In one of the stories of ‘public library‘ (Nordic), the latest book by Ali Smith that has been translated into Spanish, a young woman named Helen Clyne says that libraries are the only place you can still go without paying to simply be there: «So you don’t Is it about books? I asked. Or is it about something more than books? Maybe it was always something more, Helen said. Ali Smith (Inverness, Scotland, 1964), yes, she is one of those women who loves literature because she loves life, and not the other way around. She is a woman who searches in words not so much for a destination as for a door. Or a window to let in the light, even if the day is gray inside and out. Smith uses agile and flexible verb, and twists the rules to adapt them to his whim. Perhaps that is why she is one of the most celebrated authors of English literature.
—There are writers who flee from the present, you embrace it.
—I really don’t have a choice. Whatever you write, the time you live in will speak through the text. The present passes through us in any way, even in the form of a story. Writing stories is important because it is one of our best ways to dimensionalize time, in a fusion of present and past that also gestures towards the future. We are all porous to this; our time comes out of ourselves, directly through our skin. That is why I believe that there are no historical novels or futuristic novels, because wherever we place them, they will speak of the time and will be made of the time in which they were written.
—He has written about Brexit, the pandemic, populism and other wonders of our time, but his books are not dramatic, but rather ironic, playful. Is (good) humor a way to stay sane?
—That is the look of the stories at the present. The stories already know everything. And they are always kind and ruthless enough to let us know where we are and who we are and what pressures us to condition ourselves. Furthermore, stories allow us to discover that nothing is new for our species, that history goes in cycles and that this could perhaps be used to better read what is happening; There have always been plagues, there has always been and there will always be someone or something with power trying to mobilize and use the people by appealing to a we on a level that is highly emotional and reactive.
—Publish a book about libraries in a time of screens. Is it an act of resistance?
—I wouldn’t say that it is an act of resistance to screens, because libraries are now almost the only place where people can communally access both screens and information. And to knowledge, imagination, entertainment… Libraries are a refuge, a space to think and be in community in a free, warm and open way to everyone. There is nothing that benefits people more than the space to think. If my book is an act of resistance, it is a resistance to the way that library culture, that is, a culture of open and communal access to all of these things, including the equality and democracy that libraries represent, is being systematically eroded.
—And don’t you think there is something in the reading of resistance against the acceleration of the world?
—Reading a book, a story, is an act of opening the self to something beyond the self, while allowing that self to continue being the self that it is. It is an act of versatility and community in a world that increasingly wants to categorize us and reduce us to useful and salable data for reasons of money or power. But as soon as you open a book you are bigger. It is yourself and others. It is a fundamental act of hospitality, with ourselves and with others. It is the basis of everything communal, and I would dare say that it is one of the reasons why the human species has survived for so long.
—Are you worried about the future of reading?
-No. We do it all the time, and I have faith that our desire to read things at all levels is another manifestation of glorious human multiplicity.
—And what about the future of the novel?
—I also have faith in its glorious multiplicity.
—Is literature, in essence, a question of style?
—It’s a question of fusion. Style and form are the same thing, plus structural understanding, resonance, imagination, reality, connection, commitment, possibility. All of that comes together in a way that allows us to understand and be a part of all of these things.
—If life can be transformed into literature, can literature be transformed into life?
—Let’s say that reading books is one of the best ways to learn to read absolutely everything that happens in life.
—”Nowadays everything is an image and I have the feeling that we are moving further and further away from human voices,” he writes in ‘Good Voice’.
—We have become accustomed to believing in images. And images are not the same as contact. When a human voice, in any of its forms, reaches a human ear: Hello! We are not alone. And that other person is a human being like me, real, made of flesh and blood, much more than an image.
—You have said several times that your family origin, having grown up in a working class home, has marked your literature. To what extent has it done so?
—My origin has educated me in the same way as everyone else. But I know I’ve been very lucky. I come from a people who grew up in relative poverty, saw war and barely survived it, were good-spirited people who rowed against all odds, and were determined to make things better after having gone through a bloody time. They did everything possible so that their children received all the education possible and went out into the world with the brilliance of that spirit capable of fighting against the elements.
—Do you remember your first time in a library?
—I remember I couldn’t believe it. A room filled with what seemed like endless shelves of books. As far as the eye could see, books! I was already a child reader when I went to the library in our town for the first time; But my mother, who had a great respect for books but had no time to read anything, had tried to convince me not to become a member because she had four older brothers and was tired of years of paying fines for books returned late. I went anyway. She understood it.
—The figure of the dead father is very present in this book. Is it healthy to talk to the dead?
—I think writing is always talking to the dead, listening to the dead and knowing our own mortality. Nothing else in life apart from this allows us to know what life is really worth.
—Another constant of the book is the interest in the etymology of words. Some reveal meanings so old they seem new. In some way, these etymologies open the door to an atavistic world that helps us understand our own.
—Words carry their own history, just like us. Their stories always tell us something about them that is expansive, that allows the word to multiply its meanings, that allows language itself, and by extension all communication, to expand, that allows us to multiply everything we want to say. In language and also in life.
—I have read that you dedicated yourself to writing after leaving academia due to chronic fatigue syndrome. How was that?
—It was more like this: imagine that I am going on a road, that I was going on a road and that at the end of that road there were two things; There was a very high and very real wall, and there was something beyond that wall, another place, somewhere that I knew I had to get to. If I stayed on the road with the wall at the end, all I would end up doing was hitting that wall over and over again. So for a while (again I had no choice) I sat and rested against the wall, and there I gave myself time and space to recover, to think. Now imagine a door in the wall. Imagine it opens.
—By the way, are you nostalgic?
-At all. I love how things are renewed. And make them new.
#Ali #Smith #Writing #talking #dead
