Brain Gourmet

I knew when I set eyes on this book’s title that I was going to love it. It is so imperfectly perfect, so beautifully flawed, so darkly comforting for someone like me.

There are many statements in On the Heights of Despair I don’t agree with. I found Cioran’s take on women and on the difference between man and other living creatures to be too immature. He is melodramatic and over-exhilarated at times. But he touches on subjects that interest me; he thinks thoughts that I do. He is endearingly bold and passionate.

Spending time with this book felt like talking to someone who understands and accepts you the way you are. I can’t recall the last time I felt comfortable in my own skin without the compulsive need to explain that melancholy and sadness are not a result of things that happened to me in the past, but are just a pivotal part of my being, and have accompanied me since the day I was born.

Although very intelligently and coherently written, one can tell that these are the words of a young soul. There is narrow-mindedness and self-centeredness in Cioran’s views. There is lack of acceptance; there is arrogance and there is naïveté. But just as naïvely, my mind drank every word and slumbered into blissful inebriation. An intangible thirst was quenched in me and I now lay here satisfied, yet alert. I know the munchies will come back soon enough, but what a way to finish my reading year!