Rob Doyle - Threshold BOOK REVIEW (and rambling)
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
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The saddest I've ever been was while traveling.
It sucks to go somewhere beautiful and have it ruined because you just can't stand yourself.
Great ramble.
Feeling isolated in a foreign country is in some ways comforting, because at least you have an excuse for why you can’t connect with other people (culture barrier, language barrier, etc). But its soul crushing to feel isolated when you’re at home.
Yeah, brother. ❤
9:30 Reading Pessoa does that for me. To such an extent that I’ve never felt a deeper connection to any human being than I feel like I share with an obscure Portuguese author who died damn near a century ago.
It’s a weird feeling, but it’s so strong that, even though I don’t believe in reincarnation or any similar such notions…I still somehow feel that I had written The Book of Disquiet. Every sentence detailed either a thought that I had expressed in a similar fashion, a thought that I remembered having had almost stumbled upon in my ponderings, or captured a feeling that I had had but I didn’t know how to describe.
It profoundly moved me in ways I previously hadn’t thought possible. It was the first time I felt truly understood by the universe and not alone in it.
Cheers and lots of love y’alls.
I had a similar experience with Pessoa. I kept thinking throughout the entire Book of Disquiet that he's describing me or I could have written this about myself...
I remember when I was first introduced to Fernando Pessoa in school (Portugal). The teacher was breaking down some of his poems and I saw myself in them so deeply, that I thought I was going mad. I remember turning around to look at my classmates behind me (I sat in the second row in Portuguese class, loved it), and everyone was either spaced out, bored or taking notes to get a good grade. I was panicking, as the words that came out of the teachers mouth stripped me down to my core, although this was all about Pessoa, not me.
I'm glad to see others have felt this way about his writing. His heteronyms never hit quite the same way.
@@mimipipi120 He speaks with a rare clarity.
Beautiful video Cliff! I really think you have a book in you that should be written. You have 1 reader at least.
I see that 'anatomy of melancholy' in the backround. That would be a wild book to read and review
Isn't that The Tunnel logo in your prof pic?
The best book title of all time, according to Cioran.
I hate it that the people the internet needs more of are precisely those that want to get away from it. This is your best review in my opinion, though I reckon it's more than that.
13:26 "I'm ready to destroy the internet." The thing I have been thinking for years already. If I was presented with one wish (like in a fairy tale) that I could have become true, I would destroy the internet for all eternity.
As tempting as it is to agree, the result of that (like in a fairy tale) would probably be magnitudes worse than what we have now
This may be my favourite "review" so far to date. Love the Berlin/drug stories.
Re: age: the best age to be, in my opinion, is 36-38; not too young, not too old. This was when I felt at my peak. So at 34, you're a few years off. Make the most of 'em!
Happy Birthday…mine was the 6th. I turned 75. You’re just a kid. I set low expectations for myself and surpassed them all. Have a great life and don’t read depressing books. Read some Jimmy Buffett 😁✌️
Ha - Thank you very much Bill.
I really enjoyed your own stories and troubles, referring to similar thoughts in the book.
You really are a person I could listen to for hours and hours, talking about absurdity of life.
There are youngish male authors out there writing, but we aren't being read. It's like Bruce Wagner said, "I'm writing to be read posthumously because my books don't sell."
This is the best review you’ve ever done.
Cliff, you should read “Rakes of the Old Court” written by Mateiu Caragiale, it’s considered the best Romanian book of the 20th century, translated by Sean Cotter, who translated Cartarescu’s books.
Here’s the description of the book:
Widely regarded as the greatest Romanian novel of the twentieth century, Mateiu Caragiale’s Rakes of the Old Court (Craii de Curtea-Veche) follows four characters through the bars and brothels of Bucharest. Guided by an amoral opportunist, the shadowy narrator and his two affluent friends drink and gamble their way through a city built on the ruins of crumbled castles and bygone empires. The novel’s shimmering, spectacular prose describes gripping vignettes of love, ambition, and decay.
Happy birthday, Cliff! I'm 34 too, turning 35 next month, and I can relate so much to the feelings you described.
Just want to say thank you for the amazing reviews and for sharing moments of your personal life with us. I'm currently reading As I Lay Dying because of your influence, and absolutely loving it. Hope you keep the reviews, though I can totally understand the feeling of getting away from internet and never getting back.
Thank you very much for all, I'll definitely keep doing reviews, glad you're enjoying Faulkner.
I loved this whole review... it felt honest and very humane. And I relate to most of the topics you discussed though I'm 26, but I live in Iran and nothing I wanted has happened, and I know it never will. Sadegh Hedayat in me wants to whine and drown myself and my generation in pity, but not gonna do that. All in all it was a great one, dear cliff, thank you.
This is probably my favorite review of yours. Definitely rivals the stand review.
Cliff rambling is my kind of rambling.
Also, much prefer this bookshelf background. Nice job sir.
Cliff, this review was wonderful. Thanks for being so open and personal with this one. Love when a book has a profound effect like this one did for you. It's been a while for me but I can't wait for it to happen again.
DMT and the Void
I just wanted to relate my anecdote of what I felt and saw on DMT because it was so creepily similar to Cliff’s experience (to a fucking “T”) that I felt slightly disturbed to a certain degree. Hearing Cliff mention the “hand spiraling down into itself” part was especially disturbing. Just now, in my attempt to explain how two people could have such a similarly specific experience that seems to have no inherent meaning behind it’s occurrence, I came up swinging reading all zeros on the dial aboard my train-of-thought’s eye.
It totally beggars my fucking mind actually. There’s no legitimate explanation that I can conjure up and that could conceivably exist that I would feel satisfied upon having learned of its apparently real existence for this phenomenon.
I’ve written about my experience before but I had never bothered trying to relate the part about the hand spiraling because it seems so oddly personal and kind of devoid of meaning even to me. Seemed unrelatable and unworthy of sharing.
But…here is my version of the hand part:
The first seconds it was kicking in it seemed like a normal hallucinogenic experience. Only for maybe three seconds at the most though before the world in my noggin got twisted up into a pressure cooker insanity. Instead of my internal audio perception slowing down and stretching, all of the noise I was being subjected to in my environment started to speed up at an acceleratingly quick pace until it became one single-pitched tone-what I like to call the Great Vibrating/Oscillating Hum. During this sound wave frequency shortening bit (which seemed to have lasted for perhaps a second after it was done happening but felt like it was lasting for an eternity of snapshots while it was happening), my visual sensory input slowed down to a freeze frame. In that picture’s frame my hand was opened up out in front of me with my fingers spread wide (positioned in a way as though I was checking out my fingernails after a manicure or some shit). Black ball ended black strings sprouted out of the tips of my digits and those strings extended up all the way to the top of what I could see in my peripheral vision. And that sort of “morphed” the snapshot view of the world I had before me into like a stained glass looking picture in my mind.
The black strings were the parts of the stained glass that separate the different colored panes of glass from one another.
The strings that were growing out of my fingers, the balled ends of them at top of my peripheral vision were anchored down and stayed stationary while my hand-my left hand-started to spin clockwise. It made this really beautiful inwards spiral design as my hand started to twist down upon self at an always exponentially accelerating pace…And that was the last thing I saw before “I” was teleported to the void….
I should mention that I went intravenous for my first on so far only DMT experience. That’s probably relevant. I tried to go into it with little preconceived notions of what to expect, my mind as open as possible to all possibilities.
Here’s the part about the Void:
I do not know if I had my eyes open or not during the trip. I was outside the normal space and time I had been accustomed to my entire life. I went in with the mindset of trying to record what I saw and felt, and, at first, I was able to try to do that at least. But, every time I thought I had my mind wrapped around a little bit of what was going on and I was able to then explain it to myself, all the words that I had just conjured up disappeared. All of my sensory input failed me as I stood/sat/idunno agape in wide wonder at the great oscillating hum of black/colorless nothingness that ungirds everything. Fully buttfucking awed, in the original sense of the word “awed.
It was the first time I had something shown to me which I couldn't describe by defining its relationship to myself.
It impressed upon me just how thin of a Razor's Edge all of our reality exists upon. A belief that I already had previously firmly held. It was enlightening-but, enlightening to knowledge that I had been prescribed to for years. I must personally report that I neither saw nor sensed any entities of any kind in the Void, animate or inanimate. Just the vast foreverness of the Great Lightless Oscillating Hum.
Peace and Love y'alls
Great video. You are always honest in spite of your mistakes or flaws. I appreciate that. And your rants have gotten very enlightening and sharper over the years. Happy Birthday CLS
Thank you very much.
I see that Michael Gira collected works on the shelf, big respect
Just finishing Mists of Avalon. (King Arthur w/ women as the main protagonists) And it concludes with this exact topic of chasing happiness.
“And I know that the truth is there, there just beyond my grasp, if I can only follow it and find it there and tear away that veil which shrouds it”
“She new she could prevail on him in all else, but who can come between a man and his soul?”
SPOILER FOLLOWING!
It’s the search for the holy grail! It scatters his knights who are magically manipulated and compelled to find it. Lancelot even abandons his greatest loves Arthur and Gwen to search for it. Lancelot and Arthur never get to talk directly about their secret love.
I turned 40 last year and I'm realizing now that the best I could have of life is in the past. I'm past the zenith, crashing down fast on earth. It sucks. Realizing that you become what you hated the most (a boring asshole) sucks
Happy Birthday! I am 32, half the age my father died at... I bet you have some wonderful writing in you, some probably already out of you... I've been writing in the dark for 6 years lol, one day, one day...
Exactly the same feeling/realisation of late, that I'm not that special (there is nothing I will ever think/do that someone hasn't, does, will). And probably worse, to find others that do what my partner of seven years does, which I love them for. I mean, I guess I just have to retreat arbitrarily to my connection to that one person, them, as being with me.
The art reflects the internet reflects the human...
I've had some experiences, but wow!
Seems like a great book, I will give it a spin, thank you :)
Thank you very much
25:50 "Will you realize the best moments of your life when they are happening?" Well, you may realize them as very good moments, but many of the comparing good moments will happen later, so you can only make best of lists in hindsight. I wonder if listing things in life is more of a guy thing? I just read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity recently and it has a lot of lists: the records you would take to a desert island etc. The main character who makes lists of things is called Rob and he is 35-36 years old.😄
been watching you for years, didnt realise you were also an 89 baby, love that, this book sounds fkn great, im in. thanks
Happy birthday!
Thanks a bunch!
1. If you're a creative, the worst thing that can happen to you is to live up to your own standards. 2. I always imagined you wanting to be an older man than your age. Congratulations, you are one flick of the calendar closer to that goal. 3. I think you do notice when you start going downhill.
Gahhh mannn… I’m 34 now myself and long retired from the techno/house music scene. I came up through it in Brooklyn and nyc and it was an incredible time of my life.. I did so much in it , I was a DJ, I built sound systems, I went to every underground techno spot in the city, I knew all the promoters for those parties, I traveled around to many places and venues but the one regret I have was that I never made it to berghain. Listening to your recollection of your time there makes me bitterly nostalgic in the best way haha. I am jealous my friend.
Great video today Clifford, I really enjoyed this one.
“Am ready to destroy the internet” said he, on the internet 😊 Sounds like an interesting book.
maybe your best video yet, and no coincidence it is regarding such a great book
Do you have any book recommendations for a 21 year old which foucus on how to best put this "youthful vitality" to use? As long as I can remember ive always felt that I was too passive and waited for things to happen to me, which of course they didnt most of the time.
Its only until recently(I think around Covid) that I realized how little youth is granted to us, yet I already wasted large amounts of it.
At 31 I feel like there's youth in me yet, so start now and do what you want. Figure out what you love, figure out how you'd like to live your life, develop hobbies, find your cause/es. I've wasted the last six years saying "what if?" And being very slow to do anything about it, because being comfortably stuck somewhere doesn't require courage. "Big Magic", by Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creativity, and it gives me hope and energy. It's a good audiobook.
It makes sense that introducing the passion of gh to one persom isnt so much. But to me its everything.
Watching these gives me a very similar feeling to watching Bob Ross ... with a twist of existential dread haha
Better Than Food TV series when?
Fuck, this rambling hit too close to home. Specially the Houellebecq quote about the beautiful hotel rooms.
Oh shit...Cliff owns The Tunnel
Loved this rambling Cliff..felt like you were telling a very personal story just to me..not trying to be creepy or anything. Just refreshing from the usual fare
I just started this book and loving it. Most of the books I read are your recs. Thanks for that and keep up the great reviews.
Yeah dude I love how autobiographical this is!!! More vids like this
This was intense
Cliff, I share your love for techno. I was wondering if you had a Spotify playlist I could listen to?
Happy birthday man
Thanks very much!
Happy Birthday, Clifford. Wish you a life full of great books.
Thanks very much, wishing you the same.
I liked story time with Cliff and want to hear more about your life.
Did it occur to you that there's a reason it sat on your shelf for so long. That you were meant to read it now, at this age?
@Better Than Food you should read "Fabian" from Erich Kästner!
I’ve never ever been this early!😂 I’m honored to be here, as always. ❤
Im 44 Cliff.. Most guys at 30 or 34 nowadays are not like you. Be proud of yourself! . Lots of maturity/insight in you. YOU could write a novel, easily. I don't know if you thought about it.
same age. sadly, old enough to have a memorable experience knowing that was it right around the moment.
Excellent! Gotta get this book!
God, this video is amazing
Brilliant book. Appropriately funny and touching review
Happy Birthday dude!
Hey thanks a bunch man
My god! That was so honest & raw! So rare these days. Thank you.
18:30 So, "anything goes" equals freedom?
This review and the long parentheses about your life was fucking amazing. I read this book last year and liked it a lot but this review made me appreciate it more. So I had to go back into Goodreads and give it another star.
Have you listened to All Them Witches? You’d dig them. Great work here as always, Cliff
Ammmen on the loneliness of travel
Happy Birthday 🎉 Your reviews are very unique. I reckon if you write a book or your own story one day, it would be absolutely brilliant. Greetings from England
Thank you very much for all, greetings from Florida.
Hey, you got book shelves. 😊
The crucial thing I got out of this is 'Never go to Berlin' :D and especially to that club you described. Not for me man :D
Lol I love Black Metal and get what you mean 🤣 I'll have to look into this book sounds interesting.
24:15 the indifference of the universe.
An amazing read! Thanks for your suggestion!
Oh man, just wait until you see what it feels like to turn 60.
"I can't read fast enough to keep up with the full possibility of myself." - Cliff Sargent... Hey you should be a writer or something
trust me, you know it...
David Szalay seems like it could be a somewhat similar author to Doyle
Great review!
I like the rambling
Happy belated birthday old son. You’re not over the hill but you can see the top from there 👍
It takes some strength as a Berlin resident to hear "Berghain" thrown out there and not immediately stop watching the video 🤡
Great smile....
Hey we might be related. Not many Sargent’s in the world
Ramble on young man
i was born as a geezer ( there are some perks to it...
Eeyyy! Same birthdate.
You talk about the lack of good novels in your video with leaf by leaf. well guess what i got a Hidden gem for you, you just have to take my word on it! The Shell: Memoir Of a Hidden Observer by Mostafa Khalifa. I know you will love it. Its my all time favourite! READ IT READ IT!!🎉
I’m 33 but a female writer. I think I write like a man though.
Gender is a social construct
@@douloureux. I think you’re confused.
@@PatchyTheFox What does "like a man" mean then?