Third lap the podcast with Alejandro Gaviría and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast of
the locutorio arroba el locutorio dese I don' t like this kind of idealization
of books that confuses life with reading. As if I summarized absolutely everything yes
and how reading will suffice in life. I don' t think so,
as if moms were the main thing and as if I were reading when they
tell people, you have to read, because this is going to be better.
People there begin to fail chawinism. Hi Ricardo, Hi Alejandro that more
this week of the Colombian cultural world had what was interpreted as a good news
totally, and is that the syndices how they are called readingability. The study
is really called reading habits. It is the subject of the study by the
Colombian Chamber of the book and imbamer Ibammer and showed that Colombians are reading more.
Yes, all Colombians were reading more, according to the poll, but
Colombians, who consider themselves readers, who call themselves readers, went from reading
five four books a year, that the figures are always funny, because,
yes, how I have a problem. Four is an average that' s
a little funny when it comes to truth. Although I have also read books
in trecimal point in problem zero three of an exact book I zero fifteen and
are no longer reading five four books, but six ninety- one books.
But this is a difference between the study of two thousand seventeen and the study
of two thousand twenty- four, which is this two thousand seventeen, two,
one thousand twenty- four, that is, seven years of spo media
increase so that the self- identifying group identifies as readers the books read a
year in almost one and a half. Of course it' s a lot.
Lot. The self- called reader group has grown and the same price
that group has also grown, that is, if we do not have all
good news. They have grown in readers and among readers the number of ready
have grown and grown in the bookstore. Yes, exactly. The bookstore is
more than five hundred in Colombia and every month they open more and it'
s amazing that there are more plans and bookstore launches and the President of the
Colombian Chamber himself, the book says it has to do with the pandemic,
which I found interesting, that is, this issue that the pandemic was going
to produce behavioural changes, it seems true. As for books, yes,
he dares to say that and it seems fair and logical to me, and
if you feel one could have this suspicion that you have increased the numbers of
readers, for example, by taking Instagram and seeing that there are a number
of book reviewers with accounts of just that book reviews, that there are reading
clubs and workshops more and more. One could suspect, seeing that they were
launching bookstores, that this was growing, that there is something real, that
is, the evidence that shows this survey coincides with the anecdotes that one collects
here beyond what exactly is happening you who have looked at that rich with a
little detail and or not that will be read books or books bought. I
believe that they are read free are a lot more than in addition, in
the study there is also talk about that the growth in the purchase of books,
that one notices it in both independent publishing houses and more, as they
are all independent, but that' s what they call them. Smaller and
larger publishers have an increasing growth in their numbers. It keeps growing that and
it' s, I guess, hopeful, but it' s also amazing.
Yeah, I think it' s interesting. It has been said many
times, but it is worth reiterating. They' re two very different things.
Some are buying books, yes, others are reading them yes. We
all have true, many have a fetish with books totally and buying books has
a passion. So, it' s a passion for me. I even
remember that I told this story when I was sick with cancer, that I
wrote a notic or what I would like to do. One of the things
I thought was walking to the bookstore. Here St librarian I like clearly to
choose two other books, not read them full, see them in half,
put them in the or exile them there somewhere in the library and feel that
from there and make them happy. But it was the object that radiated something.
It' s a fetish, a little strange, but good there this
but it makes sense, is that you' re already very used to books,
that they exist and that if you think about it a little bit more,
it' s very touching that someone has. In fact, the impression
going to a printing press is fantastic to know a printing press to see how
each book, the font, the paper is made. That' s very
beautiful. They are object or bellus, yes exact. New books have an
attractive characteristic smell. The old ones, they' re even as good as
you are as they are well made to think it was very difficult to make
them. Not like now. Well, there are computer software machines. In
the old books. There are hidden stories, some underlined ones, some phrases,
some dedications that tell of other readers who passed by. And I find
that effectiche nice, interesting. I don' t want to overdo it.
Neither. I have always believed that behind that fetish there is an illusion,
and that there are promises to be fulfilled. There' s some kind of
epiphanies, to discover that those books are hiding some sort of secret, some
sort of secret that' s going to be a little happier for us or
I see it a little better. If the other day I read a phrase
from the writer that a children' s book was invented. It' s
very famous, it' s called Charlotte' s web, which I'
ve seen. It' s nice and has very nice movie versions. It
' s very sad too and she said that what excited her to see books
out there, libraries in bookstores, was the suspicion that there was a person
in there who was trapped there that one was just going to know him and
that that would be like the genius of the bottle that you don' t
know something is going to come out of there exactly a friend, a friend,
a story. What Gemi Sación hemy Way said there is in the books.
There' s a loyalty inside there' s a loyalty something that'
s going to be loyal. I think that' s interesting. But on
the other hand, when you buy those books, you know if they bring
me happiness already far away. But that, too, I have to recognize
anxiety. Yeah cool as a kind of when you go home with the books
in the bag, just bought to a task. Yes, there is a
task, and we already have many tasks in the world. Then do another
task, for example, of poetry that are read in another way, that
you don' t have to read them from the first, the last page,
that I couldn' t open them anywhere, they give me a little
more peace of mind because there is no such obligation. If there are two,
yes, there are two ways. There, well, I' m
impressed with the books you haven' t read, that you know there'
s a fair one, a person, but a life that got into a
game, that is, every book. One knows that it is a tremendous
effort and that it is the same effort to make a bad book as a
good one. For example, it requires the same dedication, the same discipline,
the same is to give everything to make a bad book and a good
one and have them piled up. You feel like I' m failing that
person who put his life behind the books. There is much effort and in
all books, even in the worst, there is something respectable, accurate,
also accurate. I don' t like this kind of idealization of books,
which confuses life with reading as if I summarized absolutely everything and how reading will
suffice in life. I don' t think if, as if Mom were
the main thing and as if she played reading when they told people, you
have to read, because this will make it better. Person there begins to
fail chauinism, not exact showinism. This week I' m talking to my
brother and I talked a lot here and he told me he had a friend
and he said that man is crazy about books. He' s reading five
or six books a week. No, and I said that idea of a
bora book. I' ve never liked it. I don' t think
it' s overwhelming. I think he blames people. Five six books a
week. That I said why I don' t want to talk to that
hand. I wasn' t gonna tell her a little bit more about Netflix
or Twitter. Do not recommend anything you can see. Yeah, you start
out like you' re against that thing in life, do something useful,
watch TV and go eat something else. Yes, that chawinism of books and
that Leeres does it to a better one and that the one who does not
read is below, sounds even discriminatory. Sometimes I don' t have one.
I have it, too, and we may have it for now that
we' re talking about books. When I got on a plane, I
always look good at the survey, who' s there, how many readers
there are here and I see few people reading and I open my book.
I concentrate an hour and a half. It' s a good place to
read airplanes today and it doesn' t feel a bit superior. But if
it has to be like this, doesn' t it have to be?
It' s a bit like people who are religious, and there are some
who bother others with that and there are others who don' t. I
like people who are religious and do not impose it on anyone or go around
evangelizing, but live it as inside and assume it. And there are readers
who are like this, very good readers who take out their readings in ways
that are not ostentatious neither yes nor do they impose themselves. It is a
way of being a quiet reader and useful for everyone. There' s a
question I' m asking myself these days that I didn' t ask myself
before, and well, what do we read for? I would like Ricardo
to explore an answer, but with a particular optics that we have on the
night table. Those chevers, what books are there, what are we reading
them for, what are we looking for? Yeah, what' s that
got, what' s on the night table, because I' ve been
thinking about what I got there and I know it' s a long tower.
So am I and the foundation of the tower is the biography of famous
Openhaime, which is huge and which I read from a few and which I
keep ringing from the film and you are reading it orderly. Or I'
m not looking for parts. I haven' t been so judicious. I
read a lot of biographies. That' s what I like to read the
most, especially about artists. I prefer to read about painters, musicians,
filmmakers, writers. I like that a lot. I thought I liked it
because biographies prove that it is possible to live in general. Yes, yes,
they endure the roads, that there are setbacks and people overcome them and
there are high and low, Well, some things that sound like girlfriends,
but that from one' s perspective sometimes, because it doesn' t look
so clear that where life goes is interesting recarto so that you' ve been
above all a fictional life fritter. Totally, but you like to read biographies.
It does relieve me. I' m relieved to see eight see that
contraction. It does relieve me. Novels make me more anxious than biographies and
make me connect with work rather than life. I have on my night table
a big novel that I wanted to read almost as obligations imposed on you.
He' s back here. It is a novel by a great Polish writer
named Olga tor Kartzuk. So, if you play Zuck there' s like
a s and a zeta. There' s a Nobel Prize in Literature.
They are called Jacob' s books on the arrival in a supposed messiah in
Poland, eighteenth century, that interesting moment of humanity, where it was coming.
The illustration was implanted in the world. But there is still another medieval
world, full of a kind of animism. We could put it that way
about beliefs that had nothing to do with science, that was gaining space and
it' s interesting. But the first part of the book, which is
many pages, is a marriage. We get a lot of people and write
every float, every dress, every kai button and at some point I thought
good for what I' m reading all this. Yeah, which one'
s interesting. It' s interesting, but I wouldn' t miss the
truth. It would be my catch at some point I saw myself doing a
task. Yes, and that' s very interesting, because one pushes one
to think about the essence of literary genres, that is, one does have
to be very tuned to a novel. It seems to me yes, this
is a very long novel, plus a thousand pages about a moment, in
space and in time, and I started learning a lot of things not from
what these Jewish communities were in central Europe in a thousand seven hundred and fifty
- fifty and learning more and more. I even got on the Internet,
I saw the story of that false Jewish messianism back then. But at some
point I started thinking good like it' s already, but I haven'
t decided if I' m going to abandon her. One is that it
does seem to me that each is clearer that novels are documentaries of a world.
It is a comprehensive document of a world. There are short novels that
have other goals, which are more stories. Let' s say and this
is a documentary. This is a documentary. I' m fascinated by that,
but I don' t get involved if that world of entry doesn'
t catch my eye. Yes, that is, the gentle gift, the
novel, this famous Russian Chollo Hof, which is what happens around the Don
River. Everything interests me and fascinated me and I read it the world of
the Caramazov brothers. Well, it' s a document about that moment and
how that society works. But of course, it has a hundred pages about
star et I don' t know which one. I mean, one has
to be very tuned, very interested in that world, in the world of
a novel. To continue is complex I think there is one of these lectures
by Blaymir Nabokoks or everything stoy about Ana Caranina. At some point he says
look this was the carriages. Draw each little part what a carriage is like
inside. If you want to learn exhaustively, and that' s the part
of the world, of course, it' s a reverse at some point,
I' m good, and if I want to know so much about
carriages, that' s what can happen. On the other side, I
have on the night table a book of poems by that melancholy poet, Ray
Bradbury, the writer he made. But deep down he is a melancholy poet
and he opens on any page, and that excites me more that way as
the poetry sings a certain vision of the world and I find myself on the
side of the exhaustive description of that world. On the other hand, a
poem that says because no one had told me about the advantages of crying in
the shower, not wonder, who it was. I' m excited,
though. No and then there, in that contrast I see a certain superiority
of poetry. Ricardo, I' ve always seen that poetry is your thing.
It is true that the verses give with a precise verse. That'
s a form of glory. That is an incredible thing when someone manages to
articulate in a verse, be it the Lionor Rigby of the Beatles, in
which there are verses of songs that one says they gave with the key,
with the nail of the world, with the key of human experience, exact
with the key of mystery. Father Mackenzie of Lionor Rigby is sewing some stockings
and one says this is the world. This lord is only in half light,
he is making the stockings that image, that absolute for what I read
in the background, looking for these epiphanies, of these findings that are typical
of literary language and poetry. Perhaps it is a much more effective shortcut to
finding that total, this work that I admire from novelists as artisans, yes,
who work many months, many years in that documentary. Yeah, totally,
but it' s good to have that dive in that world. I
recently arrived at an apartment building to make a visit and found a comfortable image
and was the doorman of the building reading a big novel yes, Gorda Gorta,
and I saw it opened the door quickly because it was hooked on the
novel. It was obvious. I said good. No yes, what a
man is not here, because he doesn' t have to be here,
he' s in another world. That note is actually immersed in the documentary
and I would think it is the essence of that. Yeah, that.
This was clear because to narrate, which means to drag, is to keep
a person in another world for a long time, is to stop him from
life, to force him to reject the stimuli of the world that, moreover,
we are today overstimulated. And it is his grace at this time that
someone spends eight hundred pages slowing down his liberating life, is very liberated,
an act of resistance. But of course, the novelist does not, although
he gives with findings and with shortcuts and converts and sentences in the middle of
the description of the carriage, if he is in another task, which is
basically the task that people do not abandon. That' s what the book
comes down to, hooking it up there, how to hook it up?
The story, the plot, traps, characters, humor, all resources.
I tend to be a little impatient and distracted. That' s why.
To that is difficult and that is why my self imposes this task that is
not finished to pass you that has been exciting of this great novel, but
I am attracted to the poetry that is there. And I also have another
interesting little book that sometimes I like that it' s not biographies, but
interviews and conversations with writers. This is rich. He may like to learn
the trade how they write. I think it' s interesting. I like
it when they reflect on what has been left in a dedicated life of letters
and writing. I like certain phrases. I like to read when writers reflect
on their craft. That' s right, that' s also given with
some very good investigations of his temperament. There was a time when Roberto Rubiano,
the Colombian writer, made an anthology of those phrases. I just deleted
the title, but it was very popular among writers in the nineties. A
book of quotations from writers, talking about different topics, the relationship of writers
with cinema, their daily work, their relationship with politics, different themes of
writers, and he gathered their testimonies and there is much there that is valuable.
It is a very concrete form of self- help. I also have
in the month a little book that I review a lot. This fictional book
by Jorge Luis Borges published back in the 1940s. He was forty- three
forty- four years old and has on an initial note. That fiction book
is the collection of two books. One is the garden of paths that Fork
was seen is a collection of tales. He says there' s one interesting
thing. He says a 500- page novel. Like he says he wouldn
' t be able to write the series. Too laborious for me, for
readers. I' d rather write a foreword of a few pages from that
so- called 500- page novel that doesn' t exist. So Borge
made those shortcuts. He didn' t write the five- hundred- page
novels because he saw a review of that non- existent novel. Of course
it' s interesting, yes, and that mentality and it' s very
enviable. I' ve dedicated myself to making novels really from all genres.
I have rehearsed them several, but I have dedicated myself to novels and it
gives me fascination when a poem has inside a novel or when a Borges story
has inside everything an encyclopedia in the background. There and that effectiveness in the
background is interesting, It is very interesting the or the tale of bor It
is the alef that goes there and that ends with that vision of the lef
of the point where all the points of the world are, because it is
a little that. That' s what a novel aspires to make a point
of everything. But this gentleman manages to insinuate it there and is therefore enviable
for the task of someone who is dedicated to making novels. And those Borks
tales have always seemed to me to be very interesting, because you don'
t get it in a first reading, understand everything, then they relent.
It seems to me, yes, they endure very well and there are many
more readings and they are very precise. Yes, and always admired. I
' ve never seen it or that precision. I was thinking about Bradbury,
at the night table, and maybe the one who best caught the chauvinism of
books and the passion for books that already starts to be annoying, like when
there' s a Pink Floyd fan who dries it today for God that exist
and shows him the collection, they show him the data that the only good
thing that' s ever happened in life is that good. Start one already
despairing with those chicks and I think it was Bradbury, with Firenheit four or
five. One completely is that the readers in that book are the chosen ones.
They are the people who will save us in the twenty- second century.
I do not know what it is, but it created a sect of
people who learn the books by memory, because, as they are all burning
them, there is one, so there is one person who is in charge
of mambo varies. I think it' s the quijote. And he'
s one, because he has love for those characters. One like when one
enters the plane and likes the one reading for these Bradbury characters who are saving
books and reading. You say they' re fantastic. But there is also
chawinism. There is chauvinism, but it describes a kind of anti- intellectual
cultural environment. Art also captures some of what is happening now and that reader,
like Heredoe, also seems attractive to me in another if not. I
like this time that I lack specialized publications, that is, after a time
we say important for journals about books, for example, it seems to me
that nowadays reading, promoting reading, reviewing what is read is in the hands
of readers. For the love of reading. So we don' t have,
because great literary critics, or not at least in commercial publications, but
we do have a lot of readers who have put instagram accounts, on Twitter
and do so with so much love. Yeah, there' s a lot
of love that you get a lot of times from reading what they' re
promoting. I had a rich conversation a few months ago with writer Carolina Sannin
last year, and since then I' ve been digging about what she told
me. She said I don' t write prose again when I have to
make a comment and I do it rather the spoken language And if I'
m going to write, I' m going to write what really needs the
attention of writing, which is poetry, that is, the already decanted language
brought to that essence. If I am going to write about some comment,
some element of our political reality, we might say I am not going to
dedicate it. What the written language requires, that cho, is attention to
the phrase, to every point, to every objective, put because perhaps it
will be too ephemeral that comment and there will be a contradiction between substance and
form, because it is very interesting. I find it interesting that I think
he' s right at heart and we' re doing this podcast yes,
because we' re seeing that there are certain things that better talk about them,
not write them down. Yeah, that' s right. I don
' t know what happened to me, but I started writing poems. It
really seemed very clear to me that and I still think that the most literary
thing in literature, if you can say something like that, is poetry.
It is what is truly literary, It is what contains literary language, in
the sense that literary language is a variation from everyday language to findings, from
proseic to findings. The poem manages, with the words of every day,
to bring to one something that I had not considered or articulate to one a
suspicion of life as why they did not teach me to cry in the shower.
It was so good, not memories, but that' s a fantastic
idea. You understand a lot of things and an emotion, an emotion,
but you look in the shower is everyday. But the combination of those words
explains one' s world at a stroke and then it would be wise to
devote oneself to poetry. But I don' t know if life or the
accumulation of years. That' s what the theory says, one even pushes
one into the story, to review, to document, to put on record.
I believe that we all have a story to tell that of our own
life and we do not want to reduce it a single sentence. Then I
think I do, I' m back. I also like to tell anecdotes.
We still use it, as it is useful. I' m going
back to the first statistic. Ricardo de Cha is five, four, six,
nine, five, four or six and I' m going to be
frank, it doesn' t necessarily seem like good news to me, because
I have had this conviction that, deep down, almost all of the rewrite
writing yes, this Borgian idea, that a single book almost contains them all
and that if one reads one or two well- read books, that'
s enough. Yes, I mean, it' s not necessarily good to
read more. Yes and what one would say in Humero, in Cervantes,
in check- ups is the whole human experience. If I agree and if
I do not necessarily read more, it will not deepen that wonderful reading experience.
So what I' m saying is maybe it' s a common place,
you don' t have to read any more, but I think it
' s liberating too and it' s that in a well- read book
it exempts us from reading other books. Perhaps it is liberating and I think
it has more to do with what literary lie, that thought, than the
thought of accumulation and of competing with and winning over other readers. I,
when I read the Count of Montecristo, felt that it was enough and left
over yes, that was there. It was absolutely all behaviors and even a
brilliant plot, better impossible. I think García Márquez said that it was the
perfect novel and the perfect plot all of a sudden to read it again and
rediscover his prsen chacuer almost enough, we almost said, but it is true
that one, because it is changing from readings as for the illusion that or
we also inhabit the precedent. We want to read about this world. That
' s where I like non- fiction, too. I like to learn
different things. Yeah, so I want to learn about genetics. That'
s what I like to get into a book, read it, illusoryly believe
that he learns something, because the Jaymeses have already forgotten everything. I liked
to read Oliver Sacs at one point. It' s a delight. They
' re all well written. Interesting. I learned a lot of things that
later forgot, but it' s a fascination and I was remembering that thirty
years ago it was a common place and it was very popular, the book
by Daniel Penach, which is called a very good novel. I gave it
to myself It was a great thing to be released, because it was exactly
the most popular thing. I think it' s no longer a common place,
because it' s been thirty years and I remember that you have those
ten rights of the reader that I found here that between that they are the
first, the right not to read, the second, the right to skip
pages. The third the right not to finish a book, the fourth the
right to reread, which is what we are talking about. The fifth is
the right to read anything, which is our defense of self- help,
for example. The sixth the right to read what I like. The seventh
the right to read anywhere, the eighth the right to peck, which we
have also said, read a few pages, the ninth the right to read
aloud and the tenth the right to remain silent which is the wise reader.
The wise reader who accumulates wisdom for himself and realizes that perhaps telling the read
to the world is not worth it. No, the penalty is for him
is his religiosity. Sometimes in this kind of literary magic that invites us so
much to enrich the excerpts of the book and others ask us things. I
like to say that I have a question, something that is tormenting me and
I catch a book in library art and it accomplishes on any page. But
it' s an answer Sometimes I find the answer. Yeah, not that
it' s in the book. It' s just good for you,
yes, but it' s good for you. And that power of books,
that chido magic believing in it. I also believe that this is the
power of fiction and I believe that it is what connects, for example,
that they give one to the tarot with reading the Count of Monte Cristo,
which is that there one will understand things and will accommodate them and articulate them.
And it' s a very useful crutch and in any case, it
' s people, human beings who have thought and put it there, who
have made an effort to write this thing that we don' t understand yet.
No, yes, it' s very wonderful, mysterious, which is
human life. I like a phrase from this unborscaed poet Whis Lowa, the
Polish. Yes or that says human life on the third planet of the Sun.
Yeah, we' ll keep reading, we' ll continue what else
we can do now. That Ricardo of five four is going to be Manuel.
Always pick a good time. Always choose a good conversation. Third round
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