CxD 📚 '23 #10: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I is Another: Septology III, IV, V
The parade of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reviews continues, because apparently, I don’t like wasting my time with sub-par offerings of the written word or because I have no sense of discernment. Either way, it occurs to me you might never see a ⭐️ (one star) rating because I’m too wise to spend time with books like that, but if you do see a one-star rating, I wonder what the reason for my having read it is/was.
Book 🔟 of the year is part of a septology, in the present case volumes III, IV, and V. I finished volumes I and II on December 30th of ‘22, before I began these brief public write-ups, and that, too, received ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
These very Norweigian books perform in the written word the act of thinking; they are a pleasure to read quickly by surrendering to the flow of words without punctuation.
What is all the thinking about? Art and its authentic deep crevices, the precarious life of an artist as an outsider, God and religion as vehicles of solace, companionship and its foibles, loneliness, perhaps depression in response to loneliness, and maybe it is also about how all our lives are the same or rather, traces of similarity —almost exactly the same— plus some superficial differences. But I reserve that interpretation until I read the final volume.
What I look for in literature is here in abundance — a reflective quality that makes me ruminate on my own life and which continues to resonate quietly after I’ve finished it, like a snowflake that’s taking its time to melt.
Big Question throughout: what does it mean to see beauty in darkness, in silence, in a realm that is not the literal one but the one that most people can’t see?