Showing posts with label The Reader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Reader. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
The Reader - Pg 217
What a sad story, I had thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatsoever.
The Reader - Pg 216
In the first few years after Hanna's death, I was tormented by the old questions of whether I had denied and betrayed her, whether I owed her something, whether I was guilty for having loved her. Sometimes I asked myself if I was responsible for her death. And sometimes I was in a rage at her and at what she had done to me. Until finally the rage faded and the questions ceased to matter. Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me--it was the path my life had taken.
The Reader - Pg 197
Her back and arms had no special smell; They smelled of nothing and yet they smelled of her.
The Reader - Part 3 - Chapter 6
I'm doing something strange here, first of all by commenting myself, secondly by posting a whole chapter. I read this chapter about 5 times and could not find one specific passage that captured exactly what about it I liked so much. I didn't think it deserved to go unshared, though, so, thanks to Schlink's short-chaptered format, here it is in all its glory.
In the fourth year of our word-driven, wordless contact, a not arrived. "Kid, the last story was especially nice. Thank you. Hanna."
It was lined paper, torn out of a notebook and cut smooth. The message was right up at the top, and filled three lines. it was written in blue smudged ballpoint pen. Hanna had been pressing hard on the pen; the letters went through to the other side. She had also written the address with a great deal of pressure; the imprint was legible on the bottom and top halves of the paper, which was folded in the middle.
At first glance, one might have taken it for a child's handwriting. But what is clumsy and awkward in children's handwriting was forceful here. You could see the resistance Hanna had had to overcome to make the lines into letters and the letters into words. A child's hand will wander off this way and that, and has to be kept on track. Hanna's hand didn't want to go anywhere and had to be forced. The lines that formed the letters started again each time on the upstroke, the downstroke, and before the curves and loops. And each letter was a victory over a fresh struggle, and had a new slant or slope, and often the wrong height or width.
I read the note and was filled with joy and jubilation. "She can write, she can write!" In these years I had read everything I could lay my hands on to do with illiteracy. I knew about the helplessness in everyday activities, finding one's way or finding an address or choosing a meal in a restaurant, about how illiterates anxiously stick to prescribed patterns and familiar routines, about how much energy it takes to conceal one's inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.
Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general. . I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, ever if it is finally tacked with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late," and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.
After the first note came a steady stream of others. They were always only a few lines, a thank you, a wish to hear more of a particular author or to hear no more, a comment on an author or a poem or a story or a character in a novel, an observation about prison. "The forsythia is already in flower in the yard" or "I like the fact that there have been so many storms this summer" or "From my window I can see the birds flocking to fly south"--often it was Hanna's note that first made me pay attention to the forsythia, the summer storms, or the flocks of birds. Her remarks about literature often landed astonishingly on the mark. "Schnitzler barks, Stefan Zweig is a dead dog" or "Keller needs a woman" or "Goethe's poems are like tiny paintings in beautiful frames" or "Lenz must write on a typewriter." Because she knew nothing about the authors, she assumed they were contemporaries, unless something indicated this was obviously impossible. I was astonished at how much older literature can actually be read as if it were contemporary; to anyone ignorant of history, it would be easy to see ways of life in earlier times simply as ways of life in foreign countries.
I never wrote to Hanna. But I kept reading to her. When I spent a year in America, I sent cassettes from there. When i was on vacation or was particularly busy, it might take longer for me to finish the next cassette; I never established a definite rhythm, but sent cassettes sometimes every week or two weeks, and sometimes only every three or four weeks. I didn't worry that Hanna might not need my cassettes now that she had learned to read by herself. She could read as well. Reading aloud was my way of speaking to her, with her.
I kept all her notes. The handwriting changed. At first she forced the letters into the same slant and the right height and width. Once she had managed that, she became lighter and more confident. her handwriting never became fluid, but it acquired something of the severe beauty that characterizes the writing of old people who have written little in their lives.
In the fourth year of our word-driven, wordless contact, a not arrived. "Kid, the last story was especially nice. Thank you. Hanna."
It was lined paper, torn out of a notebook and cut smooth. The message was right up at the top, and filled three lines. it was written in blue smudged ballpoint pen. Hanna had been pressing hard on the pen; the letters went through to the other side. She had also written the address with a great deal of pressure; the imprint was legible on the bottom and top halves of the paper, which was folded in the middle.
At first glance, one might have taken it for a child's handwriting. But what is clumsy and awkward in children's handwriting was forceful here. You could see the resistance Hanna had had to overcome to make the lines into letters and the letters into words. A child's hand will wander off this way and that, and has to be kept on track. Hanna's hand didn't want to go anywhere and had to be forced. The lines that formed the letters started again each time on the upstroke, the downstroke, and before the curves and loops. And each letter was a victory over a fresh struggle, and had a new slant or slope, and often the wrong height or width.
I read the note and was filled with joy and jubilation. "She can write, she can write!" In these years I had read everything I could lay my hands on to do with illiteracy. I knew about the helplessness in everyday activities, finding one's way or finding an address or choosing a meal in a restaurant, about how illiterates anxiously stick to prescribed patterns and familiar routines, about how much energy it takes to conceal one's inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.
Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general. . I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, ever if it is finally tacked with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late," and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.
After the first note came a steady stream of others. They were always only a few lines, a thank you, a wish to hear more of a particular author or to hear no more, a comment on an author or a poem or a story or a character in a novel, an observation about prison. "The forsythia is already in flower in the yard" or "I like the fact that there have been so many storms this summer" or "From my window I can see the birds flocking to fly south"--often it was Hanna's note that first made me pay attention to the forsythia, the summer storms, or the flocks of birds. Her remarks about literature often landed astonishingly on the mark. "Schnitzler barks, Stefan Zweig is a dead dog" or "Keller needs a woman" or "Goethe's poems are like tiny paintings in beautiful frames" or "Lenz must write on a typewriter." Because she knew nothing about the authors, she assumed they were contemporaries, unless something indicated this was obviously impossible. I was astonished at how much older literature can actually be read as if it were contemporary; to anyone ignorant of history, it would be easy to see ways of life in earlier times simply as ways of life in foreign countries.
I never wrote to Hanna. But I kept reading to her. When I spent a year in America, I sent cassettes from there. When i was on vacation or was particularly busy, it might take longer for me to finish the next cassette; I never established a definite rhythm, but sent cassettes sometimes every week or two weeks, and sometimes only every three or four weeks. I didn't worry that Hanna might not need my cassettes now that she had learned to read by herself. She could read as well. Reading aloud was my way of speaking to her, with her.
I kept all her notes. The handwriting changed. At first she forced the letters into the same slant and the right height and width. Once she had managed that, she became lighter and more confident. her handwriting never became fluid, but it acquired something of the severe beauty that characterizes the writing of old people who have written little in their lives.
The Reader - Pg 183
And because in all my confused half-waking thoughts that swirled in tormenting circles of memories and dreams around my marriage and my daughter and my life, it was always Hanna who predominated, I read to Hanna.
The Reader - Pg 183
There were many nights when I couldn't sleep for more than a few hours; I would lie awake, and when I switched on the light and picked up a book, my eyes closed, and when I put the book down and turned off the light, I was wide awake again. So I read aloud, and my eyes didn't close.
The Reader - Pg 168
I don't know what the doctors diagnose when someone isn't freezing even though he should be freezing. My own diagnosis is that the numbness had to overwhelm my body before it would let go of me, before I could let go of it.
The Reader - Pg 157
I lay there, listening to the wind, feeling relieved every time it weakened and died down, but dreading its renewed assaults and not knowing how I would get out of bed next day, hitchhike back, continue my studies, and one day have a career and a wife and children.
The Reader - Pg 146
Alongside these images, i saw the others. Hanna pulling on her stockings in the kitchen, standing by the bathtub holding the towel, riding her bicycle with skirts flying, standing in my father's study, dancing in front of the mirror, looking at me at the pool, Hanna listening to me, talking to me, laughing at me, loving me. Hanna loving me with cold eyes and pursed mouth, silently listening to me reading, and at the end banging the wall with her hand, talking to me with her face turning into a mask.
The Reader - Pg 87
It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?
The Reader - Pg 87
It took a while before I stopped watching for her everywhere, before I got used to the fact that afternoons had lost their shape, and before I could look at books and open them without asking myself whether they were suitable for reading aloud.
The Reader - Pg 69
When an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight. Airplanes don't fall out of the sky like stones. They glide on, the enormous multi-engined passenger jets, for thirty, forty-five minutes, only to smash themselves up when they attempt a landing. The passengers don't notice a thing. Flying feels the same whether the engines are working or not. It's quieter, but only slightly: the wind drowns out the engines as it buffets the tail and wings. At some point, the earth or sea look dangerously close through the window. But perhaps the movie is on, and the stewards and air hostesses have closed the shades. Maybe the very quietness of the flight is appealing to the passengers.
The Reader - Pg 67
Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success; every goal I set myself, every recognition I craved made anything I actually did seem paltry by comparison, and whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
The Reader - Pg 63
I would have liked to sleep with her in my bed, but she didn't want to. She felt like an intruder in our house. She didn't say it in so many words, but in the way she stood in the kitchen or in the open double doors, or walked from room to room, inspected my father's books and sat with me at dinner.
The Reader - Pg 20
Today I can recognize that events back then were part of a life-long pattern in which thinking and doing have either come together or failed to come together--I think, I reach a conclusion, I turn the conclusion into a decision, and then I discover that acting on the decision is something else entirely, and that doing so may proceed from the decision, but then again it may not.
The Reader - Pg 18
Through the long hours of the night you have the church clock for company and the rumble of the occasional passing car that throws its headlights across the walls and ceiling. These are hours without sleep, which is not to say that they're sleepless, because on the contrary, they're not about lack of anything, they're rich and full. Desires, memories, fears, passions, form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again. They are hours when anything is possible, good or bad.
The Reader - Pg 16
I knew none of this--if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.
The Reader - Pg 16
Then she was not awkward, she was slow-flowing, graceful, seductive--a seductiveness that had nothing to do with breasts and hips and legs, but was an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body.
The Reader - Pg 10
No decorative plaster, no mirrors, no runner. Whatever unpretentious beauty the stairwell might once have had, it could never have been comparable to the grandeur of the facade.
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