You are morning and night, cereal, oceanic…
Roads, revelations, insurgent peoples…
Rimbaud like a wounded bleeding fish throbbing in the mud…
A book is victory in the naked marine solitude…
Humankind discovering the final mysteries…
–Pablo Neruda: Ode to the Book
Dear Madam, I am a native of Santiago who has lived abroad for twenty-five years, an avid reader, and an amateur writer. After reading your anthology of short stories, I learned about the magazine that you publish. I am very glad to have found a wormhole that enables me to stay in touch with my beautiful and peaceful village, as I like to call my birthplace; at least, that's how I remember it. I was growing up blissfully and becoming a man in the 1970s, shielded by my family, religious faith, and ignorance, removed from the atrocities being committed by the dictatorship that was ruling us. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.
I have just read your article “Religion” in your magazine’s Issue 57. I must admit that I approached it with the same suspicion with which I read almost everything: a general mistrust of some conservative and mainstream attitudes; finding (sometimes where there is none; I plead guilty) a degree of complicity with the status quo, with the authorities in charge of perpetuating dogmas, legends, and historical lies, in order to keep us in the dark. For, as you say, I am not one of the many who have faith, but rather one of the few who doubt, and not only one who doubts, but one who questions everything, especially if it comes from the authorities, and even more so if it comes from religious leaders. And that's exactly why I sympathize with poor Nietzsche (despite the fact that he died young and stark mad, as you say), precisely because he was an iconoclast. Like your son, I too became disillusioned with religion before I was eighteen, and I decided that when I had children, I would raise them without it. I have to admit that, like the atheists and agnostics about whom you write (I am also one of them), I have moments of doubt as to whether I did the right thing. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.
Despite the initial skepticism with which I begin reading each issue of your magazine, I always end up smiling because the effort is rewarded with a new influx of ideas and a desire to read more, in addition to the intellectual joy.
I came upon Junot Díaz on Issue 56. A Dominican who makes it big in the United States, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, graduate of Rutgers and Cornell, professor at MIT, and all that. And I don't know him? But it is not possible! Are you kidding me? I hadn't even heard of him. After reading the article, I headed to the bookstore, and bought “Drown”, “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, and “This Is How You Lose Her” which, let me clarify, I read non-stop.
I had tears in my eyes when I read “The Memphis Boys” by Pedro Peix on Issue 53. It brought to mind another of my all-time favourite short stories from my teenage years, “Now That I'm Back Ton” by René Del Risco Bermúdez. Pedro Peix's fearless, assertive and accusing stance in “Drugs are not the problem” gave me goose bumps. It’s difficult to be more point-blank than that. Way to go, Pedro! We must not let ideals die. It was a delight to read “Yelidá” by Tomás Hernández Franco again on Issue 46. I have read only a few poems that can be compared to this one.
“Of Chance and Readings”, written by you in Issue 54, made me finally decide to read Marguerite Yourcenar. I've never read her before. What a shame! Tomorrow I'll go to the bookstore and buy “L'Oeuvre au noir”. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.
What I want to say is: Thank you for publishing the magazine! So much beating around the bush, and so many words to say it! An incorrigible vice of all aspiring writers, I guess.
I have just read your article “Religion” in your magazine’s Issue 57. I must admit that I approached it with the same suspicion with which I read almost everything: a general mistrust of some conservative and mainstream attitudes; finding (sometimes where there is none; I plead guilty) a degree of complicity with the status quo, with the authorities in charge of perpetuating dogmas, legends, and historical lies, in order to keep us in the dark. For, as you say, I am not one of the many who have faith, but rather one of the few who doubt, and not only one who doubts, but one who questions everything, especially if it comes from the authorities, and even more so if it comes from religious leaders. And that's exactly why I sympathize with poor Nietzsche (despite the fact that he died young and stark mad, as you say), precisely because he was an iconoclast. Like your son, I too became disillusioned with religion before I was eighteen, and I decided that when I had children, I would raise them without it. I have to admit that, like the atheists and agnostics about whom you write (I am also one of them), I have moments of doubt as to whether I did the right thing. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.
Despite the initial skepticism with which I begin reading each issue of your magazine, I always end up smiling because the effort is rewarded with a new influx of ideas and a desire to read more, in addition to the intellectual joy.
I came upon Junot Díaz on Issue 56. A Dominican who makes it big in the United States, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, graduate of Rutgers and Cornell, professor at MIT, and all that. And I don't know him? But it is not possible! Are you kidding me? I hadn't even heard of him. After reading the article, I headed to the bookstore, and bought “Drown”, “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, and “This Is How You Lose Her” which, let me clarify, I read non-stop.
I had tears in my eyes when I read “The Memphis Boys” by Pedro Peix on Issue 53. It brought to mind another of my all-time favourite short stories from my teenage years, “Now That I'm Back Ton” by René Del Risco Bermúdez. Pedro Peix's fearless, assertive and accusing stance in “Drugs are not the problem” gave me goose bumps. It’s difficult to be more point-blank than that. Way to go, Pedro! We must not let ideals die. It was a delight to read “Yelidá” by Tomás Hernández Franco again on Issue 46. I have read only a few poems that can be compared to this one.
“Of Chance and Readings”, written by you in Issue 54, made me finally decide to read Marguerite Yourcenar. I've never read her before. What a shame! Tomorrow I'll go to the bookstore and buy “L'Oeuvre au noir”. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.
What I want to say is: Thank you for publishing the magazine! So much beating around the bush, and so many words to say it! An incorrigible vice of all aspiring writers, I guess.
© William Almonte Jiménez, 2024
