I remember a sunny and cloudy morning. In the same old coffee shop, next to the same old bookstore, in the same old space, with the same coffee worsenothing forever. I know it sounds like a complaint, but it’s not. I recognize her from afar because of the lenses I have seen of her through photographs on socio-digital networks, although in many of them she dispenses with the artifact that makes us less myopic. The nerves that weren’t there appear when they tell me that, in fact, she is Laura Sofia Rivero (Mexico City, 1993). It is likely that, as always, it was a warp greeting to which I did not know how to respond. Nothing serious, I think.
I then think of a quote from herself to alleviate the impression and get back on track. “May the god of stupidity help us, those who need to write to answer questionsthose of us who believe that an incandescent thought can be born in the diligent reading of others.” I repeat it to myself like a prayer.
What about me is not made of language?
It is necessary to start at the beginning, but not so far back. (We must ignore the question of the title because it is preceded by the first edition of the Encyclopedia of everyday artspublished by Ediciones Moledro in 2022. This new edition, enlarged-corrected-and-remastered, is now sponsored by Penguin Random House. A small big difference that will make the young essayist’s daily life reach more corners.) The structure, the forms of the essays, that fragmentary and brief touch.
“I think it has to do with the fact that I am a reader, a very very reader of a tradition of the short essay that interests me a lot. Perhaps it is a tradition of the short essay associated with journalism and the article.. I’m particularly interested in that because I’ve seen that there are many essay books that I consider my favorite books, even.
“I think of Chesterton’s essays, of Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s essay articles, I even think of the short prose of Wislawa Szymborska, of Augusto Monterroso, of Luis Ignacio Helguera, of the English essayists. Like all of these authors are authors who found a place for the short essay in the newspaper article.
“Many of his books are not only compilations of already published texts, but they are seen as a writing project disseminated little by little in magazines, but which is later grouped into a book. Perhaps the difference with these miscellaneous books of essays and any compilation of articles is that a compilation (of articles) perhaps thinks about the book after it has already been published, and I I think that many miscellaneous essay books think about the idea of building a book little by little.So, first there is the idea of the book and then there is the writing.
In that relationship between journalism, short article and essay I found a way to relate to the genre as a reader, which also encouraged me to see what I could do through writing, and I think it is very pertinent to think of brevity as an incentive for the essayistic view because it seems to me that the short essay condenses its nature.
Because? Because in the short essay the value of the humorof the acuityof the witof the concision that seems to me to be in every essay, but perhaps much clearer in short essays,” he says.
short essay
The also author of God has guts. Meditations on our waste (FCE, 2021) considers that this portrait of everyday life can be best observed from a brief perspective, although no other form could be ruled out.
“The essay in general is a form of writing that asks what it means to think, what topics we think about, what issues we think about and what ways we think in writing. All the time we are asking ourselves what it means to think, and because of that first question, let’s say thematic, about what is worthy or what deserves reflection, the literary essay is also interested in touching on topics that one would think (that) are insipid, insignificant, useless.
“And I think maybe trying to capture the strangeness, the surprise, is something that is achieved with greater intensity in a brief way than in a much more exhaustive examination, because I think that, then, perhaps we would already be touching the limits of specialization, of rational-exhaustive writing, and I don’t know how much the estrangement that for me is the center of the short essay would be lost,” he reflects.
Contradictions
Laura Sofía Rivero says that there are many people who read essays as if it were a lapidary opinion. “That is why we quote the flesh and blood authors, and say: Alonso Reyes said that…, Borges said that…but I wonder: which Alfonso Reyes or which Borges?”, he considers.
“We tend to think that it is an opinion already established forever and not a kind of writing from question marks, from questions and from certain very specific moments in which the thought is located.
“So, write from the contradictions in this bookfor me, involved, first of all, putting together 11 years of writing, there are many me here just because of that question of temporal change. There are many things I say that I no longer even think or execute, but I have always been interested in the essay not as the writing of an opinion, but as the attempt to capture the thought in a very specific circumstance. I really like this series Rouen Cathedral by Monet that portrays the same façade – of a medieval cathedral – at different times of the day, and changes depending on the light.
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“I feel that the short essay is somehow trying to capture the lights of thought. I believe that what we think is not the same as what we think, and that, throughout our daily lives, there are moments where a certain situation or issue seems vitally important to us, and sometimes insignificant.
“Here I dedicated myself to tracking down those very important moments where the central thing for me was to ask myself why I hate English classes so much, why I get bored at book presentations, even though that’s not what always happens to me, right? Just try to understand why, why an experience is so intense at a certain moment and what it means.
“I think that the essay is always asking itself that: what does it mean that the things that surround us are big, small, high culture or everyday things. And I think that this interest in capturing thoughts and not capturing opinions is also what gave this desire for plurality and contradiction to this book,” he asserts.
Parenthesis: essay and literature off the page
(It seems to me that, perhaps, that is the main thing I think about the relationship between the essay and literature off the page. For me, it is very important as a reader and as a writer to think about the construction of an essayist voice and not of an essayist person.)
The essayist, a devil’s advocate
Renew perspective on an issue. Let us move on to the explanation before you complain about the bureaucratic language. This time we won’t get there. We are talking about the essay, that diverse genre that, says the author, that place that is always looking for other ways of seeing.
“That’s why every essayist asks himself, all the time, why thinking is a problem and, in that sense, he looks for other views and other perspectives. I like, in the tradition of essays that I read, that essayists present reality as an armchair where all the people sit and don’t say anything, but the essayist sits and finds it very uncomfortable. Reality is a very uncomfortable chair. And the essayist wonders why no one says that, why no one told me if so many already sat here.
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It does not mean that this is an opinion, that writing is giving an opinion, (but) only to point out a certain discomfort and point out other ways of seeing it. “That seems to me to be the central point of the essay: a demystifying look I really like the authors I read because they make me realize how comfortable I was living the way I live and the problems involved in getting used to the fact that the way we see is the only way. I think that this question, of how many other ways we have of seeing things, is something very satisfying and even very healthy to not have tunnel vision, but to try to broaden that view and that observation as much as possible,” he says.
Essay and these realities
“I believe that the essay gives us back the freedom to think, about what we want and how we want,” he considers. “We frequently have the conflict that, more so in a world like ours, where what matters is prestige, not being founded, homogenization, etc., for me the essay as a form of literature gives me back what all literature gives back, which is to give density and depth to the world, and offer me other spaces that the world denies me to relate to it.”
“The essay is that freedom of thinking that is missing in many other places that I think is very important to recover.“, he continues. “Because I don’t necessarily think that by thinking what we don’t usually hold, we will change our minds, but maybe we will even understand why we think what we think. I believe that this healthy and enriching exercise of turning to see other things is a very important learning process in a society that sometimes tends to be very closed, in a way of life that tends to unify the experience.”
“Lately I’ve been asking myself this a lot: how can we think about other things? How can we enrich what we think if we all experience very similar things?“, he asks. “And the essay is that invitation to enrich the experience, perhaps thinking about what those points of contact are between the autobiographical experience, that of others, that of what we see in books: dead people, who come from other cultures, other times, and asking ourselves what we find as a point of union between all of that. So, I think that is why rehearsal is essential for me, because This freedom of thinking helps to mobilize knowledge that we considered unimportanthelps us give other values to the things that we are already told how we should evaluate and also helps us to dignify curiosity, to dignify wonder and reconcile ourselves with that idea of what it means to think.”
First aid
Laura Sofía Rivero has published her “First Aid” section in her personal library. “There I have certain books that, when I forget what literature is, I go back, consult them and remember. I remember that feeling that the words return your astonishment, that the words fill you with questions, that the words remind you that they are useful for something more than what the dictionary says,” he confesses. In this very personal section, titles such as:
- Dissertation on cobwebsby Hugo Hiriart.
- Conspiracyby Juan José Arreola.
- Always non-mandatory readingsde Wislawa Szymborska
- Alarms and digressionsde G. K. Chesterton
Laura Sofia Rivero will present Encyclopedia of everyday arts on Monday, October 27 at Mauricio Achar’s Gandhi with Jorge Commensal at 7:00 p.m.
The post Laura Sofía Rivero: ‘The essay gives us back the freedom to think’ appeared first on Veritas News.
