There are three volumes - of which this review is of volume one, the only one that is widely read. The author spent twenty years writing it. This book is widely regarded as a classic. It’s exactly the way of the modern pop culture – it always attempts to lower any observer down to its vulgar level and to make one admire even the worst kitsch. Relativity and uncertainty principle rule in the world so everything depends on the vantage point and attitude of observer… And even the simplest thing is always seen by different people differently…įor the moment one begins to take anything, no matter how foolish or tasteless, seriously and puts oneself on its level, it begins to reveal a rationale of its own, the intoxicating scent of its love for itself, its innate urge to play and to please. The hospital aide clothed in lily-white, who, with the help of acids, thins out a patient’s stool in a white china dish in order to obtain a purple smear, rubbing it until the right hue rewards her attention, is already living, whether she knows it or not, in a world more open to change than is the young lady who shudders at the sight of the same stuff in the street. It practically revolutionises an outlook at the entire existing order of things… Short of an actual revolution, of course.Įven the outright reactionaries pretend to dig the new until the new starts breaking the old order of things… And The Man Without Qualities is groundbreaking in everything and in all directions. Revolutionary views? I’m afraid I must admit that I’m by no means an out-and-out opponent of revolutionary views. Everyone in the world has one’s own individual attitude to the surrounding reality…
0 kommentar(er)
