A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Read Online Free PDF

implications or consequences, because being aware of and open about one ’ s motives at least means one is not lying, and no one, except an electorate, likes a liar. We all like full disclosure, particularly if it includes the admission of one ’ s 1) mortality
    and 2) propensity to fail. (Related, but not the same.)
    e) The Putting This All Down as Tool
    for Stopping Time Given the Overlap
    with Fear of Death Aspect
    and e) ’ s self-explanatory corollary,
    e.2) In Addition to Putting This Down as Tool
    for Stopping Time, the Sexual Rendezvous
    with Old Friends or Grade School Crushes
    as Tool for Collapsing of Time
    and Vindication of Self-Worth
    f) The Part Where the Author Either Exploits
    or Exalts His Parents, Depending on Your
    Point of View
    g) The Unmistakable Feeling One Gets, After Something Truly Weird or Extraordinary, or Extraordinarily Weird, or Weirdly Terrible, Happens to Them, That in a Way They Have Been Chosen Aspect This of course happened to the author. After the double deaths, and his guardianship, he felt suddenly watched —he could not help but think, in much the same way someone who had been struck by lightning might, that he had somehow been singled out, and that his life was thereafter charged with purpose, with the gravest importance, that he could not be wasting time, that he must act in accordance with his destiny, that it was so plainly obvious that.. .that.. .he had been chosen...to lead!
    h) The Aspect Having to Do with (Perhaps) Inherited Fatalism This part concerns the unshakable feeling one gets, one thinks, after the unthinkable and unexplainable happens—the feeling that, if this person can die, and that person can die, and this can happen and that can happen. . .well, then, what exactly is preventing everything from happening to this person, he around whom everything else happened? If people are dying, why won ’ t he? If people are shooting people from cars, if people are tossing rocks down from overpasses, surely he will be the next victim. If people are contracting AIDS, odds are he will, too. Same with fires in homes, car accidents, plane crashes, random knifings, stray gunfire, aneurysms, spider bites, snipers, piranhas, zoo animals. It ’ s the confluence of the self-centeredness discussed in G), and a black sort of outlook one is handed when all rules of impossibility and propriety are thrown out. Thus, one starts to feeling that death is literally around each and every corner—and more specifically, in every elevator; even more literally, that, each and every time an elevator door opens, there will be standing, in a trenchcoat, a man, with a gun, who will fire one bullet, straight into him, killing him instantly, and deservedly, both in keeping with his role as the object of so much wrath in general, and for his innumerable sins, both Catholic and karmic. Just as some police—particularly those they dramatize on television—might be familiar with death, and might expect it at any instant—not necessarily their own, but death generally—so does the author, possessing a naturally paranoid disposition, compounded by environmental factors that make it seem not only possible but probable that whatever there might be out there that snuffs out life is probably sniffing around for him, that his number is perennially, eternally, up, that his draft number is low, that his bingo card is hot, that he has a bull ’ s-eye on his chest and target on his back. It ’ s fun. You ’ ll see.
    And finally:
    i) The Memoir as Act of Self-destruction Aspect It can and should be the shedding of a skin, which is something one should do, as necessary and invigorating as the occasional facial, or colonic. Revelation is everything, not for its own sake, because most self-revelation is just garbage— oop! —yes, but we have to purge the garbage, toss it out, throw it into a bunker and burn it, because it is fuel. It ’ s fossil fuel. And what do we do with fossil fuel? Why, we dump it into a