Read Guerre (War) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (with a cover by Tardi, as for the other books of his in the Folio collection), a recent recovery of a 1934 manuscript that had been stolen from his Paris apartment in 1944 when he fled to Sigamaringen along with the collaborationist Pétain government. As described (with much whining and cynicism) in D’un château l’Autre (Castle to Castle). If Voyage au Bout de la Nuit is to be considered as one of the strongest anti-war novels ever, Guerre sounds like the original, uncensored , unedited—a few words and the earlier pages are missing—, version of this book, despite being written later. A short but intense 150 pages raw fall into the mindset of a surviving WWI soldier that feels like treading a sewer but offers an in-your-face testimony on the unlimited amorality of war and men, with no heroes… As mentioned earlier, I also read Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which is another kind of shell-shocking journey in three mindsets around the central figure of the sister fasting herself to death, whose perspective is barely heard. Raw, again, with introspection and returns to childhood trauma, impressive in many respects and so original!
Made jars and jars of green tomato jam as the tomato plants had started to rot due to the enormous volume of rain we got in September and October. Also made a pie with chestnuts and chocolate and the very last raspberries, after my attempt at chestnut butter did not prove successful. With a sprinkle of matcha to substitute for sugar. (Figs are also almost done for the season, after a massive harvest that I mostly shared with my Dauphine colleagues.)
A reading questionnaire I picked somewhere I cannot remember, a while ago, and filled in the lazy days after X’mas… Could have substituted each entry with dozens of others.
