Fint om läsning II

Apropå mitt tidigare inlägg om böcker som tar upp läsandet: visst måste väl Jenny Diskis berättelse om hur hon som trettonåring läste sig igenom världslitteraturen på Circle Line vara något av det finaste som skrivits om läsning? Det är ett långt sammanhängande stycke som återfinns precis i början av den ljuvliga antireseboken ”Stranger on a Train”, och några lösryckta fraser gör inte berättelsen rättvisa, men jag kan inte låta bli, det är så fruktansvärt vackert skrivet. Alltså…

Every morning when I was not at school I walked to the local library and took out three books, novels, whatever my fancy, based on nothing but titles and covers (I read Nabakov, Somerset Maugham, Edgar Allan Poe, Nevil Shute and Margaret Mitchell with equal enthusiasm and literary innocence), and I took these to the nearest underground station, Notting Hill Gate. Notting Hill, to my good fortune, was on the Circle Line, a London phenomenon that has been the saving of many a tramp, drunk, overcrowded writer and sulking teenager down the years. It is the only tube line that travels in a continuous complete circle, although looked at on the modern tube map it is shaped more like a bottle lying on its side. [...] I read voraciously. There was no need to look up to check which station we had arrived at, it made no difference to me. So I could keep my head buried (as Pam would say contemptuously) in a book. I got through my three books by the following morning unless I had chosen something I found unreadable. That was very rare. The fact that something could be read made it readable to me in those days. Books were where I lived, not because I was bookish, but because everyone has to have a place to go to, and between the covers of books was mine.

(Jenny Diski, ”Stranger on a Train”, s 3-5 i min utgåva)