The first thing that comes to mind is: “Fool who reads.” Well, nothing we don’t already know.
Does it seem rude? “Fool,” a bit, “also the one who writes,” then.
There aren’t many things truly necessary to know about writers and readers, except that writers, even the most sincere, lie, and readers, even the least naive, are naive enough to want to believe the tales writers tell.
Many readers, in turn, would claim to increase their knowledge more or less like filling a bucket, drawing new knowledge from new readings, but they should know that this is not how one becomes wise.
How do you tell a learned reader that knowing all the exquisite ways letters of the alphabet have combined over millennia often does not make him the keeper of truth—which texts largely deliberately conceal, out of base interest or naive ignorance, through distortions and hyperbolic metaphors—but only an expert in those very letters?
Not that it’s little, anyway… in some cases, it would be enough.
Moreover, writers and readers are often the same people, doing both, suddenly hating the opposite category they belong to.
A reader might not even seek the truth, and, assuming there is a way to write it, might not be able to understand it. They might be offended because they are forced to think about things they never imagined or wanted, like hating the morning alarm clock, which doesn’t lie but is guilty of ringing at the set time.
There were—and perhaps are not entirely gone—times when people died horribly for wanting to write the truth. Today, fewer die, but writers are discredited for a long time, mocked and humiliated. That should suffice; not many people, in fact, challenge public shaming lightly, even if mediated, or public ridicule, out of polemical frenzy or the whim to be right.
It would take, besides a bit of constructive self-harm, a lot of nerve. Isn’t that arrogance, that of singers in tune in a tone-deaf choir?
Writers, as you see, seem to have very good reasons not to write the truth, not least because they almost never know it.
The only truth they know—and this applies to everyone—is their very personal opinion.
For the sake of consistency, a writer should become the most disinterested individual, drawing at every moment from their original inspiration and grasping the essence of things through the only filter they have, which, in the best conditions, is their most transparent good faith, the noblest expression of their sincerity, exposing themselves to the mortification of objections, the slaughter of refutations, the bloodbaths of debates, all for passion, as if having, blamelessly, ideas necessarily implied the responsibility to support them, the strength to defend them, and the courage to die for them.
Who, if not a manic exhibitionist, could desire all this, now that anyone, especially those with no reason to love us, could hate us out of boredom even before interest? Who would be so mad as to subject themselves to gratuitous contempt without ever regretting it?
I’ll be honest: as a reader, I have been ruthless, like a driver with a pedestrian hesitating on the crosswalk or a pedestrian with a driver who doesn’t respect the crosswalk, and at the same time the most naive of all.
I still trust writers. I love them, sometimes. If they suffer, I suffer with them; if they rejoice, I rejoice with them. If they spew improbable and lengthy ramblings without head or tail, venturing into linguistic explorations bordering on spelunking and lingering, for no apparent reason, in verbose and repetitive paragraphs, pursuing the only apparent goal—seemingly their real purpose—of matching every subject to its verb, every subjunctive to its conditional, in a triumph of well-aligned adverbs, adjectives, and synonyms, perhaps forgetting what they were saying and surprising themselves by telling a whole different story from the original, well, I forgive them and follow them in every evolution of the pen, immersing myself breathlessly in every sentence, every paragraph, every intonation, ready to drink in every word, even vain, especially if vain, for pure pleasure, confusing that same visceral enjoyment with the highest expression of my intelligence, coming, like the most gullible among readers, to see it increase with every sentence read, every additional chapter, every little book a writer conceived more for show, more for venting, than for any real educational intent.
I write myself, so, as a writer, I basically lie.
In reality, I do what I can, with what I have, for reasons sometimes right and sometimes not. Some things I improve over time, which is a bit like lying; others I delete, which is perhaps worse; others still—alas—more out of affection than good taste, I keep, to remember them.
I like to think there will be a chance to come back to them, if only to have a laugh.
In general, these are ideas the world could have spared itself and can serenely continue to ignore later: the good silence that, however, was written.
Writing has become important to me, at least since I realized that it’s not certain I would remember certain details forever; I could suddenly go senile and not slowly as I have for years, forgetting I ever had an opinion, that of life, as I understood it flowing inside me, long and intense, deep and complex, only a vague idea would remain of something that could have been on average and was not.
It was.
In a way, I would like certain thoughts to preserve themselves, not because they must impose themselves—because there were better ideas, but also completed works that would have been better if they never were…—I would like them to live, remaining the voice that needed no listening, echo of all the silences that seemed the best choice to me, that granted me so much joy in life, away from shouting crowds, because even fruitless branches can give cool shade.
The rest is entertainment.