I have a strong masochistic streak when it comes to books. I will sit and suffer through the densest, most self-indulgent prose if there’s even a hint of insight waiting at the end. But this was the book that finally broke me. I made it through a hundred pages before throwing it away.
How can someone be so corny and yet so convinced of their own depth?
Cioran presents himself as someone who loathes life, detests his own birth, and has seen into the abyss. And yet, ironically, he comes across as completely enamored with his own suffering. There’s no humility, no curiosity, no room for the reader: only Cioran, the MOST tortured soul to have ever walked this earth, whispering aphorisms from atop his pedestal of gloom.
This book reads like the diary of a teenager who thinks no one has ever felt misery before, but Cioran isn't a teenager. That makes it worse. I’ve read No Longer Human, The Catcher in the Rye, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — and while I didn’t like those, at least their protagonists had the excuse of youth. Cioran doesn’t.
People love to glaze over his prose. I don’t see it. After 20 pages, the pattern is clear: a few lines of stylized despair, a theatrical sigh, and a declaration that life isn’t worth living. Then repeat. Ramblings of a self-absorbed miserable man. If you’ve read five pages, you’ve read the whole book. There's no wisdom here.