The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

The History of The History of Love

In the beginning everyone started out with a perfect world. Each person’s world was as beautiful as them, the sky of their world reflected their eyes and their footsteps were already marked in the sand. But they were alone in their perfection and people started venturing out of their worlds into other worlds seeking companionship. At first these expeditions were awkward and short, people rarely liked each other’s worlds as much as their own. As time went on people stayed in each other’s worlds longer and on their way back they inadvertently dragged something back into their world. A clump of dirt would latch on to the sole of a shoe, a flower petal would journey between worlds on an unsuspecting shoulder, a smell would hide inside a woolen jacket. Pretty soon people’s worlds began to merge, the boundaries between worlds started disappearing and no one knew if they were in their own world or someone else’s anymore. After a while only small patches of perfection marked the territories people once knew as their own, and not long after that they forgot they were theirs to begin with all together. Inside this new conjoined world teeming with people there remained an island world of two people who needed no one else’s world but each other’s. His name was Jonathan Safran Foer, her name was Nicole Krauss. Through the leaves of the thick hedges that marked the boundaries of their perfection they watched the people in the big flawed world around them go about their lives. They thought they were beautiful. They thought they were sad. They wrote wonderful books about what they imagined their lives would be like. Books about love and loss, books about memories and words, books about keys and locks, books about children and fathers. In these books love justified loss, memories went beyond words, keys opened locks and children loved their fathers. When a book would be finished they would throw the book over the hedge and into the big world. The people read their books and wept because they still had a distant memory of the perfection they used to have. One of those books was The History of Love.