What shall I read today? Part 7

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk (2001)

As a Palahniuk's novel, and one of unique genius, I would add, the world presented to us is a surreal one.
However, since I would define Palahniuk an "anthropologist", first of all and, secondly, a writer, the material for this surprising novel comes from his researches in reality. Through his attendancy to sexual addiction groups, or talks with total strangers, Palahniuk built the story of Victor Mancini and his friend Denny. The writer's focus and study on the individual and its pysche reaches outstanding levels in this book. Unforgettable are the scenes set in the characters' working place: a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, plus the author's ability to combine the numerous sub-plots, and make them collide in an exciting, breath-taking climax.

Favourite quotes:

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

"People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”

“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”

“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”

“The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

“I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.”


The elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (2006) 

There is nothing better in books than characters who share your same love for literature, especially if it's Lev Tolstoj. We follow the two main characters, Paloma and Renée, whose lives will meet thanks to the presence of Kakuro Ozu, a Japanese business man, fascinated by Renée's hidden intelligence and culture. One of this book's best qualities is the choice of its setting: an upper-class Parisian block of flats, in which Renée works as a concierge, and Paloma lives with her family's hypocrisy. Exquisitely, and thoughtfully written, a tale about life, culture, and beauty. Without forgetting hilarious scenes of subtle social criticism set in the building's hall. The book, as its title, has the "same simple refinement as the hedgehog."

Favourite quotes:

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. ”

“People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.”

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”

“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.”

“I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.”

“Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?”

“Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.”

“When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.”

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls."

“They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.”

“In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.”

What shall I read today? Part 6

My Dark Places: An L.A. Memoir, James Ellroy (1996)

This book represents a writer's, and a man's braveness in telling about his "dark places" publicly. James Ellroy's masterpiece is a personal trip inside his own life, starting with the trauma and obsession for the "Black Dahlia" which will accompany him throughout his whole life. 

Ellroy's mother, Jean Ellroy, was killed in El Monte in 1958 when he was 10, and her death still remains one of the unsolved homicides in the United States. From then we follow the mind of a child, a teenager, a young man, who by going through the harsh hell of life develops an extreme hunger for books, knowledge, investigation, and the rest is history.  

The history of one of the most celebrated crime writers of the 20th century. Only a few quotations this time, because I think, the 'poem' dedicated to his mother at the beginning of the book is already enough to understand the richness of it.

Favourite quotes:

"A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear.
Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm.
I failed you as a talisman - so I stand now as your witness.
Your death defines my life. I want to find the love
we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn 
down the distance between us. 
I want to give you breath."

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.” 

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk (1999)

This book, as many others I reviewed on this blog, has a particular meaning for me. 
First of all a very simple one: it helped me decide the topic of my final exam last year, the story of the grotesque in literature and films. Secondly, I could not read it without crying, without being aware of its being extreme and at the edge of reality, but because of this reason, its characters seem more true than any other living person.  
In a society of repression, and prejudices, being yourself is not always easy, so you prefer wearing masks, transform yourself to become the one you have always wanted to be. You cannot read it if you don't like to be schocked and to be questioned about what life really is. 
It was supposed to be Chuck Palahniuk's first novel to be published, but the editor stopped  it because it was too disturbing. After Fight Club's success, though, they published it, but not in the way Palahniuk wanted. For the book's layout he had taken inspiration from women's magazines, fashion catalogues, etc. in which you are constantly asked to read the rest of an article in another page, so you find yourself jumping from page to page to finish a story. It was considered too confusing and complicated, but I just think it's brilliant.  
It soon became one of his most celebrated books. In 2012, though, after this huge success he had the right to publish it as he wanted, this new version is called Invisible Monsters Remix. Nothing more to add, I'll let Chuck speak...

Favourite quotes:
  
“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

"You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.”

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

"Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.” 

“Beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

“Find good in what the world says is evil.”

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

“The murderer the victim the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead.”

“I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.”

“All these thousands of miles later, all these different people I've been, and it's still the same story. Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying? How is it you can keep mutating and still be the same deadly virus?”

“Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?”


Next "What shall I read today?":
Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery).