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MIGUEL BARNET:
A Runaway Slave with an Angel's Craft
By: Ciro Bianchi Ross | Photos: Silvia Mayra
Miguel Barnet wears a cap to keep his head warm while he puts pen to paper. He says that all great literature is hand-written. He is afraid of the computer because every time a word appears on the screen he begins to see it like something carved in stone, definitive, something that won't let him move on. It deprives him of the pleasure of the blank page filled with his symbols, of the pleasure of crumpling up a page, which is like killing an imperfect creature so as to create a healthy one.
That's what he did, painfully, with the first three hundred pages of Oficio de Ángel, started in 1975. He knew he would return to it someday and so he did, in 1987 when, while staying at an ugly hotel in Valencia, Spain, he took a piece of paper and wrote "And the time of the river began. And the surface water was never again calm. And the night became day..."
Barnet is 68 years old and creates an extrovert personality for others. He is really a melancholy person; a sad man who always seems happy
while he puts pen to paper. He says that all great literature is hand-written. He is afraid of the computer because every time a word appears on the screen he begins to see it like something carved in stone, definitive, something that won't let him move on. It deprives him of the pleasure of the blank page filled with his symbols, of the pleasure of crumpling up a page, which is like killing an imperfect creature so as to create a healthy one. 
That's what he did, painfully, with the first three hundred pages of Oficio de Ángel, started in 1975. He knew he would return to it someday and so he did, in 1987 when, while staying at an ugly hotel in Valencia, Spain, he took a piece of paper and wrote "And the time of the river began. And the surface water was never again calm. And the night became day..."
