I finished reading Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet today. It took me too long to get through it. I am disappointed. I like "overly wordy" writing, but this seriously needed an editor: it is far too repetitive and unfocused to be a good read (I know why it is like this, but still...).
Some good bits: "I have a tender spot - tender to the point of tears - for my ledgers in which I keep other people's accounts, for the old inkstand I use, for the hunched back of Sergio, who draws up invoices a little beyond where I sit. I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul's love, and so it's all the same - should we feel the urge to give it - whether the recipient be the diminutive form of my inkstand or the vast indifference of the stars." (#7)
"Let's buy books as as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us." (#23)
"To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction. I refuse to look at the day to find out what it can offer that might distract me and that, being recorded here in writing, might cover up the empty cup of my not wanting myself. I refuse to look at the day, and with my shoulders hunched forward I ignore whether the sun is present or absent outside in the subjectively sad street, in the deserted street where the sound of people passes by. I ignore everything, and my chest hurts." (#99)
"Tedium...I work hard. I fulfill what the moralists of action would say is my social duty. I fulfill that duty, or fate, without too much effort and without gross incompetence. But sometimes right in the middle of my work, or in the middle of the rest which, according to the same moralists, I deserve and ought to enjoy, my soul overflows with a bitter inertia, and I'm tired, not of working or resting, but of me."(#263)
"The love of absurdity and paradox is the animal happiness of the sad. Just as the normal man talks nonsense and slaps others on the back out of zest and vitality, so those incapable of joy and enthusiasm do somersaults in their minds and perform, in their own cold way, the warm gestures of life." (#296)
