Carlos Fuentes

larry over at the OF Blog has written a lovely post on fuentes. the passage he translated: gorgeous, profound.  will be thinking about it all day now.

ofblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/quote-from-carlos-fuentes-in-memory-of.html

i have not read fuentes since my first year of college. i am overdue to revisit him (where the eff is my terra nostra?).  as i am overdue to (re)visit so much in literature.

(thinking about fuentes is making me think about my reading in general: how there are never enough hours for it all, how weblike reading is: any one book brings five more into view.)

(i do not think anyone can read too much or too broadly.  everything stretches you, even the dreck.  it is like viewing facets of the world, reflected back at you; it is like a conversation; it is the only art form that consistently changes how i think.)

(i do not think you can be a writer, and read only one genre, one style, one type of writing.  or one country’s literature, while we’re on the subject.)

(it eases the blow to see that fuentes was looking his same dapper, foxy self right up to the end.  please, please, let me hit 83 and look that good.)