P’s Reviews > The Italian Teacher > Status Update

Bear redeemed himself, [ . . . ]as shown in the undeniable humanity of his Faces series.
You mean Pinch redeemed Bear. Pinch made the effort to mitigate the resentment people felt towards Bear. Pinch recognized the suffering Bear inflicted on them all, and worked hard to diminish it's aftereffects... Poor kid. Damn Bear.

,, " He toiled for decades without caring what the public thought; he scorned money; he dedicated himself to a singular vision." ,, Uhm, you mean he scorned "income", income directly from you, because he had it from other sources. And he absolutely >did< care about opinion - once he decided those works aren't worth showing, he'd burn them all... Damn, people, believing such blatant lies???

unfinished self-portrait of Pinch pictured as youth, back when he believed he'd endure, that strangers would know of him someday.

Jing keeps that painting under his bed in the spare room. At times, she takes it out. Never for long. Just a look.

But from the present vantage, what happened feels inevitable - not because events were beyond his control but because they were within it. He couldn't have been other than he was. That doesn't hurt anymore. Just another ant, marching up and down.

Q_Q
TT_TT

"You have to let go of my hand at some point." - "You mean it doesn't come off?" - "It's become quite attached to me." - "I feel the same way." At least he got to experience companionship of peers later in life, what, just before his death?

What anguishes him most is not that he didn't succeed, but that he didn't experience more: other lovers, intrepid trips, peculiar foods, a daughter and a son, both grown, returning to see him.

Well, they do say, 1) "its not the years in your life, its the life in your years", and 2) "when you're old, you regret not having done things, you don't regret the things you did."...

the peacemaking power of art, whatever that means

you fool, Pinch bent over backwards to reconcile Bear's children with his memory, and you don't know about "peacemaking power of art"??? Ugh.

But it's richly worth this poverty. [ . . . ] It's vindication, even if nobody knows.

Had to re-read the first sentence thrice before understanding the structure, and then the meaning.

All of that makes him almost important. And they say he must surrender that.

his father rejected him years before and remains trapped by pride, unable to find a way back.