Conversaciones librescas
Jueves, Enero 12th, 2012Hay una conexión secreta entre los libros. Como si conversaran entre sí o sus caminos se cruzaran en algún lugar de un subsuelo libresco imaginario, tipo cuadro de Escher o relato de Borges. En ocasiones sucede que un autor ha digerido a otro a quien leyó hace mucho tiempo y otras simplemente parece que bebieran de las mismas fuentes.
Introduction “How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live”, Missy Vineyard. Da Capo Press; 2007; Cambridge; Massachusets. (pag 1; Libro sobre la Técnica Alexander).
“There is a poster of Michael Jordan on the wall in my teaching room that I like to show my students. Jordan is four feet off the ground, suspended in the air halfway between the foul line from which he has departed and the basket toward which he is aiming and soon to dunk the ball. He is as close to a human bird as I have seen –a massive, four-limbed bird in improbable flight. There are many striking aspects to this picture: Jordan’s height in the air; the distance he has travelled and has yet to travel, airborne, en route to the basket; his strong, upright torso. Most astonishing is the expression on his face. It is apparent that his mind is not focused on his body. He is not feeling what his legs are doing, checking out where his arms are going, or wondering where he will land. His mind is focused on the basket as every part of his body fulfils his purpose in easy and fluid coordination, following the direction of his mind’s intent.
“Wow! How does he do that?” my students ask in a tone of wonder. The next question is spoken slowly, with a distant note of self-reproach: “Why can’t I do that?” (…)
Introduction “On Writing Well- The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction”; William Zinsser (Harper Collins; Nueva York; primera edición 1976; edición empleada 2006, con motivo del 30 aniversario de la primera; pp IX-X).
“One of the pictures hanging in my office in mid-Manhattan is a photograph of the writer E.B. White. It was taken by Jill Krementz when White was 77 years old, at his home in North Brooklin, Maine. A white-haired man is sitting on a plain wooden bench at a plain wooden table –three boards nailed to four legs- in a small boathouse. The window is open to a view across the water. White is typing on a manual typewriter, and the only other objects are an ashtray and a nail keg. The keg, I don’t have to be told, is his wastebasket.
Many people from many corners of my life –writers and aspiring writers, students and former students – have seen that picture. They come to talk through a writing problem or to catch me up on their lives. But usually it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for their eye to be drawn to the old man sitting at the typewriter. What gets their attention is the simplicity of the process. White has everything he needs: a writing implement, a piece of paper, and a receptacle for all the sentences that didn’t come out the way he wanted them to.
Since then writing has gone electronic. Computers have replaced the typewriter, the delete key has replaced the wastebasket, and various other keys insert, move and rearrange whole chunks of text. But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read. That’s the point of the photograph, and it’s still the point -30 years later- of this book”.
Teniendo en cuenta que el libro de Zinsser ha vendido más de un millón de ejemplares en Estados Unidos, que se publicó por primera vez en 1976 y que el texto de Vineyard se editó en 2007 es muy posible que Vineyard hubiera leído el libro de Zinsser y se le hubiera quedado en la recámara el recurso de empezar el ensayo con un detalle personal y al mismo tiempo visual y didáctico. Hay decenas de libros que arrancan con una imagen así (supongo), pero la coincidencia me ha hecho gracia.
En ambos casos, empezar el libro con una foto y concretamente con esa es una buena elección: la imagen tiene viveza, convoca a la emoción y detalla los elementos clave de lo que se enseña en el libro: en un caso la relación cuerpo mente y en el otro la escritura. En otras palabras, supone una puerta a lo que se va a encontrar el lector a nivel intelectual y afectivo.

