The following is an imperfect translation of a commentary by Luis Othoniel Rosa, writer, poet, anarchist and scholar who, among other things, teaches Latin American literary studies at the University of Nebraska. Luis’s original text in Spanish follows my translation.

What Does It Mean Today to Be Disruptive in Literature?

It means to affirm and to stop making ourselves of interest. Being disruptive in literature today would be to put an end to the era of questions and paradoxes, of undecipherable allegories and of the “writing of the self,” where the children of the white middle class write novels and poems about the silly traumas of their insipid lives. Being disruptive would be imagining possible worlds and manufacturing bold, new mythologies without fear of getting it wrong because it is no longer the writing self that matters, but the collective mind that thinks by means of our writing.

Recently I’ve been following a YouTube channel called Weltgeist, which deals (exclusively, I believe) with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and to a lesser extent, Nietzsche. This has prompted me to re-read The World as Will and Representation, the great pessimist’s magnum opus. But Schopenhauer had opinions on nearly everything, as his entertaining (and occasionally outrageous) essays show, including reading and writing. And since he was one of the few philosophers who had a clear and elegant prose style himself, and since he was clearly one of the greatest intellects of recorded history, it may be worth considering what he had to say on the subjects.

First of all, he cautions us not to read much. This is pertinent, when so many people aim to read a book a week, or more – one of my friends felt guilty if he could not manage to read two or three books in a week.

My last post dealt with weirdness in fiction. This post is an extension of that topic, related to two works I’ve read recently. The first of these is Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch, which I’ve only just gotten around to reading. (It’s nearly 800 pages long–that’s my excuse.) The second is a nonfiction memoir, Not the Kennedys, by a very talented newcomer, John O’Hern, who happens to be my cousin by marriage. These two books have absolutely nothing in common except that I happened to read them in the same month, and that both triggered more thoughts about how we humans confront an incomprehensible and incoherent world by writing about it.

The Goldfinch is, in my unhelpful opinion, less original and less spectacular than critics have made it out to be (maybe my next post will be about the weirdness of literary prizes).

Leo Tolstoy – the greatest novelist of all – and yet lots of readers, even serious ones, have never read him. Why? Partly it’s because his two most famous works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are on the long side. That’s true, but even so, if you read just an hour a day, and typically read a short novel in a week, it might take a month to read Anna Karenina, and six weeks or two months to read War and Peace. Not that long. And you’ll probably read them faster, because they’re so good you’ll find yourself reading more at weekends and on evenings when you have time. But let’s say you’re really busy, and intimidated by these monuments of Russian literature.

I recall years ago reading about the success formula for television sitcoms: the plots can, and often should, be completely implausible, but they must be probable. In other words, the situation and actions can be as weird as you like—the weirder, the funnier—but the sequence of events has to make sense within that weird context. Lucy wandering lost in the New York City subway with her head stuck in a mammoth loving cup was perfectly acceptable, and hilarious, so long as Ricky didn’t suddenly materialize inexplicably out of nowhere to rescue her.

This formula makes me think of my favorite movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. To me, it represents the culmination of Hitchcock’s genius: a realism so rarified that it presents completely unbelievable situations in ways that make them seem perfectly natural.

For months, I’ve been contemplating giving up—not just this column, but writing. Altogether. I hope this won’t sound like a long whine, whinge, or worse—the dreaded ‘mansplaining.’ But for a long time, there has been no interest in my work from the industry, even though I’m fairly sure I write better than I did fifteen years ago, when there was a lot of interest. Some of that, I suspect, is because of the current ‘woke’ moment—what a ‘vile phrase’ that is, to quote the Bard. But I’ve moaned about that before so I won’t now.

            It could also be because my writing simply isn’t engaging a new, different audience: one that is not only ‘woker’ (presumably, if we can trust the media), but one is that is doubtless younger, and suffers from a shorter attention span.

Daniel Silva, The Order (2020)

If there were an award for the best opening chapter of a fiction, including characterization, dialogue, plot and theme, the first chapter of The Order would be in the running. Daniel Silva, after all, is no amateur in beginning a novel that feels that it has been recorded by cameras, microphones and probes into each characters mind. The initial scene in The Order suggests something tragic has happened at the Vatican. The chapter’s main character, Archbishop Luigi Donati, fears the worst. It turns out his mentor, Pope Paul VII, is dead and the circumstances are suspicious.

Thus begins a narrative featuring the Church of Rome and the Church’s most trusted Jew––Gabriel Allon. The complexity, including a fictional account of the origins of the Church, is portrayed realistically, with verve and in a tasteful manner, considering Allon’s role, must represent a heresy to millions.

Recently I attended a lecture about Irish “occasional poetry.” This doesn’t mean poetry written now and again; it means poetry written and performed for special occasions: holidays, commemorations, funerals and the like. The most obvious of these that comes to mind is “The Hill We Climb,” the poem commissioned for, written and performed by Amanda Gorman at President Biden’s inauguration.

I won’t get into a critique of the poem, except to say that I liked it on the whole, and that, like most people, I admire Ms. Gorman’s talents. Nor will I comment much on an infamous precursor, “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander, performed at President Obama’s first inaugural in 2009. (Suffice to say that at the time I had a good rant about it with my favorite poet, Alexandra Burack, who also happens to be my cousin.)