Douglas Coupland - Génération X

This is a rather strange book, with the friendship between Andrew, Dag and Claire, as a background. these three people seem to have the whole rest of the world inflicted upon them, while still managing to live life their own way, or more or less so... It mainly consists of a multitude of reflexions and comments on this socalled “Generation X” and everything related to it. The story benefits from a good narration, which has little to do with actual facts but saves us from what could otherwise have been a somewhat tedious read. Finally we are left with a good novel, whose chapters can each be read for itself and suitable for all generations.

Kafka: The trial

This is probably Kafka's greatest achievement. All of his universe is here in a nutshell; the force beyond - or - below- which cannot be escaped and drives the main character against his will, along the paths of a logic exceeding logic.The growing feeling of resignation towards a world which makes no sense and more. It's all there. This book is probably one of the major works of litterature of the twentieth century. It's a classic, plain and simple.

Ingmar Bergman - Autumn Sonata

A great, beautiful movie with two great, beautiful actresses: the daughter, Liv Ulmann, impressive and the mother, Ingrid Bergman, gorgeous. Only a “genius” (as Liv Ulman called the director, Ingmar Bergman) could show with such acuity the complex intrications of the mother- daughterl relationship, and describe its paroxystic crisis in this stuffy, indoor drama full of pain and unrestrained emotion.

Women grinding wheat in Palestine

Date unknown.

Kafka: Letter to his father

The letter Franz Kafka "wrote" to his father is a crucial moment in his work - and probably in his life too. It is essential to read it if on wants to understand the rest of his writings, in which the father to son relationship plays a prominent part. In this letter we discover a person devastated by a too severe education coming from father who never let him be himself. But then again without this father, Kafka would not have been who he was, and who knows, he might never have become a writer. This letter lets us discover this relationship, made of ambivalent and contradictory feelings, a letter which Kafka's father never got to read.

Missed

I'm eating, and while I'm eating, i can see a possible shape on the table opposite. I go on eating as though I hadn't noticed. But my gaze gets restless, like a disturbed mouse or insect. I go fetch my pen and a sheet of paper, and I sit down again, same place. But it's all gone. I had set out to draw and now I find myself writing I had set out to...etc. Was my getting up enough to disrupt this organised, accurate and rigid world of lines and proportions? The shape came back in the end, it did. Where from, I don't know. Too late anyway: drawing had left me just like the shape had disappeared from the table. And it will come back too eventually, but these two, the shape and my drawing urge, will probably never meet.

Blogging

Blogging is like saying something to someone who's not there, and who never will be. Or if they are there someday, we will be gone.