Loved it, but while reading I couldn’t shake the feeling he was still actively daydreaming? I was so convinced he was watching Nastenka from afar. Every conversation and laugh and cry was in his head as he watched her sit on a bench or cry by the river.

I might’ve just theorized too hard at the beginning, but I was so convinced each line was pointing to it. It even felt as if he was telling on himself, especially during the dreamer rants. “I create entire love stories in my dreams.” and “although from a distance it will look like a love story.”

Even with tangible things like the letter, I still convinced myself that was all part of the love story he wrote in his head. He wanted to make himself like a hero to Nastenka. I even thought the way she reacted throughout the story felt animated and over the top, like an actor in a play.

I was waiting for some big reveal, possibly where his illusion suddenly dropped and he accidentally scares the crap out of this poor girl he was secretly following/stalking.

Then I read the Morning chapter, and I realized maybe everything did actually happen and he just got friendzoned. Lol. My whole theory crumbled right then and there. I loved the story though, even if I led myself astray with the daydream theory.

I can’t wait to read one of his novels! This was easily my favorite short story, followed by A Nasty Business.

P.S. I read the clothbound Penguin classics copy of White Nights, translated by Ronald Meyer.

By some accounts I’ve come across, what he did (prior to being arrested) was fairly benign and the group he was a part of didn’t seem so bad, but the Russian state during that time was extremely oppressive which is why he was arrested, went through a mock execution, and ended up being sent to Siberia. However, I have also seen or heard other accounts that depict him as a true radical and threat to the Russian state.

Can anyone answer that, and also, if he would be considered a radical by today’s standards (say in the America and/or Russia of today), and/or perhaps another European country of his own day, say France or Germany?

Additionally, it’s my understanding that Dostoevsky ended up a Russophile after everything he went through. Is that potentially indicative of him of having been brainwashed/just being scared into loving Russia like Winston in 1984?

Would love to learn more from an expert!

I've been thinking a lot about Catcher in The Rye in terms of story structure and why it works. Most plots that have a meandering story structure fall flat on their face (usually due to a lack of narrative drive and pacing). Whereas Catcher, like it or not, is one of the most successful books of this type.

When watching the Odyssey, I suddenly realised that Catcher in The Rye is very similar in terms of story structure. In the Odyssey, the protagonist, overcoming an ordeal (Nolan admittedly plays this up more than the original), goes on a journey home, encountering various episodes that lead to a reconciliation of their inner world turmoil and their outer world reconciliation with family.

Holden's journey is very similar. He is struggling with trauma and the ordeal of being suspended, and he's grappling with this longing for childhood days before people put on the fake ("phony") rituals of adulthood. To reconcile these things, he goes on a journey home through a number of strange encounters, each contributing in some way to his end reconciliation with his family (his sister).

Catcher is in some ways more subtle and less explicit about some of this, but it's there in the text. If the book were rewritten for a modern audience there would be long traumatic scenes at the start, which would make us sympathise with him. These are absent in part due to the context when it was written, that mental health was poorly understood and stigmatized back then.

A reverse Odyssey (leaving home) with similar beats is the movie Goodwill Hunting. I think that the people who hate Catcher probably prefer Goodwill Hunting (at a guess). In that film, the protagonist is firmly established as the underdog cleaner at the start, pitted against elite professors, the NSA and college jocks. He also goes through a reconciliation of the self in order to leave home.

For a long time, I've been baffled by some negative views of Catcher. It seems that those who most benefit from our system understand it the least, whereas those in a troubled state (like many teenagers) understand it more.

There's also this weird thing with the book where some people love it as a teenager and hate it as an adult. And I think there's something very sad about that. It's almost like we can only empathise when in the same situation, whereas when we finish the journey, we lose our ability to care.

This strikes me particularly hard because I think it's a theme of modern literary criticism (if we can call it that) on tiktok etc. people basically read books of protagonists that look and sound like them, and then call those books amazing. Whereas I truly believe the best part of reading is learning empathy for someone radically different, who looks and sounds nothing like you, from another country, place, dimension or other realm even.

I read a Man Called Ove a few years back, and honestly I really enjoyed reading it. It had great themes of loneliness and isolation, as well as found family which I usually love. However, I just finished And Every Morning The Road Home Gets Longer And Longer, and hoooly shit it was bad. Like, really bad.

An eon ago I studied creative writing at university; and AEMTRHGLAL reads exactly like the kind of short story my classmates might have written. It was trite, shallow, straight up boring, and the overwrought language drove me insane by the end. And it was less than 100 pages!!

My big question is this: is it worth reading his other works? Is AEMTRHGLAL more his standard, and Ove was the standout, or is it the other way around? My mum read Beartown and had similar complaints as me, so I’m not confident, but I’ve heard Backman lauded online so much

I love humorous fiction and satire and thought that this would be a perfect book given my personal tastes. After seeing Paul Beatty recommended on many reddit threads on subreddits for specific authors I am a fan of, I finally purchased the book and was super excited to read it. My first attempt roughly a year ago only lasted about ~30-40 pages, but I didn't look too much into it, as I'm not always in the mood for every book and some of my favorite novels have taken multiple attempts to get into.

After having completed the book, I'm really at a loss as to what I am missing and it seems as absurd as the book to me that 'The Sellout' was designated as the best English-language novel in 2015. Some authors use irony like a scalpel, Beatty wields irony like a sledgehammer or a derailed freight-train. The craziest part to me is that it's difficult to find a single sentence in a ~300 page book that is not intended to be satirical or humorous - it is maybe the least subtle book I've come across in the English language. It really comes across as one long-winded, continuous ramble of absurd joke after joke stretching for hundreds of pages with little narrative flow. In my mind there is a place for this type of literature and it can be enjoyable, but it really feels like this novel should be lumped together with authors like Tom Robbins (who are really just fun and wacky at their core) and only is vaulted into the stratospheres of "high literature" because it revolves around socially charged topics.

That being said I often had to stop and think is this really that funny or is this book just a jumble of satirical and political low-hanging fruits - jokes or social commentary that are agreeable and easily recognizable as irony to the average reader and which make you feel good about yourself for being able to identify avant-garde satire from an award-winning book (The Barbie movie discussing the patriarchy in the year 2023 is more of this type of low-hanging fruit critical commentary). I think in person he is probably an incredibly clever and funny person, but no one is funny enough to maintain a constant stream of humor for hundreds of pages and have everything hit. Not to mention that some of the humor is just straight up potty humor or unnecessary overuse of profanity for shock value - which is a new realm for many readers (but it certainly does not mean that it is deep or valuable).

The value of literature for many people is the emotional depth and the level of nuance at which ideas or characters can be explored and flushed out - an area where the novel really shines relative to other art forms - but this book has the emotional depth of graphene. I think that other artists have explored these issues far more successfully by wielding satire more sparingly and weaving it into much more balanced stories of greater complexity. To me the critical success of this book lies in a common pitfall where reviewers often overrate the depth and quality of books or movies that touch upon topics that are deemed socially progressive and somewhat taboo. I would compare the reception of 'The Sellout' to Anora which won best picture in 2025. Similarly I thought Anora was a good, but fairly shallow exploration of the "taboo" world of sex workers. Reviewers went on endlessly about how groundbreaking Anora was (was it really?) and it ultimately won best picture, but it really didn't make any points that wouldn't be immediately obvious to a mildly socially conscious 13 year old. In much the same way, The Sellout didn't make any social commentary that you couldn't find among twitter rants and it certainly didn't explore any of these topics at an intimate enough level to really illicit an emotional response in the reader, so I struggle to see the social value from a critical respective other than the book is a bit fun and gratifying.

In the end I think this is really just a funny book, but a book that tries to be much funnier than it really is (or even should be) and which has certainly been lauded as something far more impressive than it really is. When it comes to humor, I'll take Ignatius Reilly or Lieutenant Orr over 'Me' any day - sometimes more isn't better.

“Halfway up the hill Samuel squatted down and took up a handful of the harsh gravelly earth in his palm and spread it with his forefinger, flint and sandstone and bits of shining mica and a frail rootlet and veined stone. He let it slip from his hand and brushed his palms. He picked a spear of grass and set it between his teeth and stared up the hill to the sky. A gray nervous cloud was scurrying eastward, searching for trees on which to rain.”

. . .

“Liza was rolling out pie crust on the floury board. She was so expert with the rolling pin that the dough seemed alive. It flattened out and then pulled back a little from the tension itself. Liza lifted the pale sheet of it and laid it over one of the pie tins and trimmed the edges with a knife. The prepared berries lay deep in red juice in a bowl.”

Penguin Classics, Penguin Orange Collection, page 286.

I just finished reading this novel and wanted to drop some of my thoughts on it.

I've seen a lot of the discussion on this book focus on the the atrocities of colonialism, the racist worldview of the characters and possibly the author, the descent into madness that "civilized" people go through when stripped of their civilization, etc. And this is all fine and discussed ad nauseum, but I haven't seen much about how this novel is basically about how absurd and nonfunctional colonialism is.

Almost all of the story is spent on showing how the colonizing Europeans are just flailing around and have completely lost the plot. The ship firing into an empty coastline to defeat the "enemy" that isn't there, while the crew is actively dying. The random detonations on a mountain to build a railroad that will never be built, and the digging of random holes by exhausted and dying men, just to show that "work" is getting done. The steamboat that takes months to fix because it needs rivets, which there are a ton of at the shore but nobody seems to remember to bring them or have them stocked anywhere useful. All the cowardly pajama wearing agents that can't aim a gun correctly plotting and scheming to climb up the company ladder but never actually doing anything so as not to rock the boat, so to speak. Nobody knows what they are doing. This whole nonsense, broken system is held up purely on technological superiority over the natives; literally nothing else.

The only competent, functional man here is Mr. Kurtz. He came to do imperialism, to extract resources, and he's doing an incredible job at it, making all the other agents jealous and disdainful of him. He uses his vast charisma, natural talents, and willingness to dive into the culture to become a god-king of a local tribe and exact ivory tribute from other tribes. There really isn't any mention of any horrific atrocities he commits that exceed what we saw anywhere else. He just did what all the other agents weren't willing to do: his job. There were all willing to brutalize and terrorize the local populace, he just decided to do it in a way that actually accomplished the task the company set out to do here, which was extract resources. And for all this, Mr. Kurtz is considered insane and unsound for daring to do his job in an efficient, if unorthodox, manner.

Marlowe sees this, as does the Russian kid, and they respect the hell out of him even though he's not a good person or mentally sound. They see a man who's colonizing, and is willing to sacrifice every bit of what makes him "European" and "civilized" to do it well. Marlowe realizes that colonialism is fundamentally absurd: you either can try to do it as a "gentleman" the "European way" and accomplish nothing but useless suffering, or you can "go native" and lose any "decency" to actually make your colonizing economically worthwhile. Mr. Kurtz dropped any pretense of bringing European "civilization" or "progress" to these people, and did what he needed to do to get the ivory flowing. For all his delusions of grandeur, Kurtz was the least hubristic and the most clear headed agent in the company. He was the perfect colonist, doing exactly what he was asked to do, and it confused and horrified the very society he was asked to do colonialism for.

The idea of colonialism (spreading "civilization" to "savages" and making a buck while doing it) and what it actually means to perform it are so incompatible that you either need try to balance both and accomplish nothing but pure absurdity or strip off the higher ideals and accomplish your task at the price of losing everything it means to be European or "civilized" in the process. One isn't better or more moral than the other, as both are horrific in and of themselves, it's just one is far more effective.

Heart of Darkness's focus is less on the horrors of imperialism and it's damaging effects on the colonized and/or colonizers and more on how imperialism is a fundamentally absurd concept that creates suffering on a massive scale as a natural, useless byproduct. It's basically Catch-22 meets Huckleberry Finn with a little Kafka sprinkled in.

I'm fascinated by Sylvia Plath's writing. I find admirable the way she writes about pain in such a poetic and profound way, in a way I didn't even know was possible to put such complex feelings into words. I finished *The Bell Jar* some time ago and it really made me reflect on how mental disorders were misunderstood and treated so cruelly back then. Perhaps if they had the knowledge we have today, Sylvia wouldn't have committed suicide. I want to read her diaries, but I don't think I'm 100% ready for that yet. I'd like to know your opinions on Sylvia and works with a similar writing style.

Here's one of my favorite passages from the book:

The problem was actually that I had always been inadequate, I just hadn't thought about it yet.

The only thing I excelled at was winning scholarships and awards, and that time was coming to an end.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks, or a college football champion suddenly confronted with Wall Street and an executive suit, his glory days reduced to a small golden trophy on a shelf with a date engraved on it like on a tombstone.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in that story.

From the tip of each branch, like a huge purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and shimmered. One of those figs was a happy home with a husband and children, another was a famous poet, another a brilliant teacher, another was É Gê, the fantastic editor, another was made of trips to Europe, Africa, and South America, another was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a bunch of lovers with strange names and eccentric professions, another was an Olympic rowing champion, and above those figs there were many others that I couldn't see.

I found myself sitting under the tree, starving, simply because I couldn't decide which fig I would keep. I wanted them all, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and as I sat there, unable to make a decision, the figs began to shrink and turn black and, one by one, collapsed to the ground at my feet.

- The Bell Jar

Hey guys, I just some questions regarding the role of the natural world and central metaphor of the lighthouse in this phenomenal novel.

Regarding the natural world, it seems to have a paradoxical role, both being a source of subjective positivity and the key source of existential angst, reminding the characters of their smallness of finitude. For instance, the ocean seems to be a lulling source, providing a sense of tranquility to the central characters. Yet, it also seems to be a source that reminds each character of their smallness and finitude. Whether it’s the relentless wind, the flood of darkness, or the persistent crashing of waves on the shore, these all seem to be catalysts that forces characters to reflect upon the relentlessness of time and the meaningless of the universe.

In relation to the lighthouse, I’d assume there are multiple ways to read this metaphor. Although, when reading the ‘Time Passes’ passage, the juxtaposition between the ever-persistent lighthouse and emptiness of spaces that were once animated seems to me to suggest that the lighthouse is a metaphor for something that transcends human boundaries, especially regarding being subjected to time. And the fact that they never reach the lighthouse, this may suggest that this is a space that humans can never occupy because it’s off limits to us — we are plagued by the relentless of time, while the lighthouse stands out of this.

Recently somebody I know has been talking about McCarthy and how much she loves his books. Now, and I don't mean to be provocative (though my comment is going to be), I think McCarthy is one of the most overrated writers of the past century.

I read Blood Meridian and found it to be page after page of drivel. Half the words didn't need to be there. It was like he read Moby Dick (which I love) and took away the exact wrong thing.

It's funny because many of the authors he's compared to, I love: Dostoevsky, for example.

I've studied scripture academically so I get the whole "biblical cadence" thing.

I've never encountered somebody else who seems to match how little I respect McCarthy and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. It's like I'm reading a completely different book from everybody else. I won't go so far as to say it's an emperor's new clothes situation, but I can see why somebody might think it is.

Also, I doubt you'll be able to change my mind here. Maybe you will, but I'm more interested in seeing what people actually appreciate (because it's probably the same stuff that makes me hate his work) and in hearing from people who share my thoughts.

I know people tend to be against these sorts of posts, so please remember I'm trying to approach this with an open mind. I'm not trying to be a contrarian for the sake of stirring controversy.

disclaimer: not a review / slander, genuine ask for help

I have recently started reading A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I'm not big on classics, but I was excited to read it, because one of my favorite books used it as an major inspiration + it's also the best selling book oat, so i expected i would enjoy it a lot.

But when i got around to reading it, i quickly found out i can't understand shit (currently on chapter 3). And i don't mean as in "i don't understand how something happened" or the politics, mystery, characters, etc. I literally can't understand / compartmentalize 70% of the sentences that i'm reading.

It's not even a vocabulary issue - whenever i find a word i don't know, i pull up the dictionary and look it up. The problem is the style and sentences. The sentences are just so windy, abstract, metaphorical, ornate, long and extremely weirdly structured that my brain just can't compute them. I have never had an issue with long sentences, metaphors, allegories and figurative speech, but this book has me going like this.

Every single paragraph I start off with complete understanding of the allegory, but then Dickens takes it in a weird unrelated direction, then he interrupts the thought, then another curveball, another interruption, then he references the first sentence in a way that's seemingly incompatible with the starting allegory - at this point, i've already lost the thread and i didn't even get past the first half of the paragraph.

I have never felt so dumb and illiterate while reading something. What makes it even funnier, i've heard that Dickens is supposed to be writing with the "working barely-literate social class" as his target audience. Really makes me feel like an idiot when you put it in this perspective.

Like, sure, i'm not a native english speaker, and i'm not the biggest reader, but i'm also not a complete illiterate. I've read some humongous books (eg. The Wandering Inn), some classics (Journey to the West, And Then There Were None, The Prince and the Pauper) and some complex books (Lord of the Mysteries). There were also things i've read where i was sure that i didn't get the full meaning / missed a lot of stuff, and i would have to revisit them later (eg. Umineko). There were also a lot of times when i didn't understand some sentences / paragraphs, so i had to stop and think about them for 5 minutes till finally got them.

But never once have i been like "i understand the words, i understand the phrase, but i literally can't understand what you are talking about", even after giving it a lot of time to settle in my brain (i've been reading it for 3 days, yet there is still stuff i don't understand).

Is it just a me problem? Is there any way to overcome this? I really want to read A Tale of Two Cities and love it, but at this rate, i'm afraid i'm gonna have to DNF it. That would be a real shame, since i was looking forward to reading it.

ps: i'm using the Project Gutenberg EPUB

My question applies to many writers about society in the late 19th/ early 20th century e.g. Oscar Wilde or Agatha Christie. Was the world of upper/ middle class people so small back in the day that they could all discuss "The Majestic (Hotel) at Monte Carlo" or "We all know what Mrs Babbington's soirées are like" and everyone knew what was meant?

It seems like these people had a lot of knowledge of places and people back in the day. More so than today? I understand it was likely a select few who possessed this knowledge. And there were far fewer people and places that passed the requisite tests of class and taste to feature in these novels/ plays. And back in the day there were gossip papers that spread this information around. I imagine that some of it is performative too: showing you are 'in with the crowd'.

But it just seems bizarre that so much of 'society writing' from the early 20th century commonly contains sentiments of shared common knowledge like that, when even at that time there were still millions of people in Britain or America, let alone the whole world. Its still a dizzying number of people to all know what Lady X is lile or where Y Hotel is like. Agatha Christie is full of these sorts of "oh you must know old Jonty"/ "I stayed at The Parsifal" etc.

EDIT: a further thunk on this comparing my ideas with French literature where, ever since the 'founding' French novel (The Princess of Cleves) there was a lot of this "this happened at the dinner of Madame X", "as everyone who knows the Chevalier de Y will know..." It makes the plot look like real-world gossip. Sometimes it genuinely was veiled real-world gossip (as in Princess of Cleves). It makes the reader want to be "in on it". It's very "the girls who get it, get it. And the girls who don't, don't".

Has anyone else noticed how Jimmy Webb's "Highwayman" feels remarkably similar to Jack London's The Star Rover? Both depict a consciousness that survives bodily death and experiences multiple lives across different historical periods. I haven't found any discussion connecting the two, and I'm wondering whether this is just a shared archetype or whether others have noticed the same parallel.

Do you think this is just a coincidence, or are there earlier literary traditions that influenced both works?

Lesser known about the cosmic horror writer HP Lovecraft, but he was a fairly significant cinematic audience-member.

His letters contain over 100 named films from the 1900s-1930s, with direct contemporary comments on their releases.

I’ve made an ongoing study of this, and here’s one such snippet:

Aug 14th, 1933 (to J. Vernon Shea)

“As usual, your cinema notes offer interesting suggestions—though I've seen no shows since the Onset one to which the Longs dragged me.

I shall try to see the coming Chaplin event — which reminds me that I have probably seen nearly all of the immortal Charlie's efforts.

"Destination Unknown" ought to have some good effects, though the moral latter half sounds sappy.

What you say of the quality of the different nations' films is probably true—amusingly so in contrast to the conditions when the industry was young. In those days-say '06 & '07—over half of everything came from France, so that a cinema show was almost synonymous with the Pathé coq rouge atop the warning "Marque Deposeé" [sic].

Italian films were also numerous but France was in the lead.... so much so that cinema-devotees of that time picked up a pretty good idea of French lifehouses, street scenes, urban types, &c.

Some of the things weren't bad for their time—they were far less crude than the American products.

I recall a splendid comedian named Max Linder, & two very fair actors named Kraus & Liabel. I hope to see the cinematic “Emperor Jones" — I saw the original play a decade ago, with Charles Gilpin (now deceased, I believe) as the central figure. It was tremendously effective.”

Recently finished reading Intermezzo, a book I've been looking forward to for a while. My perception was that is a real 'literature' kind of book, and I think that is indeed its aim, but unfortunately I think it falls a bit short of heavy-hitting and lasting impact, sliding often (especially at the end) towards dull triteness.

To me, the novel has strong parallels with The Sun Also Rises, both featuring psychologically and emotionally lost, emptied characters who's lives are just a series of sporadic and disjointed events, with various intoxicants of choice (wine, Xanax) dulling the discomfort of wasted years. Most clearly paralleled is Peter and Sylvia with Jake and Brett. This makes for an interesting premise and I was interested to see a modern rendition of this theme. I also very much enjoyed the sense of 'place' given to Dublin, with the different streets, Greens, bridges, etc. Passages of Peter strolling through this visceral setting with thoughts of both self-loathing and at times self-aggrandizing also remind me of, for example, The Underground Man. Rooney also has great passages contrasting different settings. A notable example contrasts cold, dry, dark Dublin with the warm, bright, humid interior of Peter's apartment with Naomi.

Unfortunately, the prose is also one of the biggest issues I had with the book. I love stream of thought, and some of it was done well, especially the character's thoughts meandering across different life events. However, I found it to just be extremely verbose and superfluous. At some point it seemed like Rooney could not decide what adjective or adverb to use, and decided to just use all of them. Numerous passages also seemed to be trying too hard to seem deep or philosophical, but ultimately came across as shallow, almost performative. It also felt like the author was explicitly inserting her ideals in places, such as Ivan's discussion about the value of labour, which seem like a clear stand-in for Rooney's own political ideas. Discussions on appropriate age-gaps in relationships, especially Ivan and Margaret's, also come similarly.

While the novel first seems to set-up a complicated and nuanced discussion on love, loss, and loss of love, by the end I felt like I was roped into a generic Christmas love story. Giving literally every single character and relationship a happy ending stands in complete opposition of the themes in the first half of the book. It doesn't really help all the reconciliation happens so quickly. Sylvia and Naomi agree to a thruple after meeting each other once? Peter immediately is fond of Sylvia after a few minutes in the hallway? All the tension, drama, and stakes disappear within a few chapters. This has been talked about before, but really is a major shortcoming of the novel. Compare with The Sun Also rises, which so clearly is paralleled -- that ending promises no love and happiness, just more drifting and wandering, better capturing realistic hopelessness.

Ultimately, I keep thinking about the novel, and would have enjoyed reading more about the Koubak brothers. It drifts very annoyingly close to being a great novel, but it feels like Rooney held back, wasn't willing to go all the way for that to happen.

To put it into layman’s terms: Nabokov believed that the only thing that books should prioritize is to be “aesthetic bliss.” And I really hate that thinking.

If books or art in general were used for only aesthetic bliss and not have any political messaging, then in my opinion, most of the effective way of teaching people will go away. Take the jungle upon Sinclair. Funnily enough, he originally wrote the book to have people feel empathetic towards the immigrant workers and how bad the work conditions were, but it was used for a different purpose. It was simply disgusting. People were horrified about how the food they were eating was made in horrible conditions. The book literally was the main driving force for the creation of the FDA, due to the public outrage it caused.

Many books and art in general helped drive social change for the better, books like:
Uncle Tom’s cabin, the grapes of wrath, Cathy come home, and so many more.

The he wrote book himself—Lolita—was also used for massive cultural and political purposes. The term lolicon was literally coined off of his work, I’m not saying that it is his fault, but to say that authors should have no political messaging in their books is stupid considering that he put political messaging in his book, even if he didn’t mean to this take comes from a place of privilege and completely ignores empathy. I respect his work. I just don’t respect that philosophy.

Recently finished reading White Nights. Just sharing an alternative ending that I thought would be cool. I'm also not a literature academic so pardon my usage of lay terms.

In the last evening, the lodger appeared and Nastenka basically went to him and gave up the narrator. I was thinking if this final evening, the following played out

• Nastenka was alone, crying by herself, as the narrator approaches
• Nastenka, unable to reconcile her feeling for the narrator vs the lodger, avoids the narrator and walks away
• The narrator continues his approach towards Nastenka as the lodger appears and held Nastenka's hand
• The narrator, seeing this scene, quietly backs off

If you've noticed, this is the exact scene in the first evening, except the narrator is now the weird dude tryna hit o Nastenka and the lodger becomes Nastenka's saviour. And the whole story kinda envelopes itself. What do you think?

Of course, if you go into the details of the story, there may be some parts that doesn't add up. But I think these kinda twist endings really gives me the goosebumps

Note: In no way am I saying that Dostoevsky ended this story badly nor that I can write a better ending

Recently finished reading Intermezzo, a book I've been looking forward to for a while. My perception was that is a real 'literature' kind of book, and I think that is indeed its aim, but unfortunately I think it falls a bit short of heavy-hitting and lasting impact, sliding often (especially at the end) towards dull triteness.

To me, the novel has strong parallels with The Sun Also Rises, both featuring psychologically and emotionally lost, emptied characters who's lives are just a series of sporadic and disjointed events, with various intoxicants of choice (wine, Xanax) dulling the discomfort of wasted years. Most clearly paralleled is Peter and Sylvia with Jake and Brett. This makes for an interesting premise and I was interested to see a modern rendition of this theme. I also very much enjoyed the sense of 'place' given to Dublin, with the different streets, Greens, bridges, etc. Passages of Peter strolling through this visceral setting with thoughts of both self-loathing and at times self-aggrandizing also remind me of, for example, The Underground Man. Rooney also has great passages contrasting different settings. A notable example contrasts cold, dry, dark Dublin with the warm, bright, humid interior of Peter's apartment with Naomi.

Unfortunately, the prose is also one of the biggest issues I had with the book. I love stream of thought, and some of it was done well, especially the character's thoughts meandering across different life events. However, I found it to just be extremely verbose and superfluous. At some point it seemed like Rooney could not decide what adjective or adverb to use, and decided to just use all of them. Numerous passages also seemed to be trying too hard to seem deep or philosophical, but ultimately came across as shallow, almost performative. It also felt like the author was explicitly inserting her ideals in places, such as Ivan's discussion about the value of labour, which seem like a clear stand-in for Rooney's own political ideas. Discussions on appropriate age-gaps in relationships, especially Ivan and Margaret's, also come similarly.

While the novel first seems to set-up a complicated and nuanced discussion on love, loss, and loss of love, by the end I felt like I was roped into a generic Christmas love story. Giving literally every single character and relationship a happy ending stands in complete opposition of the themes in the first half of the book. It doesn't really help all the reconciliation happens so quickly. Sylvia and Naomi agree to a thruple after meeting each other once? Peter immediately is fond of Sylvia after a few minutes in the hallway? All the tension, drama, and stakes disappear within a few chapters. This has been talked about before, but really is a major shortcoming of the novel. Compare with The Sun Also rises, which so clearly is paralleled -- that ending promises no love and happiness, just more drifting and wandering, better capturing realistic hopelessness.

Ultimately, I keep thinking about the novel, and would have enjoyed reading more about the Koubak brothers. It drifts very annoyingly close to being a great novel, but it feels like Rooney held back, wasn't willing to go all the way for that to happen.

I've just started to read To the Lighthouse again....and man, the language, and the use of figuartive techniques, is truly astonishing. I just read the passage involving the alphabet metaphor, and the manner in which Woolf uses this as a metaphor to capture Mr. Ramsay systemised method of thinking, and how the realm of certain intellectual pursuits are off limits for a mind like his, is so incredibly clever.

There's also some absolute doozy existential quotes that seem to capture this underlying fear of death that pervades the novel, even throughout the first 30 pages. I actually physically stopped reading when Mr. Ramsay pondered "The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare."

I have been kinda obsessed with Mailer for a while and I finally got into Ancient Evenings, his epic novel set in The New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. I am no Egypt expert but it seems like he at least did his homework here. I know its a fictional tale but the detail shows that he cared about making it feel like Ancient Egypt. I know some people hate Mailer because he was so overtly masculine and not always the most respectful fellow but I enjoy his point of view. I can feel the curiosity in his writings.

Anyone else read this book? Any Egyptian scholars out there? Any Mailer fans out there?

I hope you like this post, My regards from Egypt ..

--------------------------------

About the author (whom I call the Egyptian Graham Hancock) :

Anis Mansour أنيس منصور was born in the Mansoura city, Egypt, in 1924. He memorized the Quran at the age of nine, then joined Cairo University, where he studied philosophy and graduated in 1947. He was appointed as a lecturer in modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, but soon left teaching to devote himself to journalism. He worked at the Rose al-Yusuf magazine, then became editor-in-chief of Sabah al-Khair magazine, and wrote his articles for Al-Ahram newspaper for decades. He travelled the world on extensive journeys, which he documented in his books, and mastered several languages that enabled him to explore different cultures. He published nearly two hundred books covering philosophy, literature, travel, and the paranormal. His style was marked by a blend of simplicity and depth, combining journalistic flair with a philosophical outlook, which made him one of the most widely read Arab writers of the twentieth century. He died in 2011 in Cairo.

His most notable books :

1- Around the World in 200 Days (1963)

His most famous and widely read work, documenting his actual journey around the world in the early 1960s.

2- Spirits and Ghosts (1972)

A collection of 35 long stories exploring mysterious paranormal phenomena, ghosts & demons, and unsolved enigmas.

3- Those Who Descended from the Sky (1971)

A groundbreaking work proposing that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth in antiquity. The author cites archaeological sites like Giza and Baalbek as evidence, and controversially suggests that Adam and Eve may have originated from other planets.

4- Those Who Returned to the Sky (1983)

A collection of essays compiled in a book, on supernatural events and ancient civilisations. The author argues that alien builders may have constructed humanity's greatest monuments, drawing on the Book of the Dead, the story of Enoch, and the Epic of Gilgamesh to trace mankind's possible cosmic origins.

5- Hidden Forces (1979)

A philosophical exploration of the subconscious and the hidden energies governing human perception. The author cites scientific findings on plant sensitivity to argue that a universal language connects all living things, inviting the reader to move from materialism toward inner contemplation.

6- The Pharaohs' Curse (1989)

A famous book in his "beyond nature" series, delving into the mysteries and curses associated with ancient Egypt.

7- Studies in American Literature (1952)

A collaborative anthology, introduced by Professor Taha Hussein and writer Anis Mansour and others. The author, along with several other prominent Egyptian intellectuals, contributes scholarly essays that examine American literature from a mid‑century Arab critical perspective. (Poetry - Long Stories - Short Stories - Drama - Philosophy - Journalism - Criticism - Sociology - Non fiction literature