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Liked It2 of 2 members found this review helpful “This book reads like a Joseph Cornell box sees. There are impossibilities of comparison, beautiful paradoxes and chaos meticulously ordered by obscurity. As the pages turn you can hear tiny bells twinkle, see fibers move in the wind of your breath. This is a book to be read when the quietness is...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “Just ordered it so will report soon......In the middle of reading but it is a compilation of thoughts rather than a narrative. I understand where he is coming from with his intimate introspections...and why its called book of "disquiet"!” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Just ordered it so will report soon......In the middle of reading but it is a compilation of thoughts rather than a narrative. I understand where he is coming from with his intimate introspections...and why its called book of "disquiet"!”
Gary Cliffe wrote this review Tuesday, January 22, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“belle langue en traduction française, classique et simple...j'ai lu une partie du livre que je trouve intéressant mais pas passionnant, c'est le genre de livre qui peut etre suivi sur plusieurs mois a petite dose...Il me laisse l'impression de lire le journal d'un dépressif.
gerard. d wrote this review Saturday, August 18, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Je reprendrai sa lecture plus tard.”
“This is a collection as writings by famed Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa. The writing here is beautiful and bleak. Pessoa writes this as Bernardo Soares, one of his many heteronyms. It is something of a surreal autobiography. There is no plot, no characters, no dialogue. Only a collection of philosophical musings on the nature of life.
Scott G wrote this review Monday, April 30, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The collection was assembled many years after Pessoa's death and has a random feel to it. It can be difficult to comprehend and the editor's notes are essential for context. I think the best approach is to just get immersed in the language and let the impressions come to you.”
“Riddley said: 4 stars
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Shelf wrote this review Sunday, January 29, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The book was written over a number of years and assembled after Pessoa's death. It is an arrangement of some of the writings he left behind. There are pointers within the text to show that Pessoa had envisaged posthumous readers and didn't intend a direct narrative of any kind. "Through these deliberately unconnected impressions I am the indifferent narrator of my autobiography without events, of my history without a life." These are "the pages which, when put together, will make up my book of random impressions."
There are characters in this but they are more like furniture than real people. They never emerge from the background. The narrator has the identity Bernardo Soares, one of the many heteronyms* that Pessoa invented, and considered to be the closest to Pessoa himself. He is a lowly clerk who uses his routine life as a launching pad for philosophical reveries. And it is a heightened state of speculation that is sought out, not answers - "The moment I find myself, I am lost; if I believe, I doubt; I grasp hold of something but hold nothing in my hand..."
He reminds us that there is no end to what man can experience, even in straitened circumstances, and that every 'answer' is only an answer within the limited scope of our understanding: "what is classifiable is infinite and therefore unclassifiable." The infinite seems a fitting end point for these scattered thoughts in this book of scattered thoughts. This is almost like writing about an encyclopedia, and this book will be put somewhere that I can dip into in the future. This may well be the best way to use this book, to inspire ones own trains of thought, ones own speculations.
Longer review @ http://theknockingshop.blogspot.com/2011/11/book-of-disquiet.html”
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“The book was written over a number of years and assembled after Pessoa's death. It is an arrangement of some of the writings he left behind. There are pointers within the text to show that Pessoa had envisaged posthumous readers and didn't intend a direct narrative of any kind. "Through these deliberately unconnected impressions I am the indifferent narrator of my autobiography without events, of my history without a life." These are "the pages which, when put together, will make up my book of random impressions."
Riddley wrote this review Friday, December 2, 2011. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
There are characters in this but they are more like furniture than real people. They never emerge from the background. The narrator has the identity Bernardo Soares, one of the many heteronyms* that Pessoa invented, and considered to be the closest to Pessoa himself. He is a lowly clerk who uses his routine life as a launching pad for philosophical reveries. And it is a heightened state of speculation that is sought out, not answers - "The moment I find myself, I am lost; if I believe, I doubt; I grasp hold of something but hold nothing in my hand..."
He reminds us that there is no end to what man can experience, even in straitened circumstances, and that every 'answer' is only an answer within the limited scope of our understanding: "what is classifiable is infinite and therefore unclassifiable." The infinite seems a fitting end point for these scattered thoughts in this book of scattered thoughts. This is almost like writing about an encyclopedia, and this book will be put somewhere that I can dip into in the future. This may well be the best way to use this book, to inspire ones own trains of thought, ones own speculations.
Longer review @ http://theknockingshop.blogspot.com/2011/11/book-of-disquiet.html”
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
jasonpettus wrote this review Wednesday, August 3, 2011. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
This was recommended to me by a friend of mine, Chicago bizarro author David David Katzman, specifically because of the growing influence it's apparently having these days on all lovers of the surreal; because for those who don't know, Fernando Pessoa was sort of the Portuguese version of Franz Kafka, a white-collar worker in Lisbon during the Early Modernist era of the 1910s through '30s, who barely published anything during his own lifetime but left behind over 25,000 pages of brilliantly obtuse work after his death. In fact, this particular novel wasn't even published for the very first time until 1982, which is why it's only now in the 2000s that it's starting to have a wide global influence for the first time, the pieces left by Pessoa in such a fragmented state that modern editors weren't sure what order the snippets should even appear. As you can imagine, then, this leaves the reading experience as a challenge to say the least, but a deeply rewarding one for the dedicated lover of experimentalism who can stick with it for the entire thing, as Pessoa weaves together observation with introspection, served with a healthy dose of cutting-edge style; and it's for sure destined to eventually become just as much a landmark of Early Modernist experimentation as T.S. Eliot or even Kafka himself. It comes recommended to those looking to expand their knowledge of this period of literary history, as well as fans of modern bizarro and gonzo fiction.”
“Mind-masturbating so far Mr.!
Panama M wrote this review Thursday, May 26, 2011. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Challenging..”
“An awesome, descriptive piece of literature. ”
Rachel wrote this review Tuesday, March 22, 2011. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“very poetic”
David D wrote this review Thursday, November 4, 2010. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
