A slender, beautifully bound blue hardback showed up on my desk. Its pages were creamy, its typeface clear in a formal, old-fashioned way. Each page number was picked out in scarlet. It was a book to put Kindle out of business, so covetable that, I almost thought, it scarcely mattered what it contained. It was then I noticed its curious title, ¡°Things I Don¡¯t Want to Know,¡± and a quotation, picked out on the cover in pink type: ¡°To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.¡±
The writer is Deborah Levy, shortlisted last year for the Man Booker for her marvellous novel ¡°Swimming Home.¡± ¡°Things I Don¡¯t Want to Know¡± is published by Notting Hill Editions, a small, choice, independent publisher committed to ¡°reinvigorating the essay as a literary form.¡± They came up with the idea of commissioning writers to respond to essays of distinction. Levy has had George Orwell¡¯s ¡°Why I Write¡± (1946) at her elbow.
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