The Hooligan's Return Compendium

The Hooligan's Return Compendium 

Moves in the prose:

" Will he become, this morning, the man he was nine years ago, when he first arrived here, bewildered now, as he was then, by the novelty of life after death?" Think of syntax, of the effect raising this question has. 

- Something about the prose feels like it is stumbling to get out, to be told, a rush. 

- "I had finally left, feeling guilty for not having done so earlier feeling guilty for having finally done it."  & "I was racked by the guilt of not having left my motherland in time, by the guilt of not having stayed there to the very end." Similar sentences. But they accomplish something pleasurable, a contradiction on the sentence level, a catch-22 set up. 

Thoughts:

- "Perhaps. But I'm not ready yet for the return. I am not yet indifferent enough to my past." - Think of this. What is necessary to return to a place of turmoil: indifference. 

- "My anxieties were ambiguous. I did not know if I feared meeting my old self there.." The anxiety of encountering an old self. 

- - "I'm preaching not to change others but so that I can stay unchanged, a rabbi once said. And yet I have changed. Look at me, I have changed." Wow. Wow. Wow. Love this. The idea of a preacher preaching not to change others, or convince others, but to remain steadfast in his faith. 

To help with my project:

"I returned to the bench in front of Ottomanelli's where, one hour earlier, the past had come for me." -- An elegant handling of a character plagued with images from the past. 

Lovely lines:

"taste for inner catastrophe" 

- "delicate laughter."

- "Yes, the intensity of a whole lifetime within one moment..."

- "ready to make peace with the futility of the day" 

Wow, chilling, beautiful, heart breaking:

- Letter: "I think of you with great love and lonely longing. I can hear kids playing in the street. Shall we ever play together again? Poetry, too, has grown old and can no longer write itself. We hope the days ahead will be uneventful....However, there is love. Love is not just an abstract term, just as in the sciences we have Ohm's law , let us imagine that we also have a Loi de l'Homme, a Law of Humanity: a man is someone who leaves behind a vacuum greater than the space he previously occupied. Absence is a prolonged spasm-- once a day, once a week, several times a week. The heart grows older, and no man can bear more than a man can bear. Oh, what a playful, bashful friendship we had! If only we could start anew. Now we stand by the window like kids and wave to each other across the road, except that in the middle of the street lies the ocean."

Paragraph: 

- Page 44. " In 1997, nine years into the new calendar, that is, thirty six years from.... But, at the same time, he was only eleven years old, counting by the time elapsed since his departure from the old life. Such a pilgrimage seemed premature for so young and emotional a person." This is a perfect paragraph. What a wonderful way of handling time and character. Sets up exactly where our protagonist is, too. 

Words:

Prescient