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Once Again, Troy

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A Reader on Reading
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248Once Again, TroyTweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “there’ll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we’ve finished!”Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 4MY GEOGRAPHY IS MAPPED by my readings. Experience, memory, desire color and shape it, but my books define it. My Oregon belongs to Ursula K. Le Guin, my Prague to Gustav Meyrink, my Venice to Henry James, my Alge-ria to Rachid Boudjedra. But when I think of Beirut, three images come to mind. The first is the one my mother described to me after visiting the city in the early fifties. She had been to Paris, to Rome, to Venice: she thought there was no city as lovely as Beirut, as elegant, as welcoming. Whenever things would go wrong in Buenos Aires (and they would go wrong often) she would complain and shake her head and, instead of repeating “Moscow, Moscow!” like one of Chekhov’s three sisters, she would sigh, “Beirut, Beirut!” as if her life in that paradise would have been different had she stayed. Perhaps it would have, because Beirut was for her an impossibility. Impossible things tend to be perfect.The second is the city I visited in 2004. The friendship of the people, their extraordinary courtesy, the constant shift in tone bred from the variety of cul-tural backgrounds, the pride and relief in seeing their city built up again after the war, the lack of shame with which they showed the scars, their ingrained and shared belief in the vital importance of poetry, music, good food, intel-ligent conversation left me, as I returned home, with a sudden nostalgia for what I had experienced as civilization.The third is the bombed city shown on the evening news in 2008. Like any ravaged city, it is both a place of incommunicable daily personal suffering and also the image of every city in no matter what war: a place in which walls that
© Yale University Press, New Haven

248Once Again, TroyTweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “there’ll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we’ve finished!”Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 4MY GEOGRAPHY IS MAPPED by my readings. Experience, memory, desire color and shape it, but my books define it. My Oregon belongs to Ursula K. Le Guin, my Prague to Gustav Meyrink, my Venice to Henry James, my Alge-ria to Rachid Boudjedra. But when I think of Beirut, three images come to mind. The first is the one my mother described to me after visiting the city in the early fifties. She had been to Paris, to Rome, to Venice: she thought there was no city as lovely as Beirut, as elegant, as welcoming. Whenever things would go wrong in Buenos Aires (and they would go wrong often) she would complain and shake her head and, instead of repeating “Moscow, Moscow!” like one of Chekhov’s three sisters, she would sigh, “Beirut, Beirut!” as if her life in that paradise would have been different had she stayed. Perhaps it would have, because Beirut was for her an impossibility. Impossible things tend to be perfect.The second is the city I visited in 2004. The friendship of the people, their extraordinary courtesy, the constant shift in tone bred from the variety of cul-tural backgrounds, the pride and relief in seeing their city built up again after the war, the lack of shame with which they showed the scars, their ingrained and shared belief in the vital importance of poetry, music, good food, intel-ligent conversation left me, as I returned home, with a sudden nostalgia for what I had experienced as civilization.The third is the bombed city shown on the evening news in 2008. Like any ravaged city, it is both a place of incommunicable daily personal suffering and also the image of every city in no matter what war: a place in which walls that
© Yale University Press, New Haven

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Part I. Who Am I?
  5. A Reader in the Looking-Glass Wood 3
  6. Room for the Shadow 11
  7. On Being Jewish 22
  8. Meanwhile, in Another Part of the Forest 26
  9. The Further off From England 37
  10. Homage to Proteus 42
  11. Part II. The Lesson of the Master
  12. Borges in Love 47
  13. Borges and the Longed-For Jew 62
  14. Faking It 66
  15. Part III. Memoranda
  16. The Death of Che Guevara 79
  17. The Blind Bookkeeper 86
  18. The Perseverance of Truth 95
  19. Aids and the Poet 104
  20. Part IV. Wordplay
  21. The Full Stop 115
  22. In Praise of Words 117
  23. A Brief History of the Page 120
  24. The Voice That Says “I” 128
  25. Final Answers 137
  26. What Song the Sirens Sang 141
  27. Part V. The Ideal Reader
  28. Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader 151
  29. How Pinocchio Learned to Read 155
  30. Candide in Sanssouci 164
  31. The Gates of Paradise 172
  32. Time and the Doleful Knight 182
  33. Saint Augustine’s Computer 187
  34. Part VI. Books as Business
  35. Reading White for Black 201
  36. The Secret Sharer 207
  37. Honoring Enoch Soames 214
  38. Jonah and the Whale 218
  39. The Legend of the Dodos 227
  40. Part VII. Crime and Punishment
  41. In Memoriam 231
  42. God’s Spies 237
  43. Once Again, Troy 248
  44. Art and Blasphemy 251
  45. At the Mad Hatter’s Table 254
  46. Part VIII. The Numinous Library
  47. Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Library 267
  48. The Library of the Wandering Jew 270
  49. The Library as Home 278
  50. The End of Reading 282
  51. Sources 293
  52. Index 297
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https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300163049-034

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Part I. Who Am I?
  5. A Reader in the Looking-Glass Wood 3
  6. Room for the Shadow 11
  7. On Being Jewish 22
  8. Meanwhile, in Another Part of the Forest 26
  9. The Further off From England 37
  10. Homage to Proteus 42
  11. Part II. The Lesson of the Master
  12. Borges in Love 47
  13. Borges and the Longed-For Jew 62
  14. Faking It 66
  15. Part III. Memoranda
  16. The Death of Che Guevara 79
  17. The Blind Bookkeeper 86
  18. The Perseverance of Truth 95
  19. Aids and the Poet 104
  20. Part IV. Wordplay
  21. The Full Stop 115
  22. In Praise of Words 117
  23. A Brief History of the Page 120
  24. The Voice That Says “I” 128
  25. Final Answers 137
  26. What Song the Sirens Sang 141
  27. Part V. The Ideal Reader
  28. Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader 151
  29. How Pinocchio Learned to Read 155
  30. Candide in Sanssouci 164
  31. The Gates of Paradise 172
  32. Time and the Doleful Knight 182
  33. Saint Augustine’s Computer 187
  34. Part VI. Books as Business
  35. Reading White for Black 201
  36. The Secret Sharer 207
  37. Honoring Enoch Soames 214
  38. Jonah and the Whale 218
  39. The Legend of the Dodos 227
  40. Part VII. Crime and Punishment
  41. In Memoriam 231
  42. God’s Spies 237
  43. Once Again, Troy 248
  44. Art and Blasphemy 251
  45. At the Mad Hatter’s Table 254
  46. Part VIII. The Numinous Library
  47. Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Library 267
  48. The Library of the Wandering Jew 270
  49. The Library as Home 278
  50. The End of Reading 282
  51. Sources 293
  52. Index 297
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