"I don't know what pornography has come to mean today, but I know what pornography is not. I recently saw the horrid TV broadcast against Ovidiu Verdes's book, the whole pathetic setup designed to compromise an author. I consider Musics and Tricks as one of the purest – in the Salingerian sense – novels Romanian literature has got. I'm not bothered about the few words said in some place by one of his characters, a streetwise alley cat, like all boys do in real life. What was pornographic (as defined by Gombrowicz!) was that TV news broadcast in which a ridiculous, righteous voice could be heard, women engaged in a strip-tease act could be seen in a corner of the screen, while a magnifying glass was hovering above printed words that are not supposed to be read by children in a novel (but may be heard and seen on TV in prime time!). I wonder when they'll make a similar little unmasking film about The Uprising (the Nadina scene), take Creanga out of schoolbooks for having written The Tale of All Tales, and even Eminescu for Anthropomorphism, Urmuz because of his character, The Funnel, and so forth."
by Simona Popescu (b. 1965)
