Extremes are sometimes necessary

And another name for the TBR list--Kiko Amat:

Regarding Latin America, Amat said the region awakens in him “an enormous fascination; it’s a world that’s so strange. There’s a really beautiful enthusiasm that clearly is non-European.”

“I love how the concept of the artist here is lived from the standpoint of celebrating that privilege, while in Europe there’s a perspective that’s much more comfortable, as if (the artist) were someone who had always been born for that,” he said.

He also criticized contemporary Spanish culture, which he said is “boring and serious,” adding that “even when they try to approach the popular ambit, they do so in a way that’s so pompous, so academic and so pretentious.”

“I don’t have to apologize to the cultural elites because I like ‘Spiderman.’ But not apologizing for that makes me sound strange within the literary world. (But) I have no intention of being accepted by the popes of high culture; that doesn’t interest me in the slightest,” he said.

(via The Literary Saloon)