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Quote by Sergio Chejfec

“Novels with a "thesis" don't interest me. They just don't - novels that want to "show" something, that want to "argue" something specific. I don't read novels that are looking to convince me of anything.”

Quote by Sergio Chejfec

Author

Sergio Chejfec, born in 1956, is an Argentine writer known for his profound philosophical reflections and unique narrative style. His works are widely regarded as significant representatives of contemporary Latin American literature. more

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“The walk is like a matrix, like a diffuse, vague happening. It's like - imagine a play, a work of theatre, that is totally vague, almost devoid of details that consists in one person going on a walk. And as a consequence, there is a necessary tension between the determinacy and indeterminacy, the definite and the indefinite, of possibility.”

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“At one point I felt a tension between objects, their real, physical lives, and the idea of meaning: the physical, material reality of a book, and the totally intangible experience of reading it.”

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“I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.”

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“I had a lot of expectations placed on me because I was already having some success with my short stories. That was not a good situation to be in. That by itself took a long time to overcome.”

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“Not unlike gender reassignment surgery, someone determines that they are of a different race on the inside and they wish to surgically correct that.”

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“A word, and all the infinite fluctuations it may possess. Like that moment when you know you have something to say, and you know you're speaking, even, but you still have no idea how you will say it. Or the moment when, as a reader, you're reading, and you are understanding what you are reading, but still have utterly no idea what will come next for you, what precisely the author wants to say. For me, that is the ultimate level of literary depth, of literary density.”

Knows Want May Stills Ideas Moments Reading Next Understanding Levels Reader Ultimate Infinite Depth No Idea That Moment Density Fluctuation

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“Like when you pick up a book and you don't realize what type of text it is - it could be an essay, a novel, a biography - and at one point you realize you don't know where, as a reader, you want to be. Where are you going with this text? What is the goal? How are you supposed to interpret what you're reading? And people's responses vary - some dislike it, and are put off by the confusion, the lack of comprehension.”

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“I don't even know - for me, it's difficult to decide which is more important - the things or the thoughts. It seems to me that certain things came up more or less naturally.”

Knows Important Seems Certain Difficult

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“What I find is that many times when I work with chance, with indeterminacy, I am more open to experience, less prone to a fixed process, and I think it creates a very important challenge. It creates a way of writing that is, in a way, flatter or smooth, a surface conducive to release, to movement. And in this way, the form of writing gets delightfully melded with the process of the writing.”

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“Not to say that the process assumes anything of "greater" or "lesser" importance, though: it's just more graphic information. Take the surrealists, for example, or a work by Cage. For me, there's a great value in doing this with literature. There's a certain form of dependence; process and product inform each other, depend on each other. I consider myself a writer who doesn't write with a style, almost. I begin with tension, with a vibe, a character.”

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