In ‘Papiroflexia’ the writer and journalist brings together hundreds of aphorisms in a special tribute to books and reading
“Writing aphorisms is like drawing thoughts in the air with words.” This is ensured by Guillermo Busutil (Granada, aged 61), a writer and journalist who made his first and successful foray into the old and demanding genre with ‘Papiroflexia’ (Fórcola). It is the special and heartfelt tribute to the book and to the reading by the winner of the National Prize for Cultural Journalism 2021, for whom reading is “the origami of the imagination” and a salutary miracle that “allows us to to miss. ”
His editor, Javier Jiménez, led him to bring together the brilliant flashes that Busutil is used to spreading in its articles and texts in one book. And he went on. Of the 751 aphorisms contained in ‘Papiroflexia’, 90% are newly invented and 10% come from earlier texts.
Busutil carefully collected and illuminated these “bow ties of language”, always halfway between philosophical thought and playing with the lexicon that refers us to the greguerías of Ramón Gómez de la Serna, to the sharp sayings of Lichtenberg or La Rochefoucauld, or to the luminous aerolites by Carlos Edmundo de Ory. “It’s about taking geometry out of language and drawing ideas with words,” emphasizes this Granada polyhedral author living in Malaga, clarifying the essence of a book “that aims to leave questions and echoes behind.”
He likes, he writes, “disobedient books”, “writers with a cross-border vocation” and “being alone with words”. Thus in ‘Papiroflexia’ he gives us expressions that, like butterflies and conch shells, flutter and whisper in our imagination, inviting us to read the books that have been precise compasses in his life in the life of the author ‘La Cultura, dear Robinson’ and former director of Mercury magazine.
His great little book is also the mirror of an era that is still moving from paper to bit, from the page of paper to the pages of light from a screen, “creating mirages that prompt us to see what they want us to see” . However, it celebrates the always beneficial effects of reading and the love of books. With them, Busutil builds a clear and loving relationship “through the self, through childhood, the reader’s creation, through the spaces and ideas that reading and language generate as boundary space or through the sharpness that the word demands.”
For Nuria Barrios, who precedes ‘Papiroflexia’, the book is evidence of “an intense love for imagination, language and books”. “The same love that moves the sun and the stars, as Dante wrote in the ‘Divine Comedy’. Without him, nothing is worth living,” concludes the writer.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
