the Canadian prophet who announced the death of thenbook in 1980. It was Sir Edmund Leach, eminent Britishnsocial anthropologist, then provost of King’s College. That isnto say, a distinguished mandarin of the alphabetic culture ofnour time. We should not take such statements lightly. If SirnEdmund Leach thinks that the alphabet stinks, something innthe alphabet must be rotten.nIt is true that for many people the written word isnbecoming more and more dispensable. The most flagrantnexample is to be found among the children of our time, tonwhom television programs give what novels of Kari May,nSalgari, Jules Verne, and the great Alexandre Dumas gavenme. Radio and television have taken the place of newspapersnand magazines as the main source of information on currentnaffairs, and although the number of readers in the world isngrowing in absolute terms, there is no doubt that, relativelynspeaking, the printed word has less influence today than itnhad in the past. Books are less important to the literatenpeople of today (considering the time they devote to themnand the effect they have on their lives) than they were to thenliterate people of the past. This should worry us, becausenalthough 1 doubt that the prophecy of Professor Leach willnmaterialize soon, if it does come true it will probably be andisaster for humanity.nMy pessimism is based on two certainties. First, that thenaudiovisual culture is more easily controlled, manipulated,nand degraded by power than the written word. Because ofnthe solitude in which it is born, the speed at which it can benreproduced and circulated, the secrecy with which it conveysnits message, and the lasting mark on people’s consciencenof literary images, the written word has revealed anstubborn resistance to enslavement. In all totalitarian andnauthoritarian societies, if there is dissidence, it is through thenwritten word that it manifests and keeps itself alive. In a goodnnumber of places, wridng is the last bastion of freedom.nWith its demise, the submission of minds to political powerncould be total. In the kingdom of audiovisual, the master ofntechnology and budget is the king of cultural production.nAnd in a closed society, this always means, directly ornindirectly, the state. It would decide what men should andnshould not learn, say, hear, and (in the end) dream. Therenwould be no underground culture, no counterculture, nonsamizdat. This society, once personal choice and initiativenin cultural activities are removed, would easily slip intonmental slavery.nAnd the robot citizens of that world would probably alsonbe dumb. Because, unlike books, the audiovisual productntends to limit imagination, dull sensibility, and create passivenminds. I am not a retrograde, allergic to audiovisual culture.nOn the contrary, after literature I love nothing more thannthe cinema and I deeply enjoy a good television program.nBut the impact of the audiovisual on the spirit never matchesnthe effect of books: it is ephemeral, and the participation ofnthe listener’s or the spectator’s intellect and fantasy isnminimal compared with that of the reader’s. Even in the fewncountries where television has reached a high level ofncreativity, the average program, that which sets the pattern,nis cheap, its strategy being to embrace the widest audiencenrunning for the lowest common denominator.nI do not believe this to be accidental. Technology andnbudgets exert a strong coercive force on originality and cannsuffocate and destroy it by guiding it too rigidly. This is thenreason why the most typical TV product is the serial, likenDallas or Dynasty, in which the director seems to bennothing more than a clever user (or servant) of those mightyntools: the economic and technical means.nThe nature of culture — either alphabetic or audiovisual,nfree or enslaved — does not stem from historical determination,nfrom the blind and impersonal evolution of science.nThe decisive factor will always be man’s choice, the decisionnof powers that can drive society in one direction or another.nIf books and gadgets are caught in a deadly fight and thenlatter defeat the former, the responsibility will lie with thosenwho chose to allow it to happen. But I do not think thisnOrwellian nightmare will really occur, for our fate, as writersnand readers, is linked to that illness or vice called freedom,nwhich humanity caught rather late in history and whichnaffects a good part of mankind in apparently an incurablenway.nWriting is a solitary business. Confronted with thenpiece of paper, pen in hand, so that what we callninspiration can pour out, one has no other choice but tonisolate oneself from immediate life and plunge into theninnermost universe of .memory, nostalgia, secret desires,nintuition, and instinct, all ingredients that nourish thencreative imagination. The process that gives birth to a fictionnis long, difficult, and fascinating. Although I have livednthrough this process many times since I wrote my first story,nI have never really been able fully to understand it. I am notnsure if this happens to all writers, but in my case at least,neven though I try to be lucid when writing and attempt tonexert a rational control over the story, characters, dialogues,nand landscape that appear as the words flow out, I can nevernavoid a certain darkness that, like a shadow, escorts thenconscious task of writing a novel.nThe element that rushes out spontaneously from thenmost secret corner of one’s personality imposes a specialncoloring upon the story one is trying to write, establishesnhierarchies among the characters that sometimes subtlynoverturn our conscious intention, and adorns or impregnatesnthat which we are narrating with a meaning or symbolismnthat, in some cases, not only does not coincide with ournideas but can even go as far as to substantially contradictnthem. The writer, the artist, is much more than merenintelligence, reason, ideas. He is also that shady region ofnone’s personality that our consciousness is always repressingnor ignoring. In the creative process, as in the magicalnexorcisms and healings of the primitive, that region manifestsnand imposes itself, restoring that completeness of thenindividual that, in almost all other social or private activities,nappears incised, reduced only to its conscious counterpart.nPerhaps because they are born from the associated effortnof reason and unreason, of intellect and intuition, of the freenflight of fantasy and the dark intentions of the unconscious,nthe products of art and literature possess the continuity thatnallows them gracefully to cross the centuries and the barriersnof geography and language, maintaining the vigor andnpower that time, instead of spoiling, increases. The peripeteianof the gods and the men of ancient Creece, which anblind poet recited three thousand years ago, still dazzle usntoday and, just like those remote ancestors who heard themnnnAPRIL 1992/15n