Giving thanks for having a country of one's own is like being grateful for having an arm. How would I write if I were to lose this arm? Writing with a pencil between the teeth is a way of standing on ceremony with ourselves. Witnesses swear to me that I am the most Portuguese of all the Portuguese members of my family. It's as if they were always greeting me with an "Ah, France! Anatole, Anatole!" the way Lévi-Strauss was greeted in a village in the Brazilian countryside. The only family members we manage to speak with, how-ever, are those who are unable to respond. We operate under the belief that this family interprets the world for us when in reality we spend our lives translating the new world into their language. I say to Lévi-Strauss: "This is my aunt, she's a great admirer of yours." Lévi-Strauss invariably replies: "Ab, France! Anatole ...," etc. To write with a pencil between one's teeth is to write to a villager who finds himself before his first Frenchman. The matter of knowing who is responding to what we write might provide us with relief from our miniature interests, bringing us to imagine that what we say is important, despite it all. To stand on ceremony with what it is we have to say is, however, a form of blindness. Writing has little to do with imagination and resembles a way of coming to deserve the lack of a response. Our life is overrun all he time by this taciturn family- memory-the way Thatcher ared that English culture would be overrun by immigrants.

ISBN: 9781947793415