Paul Auster - City of Glass

As for Quinn, there is little that need detain us. Who he was, where he came from, and what he did are of no great importance. We know, for example, that he was thirty-five years old. We know that he had once been married, had once been a father, and that both his wife and son were now dead. We also know that he wrote books. To be precise, we know that he wrote mystery novels. These works were written under the name of William Wilson, and he produced them at the rate of about one a year, which brought in enough money for him to live modestly in a small New York apartment. Because he spent no more than five or six month on the novel, for the rest of the year he was free to do as he wished. He read many books, he looked at paintings, he went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television; in the winter he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he like to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city - never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.
New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within. The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence, the act of putting one foot in front of the other and allowing himself to follow the drift of his own body. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.

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Tuhle knížku mi doporučila milá prodavačka v knihkupectví, když jsem se chystala na svoji první cestu do New Yorku, a já se jí za to od té doby uctivě ukláním. První díl tzv. Newyorské trilogie, strohý, tajemný a napínavý, taková černočerná záhada, hltala jsem to po kavárnách a bála se a na procházkách hledala svoje vlastní tajná poselství. New York Austerových knih mi bude už vždycky trochu připomínat Gotham City. Máte svoje vztahy kniha-město?

Mám nachystané ukázky, jen napsat doporučení, možná budu trochu přeskládávat pořadí, a doplňovat starší, chybějící Moly. A teď běžím psát do deníku, dnešní den stojí za zaznamenání.