Rafael Chirbes, reading and writing in his small, messy house in Beniarbeig. Me, reading and writing about Chirbes in a college town in Southern Illinois. You, wherever you are, reading and thinking about what I write about Chirbes. All of us together, we are sustaining and preserving the edifice of culture.
All of us are putting a little sliver of our effort and time into making culture possible. When we read authors like Cervantes, Balzac or Anthony Trollope and create a window of possibility that our children will also read and love them, this is how we make culture. It is one of the most important things we can do, yet somehow it seems strangely self-indulgent.
If you start feeling guilty about spending too much time reading and thinking, tell yourself that you are doing one of the most important things a human being can do. You’re creating culture.
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