This is something I’ve been going on about in Our Man in Gdansk for some time now. This time, the book in question, though Polish, is available in an English translation by the highly regarded translator Bill Johnston. I refer to Andrzej Stasiuk’s 9. Look at the mess on page 6:

To the right there’d once been fields. … autumn stubble where cows grazed. … Yellow paths twisted among the willows. … dark patch on the sand. … Now a row of billboards separated the road from the boundless grey grass that had taken over the vegetable gardens.

It’s clear enough that now there is just grass but what was there before? Fields? Willows? Sand? Vegetable gardens? Sandy paths running through thickets of willows growing on vegetable gardens surrounded by fields?

A particularly clear illustration of the Polish author’s inability or unwillingness to read what he has written occurs a few pages later, when we read: Bolek “pulled the sleeves of his jacket back a little” (21). What’s this on page 17, though? Bolek’s “gold chain slipped from his wrist onto his forearm. … Each time he raised his glass or cigarette, the bracelet fell half way to his elbow.” What has happened in the pages intervening between 17 and 21? Bolek went to the toilet. To put his jacket on, no doubt.