Perfume – the Story of a Murderer aka Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind – another look at the story is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/note-on-perfume-by-patrick-suskind.html - 8 out of 10

 

Perfume – the Story of a Murderer aka Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind – another look at the story is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/note-on-perfume-by-patrick-suskind.html

8 out of 10

 

 

This note comes rather late, there has been a take on the novel in 2016, on this blog, but nothing in writing – hence, this will be not just biased and all over the place, as usual, but to be avoided, perhaps at all costs – not that there will be a flood of curious people, waiting fervently to see what the under signed has to say about Perfume…

 

After all, it is one of the bestselling German novels and has been a huge financial success for nine years – if you ask me, I would much rather have Thomas Mann https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html on Any Given Sunday, or any other day of the week, it is the crème de la crème

However, the book did create a good impression, even for this fussy, pretentious reader, at the time, if this is not a selection from vague memories – I have read that what we remember is not just information on the state of that side of the brain, but it tells a lot about us, as characters maybe – only the image has changed in the meantime

 

A lot has to do with the film adaptation, which was not a successful on, and furthermore, the actor in the leading role, Ben Whishaw, is one of those that starts my allergy, slowly, or speedily, he joins a list of lads that I just cannot stand – there is also Diesel, The Rock, Kutchener, and from the other genre, Elizabeth Debicki

On the merits of the narrative, we do have the myth of the creator, which we can find in the Oriental Tales by the Nobel Prize Winner Margaret Yourcenar https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/11/oriental-tales-by-marguerite-yourcenar.html and in our local folklore, where we have the Legend of Manole, connected with a monastery

 

Manole would be the local Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, presumably, in our version, the hero is the leader of a team of masons, assigned to build the Monastery Curtea de Arges – a place where I had taken my clients, when I was in the Hospitality business, oops, I am moving away from the novel, so let us have a second alarm!

In other words, I had to tell this fable maybe one hundred times, and we come now to those habits, being used with this path in the brain, I follow the trench and now I jump to something else, from the Talmud – ‘be careful with your thoughts, for they become words, be careful with the words, because they become acts

Pay attention to the acts, because they become habits, and be careful to the habits, because they become character, and be careful with character, because that is…You

 

Back to Manole, the builder, who tried with his team to raise walls, only what they raised in the daytime, would crumble at night, and just in time, the hero has a dream, in which he is told that they need to take the first wife that comes with food at the future monastery, and put her in the middle of the bricks, wall her into the structure

Since the situation repeated itself for so long, they are desperate, and he tells his team about the solution in the dream, and they agree, only they warn their spouses to stay away in the morning, and honest Manole is the only one who plays fair, and it is his wife who comes with food, and she has to be walled

 

Worse, she is pregnant and cries when the husband starts trapping her inside, this is in fact one of the best-known stories around here, and as Marguerite Yourcenar proves, in other realms as well, albeit in a different format, in her telling, the woman is placed withing a bridge, and then milk will continue to pour out, after she is dead

The idea is that you need to sacrifice in order to achieve something, and even more so, if we are talking about a work of art, or a masterpiece, for some silly reason, the Delayed Gratification theme comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment explained in the pies experiment, with children

 

Kids have been given a choice, in this test, they can have a pie immediately, or, if they wait for some minutes (I forgot how many, but you can Google for the whole beano) then they get two, instead of one, and then they looked at what happens with the two categories, but not in the timeframe of a day, or weeks

They took years, and those who Delayed their Gratification turned out to be more successful, in their private and personal lives that the others – the same thing applies to the more positive, optimistic, who live longer, also have more achievements in their personal and professional existence, they get sick less often and then they stay so for fewer days

 

Even a smile helps, but one that is genuine, called in psychology Duchenne, and the experiment for this (well, one of the many, clearly) had experts look at the photos associated with the end of high school (or was it college, university, never mind) and selected the people who had that sincere, open smile, form the rest

After years, the ones that just had that smile in the end of term photograph would show the same difference, they had better professional and family lives, with various factors that you can, again, find on the internet if you are interested…before I go, maybe I should remember Grenouille for the last lines, although he became a real bastard, a killer, like Putin and those other dictators, responsible for mass killing, while this Grenouille murders fewer…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”