The Life and Times of a Poor Bibliophile

He stared at her deformed toes, waggling nervously before the shabby couch, in which her lump body had sunk away. Her frowned face stared puzzled at the crossword she had found to occupy herself with. A fire ball of hate welled up in his guts simply watching her. He turned to the book shelves in the living room, her living room, and felt relieved, deeply felt inner joy, the sight of these books gave him an overwhelming pleasure. The fact was that she had the best bookshelves of anyone he knew. Although now, she was a repulsive mass of thoughtless babble, she once, as a student, had been a promising Lacanian psycho-analyst. Her shelves were filled with surrealist literature, existentialist plays, and works by Lacan and Freud. But in the last ten years she had not read a single book of interest anymore, indulging in the mediocre life of a routine-filled job as an editor for a psychological magazine. Georges counted the backs of the books he had lined up in the top right shelves. All the other books he had read already in the long years since they had met. Thirty-two to go, he whispered. He never had loved her, he found no sexual attraction in her body, in her dull eyes, he hated kissing her thin lips, but once a week he kissed those horrid lines in her face. Thirty-two times ten, three-hundred and twenty days, one more year, he crossed the lines in the imaginary wall of the prison of his relationship with her, then he would be free of her, having read all the books in her library, free to leave.

The Utility of Books

I never read a single book in my life. Yet, I was as happy as any man could be. I was curious like a child, and wanted to learn about life through living, being, and I loved to discuss my thoughts and to listen to the thoughts of others. I loved to debate the philosophy of men, great and insignificant, posing questions to test the opinions people held. When it came to truth, I believed that each man, each object held its own. So I pondered upon the essence of each thing, tried to penetrate the inner core and look upon the things as to be the thing itself, and I searched for the truths within each person and tried to look at their world with their set of eyes instead of my own. Sometimes, I would meditate for hours, trying to perceive the reality of the tree under which I sat, staring up at the umbrella of single leaves that lay scattered on the surface of the sky, attached to the stem only by the widening strings of the branches from which they dangled, and imagined looking down through a myriad of eyes, and touch the sky with a myriad of fingers, and looked at this sole figure on the ground, staring blankly, following the broad stem along its coarse, touching the dry, dead bark on the outside, covering the living soul of the inner stem, to hear its vibrant voice slowly speak thoughts stretched out through the ages, covering its elongated lifespan, seeing the drips of water, its flowing blood, being pressed up the veins from the subterranean depths of the roots, reaching widely across the ground, branching out, imagining the green, juicy but waxy structure of the leaves, the sunlight catalyzing the photosynthesis, turning carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar, imagine a single leaf choking, I would chew the leaves, chew the bark, chew the root that I dug up, I pressed my face in the soil, held out my arms like branches in the air, digging my toes into the earth, I imagined the birds jumping on my back, the bees buzzing in my ears, and the pleasurable arousal it caused, the wind pulling at the leaves, until I bled and finally were nude, liberated. I tried to seek an honest communication with the people and things around me, with the world, to tab into the energy that constituted all matter. Thus, once, I debated with a friend the utility of books. As I had never read a single line in my life, I was unable to convince him that there was only the truth of books in books, and that books could impossibly contain truth about anything else. Now, I was a jolly person, I smiled at each soul, I lay my arm around a man when I greeted him, I kissed the air before I breathed it, I blessed all the words with a soft whisper as they glided over my lips, and greeted each day with a happiness that drenched the earth, the sky and the eyes of man with a brightness of the stars. And with this friendly joy for everything that was, for life and existence of things, for the shadow and the light, I agreed to read a single book, before I would finally reject the utility of all books. I borrowed a tome that my friend handed me, which he wholeheartedly recommended, and guaranteed me that I would not regret reading it. That reading this book would open a door to a new dimension, that each word would hammer down a transcendental meaning that encompassed all. So I sat down under the tree on the hill, lay the book on my knees and read. I quickly scanned over the white paper, I tried to touch the texture of splinters, and looked at the black carvings of the letters, and slowly out of the forest of letters, life emerged, and I read. But something happened to me, I had barely finished the first line of the first paragraph, and a deep sadness welled up inside me, tears flowed from my soul, and as if my spirit left me empty, sitting there under the blossoming tree, I felt alone. For the first time in my life, I realized that I did not matter, that there was no meaning to truth, and that my pursuits of life were futile. Ever since, this empty sadness, this homelessness, this restless quest carved into my heart, has not left me, and I wake up every morning with tears in my eyes, reluctant for another day.

The Frenzy, Frank

'But ... where is the frenzy, Frank, the bang, the boom, buddy, the slang, the oof, the awe, man, the puzzling pinnacle, the dithyrambic dazzle, the mind blowing wit! Where is it? I don't see it. It is missing.'

'Because I want to portray the slow digression in the opening, I wanted to introduce the daunting detail of every day, the common element in every one's life, you know, the benign, the petite, the insignificant, the ordinary.'

'Well, I can't publish it like this. You need to drag in the stranger with a hook, grab their attention with a forceful act, persuade the casual reader, create their curiosity and awaken their empathy.'

'That's exactly why I start so small. Everyone can immediately identify with the plain, the prattle of coffee on the kitchen counter at seven in the morning. It's a symbolic dripping through the filter of every day life.'

'But it doesn't distinguish the antagonist, you must create the extraordinary, the fantastic, what is special, there's nothing heroic in there now.'

'Precisely my point, the drama is hidden in every common person, the theater of life is present and enacted in every person's life, and it starts on an empty stage, the tragedy slowly unfolds, never does the reader recognize when fate takes a turn, by the hour but without notice, the big drama in life comes in the form of a subtle sadness.'

'No, no, no... I can't sell such sensitive, gay nonsense, it's too intellectual, too transgressive, if you want to sell your work, you cannot think like a playwright, think like a Hollywood director, the big picture, brother. Where is the explosive opening, the disastrous event, the fireworks, think Broadway! If no body dies, no body cares.'