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From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Life as a Trap
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2025 16:45:07 -0000 (UTC)
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STRANGE LIFE OF IVAN OSOKIN review excerpt entitled "Life as a Trap"
from TIME magazine, 1947:

    ... "But this is simply turning round on a wheel!"
    says Osokin. "It is a trap!"

    The old man smiles.

    "My dear friend," he says, "this trap is called
    life. ... You must realize that you yourself can
    change nothing and that you must seek help. ...
    And to live with this realization means to
    sacrifice something big for it. ... A man can be
    given only what he can use; and he can use only
    that for which he has sacrificed something. ...
    This is the law of human nature."

    The view of life repeating itself on an endless
    "wheel" is a fundamental of Hindu belief.
    Westerners are apt to find it a hypothesis out
    of all proportion to the evidence: the occasional
    human sensation that "I have been here before."
    A more common and much stronger sensation is that
    of free will, which the "wheel" denies. In Osokin's
    tale, the magician's demands resemble the Christian
    requisites for salvation. ...

    (excerpt)

    <https://time.com/archive/6823911/books-life-as-a-trap/>

STRANGE LIFE was published in Russia some time around 1915. TIME's
review appeared shortly after the novel's translation to English in
1947. STRANGE LIFE lends itself to waxing philosophic about such
esoteric notions as: Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence and George
Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way."

A tale of two timeless themes:

DEVIL IN CRYSTAL by Marlow (1944) carries its protagonist along on a
historic event stream. It's history writ large.

STRANGE LIFE intimates on its protagonist's emotional feelings for
females frequenting his life: from his mother to his friends. In the
end, it's a cautionary tale about frittering your life away on
daydreams. Both the story and its message are recommended by me.

# # #

My next audiobook is MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS by Jung.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.