“There's a boundary line: on one side are those who make books, on the other are those who read them, so I take care always to remain on my side of the line. Otherwise, the unsullied pleasure of reading ends, or at least is transformed into something else, which is not what I want. This boundary line is tentative, it tends to get erased: the world of those who deal with books professionally is more and more crowded and tends to become one with the world of readers. Of course, readers are also growing more numerous, but it would seem that those who use books to produce other books are increasing more than those who just like to read books and nothing else.”
Not gonna lie, sometimes my mind drifts off to a world where overnight I obliterate all trace of my online presence and pick up and move someplace I can slip into anonymity. Mexico perhaps, someplace I know no one and no one knows me, and where I don't even know the language. Set aside any semblance of professional pursuit from my creative endeavors and instead get a job waiting tables or tending to a bar or working at a bookshop, a day-to-day affair that requires no longview, all while speed-learning Spanish and spending my free time doing nothing but reading and sketching till the end of my days.
The excerpt at the very top is from Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELLER, which may just be the most post-modern book I've ever laid hands on. It's about an apparently misprinted book, whereby every other chapter seems to belong to a completely different book. In that regard, it can be quite challenging to get into, but in so doing it held up a mirror to me and reminded me of a thing I did in THE SOLAR GRID, in which I relegated the half of each chapter to what may seem like a completely new story, until much later you discover that it is all in fact one story. Which made me realize how challenging I must've made it for readers too.
Sticking with Calvino pays off though, because by around the 75-page mark, you're hooked, and the brilliance of Calvino's ploy begins to dawn on you like eureka.