39, NG12, M34, E38, / WG27, F5, MF0, D1, Frz0, NA0, B4, C1

Lawrence Block, The Burglar in the Rye

Auch hier geht es wieder um einen litarischen Klassiker oder eher um den öffentlichkeitsscheuen Autor und obwohl ich 'The Catcher in the Rye' nie gelesen habe, tat das dem Genuß keinen Abbruch. Sehr gelungen auch das Paddington Hotel und der verwickelte Tathergang in der Mordnacht, und die Lösung, die Bernie findet um alle glücklich zu machen, inklusive ihn selbst. So viele Serien werden schwächer, je länger sie dauern, aber bei Block ist es meistens andersherum. Hier hat er anscheinend noch viel zu sagen.
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'And you wanted the letters back.'
'I wanted them to disappear, to cease to exist.'
'Why?'
'Because I don't want people pawing over them and finding little glimpses of me in them. It's the same reason I live my life the way I do.'
'Yet people find you in everything you write.'
'They find the part I'm willing to show,' he said. He looked off into the distance. 'It's fiction,' he said, 'and I get to make it the way I want it to be, with a clay factory relocated from Huntingdon to Peru, say, if that's where I want it to be. I don't care who reads my fiction, or what they think they find there.'
'I see.'
'Do you?' His eyes probed mine.'Say you're having a conversation with somebody. You don't mind if he can hear the sentences you're speaking, do you?'
'If I minded, I wouldn't sa them in the first place.'
'Exactly. But suppose, while he was listening to you, he was also reading your mind. Picking up the unvoiced thoughts buzzing around in your brain. How would you like that?'
'I get it.'
'The fiction I write is my conversation with the world. My private life is private, an unspoken conversation with myself, and I don't want any mind-readers eavesdropping on it.'
'So it doesn't matter who gets the letters,' I said. 'A collector or a scholar or a university library, or even Alice Cottrell. It's the same invasion of privacy wherever the letters wind up.'
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(Lawerence Block, The Burglar in the Rye, 1999)