This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.

The words of U.G. Krishnamurti immediately sprang to mind: "So long as you want to be like me, you will remain what you are..." The paradox of wanting? Could this be it? The loser Buddha? I read with excitement, convinced I was about to uncover some hidden kernel of truth or secret piece of knowledge. Cioran invokes Buddhism several times throughout the book, yet he never returns to this near-enlightenment, nor does he seem particularly interested in unpacking it. Instead, I was met with another eight hundred or so pessimistic aphorisms. I should have known better.

Soon my eyes glazed over as the aphorisms drifted past me. In this haze, I would daydream about Cioran wandering the streets of Paris at night, head lowered beneath the collar of a long black coat. I wondered if he had ever enjoyed a good glass of French wine, or whether he sustained himself solely on gray slop. I wondered if he smirked while writing the chestnut aphorism, knowing it would bait readers like me. My daze would only be interrupted whenever Cioran threw out a funny one-liner, took a jab at the French, or the Germans, or aired some petty grievance about a friend.

By the final third of the book, my daydreams had evolved. I began imagining Cioran as an emo teenager with heavy eyeliner and hair swept dramatically across half his face. The aphorisms became lyrics from Nine Inch Nails or The Smiths. I finished the book grinning--probably not the reaction Cioran intended.

Despite my dislike of aphorisms--and despite the image of "Emo Emil," or perhaps because of it--I enjoyed the book. Not for some hidden wisdom I was hoping to uncover, but for the state of mind it induced. The aphorisms sent my thoughts drifting elsewhere. I found The Trouble with Being Born more rewarding as a vessel for daydreaming than as a collection of aphorisms. It leaves enough empty space for your own thoughts to take over, and perhaps that is its greatest strength. In any case, the book is very quotable, so I'll leave a few here.

In a work of psychiatry, only the patients’ remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.

Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.

No longer wanting to be a man …, dreaming of another form of failure.

Nothing more aggravating than a seamless, unremitting irony which leaves you no time to breathe and still less to think; which instead of being inconspicuous, occasional, is massive, automatic, at the antipodes of its essentially delicate nature. Which in any case is how it is used in Germany, a nation which, having meditated upon it the most, is least capable of wielding it.