Inside Plantin- Moretus Museum- Antwerp |
I am addicted to reading.
I often marvel at how sensitive all these published writers are and believe
that how wise they must be in their private lives since they seem to understand
the human emotions so well.
Since young I
found solace in words and writing. Our brains tell us how we feel and what we
think. When I can release those
thoughts in writing, it is a joy. I cannot write well if I am feeling upset or
restless. I need to be calm in order to map out my thoughts. So I reckon these
published writers must be very wise and in control of their private lives since
they write such beautiful prose. I wonder if they
have to confront the same anger or bad or hurt feelings over and over again and
I would like to know if they have ever found resolutions about what they
experience in their lifetime.
I am currently reading Julian Barnes's memoir
Nothing to be Frightened Of.
It is a memoir on mortality as he muses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable
extinction. Julian Barnes is one of my favourite writers as I can often relate
to what he writes about and many of his musings resonate with me. I find his
writing humourous and introspective. I am therefore comforted when I come across Julian Barnes’ observation in his memoir.
" I used to believe, when I was
"just" a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth
was found, because they described the world, because they saw into the human
heart, because they grasped both particular and the general and were able to
re-create both in free yet structured forms, because they understood, must
therefore be more sensitive-also less vain, less selfish -than other people.
Then I became a writer, and started meeting other writers, and studied them,
and concluded that the only difference between them and other people, the
only,single way in which they were better,was that they were better writers.
They might indeed be sensitive, perceptive, wise, generalizing ,and
particularizing-but only at their desks and in their books. When they venture
out into the world, they regularly behave as if they have left all their
comprehension of human behaviour in their typescripts. It's not just writers
either. How wise are philosophers in their private lives? '
I read more
fictions than non-fictions. I know that fiction and life are totally different
as life is definitely unpredictable and complex even though art often imitates
life and life can also imitate art. What motivate me to read is that the writers
share their thoughts and beliefs and their writings cleverly describe the
idiosyncrasies and ironies of life. It is comforting to know that
whatever we feel and go through are experienced by many others and I believe
that nothing is really original.
14th century Printing Press Plantin- Moretus Museum- Antwerp |
Julian Barnes wrote in his memoir that as a young man, he was terrified of flying so he reckoned that the book he
would choose to read on a plane would be something he felt appropriate to have
found on his corpse. It sounds morose but his deliberations about death and
mortality are thought provoking indeed.
Julian Barnes is definitely a gifted writer.
Julian Barnes is definitely a gifted writer.
Burgundy September 2008 |
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