At one of the tables at the recently held book fair in Guayaquil, which it must be said is the most solid in the country and one of the best organized, there was talk about a book about books. Always curious to encourage reading, Cecilia Ansaldo, in addition to the director of the Fair, was encouraged to raise topics and discuss at a table attended by the Argentinian writer Claudia Piñeiro, the Ecuadorian novelist Adolfo Macías and the author of this text. Many thoughts have come to light about the way novels can dialogue with other books, from the recurring idea of ​​influence to dialogue or crossover characters traveling from one book to another, and even the importance of reading for the protagonists. from the novel. If he Quixote It is driven by a reading obsession that wants to imitate the knight errant, since then the allusions between books, stories and characters have not stopped. Even the movies abound with winks and references. Claudio Magris, a great Italian writer, an excellent connoisseur of Germanic and Central European literature, recalled this in the film NightAntonioni, one of the characters had a novel in his hands Sleepwalkers Hermann Broch. Magris doesn’t give a reference, but he refers to the character of Valentina Gherardini, played by Mónica Vitti. It is not just any novel, but one of the most relevant from the beginning of the 20th century, and for Magris it was a sign of the scope of the work of the Viennese writer who suffered his own special night: the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Don’t you have a little book?

Doors of dialogue, warnings for sailors, beacons of light amidst the tumult of a never-ending world, books are that indispensable pause not only to find out what is happening elsewhere but also what is happening through us. The act of reading is not just a neutral reception of a story: it is a long-term active work in which what is read undergoes a transformation. Once the plot is read, these signs and warnings about other books in turn open new doors for exploration. The silent alarm, the look, these nods to other books within the book are an invitation to secrecy. Worried about the spread of reading, perhaps pressured by the inundation of audiovisual media, as if it were a pre-ordained race in which books will seemingly lose, we forget that mass reading is not necessarily the best and that some reading is not available. . A big book, a great read, like that deserted beach we discovered a little bit away from the big tourist centers. There are always readers who, faced with seasonal hits, faced with the thunderous releases of new novels, choose the path of secrecy, those books that seemingly no one reads – classics, for example – or that no one is interested in because they are a challenge. .., they are demanding, they do not want to indulge in trite and trite themes and languages, they are reserves of creativity, research, with an unexpected reference to our time, they even encompass a much broader idea of ​​time compared to the immediate.

Balance sheet of FIlgye 2023

I said that there are books that are not accessible to everyone. It is obvious that one of the rights of readers is to have books at hand. However, I think nuances are necessary. In this regard, what caught my attention was what Claudia Piñeiro observed, which really sheds a tangential light on what can easily be forgotten: to realize this right of the reader, we must defend the education of the reader. That is, to prepare the reader in the best way so that he can appreciate the best reading, the meanings that each book offers and even more complex meanings that make great books available and which, although it sounds paradoxical, are available. They rest in our libraries, but no one asks because they have not received the training they can have for that reading and its understanding. This is where the simple and easy policy of mass gifting of books is diluted, as if gifting a paper item solved the entire process of education and encouraging reading, when in fact it is the pinnacle of something that should have been accomplished. If the desire for certain books and reading is nurtured, if mastery of certain forms of writing is built in the imagination of the potential reader, it is almost certain that this reader will do everything to reach those books that arouse his curiosity. , Even if they seemed unattainable, even if they were expensive, even if they were cheap, but they went out of print and were not republished, and you have to wait for them for years to be counted on, that reader who received the invitation to the secret will not give up easily. Because the interesting thing about that call is the expectation created, the ability that other readers, friends, teachers, or even writers alluding to other books had, the ability, I say, to know how to share that center of working light that we have. and that we do not have the feeling that we have found the truth, but the path of understanding, the direction to follow, because if the book intends for the reading to stop there as at the end of the journey, we find ourselves in a trap, with a mirage, because that is exactly what wisdom reveals and the mastery of great works is the bridge role they have, whether to bring us back to ourselves for an accurate examination of our experience or to lead us down other paths and continue exploring. Even when the book denies the other books, when Don Quixote’s priest and barber censors and throws out the window the books that have corrupted the mind of Alonso Quijano, we learn what those books are, and then comes the call to secrecy. (OR)