Sitting on History - the chained book bench at the British Library

This sculpture is probably one of the first things I noticed inside the British Library. It feels at home there, although I had no idea about its meaning until I googled it today. According to Wikipedia, ‘the work, with its ball and chain, refers to the book as the captor of information from which we cannot escape’.

The explanation is probably as meaningful as a whole book, to be honest. It’s a one-sentence story. What can’t we escape - the book or the information? If we can’t escape the book, the captor, is it because we are information? Or if it’s the information we can’t escape, is it because we must face it? I’m going all literary analysis here, but do you see what I mean?

While we’re on this topic, since 2020 I forgot to notice how many people read on the train. Today I saw at least three people reading, just in the short breaks when I was raising my eyes from my own book. One of them, a white man, was reading Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’. And I was reading Caleb Azumah-Nelson’s ‘Open Water’. Read them both and you’ll understand why this is important.

Writing is a way to share an experience, and reading is a way to live it.