Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Not One Day

It required you to exhibit a talent that you have acquired through so much reading, which allows you to scan a 200- page volume—provided it’s not a grotesque translation of a German treatise on metaphysics—in thirty minutes and retain enough to talk about it. Which you then proceeded to do with the author, competently enough that your remarks and questions surprised and seemed to delight her. By way of explaining this little talent, this little secret weapon you unveiled, let’s say that a novel is like a car: any amateur mechanic knows upon initial inspection the type, its most common pathologies, and the structure of its engine. There are a few common models, a minuscule amount of rare ones that force you to revise your understanding, oblige you to dismantle them completely to understand their workings. We encounter more family sedans on the roads of literature than Ferraris or prototypes. Let’s also say that, to your eyes, literature takes after mechanics more so than religion. You see in it neither transcendence nor the ineffable. Rather valves, cylinders, ignitions… Which is to say nothing of the trips it can afford us, nor of the lands it can take us to. You informed your novelist that her vehicle was well made, itsmechanics solid. That, judgingbyear, everything ran smoothly, the music of the motor was pleasant, the carburetor well tuned. The two of you parted after dinner on an excellent note and you went back to your hotel room, planning to pack

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