P. S. The cat is still alive

Kurmaca yazarlığının yanı 

sıra çevirmen ve antoloji 

yazarı olarak da tanıdığımız, 

günümüz dünya edebiyatının 

önemli isimlerinden biri 

olan Alberto Manguel ile 

Borges’e dair anıları, yazar 

olmaya, metne dair görüşleri 

ve Boğaziçi Chronicles 

etkinlikleri kapsamındaki 

konuşmasına ilişkin bir 

söyleşi gerçekleştirdik. Keyifle 

okumanız dileğiyle...

It is very nice to meet you. Can 

we start from the years when 

you read for Jorge Luis Borges? 

Could you please share your 

memories with us?

I was working in a bookstore in 

Buenos Aires as an adolescent. Borges 

would come to the bookstore to 

buy books. This was in 1963. He had 

become blind around 1955 so he 

needed people to read to him. He 

would ask everyone and one day he 

asked me if I could read to him. So, 

for four years I read for him every 

evening in his apartment. When I say 

“read for him”, I do not mean that 

I chose the stories or the texts. He 

would specifically ask for a text to be 

read and then he would comment 

on the text but for himself. It was 

not a shared reading as if I would be 

reading for you. It was really a 

way of him being reminded of the 

text that he knew and be able to 

comment on it. He was doing it for a 

specific purpose. When he became 

blind, he decided he would not 

write any more prose. He said that he 

could write poetry. Because poetry 

came to him as music to which he 

would put words. But prose he said 

he needed to see his handwrite. So 

he had decided not to write prose 

anymore. But with time he had had 

some ideas for short stories and then 

he decided that he would go back 

on his promise to himself and write 

prose. But before he would launch 

into new short stories he wanted to 

revisit the stories of other writers that 

he loved. I think it is wonderful advice 

for anybody who wants to write. 

You learn to write through reading. 

You learn to write by observing and 

analyzing what other writers have 

done, how they have done it and

find clues in their writings. So, 

he would want me to read the 

stories not to follow the plot he 

already knew almost by heart but 

to observe how it was done like a 

mechanic would look at montages 

to see how wheels and coges work. 

His observations were about the 

mechanics of writings.

So, you think that being a good 

writer is about reading a lot. 

Being a good writer has to be put 

in a context. Being a good writer for 

whom? For yourself, for your readers, 

for your contemporaries, for your 

future… But if you want to be a writer 

of any kind, it is a craft like any other 

that you have to learn. I do not think 

that anybody can teach it. I do not 

believe in creative writing courses. I 

believe in reading courses. I believe 

in offering would be writers material 

to look at. I think as Borges thought 

that you learn by seeing how things 

are done. It is like cooking. You learn 

how to cook by watching somebody 

cook. Instructions do not really work, 

you have to see how the dough is 

handled, how the vegetables had 

chopped.

You see creative writing 

courses are much more than 

the reading courses in Turkey.

In everywhere. It is something was 

invented by the state in order to give 

writers a little bit of money. I have 

nothing against that. But is it useful? 

No, I do not think it is useful unless 

you offer it as a reading course. If 

Proust were teaching Joyce how to 

write, he would make a mess of it. 

If Joyce would teach Proust how to 

write, he would make a mess of it. 

Because your vision as a writer of 

what literature is, changes depending 

on whom you are. Obviously it will 

effect what you teach. If I go back to 

the metaphor of cooking, a sushi chef 

would be a very bad teacher of Italian 

cooking. I think that unfortunately 

creative writing courses are part 

of publishing industry that was 

invented in the mid-20th century in 

the Anglo Saxon world. That entails 

the work of what in English is called 

editor. It is something very different 

from the word editor in French, 

Spanish or Italian. It underlines those 

occupations is an ideal and I think 

this is fundamentally false. It is the 

idea that you can tend to produce 

a perfect work of art. You can say “I 

want to produce a perfect camera” as 

an engineer. There is such a thing for 

what you want to use it. And if you 

have the right lens and have the right 

structure you produce a machine that 

is almost perfect. But art does not 

work that way. In fact art consists of 

failure. 

The work an artist produces is never 

what the artist has imagined. There 

is an ideal book you want to write, 

of the dance you want to perform, 

of the music you want to compose, 

of the painting you want to paint. 

But in the realization of that work, a 

number of circumstances enter the 

author that work from the concept 

imagined to the concept that is made 

concrete in words or in movement. 

That is not a bad thing because in 

creating and in perfect work of art, 

the artist allows for the gaps through 

which the reader, the viewer or 

the listener can access to the work. 

But the publishing industry in the 

Anglo Saxon world wants objects 

for consumers. And objects for the 

consumers have to be constructed 

“ART CONSISTS OF FAILURE”

Duygu Cankılıç ‘11

B

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