Open City by: Teju Cole

I found the tone of Teju Cole’s Open City to be very melancholic in accordance to Julius’ detachment from others around him. The one-dimensional nature in which he assessed people made it seem as if he had an intimacy issue. In this way, Julius was both relatable and confusing; his inability to connect with others made this academic, incredibly learned man very human in this “flaw,” yet it also caused him to present himself as an anti-hero.

At times, he is both victim and villain. This didn’t make him unreliable to me, it just made him seem more human—a befuddled mess of contradictions. He is so paralyzed by his thoughts that he often does what he is determined not to do, which is an experience that most of us have encountered in our lives.

Overall, I found the digressive nature of the narrative to be frustrating. The lack of quotation marks made it all the more difficult to determine if Julius was actually having a conversation with someone or if the dialogue was a piece of one of his many fantasies. In a twisted way, I’m glad that it was such a difficult read: I found that I was constantly self-assessing while going through the ebb and flow of actively paying attention to the story and getting lost in my own stream of consciousness. Perhaps this effect was a reaction to Julius’ digressive thinking.

I’m left wondering: how could a mind, so sensitive and observant, be unable to analyze his own shortcomings?