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2:48pm on Tuesday, 19th January, 2010:

Self Sacrifice

Weird

My brother collected old-style Penguin and Pelican books. I used to buy some for him when every once in a while from charity shops, and hand them over whenever we met up. When he died last year, I had eight of them in stock. Rather than hand them over to his wife, who was trying to figure out how to get rid of the two thousand or so she already had, I kept hold of them. I'd picked them up individually without any reference to their content: my only requirements were that they didn't cost too much and I didn't think I'd bought them before.

Of the eight I had, four were destroyed when I tried to make a doorstop out of them. The varnish left white marks that didn't look good.

The remaining four volumes (with spoilers) are:

• Chéri and The Last of Chéri, by Colette. This ends with Chéri blowing his brains out with a gun.
• Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. This ends with Hedda blowing her brains out with a gun.
• Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw. The second half of the volume is The Revolutionist's Handbook, which ends in the line: "If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself".
• China: New Age and New Outlook by Ping-Chin Kuo. This 1960 work ends with the prediction that Communist China will be able to develop the necessary strength to deal with Russia as an equal.

Who'd have thought that China: New Age and New Outlook would have been the one that had the least downbeat ending?

Referenced by Working Cat.

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