The worst part of reading this book is seeing youself in Giovanni. Chapter 19 where Giovanni goes back to the city where he come from and eveyone has changed, and he feels like a stranger hits especially hard. The past didnt stop for him. He knows he can rekindle the old interactions with Maria but he doesn't even try because she's changed too. He's been been stockholmed by Bastiani and wants to returnThe whole Lazzari thing i kinda didn't get that well, were Tronks action a fall back to traditional old timey rules thus showing us how Bastiani is stuck in the past and how time seems to pass but also go by at a snails pace?The jist is that Giovanni fell back into habits that were comfortable for him and that ate away at his life, the goal was set and all he had to do was wait it out. Thus wasting his life and making it meaningless. He saw his older comrades tossed aside and the same happens to him.Am I missing something here?Man this book was grim, but now what?
>Giovanni gets three hot meals a day>sleeps in safety and relative comfort>hangs out with his fort friends all day>very rarely has to do actual work, physical or mental>never has to worry about money>occasional flashes of excitement to keep things interesting>this is supposed to be a horrific fate for some reasonI want Giovanni's life
>>25301807enlist nigga, all you do is some push ups everyday and then you get to go back to your barracks and play ps5
>>25301807fuck you're right. His work doesn't really feel like work and he only feels bad when society is ahead of him. He wants to work. The only thing he can't control is that the war is up to chance
>>25301809I served in fucking Haiti after the earthquake, and we had crazy fast internet for the time.Back home, I literally had 56 kbps dial-up internet, but in the poorest country in the world (at the time, by a long shot), I was downloading movies faster than I could watch and playing online games at night.Lots of things create an impression on me. The extreme poverty, the smell, the despair, the ugliness, the crab mentality of the "people". But having better internet in the barracks, better than I had at home, was right at the top. I mean, it was a fucking island. Someone bothered pulling fibre optic so soldiers could watch porn in peace in a country without a reliable source of potable water.
>>25301809No guarantee of where you'll go and I'm old for the militaryI wish I could sign up with a job like that but every job fairies requires way to much paperwork and qualifications compared to back then or its militaryAt this point I'm such a failure I just want one of these types of jobs nobody wants somewhere remote and just send money to my family who are far superior to me
>>25301807Everyone compares this book to 4chan in a bad way but 4chan is a lot of fun and I've enjoyed my time here. Imagine Giovanni happy
>>25301797Now you should at least have some desire to break away from the self imposed limitations and actually leave the fort to go and explore the land of the tartars instead of expecting the tartars to come to you. Maybe you want to fight them, maybe you want to know more about them, whatever, but don't just sit and wait for the world to give you for free what you want because most of the time it won't, or if it does it will not be in a way where you can control it. This is the whole point.
>>25301807>occasional flashes of excitement to keep things interesting3 times in 30 years isn't what I'd call 'occasional'
I like to dip fish sticks in tartar sauce.
>when Giovanni stops running up stairs two steps at a time not because he physically can't but because what's the point?>he never would again Hasn't happened to you yet, huh bros...?
Gotta bring it up but how does it compare bros?
>>25301807>food>comfort>security >routineThese are the kinds of things a child wants.
I am very close to ending this book.Right now they can just see the lights on the horizon of the potential road that everyone dismissed as nonsense.For a book about being bored, it sure keeps my attention...
The most difficult part about this book was not only do his superiors lie to him about leaving in what was it 2 weeks or 2 months, but his friends also did the same, he was never able to connect that too many people wanting to leave means no one can leave. I never understood why he never made this insight.
>>25305297Nah there's nothing I can really do. Not only does the world not need me in it, it fundamentally doesn't want me in it. I never should have even existed. Its nonsensical my parents even met. And in my 30 years of life I just could not find anything I wanted.
>>25305567This is just life.In my opinion, he was wrong in expecting privilege; he assumed he deserved a transfer just because... reasons? And his "friends" should have sacrificed their own well-being so he could fuck off there first when he wanted, instead of just take the initiative and ask for a transfer like everyone else (something he postponed many times for the most banal motives).
Being young and naive you expect those in positions of authority and power to act benevolently and actually look forward to the interests of those under their command. You do that because you assume everyone is as altruistic as you imagine yourself in that position. Drogo had no reason to assume the General and the medic were>just 2 more weeks broin order to keep him quiet and hoping that the monotony of it all would eventually swallow him.Personally I see in Drogo the failing of naively trusting the goodwill of those in positions of authority, >>25301797The worst thing one can do is live life passively, as the wind blows. Not having the courage to stand up for yourself will break you sooner or later.The absolute worst part is seeing myself in it as I've accepted being in a work I hate because it pays better, having had no time to try anything else before being forced to work
>>25305629At least you have a job
>>25305524I like Tartar Steppe way more.Opposing Shore had decent setting, but writing was tiring at times. Buzzati much more approachable and enjoyable imo.If you crush books and likes Tartar Steppe then I'd say go for it, but otherwise I'd skip. I'd give Tartar Steppe like an A- where Opposing Shore a B- or C+.
>>25301807he's an animal in a cage at the zoo Giovanni mourns the past and the future because he wants something else and doesn't get it, even if he doesn't clearly know that that something else exists
>>25305567>>25305629Captain Ortiz is the first person Giovanni meets and he tells him the truth to his face and is never anything but honest and friendly to him...But in the end, when Ortiz is retiring and the rumor of action is still active at the fort while he is cordial in parting with Giovanni he hopes in his heart that Giovanni's life will be wasted the same way his was and that there will be no battle for him either. This is human nature, it's hard to be wronged so deeply and wish others to be spared, they were good friends but still he betrayed him in his heart.
>>25305664The amount of betrayals that the guy goes through is too much, especially at the end, how he's hurriedly rushed out of the fort like a beggar just as the game he's been looking forward to all his career finally arrives, it makes you want to laugh as the only reaction to your heart finally being crushed by the weight of betrayal. I think Angustino's death foreshadowed Drogo's fate, a completely pointless mission they were sent to and his colleague or was it his superior just thought he would punish him because his subordinate had found a way to accept his fate.
>open fortchan>another Tartar Steppe thread on the 'log>entire catalog is nothing but repeat threads>momentarily acknowledge that the site has gone to shit>that it has nothing new to show>that 15 years here have only warped me>that it was always shit>that I should leave and never return>relate these feelings to Drogo's predicament in the Tartar Steppe thread>open the catalog start hitting F5>any day now a good thread could arrive>mfw
>>25305576Oh I forget how he was dressed down by that officer at his town.
>>25305635There is more to life than just survival anon. When you live day to day it's difficult to see it, but once you achieve stability and get a handle on achieving your basic needs you start to feel the emptiness inside that comes with not meeting the more abstract desires and needs. It's great to have a good paying job until you realize the monotony of it slowly sucks your soul away to the point where you feel like a zombie every single day after finishing your shift, too tired to do what you love for fun, too well paid to switch to something else.And every year that passes you see your paycheck grow, you get more experience and everyone around you treats you with more respect because you're becoming the "expert", you're becoming someone important. And you keep going because now your expenses have crept up to the level of your income, and now you have maybe a wife and children, and you look outside your office window to see a food delivery driver riding a motorcycle, feeling the wind, the speed, the movement, and for a split second consider the possibility of living like that, doing something real, physical, instead of mashing buttons and staring at a screen all day every day, and wish you were young again, with no responsibilities, with nobody depending on you, free to move halfway across the country to bartend in a rock bar for minimum wage, banging the owner's daughter that works as a waitress on the weekends, with all the possibilities and opportunities of the world ahead of you and enough time and freedom to pursue them but then your teams group chat pings and you are transported back to reality.
>>25305713Sometimes I think about the monotony of 4chan but then if I actually look back on my life in not even the last 10 years, it’s crazy how much has changed when seemingly all my days are spent shitposting.
>>25305718That's cute but at least you have a job
>>25305718I'm in this post and I don't like it.
>>25305718>ugh this stable employment and big paycheck and wife and family and social status is so.... MONOTONOUS. If only i was an uber driver or something. Sigh....
>>2530571310/10 thank you.>>25305718lol that's me!
>>25304862But how many times have there been no good threads on the log, where you keep opening the same threads yet no one has replied
>>25305297Yes but im struggling to find where to start >Inb4 the greeks
>>25305442Youre lying, Fishfingers are floppy
I prefer Sound of the Sky.
Apparently it has a similar setting, can anyone confirm?
