"Naive super", "The Magic Misfits, # 1"
Oct. 7th, 2019 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiefoeErlend Loe's slim book does have its nice moments. It's even got 90s nostalgia going for it now.
__ The narrator regresses, seeking solace in toys such as a red plastic ball and a BRIO hammer-and-peg set.
__ The narrator’s childlike guilelessness..., is a kind of Möbius strip of shallowness and depth, innocence and wisdom.
__ Coming-of-age novels often only pretend to be about disillusionment. In fact, they are intensely romantic, although the romance is articulated as skeptically as possible—as an absence of romance, a yearning for romance.
__ Jay Caspian Kang used that moment, and the “Naïve. Super” factoid, to argue, in the New York Times Magazine, that Mayor Pete speaks to the liberal upper middle class’s “dilettantish longing” for signifiers of learning and substance. “With his air of decency and grab bag of gifted-and-talented party tricks,” Kang wrote, Buttigieg “doesn’t so much represent the will of the Democratic electorate but rather the aspirations of its educated elite.”
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Neil Patrick Harris narrates the audiobook too. Charmingly. (Now I wish I'd jotted down the magic tricks he taught in the book.)
- After a few minutes he comes back down. He is happy. His dad hasn't been to Africa. He hasn't seen a tiger, but he's een a polar bear in Spitsbergen. And Borre shows me a photograph his dad took of the polar bear. It looks dangerous. Faced with a dad like that I can't do much.
- I hope I'll be able to say the same if someone asks me to summarise my life in sixty years. That I can just mull it over for a while and say that I think life can be compared to a journey. And feel that I'm having that thought for the first time. That I came up with it myself and that I mean it.
- All of this attracts me more and more. My existence is developing some distance from itself. Perspective. Perspective is one of those things one ought to be able to purchase and administer intravenously.
- That means that if I were to live forever, I would do everything and experience everything. Something like that would only be interesting if my brain were able to think an infinite number of thoughts. I honestly don't think if it is... I doubt if I'm imaginative enough to live forever.
- Americans seem to live according to the simple theory that two is better than one, three is better than two, etc. For example, they believe two hundred dollars is better than one hundred. It’s a cute theory.
- When the universe is ephemeral, one can easily feel that human existence is meaningless. Why should I do anything at all? On the other hand it is tempting to try and make the best of it. I'm here, anyway. The imagination won't cope if I try to picture where I'd otherwise be.
- I’m saying it’s strange when you meet someone. That it’s a new planet.
- I still don't know if things fit together, or if everything will be all right in the end. But I believe that something means something. I believe in cleansing the soul through fun and games. I also believe in love. And I have several good friends, and just one bad one.
- We shall never meet, but there is something I want you to know. My time is not the same as your time. Our times are not the same. And do you know what that means? That means that time does not exist. Do you want me to repeat that? There is no time. There is a life and a death. There are people and animals. Our thoughts exist. And the world. The universe, too. But there is no time. You might as well take it easy. Do you feel better now? I feel better. This is going to work out. Have a nice day.
__ The narrator regresses, seeking solace in toys such as a red plastic ball and a BRIO hammer-and-peg set.
__ The narrator’s childlike guilelessness..., is a kind of Möbius strip of shallowness and depth, innocence and wisdom.
__ Coming-of-age novels often only pretend to be about disillusionment. In fact, they are intensely romantic, although the romance is articulated as skeptically as possible—as an absence of romance, a yearning for romance.
__ Jay Caspian Kang used that moment, and the “Naïve. Super” factoid, to argue, in the New York Times Magazine, that Mayor Pete speaks to the liberal upper middle class’s “dilettantish longing” for signifiers of learning and substance. “With his air of decency and grab bag of gifted-and-talented party tricks,” Kang wrote, Buttigieg “doesn’t so much represent the will of the Democratic electorate but rather the aspirations of its educated elite.”
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Neil Patrick Harris narrates the audiobook too. Charmingly. (Now I wish I'd jotted down the magic tricks he taught in the book.)
