The book is not the book. How could it be? At first, in the morning of reading, I read carefully, impassionedly. And when morning became noon? I thought: the book is strong as I too am strong. At page 90, I can leave it for a while. Page 90, and the book is the book and I am I, and we can be apart.
That was noon. And now? Many more pages have turned. I reached page 250 today. It’s the afternoon of reading. But isn’t it in the afternoon that reading loses itself? A sign of loss is to read more, to read intensely. Reading becomes voracious. But voracity is anxious, as if the hold of the book has loosened. I read quickly, intensively, but that is a sign of the failure of reading.
The book is not the book; that much is sure. When did it fail me – or did I fail it? Or was it another book I failed – the book behind this book? Yes, that book – the one my reading always sought and which I’d thought, this time, I’d found. I’d lost it, that book, and this book, the one I was reading, became a book on the way to the book, a book among others.
Have I failed the book? Did it fail me? Or have we both turned aside, disappointed in one another? It is there on my bed now. I am halfway through. Page 250. Halfway through, its spine cracked open, generous, my place in the close printed pages kept by a pencil. It is there, a book like other books, readable, finishable and in which I will not approach the book all books are hiding.
How, I ask myself, did its author let himself be carried away so! Why did he think he could write an epic, why a book of this length! Perhaps, I tell myself, the book will heal itself; perhaps it will come together. But I have read enough of this author to know no turn will occur. This is the way it will be.
The book runs on, but it does not bear me. It runs on, and I am not borne. Am I reader? No; I am a watcher; the book is a spectacle. It was the book of life, and now it is a book like any other. I am a spectator; it is not essential to me; I read to see how it will turn out; I read because I want to have finished the oeuvre of this particular author.
Now the book is attached to a name – failure. Now it is part of an oeuvre – failure. And who am I, the reader? The one thrown back on himself, refused – but called anew by a book beyond this book. What name will it take, the next time it is born? What name will it bear, this book, in its next incarnation?
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