My Two Worlds

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I begin as I’ll end: adrift. And I begin by wondering if novels have no choice but to narrate a story. The answer couldn’t be simpler: whether they intend to or not, they always tell a story. Because there’s not a single intelligent reader who, given something unique to read, even the most hermetic of novels, would fail to read a story into that impenetrable text. Now then, what happens if the reader is intelligent but the novelist isn’t? I suspect that in those cases a great party takes place. I remember Georges Simenon saying that it’s absolutely unnecessary for a novelist to be intelligent, quite the opposite: the less intelligent he is, the more possibilities open up to him as a novelist. He was unquestionably right, for I’ve dealt with great novelists throughout my life and none have seemed very intelligent to me, especially compared to other people I’ve known, those devoted to other arts, to business, or to the sciences. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. The great Argentine novelist, Sergio Chejfec, is one of them. But if I really think about it, Chejfec is someone intelligent for whom the word novelist is a poor fit, because he creates artifacts, narrations, books, narrated thoughts rather than novels. My Two Worlds, for instance, is above all a book that reminds us that there are novels with stories, but there are also not-so-orthodox novels — Chejfec’s are in this camp — though these may also contain stories. The story in My Two Worlds isn’t easy to summarize because — as is true for all his novels — what’s important seems merely an excuse to highlight the dramatic role of the incidental.

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