Kertész is a master of the hideous, thought-provoking inversion, which in his case was provoked, as this book reveals, by the odd acts of unbelievable kindness which assured his survival of the Holocaust: "What is truly irrational and genuinely inexplicable is not evil but, on the contrary, good".
And leading them down the bumpy corridor of Hollywood Boulevard, a soft-hearted Angeleno invariably looks around in despair, willing magic and glamour from the T-shirt stores and fast-food stands, hoping that certain buildings--the El Capitan, the Roosevelt--stand out more than they seem to, that the new entertainment center is not as hideous as first thought.
I will pass over the question of diagnosis (it's possible he was not simply depressive) and the question of how such a beautiful human being had come by such vividly intimate knowledge of the thoughts of hideous men.
It looks like a particularly hideous HR Giger creation, and the thought that there are thousands of those things crawling around in my eyelashes right now is almost too much to bear.
Horror and revulsion are the most natural of reactions to the aftermath of the hideous Beslan school siege, and the thoughts of decent people everywhere go out to the bereaved and suffering.
Say to yourself: "I'm having a thought that my nose is hideous".
"Some kind of Surrealist exercise meant to inspire me, but also prevent me from thinking the perverse, looping thoughts that come unbidden: I am hideous.
And so we are actually looking at the thought that some shredded wheat, vile, hideous individual, could possibly take over from him.
Only rarely does the thought or judgment that they are hideous actually come to the forefront of his mind.
