Irimiás returns, remarkably (with another dramatic entry). "Button your coats, on with your hoods and hats, hold on tight, and feel free to turn your back on the great hope of your future because if you don't you'll get the full force of this filthy rain in your faces..." Apt. #satantangotogether

"The low hum continued, no nearer, no further away..." Futaki and now Sandor can hear it. "...above the marshy lifeless ground, a white transparent veil was billowing in a particularly dignified fashion." Heavenly Vision? Hallucination? IV (chapters descending) #SatantangoTogether

"...the whole 'manor'...had a silent, desperate feel to it, because though the higher reaches of the building were still uncovered, it was clear that within a few years it would surrender to the ruthless advance of the vegetation." Like the spiders. #SatantangoTogether

Mrs. Halics' brightly colored butterflies are another odd burst of color in this gray world, in the wake of Irimiás' departing red tie and yellow shoes. Hallucination? Futaki alone seems sane in this departure, though he was the first to commit everything to Irimiás. #satantangotogether

When I finished the chapt on Saturday, I felt I couldn't keep reading if Irimiás just runs off with all these people's money. Hoping to be surprised, though I can't imagine this is going to end well, regardless. #satantangotogether

They dance the Satantango at the end of Part I! Halics, that flat tire of a man, cuts quite a figure "in his unique moment of glory with his demonic caperings around the puffing and whooping figure of Mrs. Kráner." What an image. Good for him. #satantangotogether

"Fortunately...as long as he stayed open and people shifted from place to place, the spiders couldn't 'go around wrecking the place': even they weren't capable of 'covering anything that moved in cobwebs...'" So much subtext: spiders moving in at first sign of stillness (stasis). #satantangotogether

"Dizzy, he leant against the wall of the bar...and just stood, stupid and drained under the pitiless power of the rain seeing but not understanding the unstable world around him until...he suddenly noticed he was sober again." Futaki--yet emblematic of everyone in this book. #satantangotogether

I somehow doubt that the arrival of Irimiás and Petrina is going to "put an end to years of 'wretched misery'..." But it's something to look forward to. Meanwhile, the landlord keeps turning up the heat so that Mrs. Schmidt will take off her clothes. This is quite a crew. #satantangotogether

"She squeezed Micur still closer, looked up at the unchanging sky and quickly stopped. 'I'll make myself useful once I'm there.'" "No need to worry. She knew perfectly well her guardian angels were already on their way." Sad, shocking end to this chapter. #SatantangoTogether

"The joy and pride that swelled within her...sent her imagination into feverish overdrive...the consciousness of her own inexhaustible grandeur...confused her a little at first, presenting her with a completely unknown universe, a universe with her at the center..." #satantangotogether

"There was only one man she knew--Irimiás--who could thrill her so deeply in both bed and life; Irimiás who had more virtue in his little finger than all the men in the world put together..." The Irimiás of ch 2? Hmm... 🤣 A story is emerging, but it only gets stranger. #Satantangotogether

"What was she to do in the 'real life' about to break in on her? She was still just about able to use a knife and fork for eating..." Wow, primitive life they must be leading on this estate. #SatantangoTogether

"Because in Halics's eyes Mrs. Schmidt was the embodiment of summer, a never-to-be-season unattainable to one acquainted only with 'the ruins of autumn, a winter without desire' and a hyperactive but frustrating spring." Halics: a "flat tire" of a man. #Satantangotogether

Irimiás now appears as a fearsome figure to the landlord, whose fortune he helped make by advising him to grow onions (? Ha!), and a dashing Casanova to Mrs. Schmidt. Resurrected, too, after the Horgos boy reported he was hit by a car. Charismatic vagabond? Or...more sinister? #Satantangotogether

One of Doctor's favorite photos: "enormous, ragged procession winding over a desertlike terrain leaving behind them the ruins of an embattled town billowing smoke and flames, while ahead, waiting for them, there was only a large, spreading dark area like an admonitory blot." #SatantangoTogether

"However apparently insignificant the event...he couldn't afford to take his eyes off it and must note it all down, since only by doing so could he hope not to vanish one day and fall a silent captive to the infernal arrangement whereby the world decomposes..." 1/2 #SatantangoTogether

This novel keeps suggesting Irish plays. Petrina and Irimiás make me think of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. #SatantangoTogether

Irimiás is a flashy dresser in his "dazzlingly loud red tie" and "blinding bright yellow shoes." The rest of this world seems to be in black and white. And it might just rain throughout. #SatantangoTogether

At the end of ch 1, I'm not sure what's going on, but this is some eloquent despair. Complications are clearly going to ensue. Violent? Farcical? Feels a little like a Martin McDonagh play. #SatantangoTogether

"He lied. The kid simply lied. It's not so hard to imagine. In fact it's very easy to imagine..." #SatantangoTogether

"...it was hard to know whether the gently vibrating patches on the wall were merely shadows or symptoms of the despair underlying their faintly hopeful thoughts." #Satantangotogether

"He sometimes felt an irresistible desire to break off a chunk of nitrous paster in the machine hall...and cram it into his mouth so that he might recognize the taste of the Vigilance! sign among the disturbing riot of normally ordered flavors." Gastronomic ennui #Satantangotogether

I find that last scene on the beach unnerving. The first time I read the books, I was mystified by it. Now the man who (I think) menaces her at the very end seems in keeping with the stories we hear of ex-husbands determined to wield power. #rachelcusktogether

"He understood that he had given some of his freedom away, through a desire to avoid or alleviate his own suffering, and while it didn't seem exactly an unfair exchange, I believed he wouldn't do it again so easily." #rachelcusktogether

"I wonder...if you have ever thought of what it would be like to live in the sun... You wouldn't have to suffer anymore." Just now, in winter's intense grip with no end in sight, I can almost believe this. #rachelcusktogether

Happy to return to Yamamoto at the end. Ludo has given up seeking a father and is now seeking...a partnership? With someone on a similar intellectual/spiritual quest via art and knowledge. #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

"Stories need cruelty in order for them to work" Sophia suggests. I think about this often. It's hard for me to write cruelty. Painful to read too, but affecting--and there is plenty of cruelty in the world. Hmm #rachelcusktogether

I do love the story of the Welsh novelist determined to reach the sea, only to clamber into a military zone, where he is held at gunpoint and then offered tarts and tea. 🤣 #rachelcusktogether

"Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good; Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine." He takes her acceptance for granted. But she seemed pretty eager to enter the convent earlier. Oh well, the Duke has other plans. 🙄 #TheBard_ProblemPlays

"When you play bridge with beginners...you give them some...rules to go by. Then they follow the rule and something goes wrong. But if you'd had their hand you wouldn't have played the thing you told them to play, because you'd have seen all the reasons the rule did not apply." #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

"I don't know what one would look for in an uncontrovertible message from above; the question is what would convince a 17-year old and a gambler and God...naturally did not waste time beaming syllogisms into the mind of a girl who found 10 minutes of Italian a crashing bore." #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

"It was natural...for him to side with his father...and his father had shown little restraint in exploiting that loyalty...until he [the son] was physically immobilized...and...the facts of his life became much clearer. One of those facts was that his father rarely called..." #rachelcusktogether

"He should have lived Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might in the times to come have ta'en revenge, By so receiving a dishonored life With such ransom of shame. Would yet he had lived!" Angelo feels the blood on his hands. Measure for Measure #TheBard_ProblemPlays

Ryan returns, etiolated and hobbling, yet enjoying wild worldly success thanks to a smartwatch and a student who knows everything about 15th Cent Venice. #rachelcusktogether

"Her brother's other friends were unfailingly charming, so that she could not talk to one without instantly afterwards taking out a horse and setting it at a six-foot fence. She had never met a man who could open his mouth without imperiling the life of a horse." #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

"He had not killed to learn those moodless verbs and uninflected nouns, but he had brought a slave into existence for their sake." Ludo, frustrated in his second attempt to find a worthy father figure. #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

Abhorson: A bawd, sir? Fie upon him! He will discredit our mystery. Pompey: ...do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery? Abhor.: Ay, sir, a mystery. Abhorson, the executioner... I confess I don't understand the "proof" he gives Pompey, but he does not take his job lightly. #TheBard_ProblemPlays

"As far as he knew a problem couldn't be solved simply by infinitely restating it, unless you relied on infinity itself to break certain factors down." Or doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? Insanity, we're told (and yet common). #rachelcusktogether

The first husband's hissing hatred adds yet more poison to this frightful story... The bells erupt! and the rain... "I stood there with the water running down my hair and over my face and my clothes, watching the whole world gradually transfer itself into the mirror at my feet." #rachelcusktogether

"'And I can't get over the feeling,' she said, 'that it was all stolen from me.'" The brutal irony of the interviewer's husband's illness (when she was hoping he would leave her) and her bitter jealousy of her sister combine to make this a particularly troubling story. #rachelcusktogether

"Heaven shield my mother played my father fair! For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne'er issued from his blood." A warped slip of wilderness... there's a Shakespearean epithet! #MeasureforMeasure_2026

"I was reading Die Zeit and I came across this lovely line, Es regnete ununterbrochen. It rained uninterruptedly... Es regnete ununterbrochen...I shall think of it whenever it rains." A rainy morning here, reading. #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

Act II, Sc. 4: Angelo and Isabella vie rhetorically until Angelo, vested with the power of the state, simply demands, "Redeem thy brother by yielding up thy body to my will..." As for reporting him, "Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true." !!! #Measureformeasure_2025

The interviewer greets her with striking eloquence about the city's labyrinthine road system: "The giant freeways circled the city without penetrating it...to get anywhere, you had to go everywhere..." It occurs to me that what we have in Cusk is heightened rhetorical reality. #rachelcusktogether

Isabella's exhortation scene is fantastic, with Lucio goading and commenting on her passion and rhetoric throughout. She does warm to her subject. "O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." Yes. #MeasureforMeasure_2025

"'The hero is a man actively engaged in becoming himself--never a very reassuring sight. The villain on the other hand has already become something...He has found what is to his advantage and acts accordingly." Donald Richie on Sugata Sanshiro #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

Sibylla refuses to reveal who Ludo's father is (a mediocre travel writer) until he is able to discern banality in art-"la formule est banale." Ludo, meanwhile, checks out all the travel narratives he can find and enjoys Darwin but works out it can't be him as he died in 1882. #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

"I hated beating him...I only had to do it two or three times in his life. We both knew he couldn't have been what he was without it." This strikes me as...unhinged? He thinks the dog understands the necessity of these (rare) beatings--they make him all the dog he can be? Hmm. #RachelCuskTogether

"She couldn't stand the sound of certain words and would scream and put her hands over her ears if anyone said them." I am fascinated by this. What words? Later he gives some sentences that upset her and I wondered what words in them are the triggers. #RachelCuskTogether