RIP sensei you would've loved the song trouble by cat stevens

this book crushed me. it was so good. i don't even know how to phrase what i want to say. cruel yet forgiving, a haunting yet familiar look into the human psyche. this book is, though my description is hardly inclusive of it all, an amazing dive into shame, love, cowardice, guilt, one's own priorities, the tenuous navigation of those things; it's a portrait of its era, of fundamental loneliness when one finds no community within their own kind and the depths that loneliness drives us to, and i think (as a contemporary western reader, in the 109 years since it was written) encourages one to look within themselves. i have a lot i could say about this. i am eager to read his other works!!!