The courage to see

Paris Review is a great magazine, which I like most for its fabulous interviews with famous writers in its The Art of Fiction section. I picked up the Winter 2006 issue at the public library couple days back and thoroughly enjoyed reading the interview with the Spanish author, Javier Marias.

First up...the priceless line from the interview, which I borrowed for the title of this post, and which would make a great title for a poem or short story or a book even! To me, it defines what writing should be about and what in fact life should be all about.

One must have courage to see what one does see and not to deny it for convenience.

Here is an extended excerpt that I loved (all emphasis mine):

Q: Does a reader need to read all of your books to fully understand your work?
A: ...... I don't understand what is meant by being "fully understood." You don't write books to be understood, do you? That is not the reason for doing it.

Q: What is the reason for doing it?
A: ....... Maybe I write because it is a way of thinking that has no possible match. It is a very active way of thinking. You think more clearly when you have to put something down in words........ Some have said that writing is a unique way of knowing, but it is a unique way of recognizing. This happens very often in Proust in particular. You read something and you say, Yes, this is true, this is something I have experienced, this is something I have seen, I have felt this, but I wouldn't have been able to express it the way he has. Now I really know it. That is what the novel does better than any other genre or any other art, in my opinion. I wouldn't say that I think best when I am writing. But I think differently. 

Q: Is that what you mean when you've written of pensamiento literario - literary thinking?
A: The term is not new, of course. As a reader - and I am more of a reader than a writer, we all see, I suppose -- I can enjoy a good story, but in a novel, which takes time to read, a good story is not enough for me. If I close a book and there are no echoes, that is very frustrating.* I like books that aren't only witty or ingenious. I prefer something that leaves a resonance, an atmosphere behind. That is what happens to me when I read Shakespeare and Proust. There are certain illuminations or flashes of things that convey a completely different way of thinking. I'm using words that have to do with light because sometimes, as I believe Faulkner said, striking a match in the middle of the night in the middle of a field doesn't permit you to see anything more clearly, but to see more clearly the darkness that surrounds you. Literature does that more than anything else. It doesn't properly illuminate things, but like the match it lets you see how much darkness there is.

Q: It's interesting that you mention light and darkness because the characters in your novels often entertain powerful illusions, and self-delusions.
A: Illusions are important. What you foresee or what you remember can be as important as what really happens. We usually tend to tell our own story by mentioning only the positive things, but there is also a negative part of your life that forms you: what you didn't do, what you renounced, what you didn't dare to do, what you doubted and discarded, what you dreamt of, what you expected, what you left aside, what you didn't study but thought you would, the job you didn't take, the job they didn't give you even though you wanted it. The things youo're not are a part of you as well. We avoid talking about these things, even to ourselves,a s if they don't count. In my novels, I want them to count.

And here is an except which I completely identified with -- I do not understand music but I love it!

Q: You've written nonfiction books on film and on football - two of your pass-times. What else absorbs you when you are not writing?
A: I listen to music often. I probably consider music the highest art. In a way, I would like to make something like it with words, but that is not possible. The problem with words is that they cannot not have meaning, whereas music is so blessed: it can not have meaning. And yet there are some notes that immediately make you feel melancholic. Why is that? With words, you are telling something awful or sad -- of course, it would make the reader feel that -- but with music it's quite mysterious.

Also, gems that would be priceless for a budding writer:

The older I am, the less I understand the process of writing. I write every page as if it were the only one. It seems very odd and strange to me that something comes out in the end and it's this many pages and I know that I have done it line by line.

and

Q: Is there one quality that a novelist should have?
A: Patience.

Q: In Written Lives, you note that Joseph Conrad's natural state was "disquiet bordering on anxiety." What is your natural state?
A: Indecision -- but that doesn't mean I never decide. It means I take my time.

Aah.. I'm going to use that when I get blamed for being indecisive next time :)
--

* This reminds me of my recent attempt to read Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games. Too long... witty and ingenious...but after a while it got so long and drab that I didn't care any more and after 550+ pages, I gave up!
Note to self: Next interview to read is in the Summer 2007 issue: the iconic 'American Master' Norman Mailer ....on God, fighting, growing old, and the art of fiction.