reading Perfume - Patrick Süskind
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Yes I had to look up how to spell his last name. And I did watch the movie again to better visualise the characters. Paris is foreign to me and so is that era. I am almost halfway through it and the description of the various characters that surround Grenouille are written in such beautiful prose. Baldini's impossibly arrogant attitude about change masks the fear that he has about how he is becoming increasingly irrelevant and yearns to return to the days where he had power.
I guess the point of literature is to open our eyes to the motivations of mankind. Every seemingly evil person has motivations that are unclear. Especially the ones who have suffered unimagined horrors in their past. They learnt to hide their motivations. Their hopes and fears. Their greed.
I think the biggest advantage that I have gained after my lifetime with literature is that I get to live through lives through words. Their mistakes and their triumphs taught me more than any teacher/coach could.
The characters, sometimes born in an entire other era or country, make me realise that the things I have gone through in my life are not unique to me. I am taught that with any trauma, we can either use it to strengthen ourselves or we can dwell in it until we rot away.
There is so much to learn.