Jacob Stokes’s Reviews > Notes from the Underground > Status Update

Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself. p.53

Smetms the narrator reminds me of a John waters movie

This was a regular martyrdom, a continual, intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant and direct sensation, that I was mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty, disgusting fly—more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in feeling than any of them of course—but a fly that was continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone.

p.50

Chapter 8 to the end of part 1 was a really good read.

Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two makes four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that! p.32

And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed…In any case civilization has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.

p.25

I picked up another very short book from the library today. I began reading it on the train to center city. I am going to see blue heron at the bourse. I choose short books to read because I do not yet have the power to read anything above 200 pages. This book is interesting so far, if not a little hard to understand. It is basically one man’s cerebral ravings on his own philosophy. Looking forward to more though!