Why read at all? Why does anyone do it in the first place? Why do I? There is the element of escape, which is real enough—that’s a real-enough comfort. But also we read as a way to come to grips with the randomness of our being alive. To read a book by an observant, sympathetic mind is to see the human landscape in all its odd detail, and the reader says to him or herself, Yes, that’s how it is, only I didn’t know it to describe it. There’s a fraternity achieved, then: we are not alone. Sometimes an author’s voice is familiar to us from the first page, first paragraph, even if the author lived in another country, in another century.” Bob held up his stack of Russians. “How can you account for this familiarity? I do believe that, at our best, there is a link connecting us.
part of aging, at least for many of us, was to see how misshapen and imperfect our stories had to be. The passage of time bends us, it folds us up, and eventually, it tucks us right into the ground.
And while the partial truth is that I don’t believe, the fuller truth is that I believe just enough that I’m uncomfortable talking about my not believing.
You’re too young to know the melancholy of returning to a place where once you had thrived. I can say it is not as bad as it sounds. But then, Bob, I’m making a distinction between melancholy and sorrow. Do you understand the difference?” “No.” “Melancholy is the wistful identification of time as thief, and it is rooted in memories of past love and success. Sorrow is a more hopeless proposition. Sorrow is the understanding you shall not get that which you crave and, perhaps, deserve, and it is rooted in, or encouraged by, excuse me, the death impulse.
Bob, the shrug is a useful tool, and seductive in its way; but it is only one arrow in the quiver and we mustn’t overuse it lest we give the false impression of vacancy of the mind, do you see my point?
Days flattened fact, was the merciful truth of the matter. A bell was struck and it sang by the blow performed against it but the noise of the violence moved away and away and the bell soon was cold and mute, intact.
When the work was over there was the maintenance of his home and person and of course his reading, which was a living thing, always moving, eluding, growing, and he knew it could not end, that it was never meant to end.
Bob had long given up on the notion of knowing anyone, or of being known. He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it.
Eileen was not charming but had contemplated charm and could perform a version of it that was convincing so long as you didn't inspect it very closely.
A stream of leaves funneled down the road and pulled him toward his mint-coloured house, the location of his life, the place where he passed through time, passed through rooms.
