The Narrative: Part 1

[Grand Central Station, New York City, May 2008.]

It is a truism that a destination is never exactly as you expect it to be. Multiple factors undermine the purity of desires. The weather determines your impressions more than the architecture; authenticity is diluted by coca colonisation; ease is impeded by language barriers; insouciance is defeated by tiredness; freedom is curtailed by financial limits; and so on. All these factors are present in my everyday at home, but somehow I imagine them vanishing in a distant land of travel utopia. And luckily I persist with these delusions, no matter how statistically improbable their success becomes after the failures mount up, for I would embark on fewer quests without them. But the delusions have now become ironic. It is only natural to desire the perfect encounter with a destination, but thankfully reality steps in.

The travel utopia doesn't exist outside my mind because it has no narrative. Before seeing the museum's masterworks I must wait in line for two hours; before waiting in line I must eat breakfast at an over-priced cafe. Utopias don't have narratives, but narratives are the things that make a trip a trip. I need obstacles to trip myself up, to make me see the everyday as a local would see it, not as a tourist.

New York Public Library

[New York Public Library, May 2008.]

I'm a librarian (albeit a corporate librarian), but I don't read in libraries like this woman. It has to do with my bowels.

I exaggerate. But there is something about bookshops and libraries that induces bowel movement in a lot of people. The common "something" shared by these two most venerable establishments is, of course, books. Books are laxatives. Masses of unread books produce anxiety. It is like public speaking. You stand before aisles of unread books and it is the same as standing before the law. They judge your ignorance.

Before the Law is, of course, is the title of the most famous parable by Franz Kafka, which can be found in his Complete Stories. "Before the law", it begins, "stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment." The man waits his whole life, dying on the doorstep. Just before his last breath he asks the doorkeeper one last question: "'Everyone strives to reach the Law,' says the man, 'so how does it happen that for all these years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?' The doorkeeper recognises that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch his words, roars in his ear: 'No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made just for you. I am now going to shut it.'"

This short story was published in Kafka's lifetime, but it is also part of his posthumously published novel, The Trial. The multiple meanings of the parable are discussed at length by the teller of the tale, a priest, and the novel's main protagonist, Joseph K. However, they do not discuss the ignorance of the man for failing to notice that no one else enters his door. 

Each book in a library is for you. You are ignorant before it. And you may be ignorant after it too, depending on how good it is. But you can't judge it till you open it. You can't judge a book by its cover. But it judges you if you don't enter into its world.