Sebald extract

If he nevertheless persevered with writing, then only, as Jean Starobinski notes, in order to hasten the moment when the pen would fall from his hand and the essential things would be said in the silent embrace of reconciliation and return. Less heroically, but certainly no less correctly, one could also see writing as a continually self-perpetuating compulsive act, evidence that, of all individuals afflicted by the disease of thought, the writer is perhaps the most incurable.

- Max Sebald on Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Before, Bolaño, and after

BEFORE

AFTER

César Aira's forward march

"I don't read very much contemporary literature. There is so much to read. In the past, I remember that one lady told Borges that she read him, that she admired him so, and Borges asked her: But how come? Are you already done with all the good writers? (laughs) I march to that drum."

—César Aira: My ideal is the fairy tale

The librarian's last interview

Related:

The Paris Review interview
Three conversations: "I remember what I've read better than what has happened to me. Clearly one of the most important things that can happen to a man is to read one or another page that moves him. It's a very intense experience, no less intense than others."
Profile of a Writer: Borges (1983): 80 mins. "The film consists of interviews in English with Borges, as well as short dramatizations in Spanish of several of his stories."
etc.

La villa