A few hours after I read the aphorism of Baltasar Gracian about doubling the sources of your joy and pleasure, Gracian popped up again n my life. When I read the aphorism at six in the morning, I got the idea of writing about it in the blog. When 'The Hindu' landed at the doorstep I eagerly picked it up and opened the Sunday magazine for book reviews and stuff like that. There was an essay titled 'The Craft of Difficult Writing' by Swaha Das and Hari Nair.
The essay was about why some writers deliberately chose to be difficult in their writing. One of the writers mentioned in the essay was Baltasar Gracian, for whom, the writers said, 'writing was both lucid and truant, giving and revieving pleasure in every page by playing games with the reader's mind.'
It was a well written essay and one of the rare pieces on writing that are published in the newspapers as I was saying in a previous post.
Later in the day, I was at Abids. I was reluctant to buy any more books this year. But when I saw a good copy of Peter Hoeg's ' Smilla's Sense of Snow' I couldn't resist. I got the book for only twenty rupees. I also saw Namita Gokhale's 'Paro', Peter Mayle's 'A Year in Provence', Scott Turow's 'One L' and a book by Lewis Grizzard. I have all these books except 'Paro' which I hope to pick up next Sunday.
Rest of the day I was on an odd assignment in an office where I spent my time reading Elmore Leonard's 'The Big Bounce' at a stretch. I am eagerly waiting for the next Sunday because it would be the first Sunday of the month and 'The Hindu' would carry 'Literary Review.' It is a long week's wait.
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