The Time of Indifference

Browsing through the shelves of the school library, I came upon a thin volume of "The Time of Indifference" by Alberto Moravia.

Time of Indifference, what an incredible title. It is even more extraordinary if you know that the man who came up with it was only eighteen at the time of writing his first novel. Yes, he followed it with such titles as "Boredom", "Contempt", "The Conformist" but "The Time of Indifference" holds its ground.

It is often said that fifty or so years ago people matured much faster - this novel is a great illustration to it. It is so full of disillusions, so calmly unkind, so unusually indifferent to its own characters.

Everything what you see there isn't what it is; everyone say one thing and think another. Five characters bound together by genetics, lust, past, resentment, loneliness, and financial woos, exist in perpetual state of loud arguments, pulsating sexual desires and dramatic events but underlying emotion of their existance is indeed indifference. Like a surface of water regains its calm after the stone sank to the bottom; the high emotions in the novel remain just that passing feelings, failing to initiate real change.

This novel is often called the worst of Moravia's work, while in fact it shows how talented and observant he was even at the young age.

Musing

An article in the Reykjavík Grapevine about American expats living in Iceland caught my attention yesterday. The author interviewed some Americans leaving in the country concentrating mainly on what brought them here and how they felt about their second home. It was an ordinary article about lives of foreigners in a foreign land but for some reason one paragraph perplexed me no end, both in its style and substance:

“Iceland: where the busiest corner of the capital stations no beggar. Where no one starts her workday by shoving onto a hot subway car. Where grown men aren’t hawking cheap souvenirs. Where little boys aren’t washing the windshields of cars struck in traffic...”

Perhaps “the busiest corner of the capital stations no beggar” but Ingólfstorg certainly has a few. Considering that there isn’t a subway in Reykjavik it will be difficult to start a workday “by shoving onto a hot subway car,” will it? “Grown men indeed “aren’t hawking cheap souvenirs” – mostly because the concept of cheap souvenirs doesn’t apply to Iceland, they all are on expensive side here. “The little boys aren’t washing the windshields of cars struck in traffic”, true, on the other hand, there are plenty of teenagers working the cashier registers in Kronan, for example, and ... they make the check-out process insufferable.

There was one observation in the article that I haven’t heard before though – one of the interviewees mentioned that he had never heard thunder in Iceland. I have never paid attention to it but, yes, there is plenty of rain but no thunder here.

I thought about one more “never” – I have never seen a cockroach in Iceland.