report on myself by gregoire bouillier

i can't rave about this book enough. brilliant, intelligent, entertaining, intense, awkward. it's a full experience. gregoire bouillier's memoir tells the story of the menage a trois between his father, his mother and their lover that brought him into this world. but it's not solely his unique circumstances that make the book, what really brings it to life is his amazing ability to draw meaning from anything and everything. he can extract meaning from the most minor and obscure thing and give it purpose. his playfulness with the meaning of life and the symbols and convergences we can tap into reminds me of saul williams' writing. the following are some of the most devastating quotes from the book:

"And later, I enthusiastically kissed the girls I encountered, imaging that I'd finally awaken them; but they weren't asleep at all, or else in another fairy tale, belonging to them. I didn't understand. I couldn't conceive that those to whom I was attracted weren't in a certain way asleep."

"What I owe to such a smile. It tells me I'm not to blame, nothing is ever lost, beauty is a source of goodness, existence is bliss, the unexpected the only approbation of life, and so much more, about which Madame Fenwick couldn't have any idea, but which refutes the fate that society and my family are already reserving for me."


"I didn't even try to explain to them that my ambition wasn't to exist in this world, but to make a world exist."

"On that day, I understood that life began where images ended. At the place where I'd had to improvise and had been left to myself, without any description coming before my acts to tell them how to proceed. In a bedroom, the adventure became mine for once; it was about invention, starting with the self, whatever your state of mind might be. Finally being present, in body and mind, wholly daring. I've never perceived sexual adventure as either a social practice or a formality required by nature, but as one of the rare possibilities that I had to devote myself with someone to a human experience that goes beyond me (in times of peace.)"