Elena Ferrante is Cormac McCarthy!

"...diffuse at first and then growing ever denser..."

“…I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one’s power. It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes… The entire structure of language, the syntactical arrangement of parts of speech, punctuation, conjunctions, and finally even the nouns denoting ordinary objects were all enveloped in impenetrable fog… Especially in the evening twilight, which had always been my favorite time of day, I was overcome by a sense of anxiety, diffuse at first and then growing ever denser, through which the lovely spectacle of fading colors turned to a malevolent and lightless pallor, my heart felt constricted in my chest to a quarter of its natural size, until at last there remained only one idea in my head: I must go… and throw myself over the banisters into the dark depths of the stairwell. It was impossible for me to go and see any of my friends, who were not numerous in any case, or mix with other people in any normal way. The mere idea of listening to anyone brought on a wave of revulsion, while the thought of talking myself, said Austerlitz, was perhaps worse still, and as this state of affairs continued I came to realize how isolated I was and always have been…I was as ill at ease among artists and intellectuals as in bourgeois life, and it was a very long time since I had felt able to make personal friendships. No sooner did I become acquainted with someone than I feared I had come too close, no sooner did someone turn toward me than I began to retreat. In the end I was linked to people only by certain forms of courtesy which I took to extremes and which I know today… I observed not so much for the sake of their recipients as because they allowed me to ignore the fact that my life has always, for as far back as I can remember, been clouded by an unrelieved despair… I began my nocturnal wanderings… to escape the insomnia which increasingly tormented me.”

̶ W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, pp. 123-126

My Dog Is a Racist

My dog, a small, rather cute all-black mutt I rescued from a teenaged couple who neglected her badly, is generally sweet, but she is a racist. She hates black men. Everyone asks, "Did a black man ever beat her?" and I always answer "No, I doubt it. I think it's just because she's not used to dark skin."

I walked her through the park the other day. About twenty young men were playing soccer on their lunch break. Nineteen of the men were Caucasian or pale, and one was black. My dog ran into the middle of the game to confront the lone black man. She headed him off and stood barking at him. He looked at her, incredulous, spread his arms, and said "Take a look in the mirror, Sister."