A review by elonzo
Exteriors by Annie Ernaux
4.0
reading this book feels like meditating
"So it is outside my own life that my past existence lies: in passengers commuting on the subway or the RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators at Auchan or in the Galeries Lafayette; in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others." (pg95)
"Yet the very starkness and paucity of music allow me to recall a whole episode of my life and the girl I used to be when I listen to I'm just Another Dancing Partner thirty years later. Whereas the beauty and fullness of Le Bel Ete and A Ia Recherche du Temps Perdu, which I have reread two or three times, can never give me back my life. (pg 55)
"I realize that I am forever combing reality for signs of literature."
"In other words, the feelings and thoughts inspired by places and objects have nothing to do with their cultural content; thus a hypermarket can provide just as much meaning and human truth as a concert hall." (Pg 7)
"So it is outside my own life that my past existence lies: in passengers commuting on the subway or the RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators at Auchan or in the Galeries Lafayette; in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others." (pg95)
"Yet the very starkness and paucity of music allow me to recall a whole episode of my life and the girl I used to be when I listen to I'm just Another Dancing Partner thirty years later. Whereas the beauty and fullness of Le Bel Ete and A Ia Recherche du Temps Perdu, which I have reread two or three times, can never give me back my life. (pg 55)
"I realize that I am forever combing reality for signs of literature."
"In other words, the feelings and thoughts inspired by places and objects have nothing to do with their cultural content; thus a hypermarket can provide just as much meaning and human truth as a concert hall." (Pg 7)