"How I Became Stupid"

[fiefoe]

Good translation is often not very obvious, (a bit like typefaces of a book), but I think Adriana Hunter did justice to Martin Page's original French.

The book is billed as an 'international cult favorite' on the cover, so I couldn't pass it up. At least one of the blurbs has the right take in comparing it to "Candide", as this book is rather a tale than a novel. There is also a sense of upbeat nihilism that's more than passing similar.

• Extracting just his tithe, he foraged and nibbled his way round department stores and supermarkets every day. Similarly, ... he stole books one page at a time and then reconstructed them in the safety of his apartment like a clandestine editor. Each page won by criminal means took on a far greater symbolic importance than if it had been neatly stuck between its siblings. {This strikes me as very French. }
• There is always a moral grazing somewhere in the meadows of our personalities. 
• He suffered from that sort of social awkwardness which comes from too much tolerance and understanding. His liking for so many such disparate things automatically banished him from groups formed on the basis of dislikes. 
• He tried not to believe himself too readily, ... because he knew his own mind was not above deceiving him to comfort himself. 
• Becoming an alcoholic... keeps you busy. Alcohol occupies every thought and provides a goal in times of despair: getting better.
  
• But no one thinks of pitying intelligent people: "He watches human behavior, that must make him very unhappy". 
• If (only) we were well, if we were loved as we deserved to be, respected, with a nice sunny spot within society.
  
• This particular month of July was reading the script of March.

A list of names that can be the basis for a 'Common Thread' game question: Debord, D'Utique, Demosthenes, Lafargue.