Literary Ovelap

Thank you, _________. I have noted down the number of that post, and I give you my blood oath that I will take a crack at the question when I get there. But in the meantime, what do you think?

__________, it is a little disconcerting to know that someone can see through me as easily as you do.

I wrote somewhere about the eerie experience of finishing off The Lacuna and diving right into 2666 and in the very first paragraph of 2666 I encountered the word “lacuna.” That is a rarely used word after all. It was like I was off on some weird continuation of the experience of Ms. Kingsolver's book.

Then I encountered Guerra's discussion of biographies—which we all know are exactly the same thing as historical fiction—at page 200:

People have a thirst to learn about other people's lives, the lives of their famous contemporaries, the one who made it big or came close, and they also have a thirst to know what the old chincuales did, maybe even to learn something, although they aren't prepared to jump through the same hoops themselves. (Emphasis mine.)

My reaction was immediate. There I had been, reading about those old chincuales Rivera, Kahlo, and Trotsky, trying to learn something but not prepared to jump through the hoops myself. That is the sort of “epiphany” that 2006 provides.