Litnet (thank you, Marissa, for pointing me in this website's direction) has published an amazing interview with Latin American writer Carlos Fuentes.
Two things stand out for me in this interview:
1) He highlights the idea that the west owes Islam a great deal ie medicine, alphabet, language sources. This struck me because of the totally bizarre conversation I had with my tv repairman the other day in which we compared Christianity and Islam.
2) That the true writer has to be on the outside, always watching, always observing but always alienated. A weird kind of objectivity that allows imagination to mix with reality and create something new.
I love Latin American writing (particularly Isabel Allende - Zorro here I come) because of the magical realism that permeates even the shortest of short stories. It is inextricable, the product of a society that still lives so close to its roots in myth, superstition and legend, and remembers its place as descended from the oldest civilisations in the world, even as they get torn apart by bloody coups.
PATTOTE - Better living through admiration of the greats.
No comments:
Post a Comment