What I read says much about what I think. Much more than what I write

September 2025

La fornace, by Thomas Bernhard

It gave me a sense of urgency to do things. Writing down my ideas is also a way to stop thinking them, to move beyond. The incessant prose, without paragraphs, without chapters, without breaks between one concept and another resembles life. A senseless journey that leads where you wanted to go. The mistake is discovered only afterward. Perhaps the book that started this habit of keeping track of what I read, of notes I take while reading, of the spatial and temporal connections that make me pass from one book to another.

La patafisica è l'arte del vedere, by Jean Baudrillard

With this book I understand why philosophers are accused of saying much while explaining nothing. The language is deliberately difficult, with lexical constructions at the edge of comprehension. Yet the underlying theme is interesting. The disappearance of illusion due to an excess of reality. The immediacy of live transmission, the subjective nature of images, the personalization of remote viewing, all this leads to the death of illusion. Today we see everything through a screen that amplifies and filters, through the technique of the microscope or the reportage, there is no more room for dream, illusion is here the awareness that reality is nothing but a recent construction, the world forced to be real loses its illusory part. But beneath the veil of truth, the veil of maya torn, there is nothing, except another veil infinitely. It's like an orgy in which the question "what do you do after the orgy," which implies the desire to go do something interesting once the basic function of mechanical pleasure is fulfilled, no longer makes sense because there is no after. The process of mechanical happiness replicates infinitely while emptying itself of meaning. It made me want to reread Le Surmâle by Jarry

Punacci, story of a black goat. By Perumal Murugan

Unexpected book, found on free exchange shelves, chosen for the title and the cover, a sort of geometric minimalism with the eye of a goat in extreme close-up. The novel comes from India, speaks of desperately poor people, once we would have said agricultural subproletariat, speaks of magic and religious beliefs, speaks of relationships between people near and far, speaks of the love of the young and the old. All this from the point of view of Punacci, the black goat. Indian magical realism? Perhaps. Certainly a glimpse into lives on the margins, told with gentleness. There is no lack of fierce disillusionment of the weak toward power.

Pianoforte vendesi, by Andrea Vitali.

Pretty disposable book. A pickpocket thief, the night of the party, it rains and everyone is home. He enters a house, where only a piano for sale remained and the story of ghosts begins, somewhat pink somewhat police. With inadequate carabinieri and masked characters, without depth. The style is pleasant and you reach the end with pleasure, but it's like a comfortable bus on time to go to work. A nice trip that leaves little behind.

Perfide, by Giulia Volpi Mannipieri, aka Mura

Stories of love and flirtation in the high aristocracy of the early twentieth century. At the time it caused scandal, today we are too accustomed to this exquisite dish to not feel nauseated by it.

The fact that it was written by a woman adds a level of interest, though not necessarily of truth, to what is written. The style is marvelous, sublime, d'Annunzian; the reading is at times exciting. Unfortunately the love stories of the vips, at least for me, have tired me out.

il Supermaschio, by Alfred Jarry

I would translate "L'oltremaschio" the title of this novel. In French the Nietzschean overman translates as surhomme. In this light it is easier to read the work. Andre Murciel is not a superman, he is a man who has surpassed the steam engine phase and guides humanity toward a new destiny.