Kevin Maness > Recent Status Updates

Re-reading...

“I had an excessive reaction that pierced the surface of things.”

“The whole future—I thought—will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning. But it won’t be worse than the past.”

"I wanted the flat certainty of normal days, even though I knew all too well that a frenetic movement upward endured in my body, a darting, as if I had seen an ugly poisonous insect at the bottom of a hole and every part of me were still retreating, my arms and hands waving, feet kicking. I have to relearn—I said to myself—the tranquil pace of those who believe they know where they’re going and why."

"...I’m losing myself and if I don’t catch hold what will happen to the children?"

"No, I thought, squeezing the rag and struggling to get up: starting at a certain point, the future is only a need to live in the past. To immediately redo the grammatical tenses."

"And so even the very few people who still tried to help me withdrew in the end: it was difficult to put up with me. I found myself alone and frightened by my own desperation."

This was supposed to be for the RBC book group, but it got abandoned. Now I'm curious.

I feel snobby about books like this when I have to read them. I don't like to feel snobby, and I'm not sure why exactly I'm being snobby. But I am.

RBC book club selection

Hard to stay focused on reading these days—no matter what the book is.

I'm not going to finish this book. To me, it doesn't seem like a book to read if you ARE depressed. Might be illuminating to someone who's never been depressed.

I hope this proves worthwhile because it's going to take me forever to read.