2025-02-05 from the editor of ~insom
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THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR "A SACRED AND TERRIBLE
AIR" BY ROBERT KURVITZ.
I just finished "A Sacred and Terrible Air" (the older
translation).
There is a lot to like and to not like about it. Some
reviews I've read didn't like that the actual resolution of
the story isn't clear. Perhaps they are right, but for me,
that's the point. The world ends. People die. The
protagonists may have wasted their lives, waiting to live,
only to find that their lives were over and it was for
nothing.
Some things stood out to me:
- The first half really does read like quite a tight
mystery. If Kurvitz wanted to write a "normal" mystery (and
he had an ending in mind) then I think that would have still
made a good book.
- The girls are almost not characters. Not because they
aren't in that many pages (they're not) but because they
really exist in the story as MacGuffins. They are the
objects of desire of the protagonists and others. Their
deaths are the turning point in many people's lives; in some
cases, where hope dies.
- I've seen this described as misogynistic but I think it's
deliberate and important. If it was accidental: sure. But
this is not a novel about the girls, it's a novel about the
boys. I'm pretty sure it fails the Bechdel test.
- The boys do not miss the girls. They miss being ~13 and
feeling the promise of the future. I don't think it's
belaboured, but they chose to obsess while everyone else
moved on.
- Later in the book, when the older three girls actually get
some dialog you find out they're drug abusers; whether they
like the boys or not, they have used them to get a bunch of
amphetamines and then they nearly overdose on the beach.
Does that make me feel different about their disappearance?
When they're knocked off their purity pedestal? I don't
know.
- It's not shoved down your throat, but when faced with the
literal end of the world people still get fatigued from
worrying about it and act like it's no big deal or not
really happening.
- Frankly the girls are sexualized. The boys are teenagers
at the time, I think it's about as tasteful as it can be
handled -- pretending teenage boys and girls are eunuchs is
stupid and nothing much really happens -- but I think with a
full English language release by a major publisher this
would be a real problem. I'm sure books are banned for less.
It was a good book and a little more of a look into the
world of Disco Elysium. It seems possible we won't see any
more of that universe. I am a little sad about it, but I
also wonder just how much story there is left to tell. Yes,
you could map out a lot of lore, but the core of "murder at
the end of the world" has been covered by the book and by
the game. Maybe we just thank that world for the time we
spent with it.
