=what I'm reading right now, this snowy afternoon…=

Christ almighty, this book is depressing. Brilliant in every conceivable way, but so stupendously depressing—it's hard to even say what's so depressing about it—it's just…just everything—the narrator is so rootless & detached & disaffected—the world he lives in—which so accurately reflects our world—is so pointless & contingent (on nothing)—the language is so beautiful in its description of a surface with no depth—a Warholian vision of reality "If you want to know everything about me, just look at the surface of my paintings. There's nothing behind them." Like a David Hockney swimming pool sparkling with perfect clear water so inviting, so tempting,  you throw caution to the wind and dive in headfirst but it's just a thin varnish of paint, there's no water at all, it's just a shiny illusion, and you hit the concrete leading with your skull & crush all the vertebrae in your neck. That's what this book is like. It aches with the longing for something unattainable—the vanishing point, maybe, where meaning might be found, if there were any meaning to be found, if the vanishing point could be a destination. I lie here shattered on the couch reading it, feeling as if I were bleeding from both ears. This book makes me wish I'd never been born & glad to know I know it.