In the train from work I finished Richard Ford's short story How Was it to be Dead?, a love triangle about a woman and two men. The narrator is her current husband, the other man is her first husband from whom she was never divorced. He had vanished in Vietnam and has reappeared after 30 or so years. When reading

I could not help myself from grinning. And felt alienated by myself immediately after. Not because of the cheesiness of the joke. It suddenly came to my mind how I dislike seeing people smile when reading books in the public space. In general I like smiles as everyone I suppose. But those smiles have to be directed at someone else. Have to be part of a communication. Even the seemingly unmotivated smile of a stranger thinking of a funny situation or the smile out of sheer happiness would belong into this category as they are echoes to a real life experience. Whereas the person with the book disconnects himself from his current environment and smiles in a selfish, masturbatory way which detaches him even more from the people around him. If the young long-haired guy with glasses sitting opposite from me had asked me why I had smiled I would probably think differently about this but this has never happened to me with strangers if I remember well. Neither as smiler nor as watcher of someone smile. Next time I see someone grin with a book in front of him or her I will ask the question. And this post will have served its purpose.