Name that author..."Every person fills out quite a few forms in his life, and each form contains an uncounted number of questions. The answer of just one person to one question in one form is already a thread linking that person forever with the local center of the dossier department. Each person thus radiates hundreds of such threads, which, all together, run into the millions. If these threads were visible, the heavens would be webbed with them, and if they had substance and reslience, the buses, streetcars and the people themselves would no longer be able to move; and no wind would ever again sweep the autumns leaves or scraps of newspaper down the streets. They were neither visible, nor material, but they were constantly felt by man."
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I be googling and find Aleksandr Solshenitsyn. (I read Cancer Ward in high School, so of course I remember nothing what so ever about it, much like anything I read last week.)
Sounds to me like the attention to the multiplicity of detail of Nicholson Baker. Up until the last sentence; that doesn't sound like him. So I'm with L.M.
I decided to re-read this because I remembered it as one of the funniest books I'd read as teenager. I was right - it's hilarious. (In that dry, desperate way that people under stress can be very very funny.)
The Gulag Archipelago is really funny too. Solzhenitsyn radiates a palpable sense of glee when describing gross injustices, which is a perfectly rational mental defense mechanism for an intelligent individual living in an insane society.
I remember that after he defected to America in 1974, he criticized American culture for being vulgar and decadent, and everyone in the West were all like "WTF? You should be grateful?".
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
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- sally mckay 5-05-2011 2:09 pm
I be googling and find Aleksandr Solshenitsyn. (I read Cancer Ward in high School, so of course I remember nothing what so ever about it, much like anything I read last week.)
- L.M. 5-05-2011 5:54 pm
Sounds to me like the attention to the multiplicity of detail of Nicholson Baker. Up until the last sentence; that doesn't sound like him. So I'm with L.M.
- M.Jean 5-05-2011 6:42 pm
I decided to re-read this because I remembered it as one of the funniest books I'd read as teenager. I was right - it's hilarious. (In that dry, desperate way that people under stress can be very very funny.)
- sally mckay 5-05-2011 11:08 pm
The Gulag Archipelago is really funny too. Solzhenitsyn radiates a palpable sense of glee when describing gross injustices, which is a perfectly rational mental defense mechanism for an intelligent individual living in an insane society. I remember that after he defected to America in 1974, he criticized American culture for being vulgar and decadent, and everyone in the West were all like "WTF? You should be grateful?".
- VB 5-06-2011 1:29 am
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
- VB 5-06-2011 2:09 am