I must confess that the bestiality is how I ended up here. Selfishly, I hope this is it, that she opened up to the world once, giving it bestiality and loneliness, and then turned her back on it. Bear could be her first novel, her last, her only, her anything. Although at first she had revelled in the erudite seclusion of her job, in the protection against the vulgarities of the world that it offered, after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding.” She could cite nothing in particular as a problem rather, it was as if life in general had a grudge against her. “For some time things had been going badly for her. Until I start to panic, because life, I think, cannot be lived in isolation, cannot be lived only amongst the dead. It’s too cramped, and the books take up a lot of room. But the hole in which I hide isn’t big enough for two. I’m gloomy and difficult, yes, but I’m not an idiot. Naively, I thought it would be different when I started relationships, relationships I entered into freely, with women I chose for myself. As a child I convinced myself that my environment was to blame, that of course I could not relate to those sorts of people, and yet I have long since left behind that environment, and those people, so what excuse do I have now? I still can’t consistently relate. Being drawn towards books is simply a way of drawing away from you, all of you. Reading is not my life’s passion, it is a symptom.
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