4.5/5

But you musn't have romantic ideas about them. Murderers are ordinary people.

This is another book which, had I read it a mere two to four years earlier, I would have unequivocally adored. As the Foucault of the Hallucinating Foucault intimidated me too much to pick it up till now, my less than loving rating stands. I do not regret it, as there is no guarantee that an earlier reading would have resulted in as great an understanding. While it's true that I still have no real experience with actually reading Foucault in the cohesive entirety of one of his works, enough bits and pieces of [b:Discipline and Punish|80369|Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison|Michel Foucault|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400737037s/80369.jpg|1946946] and [b:The Order of Things|119561|The Order of Things An Archaeology of the Human Sciences|Michel Foucault|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327977833s/119561.jpg|115111] have reached me for general comprehension purposes. And of course, Foucault is very French in his academia, so reading enough Sartre and de Beauvoir and Camus and the rest as I did will give you an idea of what you're getting into.

Despite my desire to become an English professor, I will never be comfortable with closeting myself into the bell jar of theory and perdition that this and other works choose to rhapsodize about in the key of Upper Class Thinking. The whole of this book was captured in the second part of [b:Burger's Daughter|526927|Burger's Daughter|Nadine Gordimer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348427341s/526927.jpg|888256] with a great deal more depth of insight into the structuring of such an environment, so I could never get rid of the feeling of something lacking. This, coupled with the inevitable tunnel vision of a love story, made for something that was very pretty, very cool, but ultimately something that dabbled in whatever serious subject material it touched upon. Death, madness, excrement, admittedly with more empathy than most books of this type would, but it neither hedged its bets nor went far enough for my liking. Also, the main female character came off more Manic Pixie Dream Girl than anything else, but whether I say that out of true consternation or disturbed resonance with some of her more ferocious attributes in the realms of academia and social intercourse is, well, indeterminable.

I make the same demands of people and fictional texts, petit—that they should be open-ended, carry within them the possibility of being and of changing whoever it is they encounter. Then it will work—the dynamic that there must always be—between the writer and the reader.

Beyond all my quibbling, there were some passages that gripped me by the throat and refuse to let go. There was a time when my love of books led me to believe I was interested in reading of others' love for such, but enough trials and errors have passed me by to realize that, as with any reading, only a certain type of love will resonate. Duncker came the closest to my love that any author has since Maugham, enough for me to fear even more the inevitable reread of [b:Of Human Bondage|31548|Of Human Bondage|W. Somerset Maugham|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386924695s/31548.jpg|2547187] and all accompanying reevaluations of the potentially less than enthused sort. However, much as I wish to be a professor for the provocation of thought rather than the security of finances, it is the flux that I favor above all else. There would be no point to picking up that next piece of work if it were otherwise.

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks and perceive differently than one sees is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.

P.S. Someone adapt this for the big screen, pretty please.