C. Forrest Gard > Recent Status Updates

Harry Haller is a familiar person.

A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life.

In brief, acquit thee bravely; play the man.
Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue: life's poor span Make not an ell, by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill; the joy fades, not the pains:
If well; the pain doth fade, the joy remains.

The strong pull on a man to be a martyr to his own despair.... to exacerbate and prolong the circumstances which drive his melancholy... a mountain of pride beneath a veil of pensive determinism.

Once you've resolved to sink yourself into the necessities of life and only those, when something more does come into the purview of our lives, we only scoff at the prospect, so as to not be mocked once again by hope....

Reading aloud to my children. Beautiful writing, certainly best read aloud.

The hopelessness of hope when it is placed in the things of world and man. Yet we rekindle it again and again....

...spreading around him an obscure plot to try to retain him there. Probably not even Matti was concerned in it. Neither he nor the colonel, nor any other officer was the least interested in him; whether he stayed or went was completely indifferent to them. Yet some unknown force was working against his return to the city; a force which perhaps without his knowing it had its origins in his own heart.

Really thorough dive into ecclesiology and the case for congregationalism. It convinced John Owen, and what's good for Owen shan't be argued with.

Edifying.

I can already tell this book is incredibly thorough and well put together. Most of this will be a review for me but will also help better refine my teaching on this subject for those who are averse to it due to poor experiences/teaching from run of the mill evangelical Arminians in America.

There is some densely packed commentary on Ecclesiastes in here that, I think, can have a profound impact on the way you live your life if taken to heart. Gibson has done well.

Really good.

Good, not great, but also relatable in terms of how Walser views life through the eyes of his characters, namely Simon. Better to wander through this place rather than take any of it too seriously.

Reminds me a bit of Hamsun's "Hunger" but with less Dostoevsky-like delirium and more of a measured, wandering prose. Enjoyable.

I've been in too much of a snooty echo chamber on Goodreads where everyone seems to think we need to be very professional on this website that clearly hasn't been updated since 2003. I came across someone today who's quite funny and now I feel better about not pretending to be like everyone else.

I like Walser. The opening of this book has been hilarious and relatable.

Fully embracing my son and I's birdwatching enthusiasm. Life will be centered on filling bird feeders and sitting in lawn chairs with my binoculars alongside my son. This is the way.

What a mind and heart for the things of God Chambers had from such a young age.

I can already tell you Walser is fantastic and severely under-appreciated. Glad I chose him for my periodic retreat into fiction.

There is an aesthetic vision of sheer primacy. A man in the rain reading Kierkegaard's "Sickness Unto Death" while listening to an amalgamation of ambient classical crossover and atmospheric black metal, realizing that his only true self rests in Jesus Christ, the perfect union of all things good and beautiful, aesthetic and ethical.