michal k-c > Recent Status Updates

poets have always pretended to understand the Wayfarer’s agony (Coleridge, Homer, Trakl). but they are simply fancy men who have never known what it is to have scurvy

Trakl died in the most honourable way possible: failing to kill himself in the middle of dinner surrounded by friends and then immediately overdosing on cocaine the second he’s committed to a hospital.

i’m gonna start talking like a character in a McCarthy novel, much to the dismay of my family and friends

McCarthy’s first novel. i think this kid has big things in his future

reminds me of one of my favourite critiques of western culture, from an Iranian cleric after the assassination of Soleimami: “Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob? They don't have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn't have any heroes. All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they're all fictional.”

this is definitely Prize Winning Literary Fiction™️

this goes down real easy. maybe too easy…

props to Galgut for having, at very least, an identifiable style

i was certain Klara and the Sun would win the Booker this year. glad i didn’t gamble on it like i was planning on. reading the winner of the Booker this year so that i can make a more informed gambling decision next year

just now noticing there’s no chapters or page breaks in this 400+ page novel. turns out you don’t need them

Karl Ove’s dad kind of occupies the same space in my brain as the Judge from Blood Meridian

my man cannot stop crying

if i was Karl Ove i would’ve been a perfectly behaved kid and my dad would’ve loved me. but that’s just the kind of guy i am

weirdly linear for a volume of My Struggle

woah, two pages left and he hits you with “Multiplicity, then, is both relational and internal.” wonder if he’ll unpack that one

the author does such a good job at making Adorno sound like a punk bitch lol this guy really thought that because he was bullied as a kid he had a unique insight into fascism (“in fascism, the nightmare of childhood has come true.”)

decent Benjamin chapter, Horkheimer chapter going well so far. if i had a time machine i might go back and stop the enlightenment

to Walter Benjamin’s credit, i think he was a much less committed materialist than Gordon gives him credit for

excited to potentially be the first to review this on goodreads. i’ll try to be thorough for all the future armchair social theorists concerned with the question of secularism and modernity

alright i’ve made it through the infamous log shitting passage. amazing stuff. no one is doing it like Karl Ove.

Karl Ove is not an ass man it seems

sort of like listening to your dad ramble about his childhood

Karl Ove uncircumcised confirmed in the first 40 pages. i have a feeling this will be a good one

Rosenzweig fundamentally understood that the age of bourgeois democracy coupled with free market capitalism birthed a new, awful, and solvent political class: the dreaded mid-wits