Who is Lenore Nox?
Darling, would you have believed it if someone told you Lenore Nox hates books? Well, it’s true. I hate them. Despise them.
Loathe them.
I hate how tempting the pages feel against my skin, and that every time I open a book inside a bookstore—I end up buying it. I hate how the smell of an old book carries me to a time I didn’t live in—and even more—how much I would’ve liked to live in it.
I hate how much I love books.
But you could’ve probably guessed that. Between all the books I have published this year alone, and the ones I still plan to publish in the years to come, I think it’s quite obvious that I’m not impartial to the written word. So, why don’t I tell you something else about myself? Come on, pick up that sledgehammer, let’s break this fence down a bit.
The relationship between an anonymous writer and a reader is always, more or less, one-sided. Why? Because there’s a wall, darling. A wall that I willingly put into place to protect my peace. You know only as much as I tell you, and even then—what if everything I tell you is a lie? My name surely is. Nobody is born with something as poetic as “Lenore Nox”. Oh, no, my love, the name stamped in my passport is so ordinary you must’ve heard it at least a dozen times throughout your life—regardless of which country you call your home. Well, unless it’s in Asia. I don’t think my name is all that popular in countries where the alphabet is made up of hieroglyphics. But Lenore? Now that’s a name worthy of a poem. And believe it or not, some chap named Edgar Allan Poe did write one.
People often speculate that my name came from Poe’s poem. I wish I’d been that poetic.
No, my sweet. It came from a grocery list. From a brand called “Lenor”. If you didn’t know, it manufactures anything from laundry detergent to air freshener. Not calling me poetic now, are you? Oh, but “Nox”? Now, “Nox” was intentional. “Nox” means “night” in Latin. Or nitrogen oxides if you spell it like “NOx”. So, in short, I suppose, Lenore Nox is an air freshener that releases nitrogen oxides. There, now we’re both having a laugh.
But why did Lenore Nox come to be? Hmm. I suppose when Mommy loves Daddy very much… And when both of them love books even more…
I remember us having a room in the attic, filled with books from top to bottom. The pathway between those tall spires had been so narrow that I kept either knocking the piles over or ending up stuck in between them. Once, I spent an entire day being stuck, staring at the spine of Dostoevsky’s Idiot. I don’t even think I knew the word “idiot” back then. Oh, alright, it was more like ten minutes before my mother pulled me out. But imagine if it had been an entire day? Little Lenore stuck in a dusty attic, all alone, in complete silence, glaring at Dostoevsky for calling her an idiot. I fail to see the tragedy in it, to be honest.
So, if I had to provide a hypothesis and later try to prove it or disprove it, I would say—Lenore Nox is… me. And good luck disproving that.
Until next time, my darling,
You do not know me—that is by design.
Think of me as the last burning ember
On the eve before the eternal night.
