thom space

Upon reading Felix Krull I have determined that I do not know as much about nothing as I thought I did. Clearly Thomas Mann has much more of a grasp than I. After reading the last lines of the novel I was left with the distinct feeling of just having lost something valuable but not knowing quite what. I think that my lost feeling might be attributed to the fact that the writing of Thomas Mann is confounding, and at least in the case of Felix Krull is dumbfounding. I think that the book was a comment of the arbitrary nature of our identity’s superficial reliance upon language, or more accurately perhaps that our identity IS language. While not immediately convincing I must admit that the novel has stuck in me a new feeling of inadequacy, or perhaps that is not entirely accurate, it has at least reaffirmed my previously held suspicion that I am nothing more than what I say I am, or at least that I would be if I were to deny that I have existed. *

“Education is not won in Dull toil and labor; rather it is the fruit of freedom and apparent idleness; one does not achieve it by exertion,one breathes it in; some secret machinery is at work to that end; a hidden industry of the senses and the spirit, consonant with an appearance of complete vagabondage, is hourly active to promote it, and you could go so far as to say that one who is chosen learns even in his sleep.” Thomas Mann - The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man