Cinta Hari-Hari Kurungan (Hari Ketiga Belas)

Mario Vargas Llosa

Adakah seorang penulis (atau mana-mana pengkarya seni) patut mendengar nasihat orang lain untuk bekarya? Ya, dia patut dengar, dan kemudian dia patut melupakannya. Nasihat hanya peringatan di petak permulaan. Apabila kita sudah mula berlari, kita tidak lagi melihat ke belakang. 

Tetapi waktu saya mula menulis, saya tidak tahu bagaimana untuk berlari. Saya tidak tahu apa yang dikatakan fiksyen, apa yang dikatakan sebuah novel. Bimbingan paling terbaik saya pernah dapat ialah surat Mario Vargas Llosa kepada novelis muda. Beliau menulis:

"What is the origin of this early inclination, the source of the literary vocation, for inventing beings and stories? The answer, I think, is rebellion. I'm convinced that those who immerse themselves in the lucubration of lives different from their own demonstrate indirectly their rejection and criticism of life as it is, of the real world, and manifest their desire substitute for it the creations of their imagination and dreams. Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial and fanciful as the creation of fictional realities? Naturally, those who rebel against life as it is, using their ability to invent different lives and different people, may do so for any number of reasons, honorable or dishonorable, generous or selfish, complex or banal. The nature of this basic questioning of reality, which to my mind lies at the heart f every literary calling, doesn't matter at all. What matter is that the rejection be strong enough to fuel the enthusiasm for a tasks as quixotic as tilting at windmills - the sleight-of-hand replacement of the concrete, objective world of life as it is lived with the subtle and ephemeral world of fiction." 

Tanpa surat Vargas Llosa, saya fikir, saya tidak akan dapat menyiapkan dua novel terawal saya. Nak harapkan "nasihat" daripada orang lain di sekeliling saya, memang tidaklah. Beliau juga mengingatkan tentang pentingnya daya kuasa memujuk dalam sebuah novel:

"In its persuasive efforts, the novel aims for exactly the opposite effect: to reduce the distance that separates fiction from reality and, once that boundary is elided, to make the reader live the lie of fiction as if it were the most eternal truth, its illusions the most consistent and convincing depictions of reality. That is the trick great novels play: they convince us that the world is the way they describe it, as if fiction were not what it is, the picture of a world dismantled and rebuilt to satisfy the radical urge to remake reality, the urge that fuels the novelist's vocation whether he knows it or not."

Saya turut cadangkan untuk bakal novelis buku The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (1973-1982), Virginia Woolf: A Writers Diary, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel oleh Jane Smiley, semua surat Gustave Flaubert, dan buku underrated Adam Thirlwell Miss Herbert.        

Di samping itu saya kongsikan video yang menghimpunkan nasihat seniman-seniman terkenal dari serata dunia.