My Fictional Self’s Reading List

In my youth, I had one or two noble aspirations, but they were all shattered by the writings of Joseph Conrad. 

I had seen family as imperturbable and familial ties as inviolable, but that view was blown up by the Greek tragedy. 

I had trust in faith and purpose, but that was shaken by Shakespeare. 

I sought solace in the possibility of meaningful togetherness, but Beckett’s treatment of it with comic absurdity gnawed at me. 

I deemed the pursuit of knowledge was the key, but was shown the inevitable limits of it by Flaubert. 

I sought to understand deeply another and the past, but how complexly relative and uncertain it all was, as poignantly proffered by W. G. Sebald. 

I hoped there would be wisdom and dignity in old age, but learned there was only a  humbling instead, as described by Philip Roth. 

Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I guess I should drop this pernicious habit of reading ( it has made the reality of my life experience perpetually lag behind my fictional wisdom) and approach life again in unbookish humility. I know Dostoevsky would approve. But as I am deciding to do so, I am thinking of Italo Svevo and his irrefutable cynicism about the prospects of discarding old habits, of getting rid of oneself. 

So, under Svevo’s influence, I give up on giving up.