Reading from a Distance

In 2012 Antonio Muñoz Molina began the article “Paisajes del idioma” in El País with the question: “¿Cómo sería encontrar en el periódico de la mañana un nuevo artículo de Julio Camba, de Josep Pla?” [What would it be like to find an article by Julio Camba or Josep Pla in the morning newspaper?]. It would not be odd for Muñoz Molina's readers to imagine that he is referencing a travel piece by one of these writers. After all, between them, the two writers traveled to well over 20 countries and cities during their careers, and wrote for over a dozen newspapers, often about their visits to places throughout the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. Although Muñoz Molina's article appears in an Iberian daily, a reader in the know might wonder whether he asked this question from Madrid or from New York. Since around 2001 Muñoz Molina has been dividing his time between the two cities, all the while contributing regularly to El País. Was he simply wondering what it would be like to read a Camba or Pla article as would, say, a Spanish-language reader in Madrid reading about New York, of which he had only seen a few images, if any? Or was Muñoz Molina overhauling the initial way in which these articles were experienced publicly and imagining a reader in New York, like himself perhaps, waking up to lay eyes on a New York article by Camba or Pla in the day's paper?

The first situation is straightforward; the latter uproots the reader and the text to reduce the distance between the reader and the context of the text's creation. In other words, the second situation shifts the reader to a place different other than where the texts were first read publicly, but minimizes the distance between the reader and the place read about, bringing the texts back to their place of origin. Muñoz Molina might have also been lamenting the fact that the book form in which we now find Camba's and Pla's texts alters the original context in which they were generally experienced: as periodically published articles leaving their faithful readers eager to receive the arrival of their next words. Nonetheless, Muñoz Molina's words encourage a consideration of a central issue: was he going back in time to the initial context in which these texts were made available to readers?