A beautiful beginning to an intriguing novel. The next chapters? The man decides to take a vacation. He goes to Venice where he falls in love with a handsome polish teenager. Dies of a heart attack triggered by the accumulation of emotions. No. That has already been written. Something new is needed.
Oof! Enough to make a MAGA guy reach for his X app. (Btw, picture is University of Copenhagen, my alma mater. Now I am trying to figure out from the 9:23 to 10:07 train trip where the protagonist might be located. It doesn't sound like it's an S-train which leaves three probable lines, or four, if we allow for the possibility of him/her staying in Sweden on the other side of the Øresund. Maybe if I had a Malaysian research assistant, I would make her do the research)
For some reason (most probably an implanted adolescent memory !) the tight, pared down diary reminded me of the 1959 version of `The Blue Angel' with Curt Jurgens as the obsessively routinised academic besotted by the brushed up Hollywood sexuality of -yet another version- of a female stereotyped as wanton and destructive...Heaven protect men from women behaving like men (!) - polyamorous, along with passions and desire ! What triggered this memory must have been my experiences in the English higher education sector over the past twenty years where, cumulatively, each day was filled with the bureaucratic burdens of managerialism, micro level `performance management' resulting in overwork, and the permafrost of shrinking resources of the neoliberal university sector but increasing numbers of students let down by the secondary education sector. The good folk of Konigsberg may have set their clocks by the timing of Kant's walks but the experience for the majority of my friends and colleagues has been disrupted routines, frequent top down `ukases' and the consequent erosion of academic professional autonomy in terms of guiding values and practices. Phew ! What a mouthful... Peter Fleming (2021) `Dark Academia - How Universities Die' puts this better than what I have written...Finally, programme closures and extensive compulsory redundancies are taking their toll in about half of the British tertiary education sector. As for the Orengeman's US... what is happening is potentially more extensive and primordial than the McCarthy era witch hunts of progressives. I would urge the diarist who prompted my stream of consciousness to double up on their KPIs, put in MAGAbuck funding applications, and up their `game' !
Pure gold. This nihilist attitudw made me crazy in NL. Happily I am back in my belőled Eastern Europe - although that is slowly (capitals very quickly) becoming commercialized like this too
A beautiful beginning to an intriguing novel. The next chapters? The man decides to take a vacation. He goes to Venice where he falls in love with a handsome polish teenager. Dies of a heart attack triggered by the accumulation of emotions. No. That has already been written. Something new is needed.
Chapeau! This is marvelous!
Seems to be a very accurate description of what I have seen at the University in Sweden. Even the seminar stuff and the hour of the seminar! Hahaha
Very reminiscent of the short stories of Donald Barthelme (e.g. those in his collection "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts").
Oof! Enough to make a MAGA guy reach for his X app. (Btw, picture is University of Copenhagen, my alma mater. Now I am trying to figure out from the 9:23 to 10:07 train trip where the protagonist might be located. It doesn't sound like it's an S-train which leaves three probable lines, or four, if we allow for the possibility of him/her staying in Sweden on the other side of the Øresund. Maybe if I had a Malaysian research assistant, I would make her do the research)
Ahhh. Regular, boring life of an academic. Beautiful life.
Not liking what Netflix offers, the writer might enjoy the matter-of-fact routine in the films of Aki Kaurismaki, most recently « Fallen Leaves ».
For some reason (most probably an implanted adolescent memory !) the tight, pared down diary reminded me of the 1959 version of `The Blue Angel' with Curt Jurgens as the obsessively routinised academic besotted by the brushed up Hollywood sexuality of -yet another version- of a female stereotyped as wanton and destructive...Heaven protect men from women behaving like men (!) - polyamorous, along with passions and desire ! What triggered this memory must have been my experiences in the English higher education sector over the past twenty years where, cumulatively, each day was filled with the bureaucratic burdens of managerialism, micro level `performance management' resulting in overwork, and the permafrost of shrinking resources of the neoliberal university sector but increasing numbers of students let down by the secondary education sector. The good folk of Konigsberg may have set their clocks by the timing of Kant's walks but the experience for the majority of my friends and colleagues has been disrupted routines, frequent top down `ukases' and the consequent erosion of academic professional autonomy in terms of guiding values and practices. Phew ! What a mouthful... Peter Fleming (2021) `Dark Academia - How Universities Die' puts this better than what I have written...Finally, programme closures and extensive compulsory redundancies are taking their toll in about half of the British tertiary education sector. As for the Orengeman's US... what is happening is potentially more extensive and primordial than the McCarthy era witch hunts of progressives. I would urge the diarist who prompted my stream of consciousness to double up on their KPIs, put in MAGAbuck funding applications, and up their `game' !
Great warning to all of us, how we are going to spend our lives.
that’s a short work day
Pure gold. This nihilist attitudw made me crazy in NL. Happily I am back in my belőled Eastern Europe - although that is slowly (capitals very quickly) becoming commercialized like this too
Makes me want to read David Lodge's "Changing Places," "Small World" and "Nice Work" ...
Love this.
Interesting story, Africa looms in the background for things to come. I’ve had similar feelings about how maybe it’s time to become more engaged.