"When I am returning from a trip, the best part is not going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you're still traveling, but not really. [...] I do not name the people I talk about to someone who doesn't know them, I use, despite the trouble of it, abstract descriptions like 'that friend whose parachute got tangled up with another parachute the time he jumped.' [...] Even if it is an odd sort of present, I thank my father and mother for having given me life. I believe the people who make the world are the ones who do not believe in reality, for example, for centuries, the Christians. [...] I get along with old people. A woman's breasts may hold my attention to the point I can't hear what she's saying. [...] I prefer desire to pleasure. My death will change nothing. [...] I have stepped on a rake and had the handle hit me in the face."
-from "When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue" by Édouard Levé, translated from the French by Lorin Stein, originally published in The Paris Review, Spring 2011.
Full-text here.
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2 comments:
I like the idea that Christians don't believe in reality. That is really amusing.
Totally. It's a slam, but also kind of a compliment. The piece as a whole is pretty great: http://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/6078/when-i-look-at-a-strawberry-i-think-of-a-tongue-edouard-leve
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