The good column – the transformation

I would like to be included in a dropout program. I confess: I was a reading extist. I unnoticed from the public for decades, spent my life alongside books: I bought them, taken out of open bookcases, were given to like -minded people. I read it, obtained, stacked, collected, collected, without remorse, without inhibitions, without scruples. And I didn’t do anything to stop myself.

Now the books have to disappear from my life, once and for all. I have to detach myself from the idea that the extreme reading has been planted. Today I know that. Anyone who doubts my sincerity, I tell: Even severe calibers like me have the right to re -socialization earn the chance to get away from the scene.

Even before my schooling, at the age of four, it started: I painted letters on paper and handed the snippet after my mother, who worked in the kitchen, with the request to “read” my scratch. “Brgopfmf!” She read loudly before she took away her glasses again, amused by my cossiality, and enough for me again. Then I knew that letters are my thing.

The good column

Private

Thomas Blum In principle, it does not agree with the prevailing so -called reality. For the time being, he will not be able to change them, but he can use them to exhort them or, if necessary, also cover one. So that the bad withdraws. We are solidarity with his fight against reality. Therefore, “the good column” appears at this point on Mondays. Only the best quality for the best readers! The collected texts can be found at: dasnd.de/diegute

It really started at school: learning to read. The “Great Heinz-Erhardt-Buch” and Loriots “Wum and Wendelin”, the only two books in the wire wall in the parenting room, were very quickly reciprocated. At that time it started: the extreme reading of the reading that deviates from the norm, the reign of terror printed everything. Day and night your nose in the book, the back curved, the greedy fingers on the paper. More and stronger stuff was needed at some point. Every Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., get new fabric in the driving library: Blyton’s “Five Friends”, London’s “Seewolf”, Stevensons “Schatzinsel”, including crudes, because someone accidentally placed it on the wrong shelf (“novels for young people”): “The candy-colored tanger wrinkle-injected strand line baby” by Tom Wolfe. A book title like an adrenaline.

I slipped into the reading scene more and more. So an exhausting, lifelong extreme reading began. Everything before my parents’ eyes who looked away, let me allow me or specifications not to know anything about it. Then at school the radicalization through unscrupulous teachers who gave a cold smile access to tougher addicts: Salinger’s “catcher in rye”, Kafkas “transformation”. Finally, during his studies, all the barriers fell: “The Castle”, “The Sleeper”, “The Magic Mountain”, “The Man Without Properties”. 400, 700, 900, 1200 pages. In addition, secondary literature as a special kick. It was never enough. There was no stopping anymore, there was nothing left to do. I didn’t know anything else since childhood and youth. Instead of hashish or heroin, it asked me for hacks and handke, for Heine, Henscheid, Herrndorf, Heißenbüttel, even to Heidegger in borderline situations. I was lost in fantasy types of so -called primary texts, which even at those moments in which the difficult, dreamless sleep overwhelmed me late, still whispered: “Read me.”

The real crime had committed society: the libraries were always open, at least during the day. For the nights I had created a huge supply in my booth next to the bed. Stacked material that I had obtained from antiquarian bookshops with endless afterproof forays, in which the fabric, even the good, was cheap: from Panizza to Genazino, from Karl Kraus to Ror Wolf. Not to forget the Americans with the central initial: Edgar A. Poe, Joe R. Lansdale, Philip K. Dick.

As mentioned at the beginning, many years of martyrdom, an existence as a freak on the edge of society: obsessed, abnormal, isolated. I was the only one with a book and without a smartphone in the subway and on the bus. In public parks I was sweating in summer, with shaky hands for hours looking for a quiet place without screaming children, where I was able to whistle 30 to 40 Rolf-Dieter-Brinkmann poems undisturbed. As soon as I presented my favorite points from Oswald Wiener’s Scripture “The improvement of Central Europe, Roman” at an evening party or in the discotheque, I was alone after a very short time. Not to talk about the panic attacks that came immediately when I noticed that I had accidentally left the apartment without my book backpack.

I am not sure whether in a better future should not be made possible to get out of extreme reading in a better future.

In any case, it is certain: I am willing to exit. I want to avert the ideology and practice of radical bibliomania. The psychological report that was created about me emphasizes the “positive factor” that I have made the first progress. It is an elaborate and painful process: I dismantled my Billy shelves and have my 14,000 title of comprehensive private library stamped. I can use my stove again, in which Eugen Egner’s work has long been stored. In the meantime, I can walk past bookhants without entering them. This is a first step back to civil existence. For me it is about a lot. I finally want to be normal: I want to start a new life as a non -reader.