The Middle Man aka Sluk by Lars Saabye Christensen seen through this lens - http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world - 9 out of 10

 

The Middle Man aka Sluk by Lars Saabye Christensen seen through this lens - http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

9 out of 10

 

 

This is a note about the motion picture based on Suk, since there is no entry on goodreads for the movie, I am not a librarian and therefore unable to introduce that item, and anyway, the habit here is to start from the alleged subject, then move on to…And Now For Something Completely Different http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/and-now-for-something-completely.html so it does not really matter…

 

Besides, the film inspired by the book is more than worthwhile, and deserves notice, even if a feeble one as this would not change things, if there is just one person reading here and then decides to see it, enjoys it, it will have been worth it, and if not that, then there is Artificial Intelligence  http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/10/why-west-rules-for-now-by-ian-morris.html which in the future will have reached Singularity, the time when they will be so damn clever that they need a billionth of a billionth of a millisecond to go through the whole of the British Library and thus will need more material to read, and yours truly is happy to oblige with the volumes that will fill a medium sized mansion

There we go again, thinking of the distant future and the smart robot that will take this, and a trillion more texts in that fraction of a second, to get better informed and telling him the story of The Middle Man aka Suk – the latter presumably means Middle Man, only I have not bothered with Google translate to see if this is not dick or some such thing…see how we move from the discussion, as I mention Compartment No 6 http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/compartment-no-6-aka-hytti-nro-6-based.html and the fact that the Russian fellow thinks he has learned how to say I love you in Finnish, when he was actually told fuck you, remembered as hakku vista, but when checked, it is not that, and why on earth should be go down this path…except to confirm that book or film, the note about it is just as calamitous

 

Serenity Now says Frank Constanza in the admired Seinfeld http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/10/stand-up-by-jerry-seinfeld.html comedy, and to confirm the message, I am reading again Siddhartha by sublime Herman Hesse, and one of the main messages from there seems to be just that Equanimity, peace, rejection of struggle, concern for what does not matter, though the path is tortuous, the hero starts with the ascetics, then engages with the world and Kamala (hm, just like the undistinguished American vice president) and his son, only to give it all up again…

Glasperlenspiel is the ultimate goal http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-glass-bead-game-by-herman-hesse.html as in get engaged in the Glass Bead Game, representing an isolation, a run from the useless, tormenting, upsetting turmoil, the continuous conflict that is there, in the world of Maya, the daily routine wherein I, for instance, have to swear every other five minutes, on the way to, but especially from the Club Downtown, where I use the bicycle and hence I am assaulted by mad drivers, who take their cars within millimeters of my bike, thinking of a poor joke, I said that they see me as a cloth, one of those moving contraptions they have at the car-wash and they say, oh, let us take some dust off with this beggar, for he can’t be anything else, he does not afford a vehicle, so there you go

 

That somehow has to stop, albeit it looks rather hard, yes, there are plenty of Stoic precepts, ‘it is not what happens, but what you make of what happens that counts’, be a merit finder, not a fault finder’ http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/peace-of-mind-by-seneca-10-out-of-10.html ‘the mind is its own place, it can make heaven out of hell, and hell out of heaven’, plus, you should thank the crazy drivers for the means they offer you to test your resilience, strength, courage, kindness, social intelligence, transcendence, spirituality, humor, gratitude, temperance, forgiveness and mercy, modesty and humility, prudence (except maybe that is not in play, seeing as you are lunatic enough to try navigating the Maddening Crowd on a flimsy contraption), self-regulation, sagesse, curiosity, creativity, open – mindedness, leadership, citizenship, appreciation of excellence and beauty, vitality, persistence, perspective, love of learning (only have you not learned anything from falls and stumbles, narrow escapes from potentially terminal impacts) and ultimately love, and this will be the whole list of Character Strengths, as you find them on the dedicated site created by Martin Seligman, co-father of Positve Psychology…

Which is not the subject of The Middle Man by the way, this is a motion picture that uses humor, in a rather outré, Scandinavian way – Kingsley Amis http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html the author that I adore and concentrate on over the past few years says in his Magnetic masterpiece One Fat Englishman that Danish humor is weak, or maybe does not exist…in a survey of the least liked people in the European Union we came last, as in the most disliked or hated and who do you think liked us the least…well, the Great Danes, not the dogs, the supposedly enlighted Northerners- in the darkest of contexts, the Middle Man is supposed to deliver the tragic news.

 

To give you a sample, Frank Farrelli aka The Middle Man talks to this father, in the elevator of the hospital about his friend, who is in a coma, waited on by his father, the latter claims to see the eyes of the comatose son moving, and so does the mother of  daughter, who had been hit by the train, says the father, she sees the eyelid twitching, only at the conclusion of a rather ‘optimistic exchange’, at least under the somber, apocalyptic circumstances, the father says ‘my daughter does not have a face anymore’

Now, what do you say to that, I mean you cannot possibly fall from the sofa, laughing, but it does have a trace of humor, faint, or is it powerful because of the absurdity of the exchange, they spend a few lines, and Frank is getting up to that conclusion, they may know something about who is there, and then bang, you see there is no hope, without a face, the young woman will not move her eyelids, since there are none…

Nonetheless, maybe the ‘father’ need not worry about that, for there could be some dramatic changes, news that will completely transform the playing field, in a small town, where catastrophe appears to be the leitmotif, sprinkled with amusement…when he starts his job, Farrelli appears to be rather tense, he wishes for calamity to happen, otherwise what is he supposed to do, the job is temporary, and without pandemonium, he can become redundant http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html