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Quinta-feira, 10/10/2002 Have a Book in You? Julio Daio Borges Joseph Epstein escreveu no New York Times que mais de 80% dos norte-americanos deseja ardentemente publicar um livro. Em vez de encorajá-los, como todo bom escritor, fez justamente o contrário: tentou convencer seus leitores de que o desejo é apenas uma tentação fácil de se resistir. (Pena que seus argumentos sejam fracos e ele se repita muito...) O artigo intitula-se "Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again" [Pensa que tem um livro dentro de você? Pense mais uma vez]. E digamos que essa é uma das melhores coisas do texto. Outra é a lembrança a Samuel Johnson: 'There, in every human heart, a desire of distinction, which inclines every man to hope, and then to believe, that nature has given himself something peculiar to himself.' [Há, no coração humano, um desejo de distinção, que inclina todo homem para a esperança, e para a crença, de que a natureza lhe conferiu algo de especial.] "Why should so many people think they can write a book, especially at a time when so many people who actually do write books turn out not really to have a book in them - or at least not one that many other people can be made to care about? Something on the order of 80,000 books get published in America every year, most of them not needed, not wanted, not in any way remotely necessary. "The search for personal significance was once nicely taken care of by the drama that religion supplied. This drama, which lived in every human breast, no matter what one's social class, was that of salvation: Would one achieve heaven or not? Now that it is gone from so many lives, in place of salvation we have the search for significance, a much trickier business. If only oblivion awaits, how does one leave behind evidence that one lived? How will one's distant progeny know that one once walked the earth? A book, the balmy thought must be: I shall write a book." Julio Daio Borges |
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