Instead I wrote down a few titles on a napkin—Suspended Sentences, Wittgenstein’s Poker, Shantytown, Heart of a Dog—and handed it to him. Afterwards it occurred to me that I hadn’t written down the book that was open before me, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories Stories by Akutagawa, nor the one in my pocket, The Lover by Marguerite Duras. Some weirdness on my part. A childish possessiveness—I had staked them as my territory, their atmosphere particular and concurrent to my own.
