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The Uses of Reading
"Why should we have libraries filled with books?" asked a smiling young futurologist at a recent library convention... |
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Working on A Return
Some time in the spring of 2009 (stupidly, I didn't mark the exact date in my journal), Oscar Strasnoy called me and asked if I'd like to work with him on an opera, commissioned by the Festival of Aix-en-Provence for the summer of 2010. I had worked with Oscar once before, five years earlier... |
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The Perserverance of Truth
A little over twenty-four centuries ago, in the year 399 BC, three Athenian citizens brought a public action against the philosopher Socrates for being a menace to society... |
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How Pinocchio Learned to Read
I read Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio for the first time many years ago, in Buenos Aires, when I was eight or nine, in a vague Spanish translation with Mazzanti’s original black and white drawings... |
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Publishing Today
Sometime in the Age of Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney, English-
speaking readers became ignorant. First, translation into English was
practically stopped: today, less than 0.1% of everything published in
English is a translation, and that includes Japanese computer manuals... |
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Art and Blasphemy
Two years ago, the publication of several caricatures of Mohammed in various periodicals around the world ignited the furious protest of various Islamist groups... |
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Final Answers
On April 19 1616, the day after having been given the extreme unction, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra penned a dedication of his last book, The Labours of Persiles and Segismunda, to Don Pedro Fernández de Castro... |
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In Defense of Metaphor
A few years ago, the papers announced that the government of South Africa was going to set up a programme to import and produce low-cost drugs to treat patients with AIDS... |
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Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader
The ideal reader is the writer just before the words come together
on the page.
The ideal reader exists in the moment that precedes the moment of
creation.
The ideal reader does not reconstruct a story: he recreates it. ... |
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Room for the Shadow
I wasn’t going to write. For years the temptation kept itself at bay,
invisible. Books had the solid presence of the real world and filled my
every possible need, whether read out loud to me at first, or later read silently on my own... |
