It happens all too frequently that even when they’re worth the trouble—and God knows there are plenty of different kinds of trouble—too many books appear on the shelves to announce themselves with the fanfare of their packaging, a fine illustration, or the sheer volume and heft of their multitudinous pages, often with some kind of pretentious adornment like deckled edges. It wants to scream to the potential reader: I am important and goddamn it I’m the worth price, or however long I’ll be gathering dust in your library. And I’d be willing to bet that we’re all convinced the price tag reflects this kind of pompous importance. So when it…
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Two men working in a business for violin restoration play squash together and dine together at a local bistro, but they otherwise keep to themselves—at least the voiceover, heard once in the beginning of the story, would have us believe that this is the case. Uttered by the laconic and emotionless Stéphane, this voiceover reveals more than anything else in the story the attitudes and the personality of this vaguely ascetic man. A master craftsman of all things violin, Stéphane works in the shop at the back of their workplace with the stolid patience of a visionary, someone so deeply immersed in his work that the outside world disintegrates as…
