Exposure

I haven't read anything in … how long? It's been weeks since a narrative was able to stitch together my days. From this side of the page, nothing else could stitch them together. So I take down a book about Sebald from my shelf, read half an essay, then a book about Handke. I read the prefatory remarks in a book of Bernhard's poetry.

But there's no reading, not really. You need be buried somewhere to read, that's what I tell myself. Need a kind of pit. But the new house is open on all sides, it seems. Light streams through it, and there can be no secrets, and hence no reading.

Before we moved, I'd thought the bay window would be right for that big book of Arbus. Read it there. Look at it there. And then the big Bergman book – read that on the chaise longue. But when it came to it? Too much light through the window. Too much exposure, as though the sun was taking a picture of me over the days and weeks. A five week exposure.

The new house. No damp, for one thing. No rats. We moved in on the 31st March. It's now … the 5th May. Should I take home the three volumes of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centuries? Bought them on the honeymoon. Is it the kind of house in which you can read history?

I admit I reread Bernhard's The Loser recently. I reread Yes before that. I thought I needed a rat's tunnel to run through. But that wasn't real reading, there in the second bedroom (more than one bedroom now). Didn't I try a Schklovsky book yesterday? Zoo? But it was too weak for me, or I for it. The pages weren't strung together enough for me. Too much fuss; too much niggling. I wanted something to drive me through the days and nights.

What about The Kindly Ones, then? I shudder. Too big – too big for the time being. Another day. That'd be a real committment, The Kindly Ones. You'd have to carry it with you when you travelled, for one thing. You couldn't leave it behind. And if you're travelling often?

I took Trio by Pinget to Ireland, but that didn't work for me. Too loose. It drove to me to the study bookshelves instead. I read children's history books. I read bits of Patrick Kavanagh's autobiography. I read books about Native Americans. I read a very bad book by a prominent critic and complained about it at length. I read a study guide to the Bible. I read Thomas Merton and was disappointed by Thomas Merton as I always am.

And then I eyed up books in Cork Waterstones to buy. Which one, which one, and with Ireland so expensive? Should I really try Post Office, as W. suggested? Is it time for The Master and the Margharita? Then there's that new critical guide/ biography to Coltrane …

In the end, what I needed, I decided, was a biography. I needed the certainty of a linearly told life, beginning at birth, ending with death and the aftermath. Or at least a chunk of a life: think of Stach's Kafka, for example. Stach's magnificent Kafka. Should I try the V. S. Naipaul biography then? It's been so well received. Look at those blurbs on the cover. And it's a nice cover. There's V.S. Naipaul himself, young and dapper … But then I should at least read Mr Biswas first, shouldn't I? Or finish The Enigma of Arrival?

My Cork dilemma, as usual. My Cork Dilemma: call it that, Bernhardianly. And my stand-by in the bookshop in Rory Gallagher Square had gone too – a book by Butor about Manchester, how unlikely! I never thought it would sell! Who bought it? Who bought my stand-by?

No real reading, then, and in how long? Five weeks or so. Light from all sides streaming into the house (not really; it's one of a terrace). And now there's the allotment, and the small front garden. Outdoor work. Labour in the fresh air, digging and planting, all that. In the sun, the sun streaming everywhere. I'm quite brown, you can't hide from it.

And what picture's being exposed? What picture's forming? From this side of the page, there's no one pictured; for who am I without something to read? But from the other side, reading and writing belong to phantoms …