Little Murders

Finitude not infinity is what’s hard to imagine—especially as it relates to being. If you have ever been to a viewing of an embalmed body, you may have registered the notion, "why don’t you just wake up?" Stop playing possum! On the other hand, that there is no end to time is an idea that’s easy to absorb—particularly because bounty and possibility always lay on the horizon. There are a plethora of unborn people you will never know. The most disconcerting element amidst all the lucubrations concerning finitude is the loss of subjectivity. It is virtually impossible to conceive of the end of one’s own ability to take in the so-called outer world. Esse est percipi, "to be is to be perceived," said Bishop Berkeley. What happens when a person stops seeing the world? Could that be one of Jules Feiffer's Little Murders?

read the review of Francis Levy's The Kafka Studies Department on Booklist

and watch the trailer for Erotomania