Status Updates From Köttets tid

‘Brusquely she tells him—she’s from Sweden—She prefers not to meet other Swedes on—travels—She—keep her distance—but keeps glancing furtively—He seems like the sort of man you could—fantasise about—though you haven’t—the faintest idea how you would deal with him in real life. Like a—green piece of furniture you buy because you liked it in the shop but which looks out of place in the living room when you get it home—’

‘Djuna Barnes writes—there is no pure sorrow—because it is bedfellow to—flesh—to the gall & guts & the innards as a whole. You always have to take the many layers of the carnal into account. Ben Okri writes—the route destiny has planned for us is always different from the fate we imagined, & though our dreams may be fulfilled—this occurs in ways we couldn’t have expected—if you are born square, you won’t die round'

I’ve almost DNFd this so many times but then a sly little tendril of intrigue emerges

‘I had nothing against her aging—What does it cost womanhood to give manhood a chance? You’re looking at me like I’m an idiot, I know. But at least I’m an idiot who knows he’s an idiot, & that’s more than you can say about a lot of people—Humiliation is part of the entertainment value, & the people who do best are the ones who manage to ignore it—Hope is the last thing to die. I’m trying to banish any thought of her’

‘A godsend. No one has ever called her that before. She has no idea what to say in reply & can feel herself beginning to choke—gets to her feet and goes to the toilet—all she feels inside is a profound exhaustion—Calm, calm, calm—but whenever I said it my heart rate seemed to accelerate even more—a muscle running amok—simulated calm is something I consider to be calm in a sense, but calm isn’t something you can fake’

I want to see where this is going before I decide what I think. One of the character’s misogyny is super annoying but I’m pretty sure that’s intentional.