Re: Elias Canetti's
"The Book Against Death"
recommended to me by joey schutz
thank you, joey
first, i skimmed this book. i loosely read the foreword, the afterward. then i returned again to the beginning, with an understanding of the whole, to understand the whole in its many parts.
the last quote from the foreword reads:
QuoteI have approached a hundred gods,
and I looked each straight in the eye,
full of hatred for the death of human beings.
what this quote instills in me, i cannot entirely say. i like the passion in it, the intensity, the absurdity of such a position. but not only absurdity -- the feeling of its absolute incontrovertible rightness. why should something so right feel also so absurd? it is, in a way, the way i feel about kill gameplay. it is so blindingly right, and so utterly absurd to say aloud. it is freeing to see a statement in which these two go hand in hand.
obvious correctness, and obvious absurdity.
it is freeing to see another take up such a position. it is more freeing still to allow
oneself to take it up.