![]() ![]() I’d bought the book shortly after it won the International Booker Prize in 2017 and had made several attempts to begin reading it since. I was thinking about this as I considered my reaction to David Grossman’s A Horse Walks into a Bar. ![]() The act of reading confers anonymity and detachment that makes what might otherwise be uncomfortable or even stressful, a fascination and a pleasure. On the other hand, as readers, we willingly embrace fiction, even autobiographical works which reveal uncomfortable truths about characters or the writer, yet we’re fine with that. Feelings of discomfort, embarrassment, even anger can be aroused by this kind of forced submission. ![]() ![]() The experience of the wedding guest is not uncommon, especially when a speaker is in a confessional mood. Through some power conveyed by his glittering eye, he compels the wedding guest to listen to his tale and the confession of his crime: that he shot the albatross, thereby bringing bad luck to the ship. Those familiar with Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner will recall that his supernatural tale of a voyage to the Antarctic and back is told by the ancient mariner of the title to a wedding guest he has waylaid. ![]()
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