It is from the school of physical things. The same thing happens with reading as with records: if he can’t touch the object, he forgets it. He does not recover it, he does not revisit it, he does not savor it. It’s like she doesn’t have access. Miquel Serra needs paper books, “they transmit something so warm.” Therefore, with what he earned from the first strawberry planting – in 2012 or 2013 – he made a custom shelf, drawn by himself, for books, vinyl records and music equipment. His friend Mònica, a designer at Camper, suggested that one of the corners be rounded.
It is on the upper floor of a duplex, in Manacor, sloping ceiling, windows on both sides, Majorcan blinds, next to a keyboard, an old red television, a large wooden table, armchairs, a Beatles poster, paintings of his brother Joan and a framed portrait of James Salter; She started reading it because it reminded her of his grandfather Miquel Sansó (there is a photo of him and another of his grandmother Bàrbara in the frame): the same elegance, benevolent look. She immediately became one of his passions, one of his passions.
Another was Foster Wallace, for his vocabulary and the way he approached and told things. Let’s talk about lobsters was followed by two essays and a book of stories. Someone who choked gave him Infinite Jest. When Serra writes, he does so infected with that verbose and vertiginous Wallace; also by Fitzgerald and Pedro Mairal. Robertson Davies, in Asteroid Books, was a discovery. He became obsessed with Eduard Limonov after Carrère’s novel; He has five of his books, and in Cala Morlanda, a few more. There he usually reads in a rocking chair, on a terrace facing the sea, “a very Mediterranean picture.”
Every time he goes somewhere – to the MOT, to the dentist – he carries a book in case he has to wait. He tries not to be too fat, although now he is with Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann, a single sentence in about 1,272 pages. Except when he gets up in the morning, he can read at any time; especially in the afternoon, and always, always, before going to sleep. He has read since he was little, motivated by his brother and by an EGB professor, Agapito, who discovered Roald Dhal and Ole Lund Kirkegaard; “Albert is an absolute marvel.” So a part of the library is dedicated to those initial editions of children’s literature. In AbeBooks he found An Adventure at the Wheel and saves old Spirou, and a Geyper water game that is 40 years old.
Devotion to literature would come when studying agricultural technical engineering in Barcelona. He had enjoyed Sinhué, the Egyptian and not so much with One Hundred Years of Solitude; he understood that he would have to select. Through a roommate, the Henry Miller era began. Then he pulled for his account. He is fascinated by The Dream of Africa, by Javier Reverte, and Between Land and Sea, by Joseph Conrad.
He buys them in Món de Llibres, in Babel, he rescues them from a green spot. He found La uruguaya for one euro in Capdepera. For half a euro, several by Manuel Puig. He likes Lucia Berlin, Cynthia Ozick. He wants them to captivate him and be well written. He says that there are very good ideas in science fiction, but the problem is that most of them fall out of his hands, and that pisses him off. Of course, if a book is super well written and it doesn’t move forward, he gets tired of it; That’s what happens with Richard Ford. “I want inventiveness, outcomes like those of Ted Chiang or Aldous Huxley,” of whom he loves Little Archimedes.
On the lower floor, behind the sofa and in front of the fireplace, are the music players; Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, everything Paul McCartney. A boy in Barcelona sold him the Diccionari Alcover-Moll for two hundred euros, and he carried the ten volumes in his backpack after a concert, with the guitar and several pedals, to the plane. His back still hurts. He would hate to lose Buñuel’s memoirs and Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. But if only he could have one on the typical desert island it would be the I Ching. “It’s like taking you to a very wise grandfather.” He bought it at Wallapop, split with a friend, because it was very expensive. He recently bought it again for himself. He is oracular. The more sincere he is and the more respectful of his way of being, the more the book gets it right: “It is not tarotism, it is not astrology, it is a very deep knowledge; I don’t know how they were able to establish a method for you to find what you need.”
