Finished Bukowski’s Factotum. Man, was he drinking! I almost got intoxicated just by reading how much and how often he drank. The word ‘drank’ itself popped up in almost every other sentence! Drinking and women. That’s pretty much it. And trying to find work in between, to be able to go on living hand to mouth. Of course, there is the futility of it all (hence the drinking) and he does a good job at pointing it out by way of job interviews and work relationships – petty minded people, useless perspectives.
Now I started reading from his short stories. And I like them. Of course, they involve drinking and women. Right. But nevertheless, they are not bad at all. I’ll read as long as I still find them interesting.
This week I finished Khaled Hosseini’s – A Thousand Splendid Suns. Quite a read. It is pretty engaging and it leaves a deep mark. Almost a scar.
“Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.” – that could be the motto for this book. It is the story of two women and the hardship they have to go through in a country, in a city dominated by radical and absurd laws. The Russians coming in and going out of Afghanistan, the warlords, the Taliban, the Americans – these are events running in the background but deeply influencing the lives of the two main characters. And then, there is this hurt that is barely manageable when reading, this hurt that springs with every beating the man in the house is allowed to administer when he feels it necessary to the women he has. Yes, he has, because there is no difference between being a woman and being a piece of property here.