Connie on Nostr: Good morning 🌻💜🫂 Happy Sunday for everyone! From one of my favourite ...
Good morning 🌻💜🫂
Happy Sunday for everyone!
From one of my favourite non-fiction writers in Spanish:
“During a book signing I did at a bookstore in Buenos Aires, a tall, well-built man in his early twenties approached me. His physical strength contrasted with his nervous and shy attitude. He put his hands to his face and said: "I can't believe it, I can't believe it." He had brought several copies.
He assured me that one of those books had led him back to reading, an activity he had abandoned, and asked if asking me to sign so many for him wasn't an abuse. I told him no, that I would gladly do it. I asked him what he did for a living. I answered.
He assured me that he had escaped work to be there.
When I was signing the first book, he said: "Can I ask you something?" Then he asked the question. People usually ask "Why do you write?" and "When did you start writing?" or
"What is your working method?" But this young, shy man, with his face lit up by the most innocent curiosity, asked: "What is writing like?" Stunned, I asked:
"How?" "Yes, what is writing , what is writing like?" I was amazed. He was wondering what it feels like to write, as one would ask an astronaut who has just returned to Earth what outer space is like, as one would ask someone who managed to descend into the Mariana Trench what the creatures that inhabit that abyss are like, as one would ask someone who has returned from the dead what death is like. Not with the ambition of replicating that experience, but with the intention of living it through someone else's experience. He was asking me the perfect question of a perfect reader: what is it like to do what you do and what I read. With a careless generosity he revealed to me, perhaps, the first motor that moves us to write: first one is a reader, a discreet spy, and one day one decides to go to the other side, to become the spied upon. I answered him, I spoke to him a lot. To this day, many months later, I continue to speak secretly to this perfect stranger.”
Leila Guerriero
Happy Sunday for everyone!
From one of my favourite non-fiction writers in Spanish:
“During a book signing I did at a bookstore in Buenos Aires, a tall, well-built man in his early twenties approached me. His physical strength contrasted with his nervous and shy attitude. He put his hands to his face and said: "I can't believe it, I can't believe it." He had brought several copies.
He assured me that one of those books had led him back to reading, an activity he had abandoned, and asked if asking me to sign so many for him wasn't an abuse. I told him no, that I would gladly do it. I asked him what he did for a living. I answered.
He assured me that he had escaped work to be there.
When I was signing the first book, he said: "Can I ask you something?" Then he asked the question. People usually ask "Why do you write?" and "When did you start writing?" or
"What is your working method?" But this young, shy man, with his face lit up by the most innocent curiosity, asked: "What is writing like?" Stunned, I asked:
"How?" "Yes, what is writing , what is writing like?" I was amazed. He was wondering what it feels like to write, as one would ask an astronaut who has just returned to Earth what outer space is like, as one would ask someone who managed to descend into the Mariana Trench what the creatures that inhabit that abyss are like, as one would ask someone who has returned from the dead what death is like. Not with the ambition of replicating that experience, but with the intention of living it through someone else's experience. He was asking me the perfect question of a perfect reader: what is it like to do what you do and what I read. With a careless generosity he revealed to me, perhaps, the first motor that moves us to write: first one is a reader, a discreet spy, and one day one decides to go to the other side, to become the spied upon. I answered him, I spoke to him a lot. To this day, many months later, I continue to speak secretly to this perfect stranger.”
Leila Guerriero