1095 Short Sentences

How to be a person in the world? You could place the emphasis on how or be, on person or world, and depending on where the emphasis lands, the meaning changes. The enormity of the undertaking is evident in the variability of the phrase itself.

As Donato Loia’s 1095 Short Sentences attempts that undertaking, it does so with many more phrases whose meaning changes as they accumulate. This collection of 1095 aphoristic thoughts, observations, and notes-to-self shifts through the times of a day over the course of a year. The renewal of mornings and the melancholy of evenings, the in-between feeling of afternoons. It addresses a wealth of concerns, from the high-flown and philosophical to the ridiculous and mundane – and where they intersect. What seems simple and obvious becomes deep and complex, and vice versa.

You could consider it a motivational (or anti-motivational) guide, but this book is more searching than prescriptive. Statements that initially seem authoritative ultimately produce questions and doubt, in a tone more contemplative than instructive, with a seriousness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (You might even laugh?) There’s a circular and, at times, contradictory nature to these sentences. They are paradoxical – like life, often enough. And as they touch on time and memory, they become quite moving, encompassing the subjects – love, friendship, work, ambition, desire – that drive and often confound us all.  

Donato Loia is an Italian writer who lives and works in Chicago. Currently, he teaches art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he lived in Austin where he received a doctorate degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

Praise for 1095 Short Sentences