Each page had told its part of the story and was now but an old scrap of paper filled with little black marks.Īfter reading the book in amazement, in one long sitting, the book as such no longer existed, and I walked out of the paper-ridden plaza and into the cool night.

Others had been windswept, fluttering pigeon-like around the small plaza. Maybe it just felt that way after so many pages.Īs I neared the end, loose pieces of paper lay on the bench beside me, in an unkept pile. It occurred to me, as I kept reading, that my hands had begun to imperceptibly help tear off each page after I’d finished it. But I was convinced that the book wouldn’t survive if I tried to take it with me, that I had to finish it right then and there - light or no light, pain or no pain. I kept reading and the book just kept falling apart in my hands.

Before I realized it, I was more than halfway through the story. I had never before read anything by Hamsun, for no particular reason, but I found his tone captivating, his prose sparse and direct. Half-smiling, I said to myself that it seemed as if the book wanted to be read one last time, by one last reader, before completely disintegrating - an act that somehow mirrored the narrator’s journey. Every time I finished a page, that page would fall off the spine. Then the same thing happened with the third page, and the fourth, and the fifth, and so on.

Strange, I thought or maybe even whispered in the middle of an empty plaza, and I continued reading with two pieces of paper in my hand. But when I finished both sides of the second page, that page also fell off. Was it me? Did I pull on it too harshly? I decided to keep reading. But as soon as I finished reading both sides of the first page, that page fell off the spine and I was left holding it in my hand, a bit confused.

Knut hamsun glod