over the weekend I read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and much of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. Steppenwolf is terrifying and nihilistic and at the moment speaks to quite a few different things that I am attempting to understand / ignore.
of Tropic of Cancer, though, I enjoyed the modernism in abstract, which reached to surrealism at points. some passages were a little caustic for my taste. it's well written, of course, and there seems to be some real heart and passion there. overall, it was a fun read, though the themes don't gel with the type of man I'm trying to be, and some of the really long stints of dialogue—between or about characters who are never explored—are boring.
after reading the first few "chapters" I knew I had to rewrite the beginning of my novel. there's a similarity in the context, and though we have entirely different perspectives on how to live, there was a passive rationality in my character—useless and flaccid. it comes to be about the explosion of spirit within a deracinated man, through to its inevitable end. one cannot tell the story of a man coming to understand himself—becoming himself—from such a dull and logical place.
it's often peurilely said that change is the only constant in our lives, but I feel like—even more so than in university—my view on life and understanding of 'being' has been thrown around so rapidly from month to month that just staying upright is difficult; contorting these notions into a coherent narrative seems impossible.
fiction has been commercialised and so split up into such standardised categories that I feel forced to create a novel, however, finished, it barely comes to one hundred pages. this makes it a bloated story, and also makes it feel, to me, unfulfilled—but I also think it means that it is without fluff. the piece started as something that I can spit out quickly; something to peddle to publishers which would be commercially relevant but also unimportant to me.
earnestly, Elliot
