[A Living 404]
What is being read at the moment.
Every election is a new opportunity to discover more unpleasant realities about our fellow citizens. And, if Günter Grass’s Crabwalk is any indication, we should have been prepared for recurring…
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings…
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is so good, it makes you mad. And of course, the narrator, an “eccentric recluse” in a remote Polish village, has…
“Old Noel Constant had never known anything about business, and neither had his son—and what little charms the Constants had evaporated the instant they pretended that their successes depended on…
This line from Evelyn Waugh, which he gave to the maundering Dr. Puttock, pretty much presaged what became an implicit but prevailing attitude guiding the next several decades: “Some people…
“The water I drink, the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the bed I sleep on, are all determined by politics, good or bad. Politics is about power and…
Classic sci-fi novel Odd John reads like a proto-X-Men story because that’s what it is. Reputable sources credit author Olaf Stapledon with coining Homo superior, which is of course Magneto’s…
Writers, content creators, etc., all fetishcize the post-apocalyptic world since it is an opening for them to demonstrate their deep familiarity with the darkness at the heart of humanity. And…
“It’s frowned upon to say so, but if we’re being honest, come on—please. There are currently billions of humans. Even allowing for some repetition, are there billions of reasons for…
From Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, page 77 of the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Robert Baldick. “He envied pianists their talent and soldiers their scars. He longed for a dangerous illness,…