Clarissa's Blog

This whole discussion about the reading culture reminds me of a funny story from Rafael Chirbes’s diaries.

Chirbes was a Marxist and a Maoist. He went on and on about how he always felt like one of the working classes and despised fancy people and the bourgeoisie. Right after saying something like that, he would explain how he had avoided reading Faulkner because he always considered him to be at the level of literature for common people. And of course Chirbes would never lower himself to reading something like that.

I respect Chirbes for confessing this snobby mistake a lot more than I respect college professors who think it’s cute to pretend that they can’t read. And it most certainly was a mistake. Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He is the founding father of the entire contemporary Latin American literature.