Arno Geiger, award-winning author, collected books from dumpsters for a long time. In an autobiographical essay, he tells how the treasures from Vienna’s waste paper changed his life.
from
Marie Schmidt
Arno Geiger writes that what he did is not forbidden. Rather taboo, that is, something to be ashamed of, disgusted by. Even if it’s something mundane, like “eating snot in public.” Digging in the trash is also not a socially acceptable behavior. Society turns away, “Someone who is looking for something useful in the garbage is moving in a different sphere. You don’t look someone in the face and ask: Does this face look familiar to me?” That’s why he was able to do it regularly for years, even when he was already a well-known writer, Geiger admits in his autobiographical essay “The Happy Secret”. That’s how he became who he is today.