(no subject)
"Again, he puts the keys down on a shelf, but this time, absorbed in his search for the book, he forgets to take them with him after the volume is located. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have caused a problem. He would have needed the keys to open the door of the apartment, and once he realized his mistake, he would have gone back to fetch them. But that morning, in the frenzy that followed [his] sudden collapse, the door was left open, … he is distracted enough not to pay attention to what he is doing … so he walks straight into the room, turns on the overhead light and kicks the door shut behind him-thereby locking himself in. [He] has installed a self-locking door, and once a person enters that room, he can’t get out again unless he uses a key to unlock the door from the outside.
This is a hydrogen-bomb shelter, not an ordinary room, and the double-insulated walls are four feet thick, the concrete floor extends thirty-six inches below him, and even the ceiling, which [he] thinks will be the most vulnerable spot, is constructed of a plaster and cement combination so solid as to be impregnable …
With no other option available to him, [he] settles in to wait out his solitary confinement, hoping to discover enough patience and fortitude to bear up to his absurd predicament.
[After he has been in the room for five days], [d]eliverance is at hand, he tells himself. Ed will be coming any time now, and ten minutes after he thinks that thought, the bulb in the overhead light burns out, and [he] finds himself sitting alone in the darkness.”
~ Paul Auster
Oracle Night
This is a hydrogen-bomb shelter, not an ordinary room, and the double-insulated walls are four feet thick, the concrete floor extends thirty-six inches below him, and even the ceiling, which [he] thinks will be the most vulnerable spot, is constructed of a plaster and cement combination so solid as to be impregnable …
With no other option available to him, [he] settles in to wait out his solitary confinement, hoping to discover enough patience and fortitude to bear up to his absurd predicament.
[After he has been in the room for five days], [d]eliverance is at hand, he tells himself. Ed will be coming any time now, and ten minutes after he thinks that thought, the bulb in the overhead light burns out, and [he] finds himself sitting alone in the darkness.”
~ Paul Auster
Oracle Night