Woke up super early today and beat the rooster to his job!
I'm STILL reading 'How I Became Stupid' by Martin Page and it has lured me into profound reflections. Here's an extract that really made me read over it more than twice :
"On a particularly fruitful day of despair Antoine had once told himself that to believe in the truths that force us to bow our heads is to form alliances with the reality they derive from : whoever wants to find proof of his unhappiness will find it, because in human affairs you always find what you're looking for. He had then decided that every truth that made him suffer was a moral, and one that he could confront with the imagination of his own morals. But even though he was upset as he came out of that office building he didn't remember these ideas. More precisely, he didn't need to remember them : he took two Happyzac pills and the ghost of that disillusioned woman's words disappeared. Antoine rang Raphi, told him what had happened, and said that he should keep an eye on his friend.
"A shadow had hovered over his conscience while he had been talking to her, but it had evaporated as soon as he stepped back into the rhythm of life where the days multiply all by themselves.
"Those who are perfectly integrated into society know only one season, a permanent summer, where they tan their happy minds in the rays of a sun that never goes down, even when they're asleep: even in their dreams it's never dark. Antoine had lived in a rainy autumn for twenty-five years; from now on, whether it was winter, spring or autumn, his mind would know only the uninterrupted reign of summer."
I would highly recommend this social satire. I'm taking my own sweet time to plod through this book like a tortoise because I enjoy it a lot, end up rereading paragraphs a lot to savour the prose, and don't really wish to get to the end of the book.
Have you read a book lately that had excerpts you'd like to share here?
