Little Remarkable

This week a parachutist man was found dead in grassland near Teuge #NL. It turned out that he died 9 days before, after a failed para-jump. Failed? We do not know yet what happened exactly. Right now we know that he lived alone and no-one had missed him. No-one. Not at the paraclub. Not at home. Not at work. And if they did miss him, no-one went out to search! him. 

Stoner must have been a man like this para!

Last weekend I finished reading John Williams' book 'Stoner' (1965) in a Dutch translation. I wanted to read this novel to "feel" what it's like to  live a little remarkable life. Stoner failed in being a teacher. Stoner failed in love. He eventually dies in anonymity. A mediocre life of a mediocre teacher. Nothing fancy.

The book did disappoint me. It did not meet my expectations. Did I expect too much? What did I expect? For me it was too much a novel. It could have been someone's biography. But it isn't. It's an invented life. 

I did not feel sorry for Stoner. No look of recognition. Nothing resonating in my heart. Did not think much of him. Just nothing.

The coming two weeks I'm on holiday. Natal. Ano Novo. Ice-skating with the kids. Little jobs in the house. B. gets her own room. Only one book to read on my to-read-list: Stedman's Surinam. Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society. An Abridged, Modernized Edition of 'Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam'.

your little remarkable man