OTRA DE COSAS BIEN DICHAS

He pasado esta última semana leyendo por encargo The anthologist de Nicholson Baker. Y encantada de ello, por cierto, por motivos que averiguarán en el Qué Leer del, por desgracia, cada vez más próximo mes de octubre. Entretanto, aprovecho para saludarles y dejarles por aquí una sabrosa y abundante ración de cosas bien dichas. Que Vds. las disfruten:

“Poe said that there was a raven tapping at his chamber door. Was there? We don’t care. Why don’t we care? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you today on that important question.”

The anthologist

Nicholson Baker

“At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine per cent of of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published. Think of that. Of course yes Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we’re living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but no recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art.”

(ibidem)

“Dryden is one of those poets who wrote many thousand of lines of poetry and left very little of himself behind. His biographers have a hard time figuring out what he was up to in any given year. He lived through revolution, restoration, plague and fire, and all we have is his published writing and a few letter to go on. But it’s enough.”

(ibidem)

“She [Elizabeth Bishop] wrote May Swenson: ‘I think one of the worst things I know about modern education is this Creative Writing business’.”

(ibidem)

“In fact the letter may be better than any poem she wrote, though she wrote some good ones. But we wouldn’t be interested in reading the letters unless she’d written the poems. So once again, it’s terribly confusing. You need the art in order to love the life.”

(ibidem)