Do you ever fall in love with a book?

I may have read a book for class and I may have fallen in love with it.

The name of the book is Shantytown by César Aira. It is literary and theoretical gold. It is richly descriptive and reveals the world the characters inhabit through their paths throughout it. If each cheese were a different perspective of the world and space generally, this work is a charcuterie board. And it is delicious.

It deconstructs systems of violence in a way that pays its due but also blames the middle class for its delusions. The very same delusions that it willingly acts out in a game of charades prodded by the bourgeoisie news media. But it also breaks down the upholding of these systems through physical control. The places where a school or gym is situated. The elevation of an apartment and a lack of crossing paths with neighbors. The narrowness of streets opening up into a larger square drawing people forwards. Spaces being traveled through by cars as opposed to walking. The harshness of structures guiding paths of travel in planned areas of cities. These are the kinds of ideas it explores.

It not simply explores these ideas but looks at these through the eyes of extremely compellingly-written characters who are so vastly different from each other and manage to feel extremely realistic. Also a bit about perspectivism and drugs versus opening one's mind a little (which reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain). Very very kewl stuff!

It has encouraged me to try to approach every new day, every space with a Maxi-coded attitude. It made me proud to have read Deleuze and Guattari. I was born in the wrong decade, I should have lived in the Kowloon Walled City (I do not mean this seriously, the situations that put people so deep into such poverty are tragic) (but there were some very fascinating elements of the city before its tragic demolition) (RIP wonder of the modern architectural world). I will dérive. I will work out. Things are too beautiful to not experience.