On How I Became Stupid

Photo retrieved @  http://www.linternaute.com  

It’s the French novel I’ve just finished reading. Heard about it from a good friend of mine and postponed reading it until fate made it that I did. And I certainly had a grand time doing so. First of all, the book oozes with sarcasm through every paragraph. This isn't necessarily a book review, but it could be. Events are narrated from the perspective of Antoine, a middle class university professor whose mind wouldn’t apparently make a stop from thinking or macerating ideas. Things get so extreme that he loses his peace of mind and every aspect of the daily life becomes a painful remembrance of his overthinking; and in this case, overthinking means seeing too much of the big picture that the world offers which occasionally results in tragic events/or is the result of a “tragic” event, metaphysically speaking. In this view, Antoine refuses any advancement that technology, fashion, and non-organic industries offer, under the guard of tight moral values. His sense of duty to society but of all to his morals is heightened to such extent that he starts to feel enslaved. What to do next? In a clearly innocent intent to cure his “disease”, Antoine decides he needs to become… stupid, an idea that doesn’t appeal much to his friends or any normal person having a sparkle of sense left. He pursues his treatment with unflinching perseverance. He quits his job, cleans up his little studio of any objects reminding him of previous life or simply anything that’s thought-inducing. The empty space is quickly supplied with the latest technology gadgets and anything that a man his age would normally acquire, in order to attain that much desired normality. But in doing so you might he’s creating a monster, which he did compared to his original self, but in fact the character and the book criticize the commonness of conventional that modern times cast upon society. It’s the created need, and all the stereotypes that go well with the worldy ways. 

The metamorphosed character portrays a defaced man, whose appreciation for any kind of morality or beauty vanishes in the blatancy that society dictates.  The creating self, the loving self is slowly effaced to meet the requirements of a mold. Yes, a mold, that’s what most of us become when we allow society to completely engulf us. The centennial dream of individuality, that the western civilization proudly praises would therefore be nothing but a faint ghost of what man once used to be. But even in his self-induced transformation, Antoine doesn’t entirely discard his old self, there are moments when his hidden morals surge and that’s when substantial statement are made through the novel; for example, when he visits the matrimonial agency and the woman helping him asks him for nothing but physical aspects of the ideal woman he has a crushing revelation of the nullity of his endeavor. And this thin thread of substance is what eventually brings him back to his true self, as in a classic novel, despite its tremendous postmodern print.