If Not Now, When?, The Periodic Table and The Magic Paint by Primo Levi
I’ve been on a Primo Levi roll for a couple of weeks, particularly his short stories. They’re tremendous.
Categories
Month: September 2021
By Linda Boström Knausgaard (2021)
Saw it in the bookshop and I know I can only survive on Knausgaard blood.
Dreamlike account of the obliteration of Linda’s memories through an extended course of ECT in a mental institution, in a sort of fugue through mental states between unconsciousness, memory, dreaming, and awakening.
This is great fun – if perhaps getting a little wrapped up in itself by the end.
An anonymous reader keeps picking up books, becoming fascinated in the first chapter, before having the book lost, stolen, or discovering the whole thing is a mistranslation or forgery.
Calvino does an amazing job of writing a dozen absorbing first chapters with throwaway ease; the bits in between I wasn’t so sure about. It’s very “postmodern” in an obsessed-with-texts, the relationship between reader and writer etc. kind of way. Is this theme really the skeleton key to life? It’s pretty funny, but I get the feeling would be even funnier if all the characters weren’t cyphers.