Nik

Emma is a married housewife. Although her husband is caring and loving, he is still mildly boring in her eyes. She reads lots of love romances and dreams for that deep, adventurous romanticism that she sees in her books.

In that sense, her character is made our of texts: She must write love letters because that what novel characters do. Her affairs are disappointing partly because men don't live up to the scripts in her head.

It almost reminds me of some people today whose whole personality dictated by modern media. Instagram feed always shows you perfectly aesthetic places, constant traveling, unachievable bodies, lack of any hard work. Overtime it becomes a standard to some, and they get disappointed when their life differs from planted expectations.
Personally, even myself, I always feel inferior scrolling through social media. We compare our regular Tuesday to top 1% of others.

In book, Emma lives with that feeling of inferiority, it follows her constantly in everyday life. That's why I pity her. Her character is repulsive, selfish, lying and self obsessed - but still, I understand and feel compassion towards her.

This science-history work paints a vast yet grim picture of everyday life, culture, rituals, and the horrendous treatment of slaves in ancient Rome. It vividly describes the customs of gladiators -from their training, to the fights each bringing them closer to certain death, as well as the inhumane, shackled existence of ordinary slaves in the mines and fields. The average lifespan of Roman slave being 21 years old already tells much about cruelty and severity of their life.

Author resurrects Spartacus story - story of a gladiator and a leader of the greatest slave uprising in the whole Roman Empires history. The tale evokes admiration and sympathy to the unfortunate who righteously rebelled against their masters. While remaining historically accurate, Spartacus campaign feels as captivating and dramatic as something straight up from fantasy adventure novel.

I'm thankful to the author for collecting, analyzing and turning long chronological scriptures and texts into something so exciting and easy to read.

“He is a slave! But how does that harm him? Show me a man who isn't a slave: one is a slave to lust, another to greed, a third to ambition—and all are slaves to fear... No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.”
- Seneca the Younger, 60 AD

Perhaps, if I were living in post-WW2 Japan, I would connect more deeply with this book.

It stages a clash between two core principles: On one side, the pursuit of fame, glory, and the heroic death that is so celebrated in Japanese folklore. On the other, the westernized ideals of stability, consumerism, and domestic comfort. Two worlds clash psychologically between main characters, and symbolically between sea (glory, adventure) and the land (commerce).

While the ending was somewhat beautiful, I found characters too shallow. Instead of “living”, they functioned as walking ideological emblems. Such, I felt detached from the book on both levels: metaphorically, where ideas of glory and heroism is nothing I ever valued, and psychologically, where the characters never felt alive enough to invest in.

Long monotonous periods of time, amidst continuous repetition, shrink to terribly small sizes when one day is like all others, and all days become like one.

This is what happens to the main character of the novel, who arrives to visit his cousin at a mountain sanatorium for a few weeks but ends up staying there for many years.

Removed from the problems and concerns of people below, Hans Castorp, an unremarkable man and a natural-born phlegmatic, loses touch with the outside world.

No, he does not succumb to hedonistic tendencies or fall into apathy. On the contrary, during his stay, he seeks knowledge; philosophy, medicine, and the psychoanalysis of the soul become his main areas of study.

Through the character of Hans, the author demonstrates a search for the meaning of life, which ultimately leads nowhere.

Knowledge, profound feelings of love, music, and spiritual mysticism — none of these give Hans enough of a foundation, a lever, to finally leave the sanatorium.

Only war provides a strong enough reason for him to break free from the mire of constant, unanswered searching, thus giving him the sought-after answer.

In this way, within the vacuum of everyday life, the great question of life's meaning remains transcendent. Only action, an external influence, gives true meaning to the question itself and provides an answer.

This is a complex book, impossible to read quickly or “just for record.” Much time and energy will be spent — yet, worth it.

Stoner is an odd book, but it is also remarkably amazing.

Odd because there is no drama, no adventures or suspense. Essentially, author spoils you the whole plot on the first page. It's about struggle, not the struggle we usually expect in fiction or history, but about different, ‘ordinary' kind.

This novel struck me so hard as almost no other book did. I've read books about war, camps and gulags that felt less devastating than Stoner. Those books show horror from the outside; Stoner quietly suggests that tragedy can happen to anyone, without any external conflict or intervention.

That kind of tragedy happens gradually. People don't notice it until it's too late, until nothing can be changed or done anymore.