The first part Prema: Love has been a rollercoaster of emotions.
Painful to read.
It's not love that binds people together the strongest, but sex.
(It might be that the english version has translated it differently, I'm reading a dutch copy)
I agree with this statement. No matter how you love someone, unless it's your child or your parent, love isn't enough if you haven't got a physical relation to back it up.
It might give you contentment, it might give you solace and safety, but I think that 'the flesh' is more stubborn that the continuity of the heart.
The novel begun with that sentence and only got better and better. Its first chapters are filled with sexual acts, up to the brim, but never sleazy or cheap. Its lyrical prose is almost a perfect notation of how one could put a climb to orgasm into words.
And how it opened my eyes to that culture. Of course I should've known better, because the Kama Sutra has Indian roots, but still.
The most difficult veil to penetrate is mostly how other cultures experience intimacy. The last mysteries of civilization.
One of the most beautiful sentences I have come across so far (and it was half a page long, so I'm just going to write down the ending) is
...and the world ended and the world ended and it's the end of the world.
That's it, right there. The magic of putting emotion in words. In itself they don't mean anything and read out of context you wouldn't have a clue to what they mean, but it's a good example of how tangible the writing is.
But as I'm a born mulitasker..
I'm also reading the most difficult book ever written
The Sound and The Fury reads like a bunch of jumbled up words and then some.
But it's still a great story.
Who pulls that off?
Faulkner does. And he did it almost a hundred years ago.
And what a brilliant idea to tell a story through the eyes of a disabled sibling.
What a story it is! I'm just scratching the surface of what has happened and it's more intriguing than anything I've read so far. Emotions are one thing to summon, but The Sound and The Fury does it on a whole new level.
Its title alone is spot on. It's raw, it's explosive, it's loud and most of all it's worth to struggle through.
Still, thinking about the tenacity to write this, I only feel awe for Faulkner.
But now I'm going to read some more.
The Alchemy of Desire is already overdue in my library, since I took the time to read Congo first. I just couldn't part with it yet, having read the first 100 pages.
It's a fine I'll gladly pay.
