Ilse’s Reviews > Transit > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 32 of 260
We examine least what has formed us the most, and instead find ourselves driven blindly to re-enact it. Maybe it is only in our injuries that the future can take root.
— Aug 19, 2025 04:18AM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 210 of 260
Freedom, I said, is a home you leave once and can never go back to.
— Aug 27, 2025 07:04AM
Ilse
is on page 201 of 260
The concept of justice he had evolved as a result of these experiences was not retributive but the reverse. He had tried to develop his own capacity for forgiveness in order to be free.
— Aug 27, 2025 03:18AM
Ilse
is on page 165 of 260
I said a lot of people spent their lives trying to make things last as a way of avoiding asking themselves whether those things were what they really wanted. And maybe people run marathons to exercise their fantasties of running away.
— Aug 25, 2025 06:03AM
Ilse
is on page 142 of 260
Loneliness, she said, is when nothing will stick to you, when nothing will thrive around you, when you start to think that you kill things just by being there.
— Aug 23, 2025 12:31PM
Ilse
is on page 95 of 260
It's funny, how when parents do things to their children, it's as if they think no one can see them. It's as if the child is an extension of them: when they talk to it, they're talking to themselves; when they love it, they're loving themselves; when they hate it, it's their own self they're hating. You never know what's coming next, because it's coming out of them not you, even if they blame it on you afterwards.
— Aug 20, 2025 03:33AM
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Aug 19, 2025 05:59AM
I have been meaning to start my copy from the library. Maybe I will follow your lead and finally begin!
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Sam wrote: "I have been meaning to start my copy from the library. Maybe I will follow your lead and finally begin!"Sam, it took me ages to start with this trilogy, although I had a copy at home from the first part, that I found in a charity shop when on holiday in the UK years ago - and I am so glad I finally did! Her sentences are so clever, and her observations so sharp - at times she even makes me laugh (humour was what I couldn't see in her Parade, perhaps this is why this resonates more with me). Yes, do yourself a favour and give this a go, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it!
Isn’t that just the classical definition of trauma? I’m not really convinced that the future takes root in injuries, haha.
Ilse wrote: "Sam wrote: "I have been meaning to start my copy from the library. Maybe I will follow your lead and finally begin!"Sam, it took me ages to start with this trilogy, although I had a copy at home f..."
Dear Ilse, thank you for your extremely kind note. I think a part of me keeps putting Transit off because, as you mentioned, Cusk offers sharp observations, and it takes me some time to wrestle through her work. This is fine as such, but I keep running out of time to finish my other unrenewable library books! However, based on your encouragement, I am happy to report that I've cracked the book open. I look forward to your helpful notes and review!
Noel wrote: "Isn’t that just the classical definition of trauma? I’m not really convinced that the future takes root in injuries, haha."Nor is the speaker, Noel, it rather seems wishful thinking from his perspective. I am not sure if, and in which degree, injuries affect or even shape one's future - when looking at my son though, I see how those injuries don't heal and the wounds keep on re-opening, almost ten years later.
Cusk is a bit slippery. I mean, therecare lots of arresting and intetesting sentences but sometimes coming from characters who maybe we are invited to view critically- not that this necessarily invalidates what they say, but I never felt quite sure what Cusk was interested in the reader taking away from her writing. The statements? The juxtapositions? The structure? Radical uncertainty? A desire for inter-european air travel?
Ilse wrote: "Noel wrote: "Isn’t that just the classical definition of trauma? I’m not really convinced that the future takes root in injuries, haha."Nor is the speaker, Noel, it rather seems wishful thinking f..."
Ilse, I think it’s just the opposite. An injury—in the fullest sense—cuts a person off from the future—and from the past as well. In other words, it saps the vitality from the past and closes down the future. Both become something that has to be earned back, consciously. Right now, I’m thinking of what Kafka says in a letter to Milena: “nothing has been granted me, everything must be earned, not only the present and future, but the past as well—something which is, perhaps, given every human being—this too must be earned, and this probably entails the hardest work of all.” Repeating the same thing over and over isn’t a forward progression, but rather, stasis. (As you might have guessed, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, so it might not have much to do with what you posted, haha.)
