Demons, etc

Never mind those people who learn Italian in order to read Dante in the original – I read in another blog today a comment by a reader whose reading of a certain contemporary novel took years, who gave up his job and moved to an unfurnished flat in Spain to finally crack it. It’s like coming across a holy man, someone who’s taken a vow, and I don’t know what to make of this. Although, of course, it's no more odd a way of spending one’s days than working in a factory making vacuum cleaners, or being a stockbroker. W sent me a fragment translated from the Polish entitled Talking to a Wise Man: ‘The moment he opened his mouth the demons started coming out of me . . .’ Me, I found a piece of wood this evening and got out a hammer and a saw and some nails and glue and made a bookshelf – sheer escapism.