Arnon Grunberg

Fallible

Fictitious

A friend in Munich, an artist, urged me to read Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death”: “‘Civilized’ society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.”

The so-called clash of cultures is a clash of hero-systems. But alas, it is hard to admit that we all long for heroism.

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