For decades I was a voracious reader-not one of those
tablet or nook or kindle guys, actual books where you open them at page one and
use a bookmark (I was always partial to index cards so I could write down
questions and ideas about what I was reading as if the day might dawn when I
could offer Shakespeare or Heller a pop quiz).
There are some who bend the corner of a page to mark
their place-a practice I can never endorse or condone. I think it’s rude and
disrespectful of the process that created the work, such as it is bound by the
covers, etc.. It’s not a deal-breaker in terms of forming friendships though
since I don’t have friends, maybe it is.
I love books, no preference anymore for fiction or
non-fiction and immersing myself in one is a sort of adventure that requires
little to nothing of/from me except to turn the page and keep up the pace. I
was saddened to learn of the passing over the weekend of a favorite modern
German writer, Günter Grass, whose place in present-day German
literature is somewhat colored (if, as an auslander who was a guest in Germany
for many years, I may be allowed to offer my analysis, mein senf dazu (so zu
sagen)) by a moment of inadequate candor.
I came to know him, as did so many within and without
Germany, for Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), though Grass had
a full life and career beyond that novel and its cinematic treatment (and the
other two books that made up the trilogy).
It would be rude (though certainly not out of character)
for me to offer further observations or any attempted analysis on his life and
times, except to say I worked with many countrymen (and women) of his
generation who had stories of their darkest hours that they kept to themselves.
Nor was he alone in trying to shield himself-we all have deeds we’ve done that
we’d rather run from than confront.
His works were, for me, a door into another room
filled with people, known and unknown, whom we are tempted to become, but only
at those moments when we are most sure no one is watching us. As he helped me
understand those moments, and the decisions made during them, have
consequences, both for what is done and
what was left undone.
-bill kenny
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