When we ask about the ends of criticism, we’re also asking how criticism ends. I don’t think it does, any more than love. Both things—criticism, love—are better off, and better done, if we let them admit their perversions, their failures and travesties and pratfalls. They are, both things, an unending negotiation of the limits of what is bearable. They are, at their best, avenues of grace within fucked-up time, languages of perpetual inquiry and curiosity, poses of submission and dominance and everything in between, a practice of turn-taking in a world that runs on theft and greed. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that there is always room to try again. And maybe there is.
Anahid Nersessian, Originally published in Mousse 86
Maybe it’s chance. Maybe it’s fate. But the two aren’t necessarily contradictory. Chance is merely a fate unknown to us, a fate written in invisible ink.
[…]And that’s exactly what you should always follow: life and its unpredictable paths. They all lead to the same place, the same destination for all of us, but to get there, they take routes that can be beautiful or terrible, paved with flowers or bones, night roads we often travel alone, but where we have the chance to put our souls to the test.
The Most Secret Memory of Men: A Novel
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
