May 8, 2010
Susan Sontag's essays are beautifully precise, clear, and fabulously interesting. I will love her forever if only because she introduced me, via one of her essays, to Walter Benjamin, a German intellectual who spent a good part of his life sitting in a library in Paris researching and writing (but almost never finishing anything ... except his translation of Proust into German).
Kafka's character woke up to find himself a cockroach. I have wanted a better deal; I've wanted often to wake up and find myself to be Walter Benjamin.
Dear George,
ReplyDeleteAfter stumbling upon your blog this summer, I decided to make the honorary visit to Ms Sontag's grave myself. It had been an emotional rollercoaster spending the summer in Paris. I was torn between what I wanted in life (drinking coffee in Paris) and what I should be doing in life (climbing the corporate ladder in New York or London). After I had read your blog, I seemed to stumble upon Walter Benjamin's work everywhere I went, whether it was a book lying on the street or an honorary bookshelf dedicated to W.B. - every time this would happen, I would think of this blog entry.
However, one quote specifically defined the agitating inner rupture I sensed throughout the summer in Paris: 'Emotionally, I wanted to stay. Intellectually, I wanted to leave. As always, I seemed to enjoy punishing myself.'