Books Read
- Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s “The World Goes On”
- The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- Rashid Khalidi’s, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017”
Pieces Written
- Civility
- High Heat, Tumble Dry: On the Beginning Months of Trump’s Second Term
Selfies…with Books! 2025 Year in Review
The tradition continues to ensure the previous year is reflected on through the books I have read, and for the beginning of the new year to begin with a piece of writing. As my above writing output shows, I think I can safely observe a correlation that my ability to navigate through this world is directly tied to how much I write. The Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty-Five, presented a challenge to both my desire and ability to write recreationally. Trump’s presidency and, relatedly, the actions taken by ICE led me to self-censor in two ways: 1) as a precaution given the international travel that I had planned; and 2) the absurdity of current events seemed to be self-evident, and so absurd and self-evident that it had a muting effect on me. All I could do was watch and despair.
On this second point, I found myself feeling dispirited, disillusioned, overwhelmed, by a why-even-bother type of feeling that is always possible to argue against, but not always convincingly. At least I felt such a sense of futility; nihilism. I succumbed more often than not to the question of why bother, not entirely by not writing—though that certainly occurred—but by not publishing. My last piece of last year, for example—entitled, Civility—was started sometime in October, maybe even earlier, since the impetus for it was Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but it wasn’t published until December. The chief observation in that writing was that our civilized society is told that we will battle in the arena of ideas because physical altercation is for brutes. We don’t topple political leaders we disagree with because we’ll instead vote them out of office. This apparent quality of moral society seemed to me to clash with the point that the media was driving in the wake of Kirk’s murder: ideas are not worth dying or killing for. If that were true, Kirk died for nothing and everyone is wasting their time debating or sparring over their divergent views. So how are we supposed to vote, then, in an informed matter if ideas are things to share but just as quickly forget? Never mind Trump displaying his hatred for civility on a daily basis.
But let’s not get sidetracked. The Year 2025 presented another opportunity to add to my collection of read books and allowed me to get more comfortable revisiting books I had previously read that I wanted to understand better the second time around.
The (still ongoing) genocide in Gaza naturally led me to pick up Rashid Khalidi’s, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, because I felt that I needed some history of my own to get a better sense of what was going on in Gaza, or why Israel was doing what it’s been doing. It’s interesting to reflect on this book today, in the aftermath of the United States’ bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro and his wife, because if it’s true that the United States’ actions mark the end of the rules-based system ushered in as a response to World Wars 1 and 2, as Youtube’s Heather Cox Richardson argues, then Israel should feel that it is in more danger, not less, given that the state of Israel owes its recognition and legal existence, to the Allies’ victory in WWII and the rules of sovereignty and self-determination that Western powers supposedly champion. This rules-based system encouraged multilateralism and collective defense as responses to the actions of rogue or non-compliant states. Israel directly benefitted from that system, even as it flirted with actions outside the bounds of that system, likely in direct emulation of The United States, as Mr. Khalidi shows us. As The United States continues to act in a manner that isolates itself from its Western allies, Israel may come to realize that it has put far too many eggs in its United States basket. We may see a test, once again, of just how much The United States can stretch itself around the world if Ukraine continues to be besieged by Russia, and Taiwan has to defend itself from China, and our European allies decide, as a bloc, that they’ll assist as necessary but otherwise decide to sit some conflicts out. The Palestinians, meanwhile, may once again come face to face with the adage that Might Makes Right, as they have so often over the more than hundred years past.
The following three books were all completed while I was in Shanghai, China. My fiancé Adam and I spent two weeks in the city while visiting his brother’s family. The trip provided many a chance to read. Lolita was a re-read that seemed appropriate to pick up again as calls for the release of The Epstein Files raged on. I thought that re-reading the book would provide relevant insights into pedophiles, in general, and Trump, in particular—you know, because of the allegations. Trump is no Humbert Humbert, or better yet Humbert Humbert is no Trump. They do share the quality of being unreliable narrators and whose worlds we fully inhabit by virtue of being completely beholden to their recounting of events. Until Humbert’s story can be cross-referenced with those of independent sources, we have no choice but to accept his re-telling couched as confession, just as we have to accept Trump’s warped narration of the strength of the economy or his ability to resolve conflicts. Their respective delusion becomes our reality.
One way to break that delusion, at least with respect to Trump, is to read Franz Fanon’s, The Wretched of the Earth. I have a soft spot in my heart for anti-colonialist literature because it is importantly subversive. But of course, to call it subversive would be to suggest that it is purposefully counter to “the norm,” when the point of this genre is to unmask “the norm,” show its horror, and decentralize it as “normal.” Fanon breaks down the power dynamics between master and its subjugated masses. I had a peculiar feeling when reading about the methods that the State employs to villainize the people it sees as dangerous to its grip on control—by labeling them terrorists, brutes, agitators—because it sounded like what Trump’s administration does. As a method to frustrate goodwill negotiation, the masters accuse the opposition of failing to talk, all the while seeming to observe that the only thing the opposition will understand is violence. Perhaps it’s partly for this reason why Fanon, if he doesn’t outright endorse the use of violence to free oneself from one’s oppressors, he at the very least doesn’t discount its use. No sane man ever should.
Last for 2025 was Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s, The World Goes On. This book is composed of a series of short stories, all joined together by one stylistic decision: to write an entire story out of one sentence. Now, there is at least one short story that has multiple sentences throughout its three parts, but for the most part, you start with a capital letter and you won’t see the period for another hour of reading, or so. This sounds like a nightmare to read—I had that concern before my purchase. But I bought it anyway because the titles of the short stories drew me in. “The World Goes On,” “A Drop of Water,” “Journey in a Place Without Blessings,” “I Don’t Need Anything from here”—how could a philosophical sad boy like me not take an interest? And thank goodness I did. Considering this was the only Fiction book I had read this year that I hadn’t read in some year prior, this book takes the Best Fiction of 2025, award. It is perhaps blasphemous to compare a classic to a relatively new release, but Mr. Krasznahorkai did just win the Nobel Prize in Literature so this could well be a future classic. I’ll have to remember to put his Satantango on my list.
That does it for the review. I note that we are more than three weeks into the new year and every day I delayed finishing this brought a steady cavalcade of new outrages to comment against. So now it’s time we return to doing exactly that.
