"There’s an old quote about buying books: we think we are buying the time to read them, but having been a hoarder myself when I was younger I understand it differently, we were buying the selves we imagined we would become after we had read them, the great works, the great thoughts and each one bought was a new possible self, our own future greatness, claimed, set aside, each one sold on a small grief for that self’s loss, our future diminished. The dizziness in libraries or bookshops, the circling of souls, selves, worlds. It was easy to get trapped there, enchanted, enchained."
Carl Neville, from The Fullfillment* Centre
I sat at an empty table with the book. I opened its covers and felt its pages reach through my eyes into my body with their inky tendrils of words. The book was reading me. Initially polite, it grew impatient with my shallow characterization, cliched plotlines, and postmodern evasions of a strong, central narrative. It scribbled in my margins and flicked aggressively from my introduction to my acknowledgements, looking for something novel. It turned down the corner on the one memory that it found compelling (the death of my tortoise). Finally, in a gesture of complete and completed disgust, it slammed my eyelids shut. I closed its covers and returned it to its place on shelf to await the next reading.
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