A Heart So White (Vintage International)

by Javier Marías

You see, you watch a video the way you watch television, with impunity. We never look so closely or brazenly at anyone in the flesh, because in any other circumstance we know that the other person will also be watching us, or that they might see us watching them on the sly. It’s an infernal invention, it’s put an end to transience, to the possibility of deceiving oneself and describing the way things happened differently from how they actually did happen. They’ve put an end to memory, which was imperfect and open to manipulation, selective and variable. Now that you can’t remember something at your leisure once it’s been recorded, how can you remember something that you know you can see again, exactly as it happened, in slow motion if you like? How can you possibly alter it?”