always i have had a morbid fascination with long stories that are portraits or post-mortems of relationships gone (grandly) awry, where those living in the aftermath are like primo levi's survivor or t.s. eliot's hollow men - especially if there are a lot of unhappy women in them - which must be why i keep reading things like jude and tender is the night and when she was good - and then get myself into a state, disturbed and terrified because i know that if i were not careful one day i will live these stories. nowadays i don't and can't read them anymore, for i am living them. i never imagined there would come a point where i would be this dispirited, this incapable of passion, so heavy-souled. and what could have been the story of a young woman ready to give and hazard all, ready to render passion for passion, isn't.