Wednesday, May 23, 2007

the baby with the bathwater

For all those who don't know it, here's a confession. I have a talent for foolishness. I just rediscovered it, and this time I even surprised myself. I've been reading Le Monde for three months now and past issues and other assorted magazine work hard at making a mess of my kitchen table. When I can't stand it anymore, when I need room to put a plate, I take all the old paper and put it on a chair, and later, when I remember, I take the stack down and dump it into the recycling bin.

Somewhere among all the newspapers is my French–German dictionary, easily recognizable because of its bright yellow color. Lately, though, I've been wondering where it is exactly. I've just finished "Faire l'amour", a short novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, that reads like one long poem. It seemed to me that this was the best-written French I've ever come across. Even though some of the finely composed phrases and succulent words made repeated appearances, most were just in one place – in the right place. The book tasted good.

That was my lay opinion, anyway. I couldn't verify and didn't understand half of the really cute sounding words because I didn't find my dictionary. It dawned on me today that I must have absentmindedly put it on the stack of old newpapers, added more paper to the stack to submerge the aggressive yellow, and thrown the whole lot into the big green bin.

Of the more than twenty dictionaries that I own, this was the only one I consulted regularly. I'm back to reading English novels now.

1 comment:

Dee said...

drat! double drat!
I thought I had done that once with a library book but then I found it later on. Perhaps you've only misplaced it.