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A review by torishams
To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert
3.5
3.5/4
I keep going back and forth about how I feel about this book. I think it has a large impact, but the reading experience itself wasn't necessarily always compelling to me. The long sentences really require you to pay attention, and I found myself having to trace back at times to figure out what Guibert was trying to say. I think that's very intentional though, it was just something I had to be aware of and prepared for in terms of my reading mindset. I saw another review that talked about these lengthy sentences also give a feeling of breathlessness and fatigue, mirroring Guibert, which I think is also a productive lens to understand the writing style through.
* I was stretching invisible nets from my window to his to save him
* you could see it in his eyes, that panic at a suffering no longer mastered inside the body but provoked artificially by an outside intervention directed at the site of the illness under the pretext of eliminating it, and clearly this pain was more abominable for Muzil than his private bodily suffering, which had become intimately familiar to him.
* I’d borrowed Jules’s Leica to record the details, such as the wastebasket that still held a crumpled envelope bearing an address Muzil had started to write. In four months, the torment of absence had had time to deposit itself on all these things like a dust it was not impossible to brush off, they were all untouchable, and that was why they had to be photographed before they were covered over by more disorder.
* Before his death, Muzil had managed, discreetly, gradually, to separate himself somewhat from the one he loved, even having the amazing reflex, thew unconscious grace to spare this loved one at a time when almost all of his body, his sperm, saliva, tears, sweat — we weren’t so aware of this then— had become highly contagious…
* After I constantly sought out the most spectacular attributes of death, begging my father to let me have the skull that had accompanied him through medical school, hypnotizing myself with horror films… I began to disdain this bric-a-brac, put away the medical school skull, avoided cemeteries like the plague, for I’d reached another stage in the love of death, as though I were impregnated by death in my innermost being and no longer needed those trappings, but desired instead a closer intimacy with my idol, continually seeking the feelings it provoked, the most precious and hateful of all: fear and longing.
* If only one of us had been sick, that would probably have created an equilibrium of protection that would have cut the suffering in half. Together we were drowning helplessly, for neither one of us could save the other from sinking to the bottom, to the absolute and utter depths.
* And unhappiness, once you were completely sunk in it, was a lot more livable than the presentiment of unhappiness, a lot less cruel, in fact, than one would have thought.
* …because it was only natural to betray my secrets, since I’d always done that in all my books, even though this genie could never be stuffed back into its bottle, and I would never again be a part of the human community.
I keep going back and forth about how I feel about this book. I think it has a large impact, but the reading experience itself wasn't necessarily always compelling to me. The long sentences really require you to pay attention, and I found myself having to trace back at times to figure out what Guibert was trying to say. I think that's very intentional though, it was just something I had to be aware of and prepared for in terms of my reading mindset. I saw another review that talked about these lengthy sentences also give a feeling of breathlessness and fatigue, mirroring Guibert, which I think is also a productive lens to understand the writing style through.
* I was stretching invisible nets from my window to his to save him
* you could see it in his eyes, that panic at a suffering no longer mastered inside the body but provoked artificially by an outside intervention directed at the site of the illness under the pretext of eliminating it, and clearly this pain was more abominable for Muzil than his private bodily suffering, which had become intimately familiar to him.
* I’d borrowed Jules’s Leica to record the details, such as the wastebasket that still held a crumpled envelope bearing an address Muzil had started to write. In four months, the torment of absence had had time to deposit itself on all these things like a dust it was not impossible to brush off, they were all untouchable, and that was why they had to be photographed before they were covered over by more disorder.
* Before his death, Muzil had managed, discreetly, gradually, to separate himself somewhat from the one he loved, even having the amazing reflex, thew unconscious grace to spare this loved one at a time when almost all of his body, his sperm, saliva, tears, sweat — we weren’t so aware of this then— had become highly contagious…
* After I constantly sought out the most spectacular attributes of death, begging my father to let me have the skull that had accompanied him through medical school, hypnotizing myself with horror films… I began to disdain this bric-a-brac, put away the medical school skull, avoided cemeteries like the plague, for I’d reached another stage in the love of death, as though I were impregnated by death in my innermost being and no longer needed those trappings, but desired instead a closer intimacy with my idol, continually seeking the feelings it provoked, the most precious and hateful of all: fear and longing.
* If only one of us had been sick, that would probably have created an equilibrium of protection that would have cut the suffering in half. Together we were drowning helplessly, for neither one of us could save the other from sinking to the bottom, to the absolute and utter depths.
* And unhappiness, once you were completely sunk in it, was a lot more livable than the presentiment of unhappiness, a lot less cruel, in fact, than one would have thought.
* …because it was only natural to betray my secrets, since I’d always done that in all my books, even though this genie could never be stuffed back into its bottle, and I would never again be a part of the human community.