Beautiful World, Where Are You

Alice’s next letter opens with the thought, “Every day I wonder why my life has turned out this way” (54). She describes humanity’s desire for fame as a pathology that has both corrupted contemporary society and personally degraded her. She also wonders about the philosophical relationship between herself and her authored works, writing that, if she were a disagreeable person, it should theoretically have no effect on her books: “The work would be the same, no different. And what do the books gain by being attached to me, my face, my mannerisms, in all their demoralising specificity?” (55).

She feels miserable that people assume personal familiarity through her work, a problem compounded by the fact that she is expected to capitalize on her talent: “People just expect me to sell it—I mean literally, sell it for money, until I have a lot of money and no talent left” (55). She feels frustrated by the need to capitalize her labor rather than enjoy its fruits at a leisurely pace. Alice then addresses Eileen’s argument of the Late Bronze Age collapse and discusses an ancient writing system, Linear B, that was inexplicably lost at one point in recorded history. In closing, she admits she invited Felix to Rome on a whim because it would be fun: “I’m sure he thinks I’m a total eccentric” (59), she writes, revealing that she truly does care about others’ esteem despite her clear hatred of others superficially pigeonholing her.