"Roman Letters" by Evan Calder Williams (published 2011)
To put it lightly: every time I've picked up "Roman Letters" since its publication I've been reminded that I'm fully alive, not quite dead yet, and that I hate it. And yet, it is precisely the letters in this book that have urged me continue on, despite all my illnesses, mental and physical, and all the disgusting politics that go with that. With steady words, the stories Williams tells throughout this masterpiece of a text convince me that maybe it's not so bad, maybe it's completely OK to go on living with this hatred of my existence; moreover, that it is necessary for me to unpack what's there, to go in deep into that emptiness, and, for the sake it, become that gorgeous thing like Williams' Napoli... that Italian city that he traverses (Rome and Bologna among others)... a city that is gorgeous, "gut-clenching gorgeous, because it has stopped caring whether or not it exists, but still it does." (81) "Roman Letters" is the ...