Contents
Libroterapia, by Jordi Nadal: «Reading is a great source of answers, or at least good questions»
Psychology
Reading prolongs life and changes us in an essential way; good fiction expands horizons, helps us understand others better, makes us empathic. But in addition, scientific studies have shown that the effects of reading can be equated to those of meditation or to certain aspects that medicine has shown. A) Yes, readers sleep better, have lower levels of stress and depression, and have higher self-esteem than “non-readers.” But to take advantage of these benefits, the author, editor and founder of Plataforma Editorial, Jordi Nadal, explains that, in addition to “reading more”, it is important to “read well”, look for good references and not get lost in the maremagnum of the internet and social networks.
It could be said of Jordi Nadal, as defined by the academic Luis Alberto de Cuenca in the introduction to “Libroterapia”, that he is a bibliophile and bibliopath beyond all measure. At the age of 16, he began to make files on the books he read and today, at 58, he is about to reach 2.000 reviews. It certainly overflows passion for reading, but he assures that what he enjoys the most is sharing his discoveries. Maybe that’s why he decided to dedicate himself to edition: «Editing is publishing things for unknown friends, it is finding something valuable and sharing it, it is wanting to risk money to try to get others to approach a new author, it is sharing filtered content in a world in which everyone thinks they are the best and self-publishes, “he says.
Each chapter of “Book therapy” It is a formula to get closer to the authors, the contexts, the fragments and the reflections that have served Jordi Nadal as a balm in difficult moments and as a guide for each important decision.
We are immersed in a pandemic. For months we were confined and some took the opportunity to cook more, to exercise or even to meditate. Now that our social life is smaller, is it also being read more?
It seems that it is because we have more time and we also have more restlessness. We are more collected and more eager to find answers to a situation that raises many questions. We look for answers in every possible place and reading is a great source of answers or at least good questions.
He says that “reading good literature is like drinking clean water.” The relationship between health and the promotion of reading is interesting …
Those of us who have seen the movie “The Impossible” remember that brutal scene in which the tsunami wave buried everything under water. The protagonists who survived that tragedy were surrounded by water, but that water was not drinkable. And this is for me a metaphor for the internet, where we have too much information, intoxication and a lot of hatred that comes mainly through social networks that, although they contribute extraordinary things, can also be a great trap.
The increased interest now in “mindfulness” may lead us to think that perhaps it is the balsamic cream for the “burn unit in intensive care.” We are “burned out” in this world of rushing, hyperventilating, digital, and giddy because speed hurts us. We need to stop and read because it is just as important as breathing well, in the physical and mental sense.
Reading is a relaxed conversation between two universes and two people who are confessing in private. If you’re in a hurry, don’t read. Reading quickly is like stretching the petals of roses to grow. We have to lower the piston to enjoy things.
How can reading enrich a person’s sensitivity?
Throughout life the family and the school educate us in something essential which is the “education of taste.” I maintain that people are in one way or another depending on the education we have received in our family and in a good high school. It’s late at the university. One is a fool or a promising person and more or less solid at 18 years old because the family has already done what they had to do and so has high school.
We have to find ways to educate taste and get out of the children’s menu that our children are offered when we go out to eat out there. Children do not have to eat alone and always “children’s menu”, children have to learn to eat. You have to educate your taste, but I’m not just talking about gastronomy. You have to educate their taste in music, cinema, aesthetics, museums, conversations … In short, human and ethical. The development of taste is intrinsic to the continuous creation of the figure of oneself (an idea present in Sampedro, Píndaro and Rilke). You have to develop the taste to enjoy things that are more level.
When informal conversations are held about reading and we talk about when, how much and what we read, expressions such as: “I’m not here to read now,” “My body doesn’t ask me to read,” or “I can’t get any books to read. hitch »… Why is reading abandoned?
Out of tiredness, out of cowardice, out of repentance, out of carelessness, out of weakness, out of apathy, out of indifference, out of comfort … “Whoever criticizes confesses”, that said Baltasar Gracián. We make excuses because we are ashamed. People are our agenda. What is not on your agenda is that it is not important to you. If you don’t go to the gym, it is not important to you. If you don’t read, either. People make decisions. You decide to have a dog and it is an important decision, having children is important, going to the gym is important. Decisions have consequences. Nothing is innocent.
The “peterpanism” and the “temptation of innocence”, as Pascal Bruckner used to say, and that of thinking that “nothing happens” is not true. And that beautiful phrase “to believe is to create” is not true either. When I hear that if you want something ardently, the universe gives it to you, I get at least psoriasis on my elbows. It is not true that when you fervently desire something that you desire will happen. Is not true. It is an insult to those who sleep in the street, to those who get into a canoe in search of a future, or to those who break their backs working and find it difficult to progress. I have to tell my children that if they are good people, if they are honest, if they are hard-working, if they are studious and if they are disciplined, life will go well for them. But it is not true. Maybe they will do well or not, but they have to do it because it is right for them to do it and because they have to want the good for its own sake, not because it is something utilitarian. I think you have to try to do good, and educate taste and responsibility in people.
And that that sometimes we need “something light to read” or “that does not make us think”, what does it respond to?
That thing about needing «something light» … You can actually read something apparently light and very deep like «The Etruscan smile» by José Luis Sampedro that shows that if you are an older man that you have believed yourself the role of alpha male and when you are going to be a grandfather you are going to miss how beautiful it is to cuddle a grandson or a granddaughter in reality you are a misinformed person or a fool.
There are no better or worse books, there are good and bad books in each of the categories. I was the editorial director of the Círculo de Lectores for three and a half years and I saw that there were people who despised the romance novel, but what do we want? Read Kant after school? Sometimes we live a kind of cultural supremacism. What we have to do is read well, that is, do not read “Mein Kampf” and make it your bedside book. But if you read a romance novel because your life is hard and you fancy a little sugar, that’s fine with me. I don’t like coffee with sugar but I don’t feel superior to those who put sugar in coffee. The person who takes it with sugar or milk because coffee seems bitter like life to them deserves my respect. I like coffee without sugar and without milk, bitter like life… It’s all a matter of taste.
In the case of tastes, there should be at least 1.114, which are the Pantone colors. I would say that you have to read over 1.114 books throughout your life to have a certain flexibility of opinion and thought.
In “Libroterapia” he provides ideas to discover and rediscover, are there complexes when talking about literature?
You have to go without complexes for life, as long as they are not a daring ignorance, that is, as long as we respect others. If our daughter or our son goes to a school where they have to hide that they are a good reader … bad luck! You have to proudly display what you are. The monologue of La Agrado (Antonia San Juan) in “All about my mother” comes to mind in which she explained all that she had invested in aesthetic operations to be authentic, which is, as she stated, “what people do to fulfill your dreams ». In short, I think you have to be authentic to resemble your dreams.
During the Journalism career I remember that one of the professors, Pedro Sorela (now deceased), discovered to his horror that a great majority of his third-year students had not read some of the great classics of world literature. And that “reading the classics” was our work during the course …
If it is not read, we cannot interpret the world. Gregorio Luri, who is a wise man, said that boys and girls learn to read up to the age of 9 and that from the age of 9 they learn by reading. If there is no vocabulary forged before, there is no capacity for learning later because reading is learning to put words in a text and in a context. I think we have to aspire higher and not be left with the mediocrity of doing the right thing. If we do not want to make the effort to train ourselves seriously and discover by reading the great works of thought in science, literature, art … we are limiting a part of the world and we will not be able to interpret it.
From your conversations about literature with readers and writers, what expressions come to mind about the benefits of reading?
It comes to mind when I spoke to Jose Luis Sampedro and he told me that you had to be a “miner of yourself.” But also what I talked about life and literature with Ryzzard kapuscinski in Warsaw or at the Nobel Prize interview Elie Wiesel, or when I spoke with Günter Grass after the fall of the Berlin Wall. People who reconcile you with reading are part of the world of deed (Natalia Ginzburg, Elías Canetti, Albert Camus …) but also from the world of those who reflect on the “act of reading.” With Irene Vallejo, Antonio Basanta, Nuccio Order y Gregorio Luri you already have the four cardinal points to learn to love reading.