EK > Recent Status Updates

Valuska & Eszter are the same - they both believe they have a greater understanding of reality and that everyone else lives in a happy delusional state. Their views are opposite, but they are inverses of each other.

Damn - I want to keep reading but gotta wait for the next installment!

Mrs. Havisham is an eerie husk of a woman.

Wow! This prose is incredibly dense. Already feeling like this will be a work of genius.

Reading this one serially as well. It will take me a full year, which I’m honestly looking forward to slowly digesting this.

It’s cathartic to hear a prominent public intellectual call out the excuse making for Biblical violence guiding prior cultures’ views on torture, punishment, correction, and wrong think.

I’m not entirely confident on this thought because the tone and timbre have changed dramatically from the first section, but I think Valuska is potentially a representation of the hopeful optimist without a cause that is unable to see what is right in front of him.

Is it willful blindness or an inability to make out shape and form? Unclear at the moment. Could change my mind on this!

Reading serially is a completely different experience. Every cliffhanger feels different. And I’m anticipating the next installment to see if I’m onto sometime or if I’m completely wrong. A brilliant way to read!

Mrs. Eszter feels like she is another metaphor for the state. Tearing down everything in its path on its mission to the intended end. Careless to any despair left in its wake.

She lays in her bed after indulging in grotesque hedonism - the sleeping giant. The mice slowly cross the room, careful not to wake her, hyper-aware that something unsettling is present. She is the state. The mice are the people.

Brilliant.

Stillness has always been tough for me. The lack of it has caused me severe burnout. If you’ve ever had burnout you know it is fully depleting. Nerve endings become a combination of dead to all stimuli and hyper aware of any potential threats with no discernment. There is no in between in burnout.

Stillness is the way.

Mrs. Eszter and Mrs. Plauf seem to act as foils to each other. They are more similar than they would like the think.

Reading this on the original serialized publication schedule which will take me from Dec 1 - Aug 3.

So far - Mrs. Joe seems to be immensely worse than most characters in literature. She is harsh, severe, and nasty. I thought Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice was bad. She was just insufferable. Mrs. Joe is mean.

I am completely blown away by the extended metaphor of Mrs. Plauf. I feel as though I am experiencing living under an oppressive regime, always slightly uneasy & out-of-sorts.

My neck is tightening a bit from the experience.

Nicely done so far LK.