...and thus one shot at immortality

Här kommer ett utdrag från en av mina favoritböcker. När jag letade efter en bra bit såg jag att jag hade gjort hundöron och strukit under med blyerts på flera ställen. Jag är lite rädd för att läsa den igen, tänk om jag växt ifrån den. Det var snart sju år sen, men jag tror inte det. Lagom lättläst för oss som inte har engelska som första språk och fylld med humor, intellektuella människor och mord. Samt en för mig oförglömlig protagonist, Blue Van Meer. Marisha Pessl's nästa bok kommer inte förän juli 2013 och heter Night Film. Kvalitet framför kvantitet, I guess.

"Everyone is responsible for the page-turning tempo of his or her life story," Dad said, scratiching his jaw thoughtfully, arranging the limp collar of his chambray shirt. "Even if you have your magnificent reason, it could still be dull as Nebraska and that's no one's fault but your own. Well, if you feel it's miles of cornfields, find something to believe in other than yourself, preferably a cause without the stench of hypocrisy, and then charge into battle. There's a reason they still put Che Guevara on T-shirts, why people still whisper about The Nightwatchmen when there's been no evidence of their existence for twenty years."

"But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don't care what those themes are--they're yours to uncover and stand behind--so long as, at the very least, there is courage. Guts. Mut, in German. Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those burn into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last."

"How do you know?" I always asked, and when I spoke it sounded tiny and uncertain, compared to Dad. "I just know," he said simply, and then closed his eyes, which indicated that he didn't want to talk anymore. The only sound in the room was the ice melting his glass.

- Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl, 2006)

Charlie

Dagens låt: Lana Del Rey - Ride