Since I have never been one for making speeches (and I’m not sure I’d know how), I’m going to tell you a story.
The story is about a writer (a writer who always speaks very fast) who is invited one day to make the of?cial opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This happens the year in which Catalan culture is the guest culture of the Fair. A year that could be, let’s say, 2007. The writer in question —Catalan himself and, hence, on his guard— hesitates before accepting the assignment. He thinks, “Now what should I do? Accept the invitation? Not accept it? Should I decline with a pleasant excuse? If I accept, what will people think? If I don’t accept, what will people think?”
I don’t know how these things work in other countries, but I can assure you that in my country people tend to think many thoughts, and to draw many conclusions. If you say one day that, when the tailor takes your measurements for a suit and asks, “Do you dress right or left?”, you answer that you dress right (or left), people draw conclusions. If you go to the fruit store and order apples they draw conclusions. If you order oranges, they draw them as well.
Whatever you do —dress right or left, buy apples or oranges— people have a very high degree of perspicacity. People are practically clairvoyant, and they always deduce one thing or another, right down to seeing cities that don’t appear on any map. If you step forward, you should have stood still. If you stand still, you should have stepped forward. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But as it happens the writer in question feels he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for forming part of the culture they have invited to be the guest at Frankfurt that year, so he decides to accept. Obviously they will never propose to him that he make the of?cial opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair the year they invite the Turkish, Vietnamese, or N’gndunga culture. So he says yes, he’ll do it, and he sits right down at a table, gets out a ball point pen and a notebook, and starts ruminating on what he should say.
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