Kafka Was the Rage

Finished Kafka Was the Rage last week.

Love its prose. Here are some excerpts:

"When I came to know her better, I thought of her as a new disease"

"The sadness of the building was literature. I was twenty-six, and sadness was a stimulant, even an aphrodisiac"

"I had conceived of lovemaking as a sort of asking and answering of questions, but with us it only led to further questions, until we seemed to be locked in a philosophical debate. Instead of the proverbial sadness after sex, I felt something like a semantic despair"

"It seemed to me that a penis was a very primitive instrument for dealing with life"

"We become doctors to prevent death, lawyers to outlaw it, and writers to rage against it"

"The energy of unspent desire, of looking forward to sex, was an immense current running through American life. It was so much more powerful then because it was delayed, cumulative and surrounded by doubt."

"When a girl took off her underpants in 1947, she was more naked than any woman before her had ever been"

"Girls were trained to listen. They were waiting for history to give them permission to speak. They led waiting lives - waiting for men to ask them out, for them to have an orgasm, to marry or leave them. Their silence was another form of virginity"