Saramago...excerpts from Death At Intervals
"Lovers of concision, laconicism and economy of language will doubtless be asking, if the idea is such a simple one, why did we need all this waffle to arrive, at last, at the critical point. The answer is equally simple, and we will give it using a current and very trendy term. that will, we hope, make up for the archaisms with which, in the likely opinion of some, we have spattered this account as if with mould, and that term is context."...
All the names in the book was written with small cases even death.
"We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow. Just as beneath the bronze cuirass of achilles there once beat a sentimental heart, think only of the hero's ten years of jealousy after agememnon stole away his beloved, the slave girl briseis, and then the terrible rage that made him return to war, howling out his wrath at the trojans when his friend patroclus was killed by hector, so beneath the most impenetrable of armours ever forged and guaranteed to remain impenetrable until the end of time, we are referring here, of course, to death's skeleton, there is always a chance that one day something will casually insinuate itself into the dread carcass, a soft chord from a cello, an ingenuous trill on a piano, or the mere sight of sheet music open on a chair, which will make you remember that thing you refuse to think about, that you have never lived and that, do what you may, you will never live...."
Review
All the names in the book was written with small cases even death.
"We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow. Just as beneath the bronze cuirass of achilles there once beat a sentimental heart, think only of the hero's ten years of jealousy after agememnon stole away his beloved, the slave girl briseis, and then the terrible rage that made him return to war, howling out his wrath at the trojans when his friend patroclus was killed by hector, so beneath the most impenetrable of armours ever forged and guaranteed to remain impenetrable until the end of time, we are referring here, of course, to death's skeleton, there is always a chance that one day something will casually insinuate itself into the dread carcass, a soft chord from a cello, an ingenuous trill on a piano, or the mere sight of sheet music open on a chair, which will make you remember that thing you refuse to think about, that you have never lived and that, do what you may, you will never live...."
Review