Lots of cool stories here. Also some gorgeous insights about love, and trying to make it work.

The dialogue is great too, and I appreciate the long sections of it. Zablah is always a good writer. One or two stories didn't do it for me but other than that there were nice takeaways.

Phenomenal ending to an unreal work.

Mind-bendy, ultra-reflective and fascinating, feels like something written in the future.... Pretty often I'd say to myself "Yeah this is wild stuff," especially in the second half. Somehow he managed to end this thing without letting me down at all. I love it.

There were a bunch of good takeaways in this....

Much of it is a relaxing read, while giving instructions for a certain way of life (ideas I'm not sure I want to follow), I guess containing many answers.

I'd never read Buddhist stuff before so I'm hoping this was a good introduction.

I admire it, even though I doubt I'll walk that path. It's interesting though, and I love some of the grand concepts.

It seems now therefore that there is no humiliation so great that one should not put up with it easily, in the knowledge that after a few years our buried faults will be no more than an invisible dust over which will smile the smiling and blossoming peace of nature.

not gibberish, I mean, but language so sacred
it‘s not my place to try to decipher it,
phonemes holy as stones on a string, mysterious
as the names we give to animals, or words
we know only in prayer

I noted the hell out of this, marked it with stickies and read it twice. The language is melancholic and mournful, yet also fierce and pointed, as though directing the reader to do I‘m not sure what…commanding me to pay attention. It‘s avant garde and can be impenetrable, which I don‘t mind. I got lost in it and enjoyed myself. Any messages seem smeared over and I like it that way….

Throughout our life we produce energy. We say things and do things, and every thought, every word, and every act carries our signature. What we produce as thoughts, as speech, as action, continues to influence the world, and that is our continuation body. Our actions carry us into the future. We are like stars whose light energy continues to radiate across the cosmos millions of years after they become extinct.

I loved it, but I had to read it like a possessed person to get through it.... Actually that‘s how it has been for me with all of Proust.

As usual with these editions, the translator's intro in the beginning is excellent.

Some of this installment is like a fever dream; a new type of Proust. Fantasies and dreams and memories flood the reader. The prose is incredible as always, the observations revelatory. I also gasped audibly at one part.

For old age removes the ability to act, but not to desire. It is only in a third phase that those who live to a great age renounce desire, after being obliged to abandon action. They no longer stand for such petty elections as that of President of the Republic, where they so often formerly strove to succeed. They are content merely to go out, to eat, and to read the newspapers. They have outlived themselves.

I‘m halfway through this!

Really liking it so far. It‘s somewhat easy to follow and, like the previous volume, not crammed with characters to keep track of.

I can‘t believe I‘ve come this far in Proust…. The prose is filled with revelations (which I‘ve grown used to but is still heavily impressive), and I‘m fully in his world. I‘m reading this like a person possessed.

This was the easiest Proust volume to follow for me, with far fewer characters being presented, and the referring to my notes that that comes with.

It‘s filled with uniquely profound prose, as it took me through a psychological journey reminding me of many contemporary novels I‘ve read. The shift in setting and happenings was so needed. Our narrator is pretty messed up here but you gotta love him (or at least find the material fascinating).

Cool collection. Very modern and interested in interacting with what we‘re all going through, whether we do or do not want to admit it (technology).

I love the juxtaposition between the border—which is not relatable to me—pressed against the software and hardware, which so is. Many readers will have to deal with that contrast.

The prose stuff dragged for me, but the poems are fun, and they get better and better as you near the end.

I felt, but did not believe, that I controlled the future, because I knew that my feeling came from the fact that the future did not yet exist and that I could not therefore be subject to its inevitability.

I‘m a pile of judgment days
crossing the border. I tried to organize the hours
waiting in line on the bridge but days travel
over days and erase them.

Spent most of last year reading Proust, it felt like…. Seems like I‘m gonna be spending much of this year reading him too. I‘ll get through it though. (I‘m liking it!)

Customs portaled in and shot my friend
and said: “They were never really your friend.
Follow me into this portal
if you want to glove,
I mean love,
I mean live.”

The flag of the border is its fence!
It‘s the longest flag you‘ve ever seen,
rippling across the border.

Where do all your fences live?

All my fences live in Texas.

Jealousy is often nothing but an uneasy desire for domination, applied in the context of love. 🥵

This one seems like a smoother read compared to the others, despite an odd stylistic choice going on….

The smell of the twigs in the icy air was like a piece of the past, an invisible ice-floe broken off from a distant winter and floating into my room, striated here and there with a perfume or a light as if by different years into which I found myself plunged once again, swept away even before I had recognized them by the lightheartedness of hopes long since abandoned.

“The Intermittences of the Heart”—that‘s the name of a section here, and it was almost the name of the entire novel…. We‘re talking how time affects our feelings about events, as well as our view of individuals; how hurt springs up seemingly out of nowhere; how someone can feel so indifferently distant and then suddenly it‘s as though they live inside us, a part of us. Incisive, cutting prose is the standard with Proust. His wisdom pierces.

Memories of powerful language and imagery…this volume takes us through the whole of the poet‘s life, reflecting on what has changed and how she has grown, with profound, slippery themes—rapidly shifting within one single poem—and narratives that are sometimes difficult to follow but still graspable.

You can feel how she set the tone for what popular poetry would go on to become. Oftentimes dense, I find it overwhelming as well as inspiring….

The life of a seaside resort removed from an introduction the consequences for the future that might have been dreaded in Paris.

Cool book full of experiments, games, and learning.

The forms constantly press into the horizon, some of it being what one would think of as poetry, then shifting into prose, like essays, and after that descriptions of procedures Torre did out in the public, like workshops. Inventive and unsettled...totally inspirational…while being intertwined with a sense of joy, as well as some hope.

Thank you for this original book! This artifact!

I‘m over halfway through this, but I‘m kind of feeling like I need something else to read besides Proust. I was trying to go straight through while reading nothing else, but I don‘t know if I‘m gonna make it….

Mme Verdurin did not give “dinners,” but she had “Wednesdays.” Her Wednesdays were a work of art.

It cannot be said that she was stupid; she overflowed with an intelligence that I sensed was of not the slightest use to me.

Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something
to change and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves.

The first time I touched my sister alive
I was sure the earth took note
but we were not new
false skin peeled off like gloves of fire
yoked flame I was
stripped to the tips of my fingers
her song written into my palms my nostrils my belly
welcome home
in a language I was pleased to relearn.

The fact is that, even in the most genuine fatigue, especially among the nervous, there is an element that depends on our awareness and is preserved only by the memory. We are suddenly weary the moment that we fear being so, and to overcome fatigue it is enough to forget it.

“Goodbye, I‘ve hardly spoken to you, that‘s how it is in society, we don‘t meet, we don‘t say the things we‘d like to say to one another; anyway, it‘s the same everywhere in life. Let‘s hope it‘ll be better organized after we‘re dead. At least we won‘t have to wear low-cut dresses. Yet who knows? Perhaps we shall show off our bones and our worms on big occasions. Why not?”

Any action of the mind is easy when it is not subject to reality. Here I was forced to submit.

I‘ve now read three of this guy‘s books….

I had a good idea for this review but was half-asleep and didn‘t want to type it….

Zambra does many things: his work is playful; it cares deeply about the characters; meta as fuck; and one of the best parts—it‘s literature-obsessed.

You can‘t have read Bolaño‘s fiction without this stuff reminding you of it.

There‘s also mixed media!

His work gives me a lot…the whole story is moving…I kind of cried.

This volume is extreme with how many characters there are…. I remember the first time I read this (yeah I‘ve read it twice!) I had to start over because I wasn‘t keeping close enough track of everyone. This time I avoided that, but it required taking meticulous notes on a note that crashed my Evernote so I had to start another.

Overwhelming stuff. It‘s a beautiful book though. I guess I‘m halfway through—pretty sure I haven‘t read book four.

Coming up on the end of this volume (and excited about it!), I can smell it, at which point, being honest, I will most likely just dive into the fourth one, continuing this seemingly endless endeavor….

Was it really for dinner parties like the present one that all these people dressed up and refused middle-class women admittance to their exclusive drawing rooms? For dinner parties like this, which would have been no different even in my absence? For a second I suspected as much, but the suspicion was too absurd.

I can‘t tell you how tiresome he was. He would be no more stupid than anyone else if he only had the good sense, like many people of our acquaintance, to remain a fool. It‘s that intellectual facade of his that gets in the way.

I knew that in the long course of the centuries it was not only with the works of different artists but actually with the various works of one artist that critics had enjoyed pushing back into the shade what for too long had been radiant, and bringing into the light what had seemed doomed to permanent obscurity.

This book is so invigorating…. I felt like it was giving me life, opening me up to new ways of expression, so raw, personal, honest. It‘s unafraid to be cringy, emo, or dated. Yes! This is a book that we need!

A lull for me two-thirds of the way through but still…

When I tell you this voice lived in my head, so much that I felt like I was him….

(Disclaimer: I have a feeling this is a serious love it or hate it type novel.)

it occurred to me that our social life, like an artist‘s studio, is filled with abandoned sketches depicting our momentary attempts to capture our need for a great love, but what did not occur to me was that sometimes, if the sketch is not too old, we may return to it and transform it into a completely different work, possibly more important than the one we had originally planned.

There was nothing delightful about the days preceding my dinner engagement with Mme de Stermaria; I found them unbearable. For, as a general rule, the shorter the time that separates us from the project we have in mind, the longer it seems, because we measure it on a more reduced scale, or simply because of the fact that we even bother to measure it.

I have to say I‘m loving this so far…it‘s very raw, creative in the way it‘s written, and fascinating with the plot.

Gorgeous book. It‘s filled with variation: sometimes like a fable; then a very moderny narrative; and at one point switches to something that is completely, courageously like Beckett. It gave me a lot to think about…. A lot of ideas I agree with, and some that I don‘t. It‘s tender and soft and even inflammatory. I also love the way the sections are divided up—the structure! This work is totally innovative.

Father the year has fallen.
Leaves bedeck my careful flesh like stone.
One shard of brilliant summer pierced me
and remains.
By this only
unregenerate bone
I am not dead, but waiting.
When the last warmth is gone
I shall bear in the snow.

She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed itself into a different room, and trapped you in it without them.

Since the lamp she liked best was was the least expensive one, it was possible that one day she might own it, if no one bought it first. Perhaps the fact that it was the least expensive one was the reason she had made it her favorite. There is no point in loving something that is not a bit within reach.

She was plainly aware that I must regard her as a mediocre actress and, conversely, hold in high esteem the ones she despised. But she showed no resentment, because in all great talent that is not yet recognized, as hers was not at the time, however selfconfident it may be, there is an element of humility, and because we calculate the amount of esteem we expect from others in terms not of our latent potential but of our present achievements.

Let‘s start this off right: this book is sexy; it‘s hott with two “t”s. 🥵

The erotic elements work really well; the uncertainty about how these relationships fit; the subtle, emotional pivots. Intellectually this novel is also stellar. The epistolary sections I found fascinating—essayistic tangents in novels will always do it for me.

There are choices I found odd in the final third, but it‘s fine. Mostly this book is explosive.

I finished this a while ago and forgot to leave a review…. Don‘t know how that happened.

Proust is so deep and dense that you have to really want it, in my opinion—I mean want to read it—in order to make it happen. I‘ve said it before but: casually reading the text doesn‘t give the reader what I think is intended. Many of the concepts require rereads and cerebration. It can be headachey at times (okay, a lot of times); headachingly original.

Of course I wish that I personally were better-looking, and of course I enjoy the validation of feeling that I do look good, but to confuse these basically auto-erotic or status-driven impulses with real aesthetic experience seems to me an extremely serious mistake for anyone who cares about culture.