The Book of Disquiet 1982 Literature

Fernando Pessoa

…I have some thoughts on Disquiet. Similarly to Pale Fire and Wittgenstein’s Mistress, I felt like I was being trolled. 500 or so passages, all of which are just an alternate persona (or heteronym) of Fernando Pessoa’s poetic writings that all equate to “Wah Wah I’m so sad” but written more delicately in that European way all philosophical fiction books are written. To call this a novel feels incorrect. I almost felt parts of this were satirical; instead of this being the autobiography it claims to be, it instead is four hundred pages of “Sadness is the happiness of man’s emotional state of misery” or whatever. The poetic metaphors can be really strong and really meaningful but sadly only for the first 200 pages, and after that you become bored with reading it. So while you may feel disquiet at first (well, actually, just mild sadness), by the end you’ll feel completely nothing. So don’t worry if you specifically like reading books that make you feel void of emotion. This book’s backstory and Pessoa himself both feel far more interesting than the actual book itself. This being a posthumously organized collection of writings found in a trunk of his. What this means for the actual book is no editing was done whatsoever and the book suffers from a case of having little to no restraint. Duh. But that still means reading this book- a book where almost nothing happens (I’m not even joking when I say that)- is a chore.