Alberto Manguel was born in Argentina and lives in Canada. He is a writer, translator, editor and critic whose books include A History of Reading and Curiosity (Yale), a memoir of a reading life. He will speak at Perth Writers' Festival, Adelaide Writers' Week, and The School of Life Melbourne (March 1) and Sydney (March 2).
FICCIONES
Jorge Luis Borges
![<b>Alberto Manguel: </b> Jorge Luis Borges reassured a young Manguel in his belief that the reader, not the writer, is ...](/web/20170310104725im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/f/9/b/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guf9ku.png/1487557897664.jpg)
Because I learned to read at a very early age, experience of the world came to me first through books. Borges reassured me in my belief that the reader, not the writer, is the true craftsman of a text. I remember the sense of vertigo I felt when I first read Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote and the assurance of my power as a reader. Ficciones was my conscious initiation to the literary world.
GAUDY NIGHT
Dorothy L. Sayers
Here I found the best piece of advice for writing when inspiration fails. Harriet Vane is trying to compose a delicate letter to Lord Peter Wimsey. She fails repeatedly, and finally says to herself: "What is the matter with me? Why can't I write a straightforward piece of English on a set subject?" And then she sits down and writes it. More times than I can say, this admonition has helped me get my work done.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND & THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
Lewis Carroll
I read the Alice books as a child of six or seven with some measure of amusement, but it was in my adolescence that Alice became for me a guide to the absurdity of the adult world. Curious, intelligent, with a keen sense of justice, frightened by the changes in her body, confused about who she really is, Alice uses reason to deal with the madness she encounters – and I've tried to follow her example.
POEMS
Gwen Harwood
In the '80s, I spent long evenings discussing poetry with Richard Outram (one of the great unrecognised poets of our time). I was trying to understand how our feeble instrument of language could ever seize the fathomless experience of the world. Richard told me to read Gwen Harwood. In one of her poems I found these lines: "Words in our undemanding speech/ hover and blend with things observed." Harwood's explanation was, for me, an epiphany.