Auto-perguntas

O número 100 da revista Granta, com a sua espantosa capa concebida por David Hockney e uma lista de participantes de cair para o lado (Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, Hanif Kureishi, Doris Lessing, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ian McEwan, Harold Pinter, Salman Rushdie, Nicholas Shakespeare, entre outros), traz lá dentro um desafio curioso lançado por Tobias Wenzel, um jornalista freelancer que vive em Berlim, a vários escritores por ele entrevistados.
Explica Wenzel:

«”I have never been asked by a journalist what my favourite colour is”, Frank McCourt told me once, with a tinge of irony and some disappointment. His statement made a link to a problem that I have experienced for a long time as a literary journalist: the doubt that I might forget a question, a question that could be crucial to the person I was interviewing. So, two years ago, I decided to turn my anxiety into a game. At the end of each interview, I asked the writer to adopt the role of the interviewer, asking him- or herself a question and then supplying the answer.»

O projecto tem um site, já deu origem a um livro e algumas das auto-perguntas vão aparecendo ao longo desta edição especial da Granta.
Aquelas de que mais gostei foram as de Hans Magnus Enzensberger:

«Mr. Enzensberger, why are you not unhappy?
The time I have left is too precious for that.»

De Jonathan Franzen:

«Mr. Franzen, you’re at a point in your life and in your career where you really don’t have to pose for photographs anymore. You’ve been photographed hundreds of times. You could just say: no more. Why don’t you do that? Why are you so agreeable when people ask to take your picture?
Well, Mr. Franzen, that’s a very good question. I think I do it because it would be even more costly of energie to try to say no. I do it because it’s the path of least resistance. I do it because sometimes it’s easier just to be nice. It’s a way of preserving privacy paradoxically to put yourself out there and smile for the camera. When you say yes, you’re controlling something which by saying no you might be not in control of. The more you show of yourself the more protected you are. I don’t know how that works. But that’s the way it feels.»

E de Richard Ford:

«Richard Ford, do you know what’s important to you?
No, but I can make it up.»

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