Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard

"My father said he wanted to return Kant's Prolegomena and Marx's Dissertation, both of which he had finished. He took the two volumes out of his medical bag and put them down on the table. Then he mentioned the books that he would like to borrow: Nietzsche's On the Future of our Educational Institutions, a French edition of Pascal's Pensées, and Diderot's Mystification.

~~ from Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard

Friday, September 19, 2025

Do stories have something to say?

“Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life.”

~~ from The Joke by Milan Kundera

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Book Reviews for Fight for Your Long Day

W.D. Clarke's Blog " Fight for Your Long Day,  by Alex Kudera " by W.D. Clarke (January 13, 2025) Genealogies of Modernity ...