LAMENTATIONS ABOUT A BOOK

Anna Kleinschmidt

by Anna Kleinschmidt

Story

What do you consider the worst feeling?

You might think of something like anger or grief, but to me, the worst feeling is to feel nothing at all. That’s when you know it’s getting bad.

One of the things I admire most about books is the intensity of feeling they inspire. The power that things that don’t even exist as matter can have over us never fails to amaze me. I must admit that, nowadays, I usually have stronger feelings about fiction than about the real world. Those books that hold the power to enthral me with their words occupy a special place, both on my shelves and in my heart.

Looking back, I noticed a certain theme in those pages. Most have a character you get to know intimately, whom you struggle alongside with and learn to understand. None of them are perfect, but they are them. They know their flaws and rise above them sometimes, but not always. Often, there is something about them that makes them stand out. Morbidly, I like to see them struggle, just for the comfort and relief I feel when their efforts are recognized.

I find myself more outraged about slights against certain characters than against myself. I find myself grieving more intensely for the losses they suffer than for my own.

A special kind of investment is made when a story depicts animals. Animals are more innocent than any human, which makes their suffering hurt exceedingly worse. One of my favourite books tells the story of a stray cat and the human who took it in. You can feel more love in their nonverbal communication than in most marriages. I was close to tears for days after I closed the book. Unexpectedly, it wasn’t the cat who died but the human, yet the way the cat experienced grief hurt more than any death.

I read this book at a time when I was dealing with a loss of myself. Back then, I felt guilty that I was more distraught by the death in the book than the actual death in my family. I’ve since learnt that we cannot help the way we feel and that agonising over what we should and shouldn’t feel amounts to nothing but more pain. I wouldn’t tell anyone about this back then. They didn’t understand when I responded to their inquiries with lamentations about a book. I believe they thought I was heartless.

In case you ever find yourself in a similar situation, I don’t think that I was being heartless. In fact, I think that if you are capable of feeling real pain for something without matter, that is the opposite of being heartless. Feeling more about something can mean any number of things. Maybe you let it get closer to your heart. Maybe you experienced it more intensely, spending a few deeply involved hours with it instead of forming a steady bond over a long time. Just because your feelings are more acute doesn’t mean you deem their sources more important.

What I am trying to say is that books can make you feel. I appreciate this the most at times when I struggle to feel anything. When nothing reaches you anymore, a book like that can be what keeps you from straying too far for anything to return.

© Anna Kleinschmidt 2022-08-02

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