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Let’s suppose for a moment that we had to sketch José and Carlos in a single sentence. That we were allowed to proffer no more than, for example, thirteen words describing them—their existence summed up in the space of a telegram. In such a case, the words we chose would probably be these:

They’re rich.

They fancy themselves poets.

They want to be Juan Ramón Jiménez.

Fortunately, no one is asking us to be so brief.