Fragments (2)

He did not want to go home this way. Australia was a distant dream, too far to reach.

So he stopped writing what seemed bound to be mediocre, he now felt, and moved back into straightjacket lit crit. As he became stuck in this new phase, he felt moving into an entirely new direction, by comparing different regions of the world, at the crossroad between different modes of representation. Their passage back and forth across borders turns migrants into heroes of our time. Their writing back to the "homeland" also combines an attack on the "hostland" culture.

He wrote enough bullshit every day, and the reader liked it. They kept buying his books mechanically, year after year, analysing his style in different ways. There came a time, though, when he decided to quit, quite simply. Job did not pay all that well after all, with the financial crisis and all that. He was staring at the bookshelf full with his books, thinking, 'God, what have I done?'

He had to crack the code on the palimpsest. All we was left with was a magic slate he used to erase his thoughts with as they flowed past.

To focalise on the English language as a non-English speaking linguist, translator or a writer means a radical transformation of the texture of a text. A ventriloquist act of depravity and deprivation, a sanction for political licence, dissent and disagreement.