a play, say we're in rehearsal backstage at the first text, then and in the functions of the work.
Regarding the role of reading, which is essential to the whole book, in Hamlet found a highly lucid and rational reader, who is someone who is haunted by doubt, and somehow we think that is the first contemporary intellectual, is someone who is opposed to the mandates of his time, such as honor to avenge the death of his father. Submit this mandate to the test of reflection, this leads to doubt, and Hamlet not only smart she mentioned the benefits, but the paralysis that can lead to the intellectualization of things, and the disasters that can lead the because when subjected to impulse, as all the carnage it causes Hamlet. Then
is an intellectual with the flaws and intellectual lights, and in this sense is a tireless and passionate figure.
In the case of Don Quixote reader found a way, the last reader of a genre, of chivalry, which he confuses with reality and try to implement it, is a reader who can no longer distinguish what is being read from what he sees.
In a way, both Hamlet and Don Quixote lead us to reflect on how we read. When we read a book and captivating, not only we understand that work, but a reality we can read that key. In other words, we can understand the Mexican political system Kafkaesque key or key political intrigue in Shakespeare, or the struggle of a lonely man quixotic key. Then, reality becomes another form of reading, as with Don Quixote.
I think that the whole book is a reflection on the ways we have to read.
AR: There is another essay that interested me, which is that of Lichtenberg; you highlight in this promotion of alterity, of otherness in that eighteenth-century Europe. In that sense, do you believe that Lichtenberg has been a sort of precursor of multiculturalism?
JV: Yes, of course. I think it was a precursor systematic because he did not write essays on these subjects, left very lucid notes that prefigure the modern. I had translated the aphorisms of Lichtenberg to the Culture Fund, and this version read Wolfgang Premier, who was the first German translator of Julio Cortazar, a man who read English well, and then chaired the Society Lichtenberg, I invited the city where he was born in Germany, at a congress that chose a means to discover of America, because it met this date 500 years. At the same time I came from the New World.
Lichtenberg had very interesting ideas, very ahead of their time on the idea of \u200b\u200bdiscovering the other, one of his most famous aphorisms is to do precisely with the landing of Columbus, and instead of saying that Columbus discovered something notes that the first American who saw Columbus made a appalling discovery, because he found colonialism, this native knew he was going to be a victim of this discovery. It's very interesting and very advanced for its time.
was in the eighteenth century were put into question all established values, and established the guidelines of what we now call "modernity." One of these guidelines is in effect and as well point out, the interest in multiculturalism and appreciate the main lesson of anthropology, which is to criticize one's own and understand what is foreign. In that sense, many of Lichtenberg's aphorisms have to do with it.
As I said, never wrote a systematic way to respect, but your readers can do what I've tried to do in this essay, which is to collect all those thoughts that have to do with the subject of another, and to establish an anthropological vision which I think was very innovative for its time.
AR: In that sense, I think you can establish an opposition to the case of Borges, when, as you said, felt that Indian art is governed by the ugliness and that is alien to Western canons. There makes you a critique of multiculturalism. Is there a universal fee that allows us to appreciate and value the quality of a literary, culture come to be?
JV: No, that's impossible, because toda cultura está inmersa en una tradición. Los lectores rusos, por ejemplo, consideran que Dostoievski era un autor muy descuidado, cosa que nosotros no notamos tanto; en cambio, aprecian mucho la prosa de Tolstoi, de Chéjov o de Turgueniev. Cada tradición tiene, digamos, su propia valoración, y tiene autores que son clásicos hacia adentro; por ejemplo, mi poeta favorito es Ramón López Velarde —sobre quien escribí una novela que tiene que ver con su poesía, El testigo —; pero a mí me asombra que sea un poeta muy poco conocido en otros países de habla hispana, no digamos en otras lenguas. O sea que se ha mantenido como un clásico muy nuestro, un clásico hacia inside, but instead, suddenly there are authors who surprisingly like elsewhere.
So I think in that sense it is hard to know what you might like all cultures, and not have to have a uniform taste. I think one of the riches of culture is that just refuses to taste homogeneity, and authors who were once highly celebrated, cease to be later. I think one of the mistakes we make is to think that the tradition is unique, and at the same time is closed. The traditions are many, are open and we can intervene in them. Authors we now take for entrenched in tradition, will be forgotten, and others now not consider as important, they will be.
I think that's the point of multicultural assessment. I also believe that there has been over-or overexploitation of multiculturalism, that is, one thing is genuinely understand the value of otherness, and another thing to justify anything from otherness. Justify Islamic fundamentalism, burka in women, female circumcision for the sake of multiculturalism, it seems absurd. So the problem is to see how far we can justify things through a multicultural vision and how far not. That is a very interesting topic of discussion.
AR: Another aspect highlighted of the authors is their quality of passengers, contact with other cultures, making it very clear in the case of Cervantes and to Lowry. Does the travel means an advantage for a writer?
JV: No, not really, I think not. There have been great writers who have been sedentary, and also great philosophers: Kant was so sedentary, living in the city of people Koegnisberg-set your watch by the time he went for a walk. There have been authors who have never left their country, they have come a very limited territory, and from his room were able to see the world: Kafka, who lived mainly in Prague, made a few trips to Berlin, Vienna, traveled recently but managed to do a literature that is a symbol of the twentieth century.
I think this is a personal matter. In That's what has me very interested in what situation the writers get to write, is one of the things that interest me, because you can not write outside of your life. Many times the way you live will determine a certain type of work and achieved certain works only with certain risks of life that not all dare to run.
For many authors, the trip has been critical for some, the trip to Mexico has been particularly important. The cases of DH Lawrence and Malcolm Lowry, who appear in this book. They absolutely wandering central, but there are other authors whose theme is different. For example, I am very interested in Klaus Mann, the complex with his father, how difficult it is to be the son of a famous writer, writes works that not only egregious, but is writing about the same issues as him. So I was interested in analyzing the novel Mephisto in light of the success of the father, the failure that had the child with the same subject, which is the eternal issue of German culture: the Faustian pact. This situation would lead to suicide Klaus Mann, the situation there is always writing in the shadow of his father. You can break it or not, that interests me greatly.
Another way to explore the theme is the journey not in the territory, but the writer to himself, as is writing a diary. I think in times like ours, which depends on information overload in the culture of spectacle and scandal, the consumer society all the time is inviting us to buy things, which we get messages to our phones and our computer without that we asked, we left the city and we are getting things we do not want messages from the ads.
In this society, of the few opportunities we have to be alone are reading and writing. The journal is a double opportunity of being alone, because it is being written without immediate readers, without talking with anyone, where the writer is trying to travel to the bottom of himself. Then, writing for newspapers is this loneliness with double lock that I have also tried to explore. In this case, the situation in which an author makes is like a desert island, and this is the diary, although the author is surrounded by the others.
So let's say, they seek different strategies that have been the writers to do their work. There have been writers who have been extremely social, like Goethe, successful in his time, powerful men who have made an extraordinary play, while there are others who have done absolutely punished from a corner, section.
AR: I am also interested know the role of academia in his work on literature. In the book, for example, rescues of Harold Bloom, who hated the psychoanalytic interpretations of Shakespeare, or inflation theory seeking political and structural studies. Also caught my attention where Lichtenberg Robinson talks, saying that a paradigm of intellectual life was to use his few readings to broaden their experiences. In that sense, what is today the role of academia in the literary life? I note that by many writers and critics not just a rejection of academic work.
JV: I'm an autodidact, and no one can escape his own itinerary. I did not study the career of letters, but I studied Sociology, with a somewhat naive at the time thought it was a passion-literature-would become for me a marriage of convenience, and I was going to kill this interest if I used to systematize my reading for a thesis to spend seminars. I studied sociology, which interested me, and I think I got too deeply into that time in studies, particularly interested me the most abstract of the discipline, which is the sociology of knowledge. I think in the trials and in the book I write is something of a glimpse of history of ideas, or the way in which ideas have to do with reality, but never from a perspective very systematic.
The more I read and gender most interests me is the test, and many of the essayists who are teachers appreciate. For example, in That's what many references to Roger Bartra, which I appreciate very much, a great anthropologist, a scholar in every way, with whom I have an ongoing dialogue.
I did not pursue an academic career, I would have liked, I would also like to do a PhD in sociology of knowledge, not literature.
So I have no rejection by the academy, I've been a teacher, I had the opportunity-especially at universities abroad, which are more flexible with the curriculum-to teach literature, because my field is this. Self-taught, I have tried to interact with students, and fortunately I was able to teach in the universities of Boston, at the Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, \u200b\u200bat Yale, and here at the UNAM for five years. This has fed me a lot.
I have participated in many conferences where academics, and the relationship with them for me has been very necessary. For example, when I write of Cervantes, I try to follow a personal path and to relate the reading of Cervantes to contemporary authors, but I can not ignore Canavaggio, the great biographer of Cervantes, Francisco Rico, which is an academic who has set the contemporary editions of Cervantes, Martin de Riquer, who has written essays on him light in the end. I lean far as I can, in academia, but I know my role is not a specialist.
I am not a scholar, I am in an intermediate zone of the narrator of fiction that wants to communicate their passions, and I can not usurp the role of a scholar who knows everything about it. I think that academics become concentrated in areas of specialization and dealing with the Renaissance or an author of that time, there are cases like that of Francisco Rico, a notable Petrarch and Cervantes, but not interested in Hemingway.
In my case, is the life of a reader that is dispersed, they read things from different eras and trying to communicate it, without ever reaching the rank of specialist.
AR: You say about Chekhov important thing in him is not what happens in the story, but if this is interesting. In the Chekhovian sense, what is interesting?
JV: Chekhov is a master of the economy, is the great innovator of the modern short story from things that are not in the story. He is a master of missed opportunities and how what is not present in what is influencing the story. In their stories is apparently telling some simple and easily understandable, but this has to do with a much deeper reality, which is providing the reader.
Chekhov The big lesson is to control what is not said, is one of the hardest things to accomplish in the literature. Many times someone thinks a Chekhov story is sketchy, but simply because he can not fail to see what is below the story. Let's say, from this technique, Hemingway developed his famous metaphor of the whole story is like an iceberg, we only see what is on the surface, but the main mass is under water. That is the great contribution of Chekhov.
Then an inattentive reader, superficial, schematic they say: "I think these folk tales of Russian peasants, and nothing more." But behind them there is a world view, religion, the most interesting destination.
AR: On the relationship of journalism to literature, an exercise in the cases mentioned by Chekhov, Hemingway and Lowry, in what helps the writer the exercise of journalism?
JV: Like all close relationships and passionate journalism can be a great benefit to the literature, and distress. I think one of the most important journalism that gives you the discipline to write, many times the author is waiting for the moment of grace that is tackled by the Muses and dragged into a masterpiece, and this moment never comes. In journalism you have no choice but to comply with the work, and gives you extraordinary discipline on the job.
Another central lesson is that of clarity-this for those who believe in the clarity of the prose and language fluency. Journalism is read in the here and now, can not postpone their readers and requires everything to be understood. That seems very important.
Then there is a moral lesson that seems central, and journalism is that the reasons are not within you, you are not the demiurge who controls the world and decide who dies and how long it rains in your work but you can not distort the facts on which they depend, and must make these things, which he has invented you, be credible to others. If you are an intermediary, and I think this is a great moral lesson, because it gives you a humility about the issues. I think so many writers who have worked as a journalist have a curiosity of life and modesty to the office than those who only have written other genres. Rarely are the pride of a fiction writer a journalist. This strikes me as central: the economy and conciseness are examples.
is also the fact that all great literature, journalism is under pressure. I think the works of Martin Luis Guzman in the field of chronic persist with the same force that works in the field of fiction.
The dangers, of course, are there: that of clarity passes to easy formulas and excessive simplicity, do not you dare to find new formal aspects for being too close to the necessary schematics of journalism, you're not able to give free rein to wandering areas of literature because you're too used to the number of characters you can write to it, even the rhetoric that demands your newspaper. Also
wear you convert reports and articles on topics that could be treated much better in fiction. Journalism also writes many temptations as have an immediate impact on the public, since often the journalist ends up representing a character who must have a certain ideology, a certain conduct and does not dare to say something politically incorrect. For its part, the literature is made up of politically incorrect things, unexpected, and in that sense the author of fiction should not be as sound as the reporter. So break down that sense, have the nerve to reach a radically uncomfortable, not always easy for one who is very accustomed to journalism.
These are the lights and shadows, but in the end I think it's an exercise muy benéfico. Yo defiendo mucho no solamente la influencia del periodismo en la escritura de ficción, sino el periodismo mismo como una muy alta forma de la literatura cuando llega a sus niveles más elevados.
AR: Una última pregunta: como usted reproduce en uno de los textos del libro, a Malcolm Lowry México le parecía, a la vez, paradisíaco e infernal, “el sitio más apartado de Dios en el que uno puede encontrarse si se padece alguna forma de congoja; es una especie de Moloch que se alimenta de almas sufrientes.” En su opinión, ¿qué encontró Lowry en México que lo llevó a afirmar esto?
JV: Lowry, desde muy joven, tuvo una tentación por la aniquilación; had an extraordinary physical strength, and had a drunk almost continuously for nearly four decades, until finally annihilated the sturdy body seemed to resist being destroyed. In his life he was always self-destruction, and interestingly it in Mexico found the perfect backdrop for poetic language. He found a world extraordinarily stimulating, sensitive and sensual, while unfair, discriminatory, unequal, very close to violence and death, insulted, ashamed.
That contradiction between the sensual stimuli and the imperfection of reality managed to get her one great novel, because he was called to write one great novel, which is Under the Volcano. I think it's extraordinary, and it is one thing to explore throughout the book: how an author is placed in a position to make this work that he has resisted. He met here this hell and paradise that was necessary for his work, and placed it on a day in Cuernavaca.
I really like an idea of \u200b\u200bhim saying that "this whole mess, all this misery is going to become beautiful by my work", ie, the encouragement of art is not necessarily what is already beautiful, but many times the outrage, suffering, injury, fall, the shame that the artist can become beauty. And since he was an artist's self-annihilation, I needed that, and here he found it. So it's a fascinating subject.
* A version of this interview was published in Millennium Weekly, No. 607, June 8, 2009. Reprinted with permission from the director.
