Nothing To Read

After I finished the Christmas books and the new Annie Dillard and re-read John Fowles'  The Magus, I was out of things to read. Poetry and non-fiction don't count because they're always going, a few pages at a time. Nothing to read. I tried again to read Proust (which is on the shelf with things I think I should read) and gave up once more, right where the madeleine comes in. I'm afraid I muttered things about boredom and self-indulgence. My brother Dan, teasing me, suggested I try James Joyce's Ulysses again. "I tried so many times and could never get past the first sentence," I said.  "You mean you made it through the first ten pages?" he said. Then I tried Huxley's Point Counterpoint, a very worthy novel, I'm sure, but filled with despicable characters. Catching up on the New Yorker magazines, I found a pretty good short story by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who did all those wonderful screenplays for the Merchant-Ivory movies. I went to the library and checked out their one book by Jhabvala, Out of India. "I am a central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis. I am irritable and have weak nerves,"  she wrote in her introduction. I knew right away that I was going to like this book.