Garima’s Reviews > Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003 > Status Update

The books that he always read with enthusiasm were like aspirin for a headache or like the opaque sunglasses that some madmen wear to block out everything and find peace, because the truth experienced day by day as visibility is exhausting and sometimes brings on madness. Or maybe what he expected from books was messages in a bottle or windows through which one sees Alice’s rabbit skim past like a lightning bolt.

Cervantes realizes that writers don’t need anyone to sing the praises of their work. We sing its praises ourselves. Our way of praising it is often to curse the evil hour that we decided to become writers, but most of the time we clap and dance when we’re alone, because this is a solitary pursuit, and we read aloud what we’ve written and that’s our way of singing our own praises.