134. First Impression: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

I haven't actually finished this book.  Not even close.  But it's cracked on the shelf, and pretty high on the list of things to do with my free time (whenever I get some of that).  I'm surprised it took me so long to find it.  The first page was enough to get it "classic" status in my library.

The narrator starts out right away with something provocative but easy to digest.  I don't have to try to imagine the strange world he finds himself in or how he got there.  He's just telling me what he sees, and I'm seeing it.  And then he tells me what he thinks of what he sees, and I want to know more of it.  I want to know why he's in this place and what he plans to do with life while he's there.  I want to keep reading.

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       People come here, then, to live?  I should rather have thought that they came here to die.  I have been out, and I saw hospitals.  I saw a poor fellow stagger and fall.  People gathered round him: so I was spared the rest.  I saw a pregnant woman.  She dragged herself heavily along a high, warm wall, now and again groping for it as if to assure herself it was still there.  Yes, it was still there; and behind it--?  I looked for it on my map of the city: Maison d'Accouchment.  Right. They will deliver her; they can do that.  Further on, in the rue Saint-Jacques, an immense building with a cupola.  My map said: Val de Grâce, hôpital militaire.  I really did not need this information, but that does not matter.  On every side an odour began to rise from the street.  It was, so far as one could distinguish, a smell of iodoform, the grease of pomme frites, and fear.  Every city has its summer smell.  Then I saw a house curiously blind as if with cataract.  It was not to be found on my map; but above the door there stood an inscription still fairly readable: Asile de nuit.  Beside...