I am enjoying my book thoroughly. Free to sink into it for days on end, I sink into it with relish. Enchanted, I live the story. Transported to Petersburg more than a century ago, I am impatient with my own body and its petty needs. All that sleeping and eating and pissing… And then, out of the blue, this evening I discover a fatal flaw in the design of the soft cover of this plump volume. It is a color photograph of the hand of a young man holding a photograph of a young woman, a great beauty of her day. He is dressed in an old-fashioned pinstriped suit. The suit is new and buttoned up. His hand is slight, thin, almost effete. The picture in his hand is yellowed and faded. And that is the fatal flaw. According to the story, her portrait was fresh, only just taken. Although I know that few people would ever notice the cover’s incongruence, I am irritated by it. I am incensed. The disbelief so well suspended for days is swiftly shattered. And I end up by being irritated with my silly, all-too-perceptive self.

Addendum (December 26, 2019)

When I came across this piece on one of my uncharted journeys through my writings, the first few lines got me confused. I am enjoying my book thoroughly, to be sure, but what does it have to do with Petersburg? It took me a few minutes to discover that the book I was reading back then was The Idiot by Dostoevsky rather than my own (“The Prime of Life,” December 16, 2003). And then it took me a quarter of an hour at least to find this book in my library, which I visit rather rarely as of late. As soon as I pulled it from the shell, I chuckled at the cover. The flaw in question is obvious in a jiffy. Why did it take me so long to discover it, though? Another fatal flaw in my own book, as it were. “Attention,” I scolded myself, “attention” (“Attention,” May 24, 2008). Three cheers for master Ikkyu!