The Sentimentalist

"Yes, sentimentality: that phenomenon by which the emotional need of the viewer takes precedent over the reality of the object; sentimentality: the excessive and inappropriate infusion of meaning, the incorrect alignment of form and content; sentimentality: a child's perception, the stain of immaturity, sister to stereotype, father of prejudice, the soul of dramatic irony!
What happiness: to surrender the child's frantic and broad assertions about the world for the nuance and subtlety of true understanding! What joy: to abandon these delusions, to marry form with content, to live without sentimentality!"
- from The Sentimentalist

The author begins by offering a definition: sentimentality, he says, is "the excessive and inappropriate infusion of meaning, the incorrect alignment of form and content." Viewed in this way, sentimentality is an existential quagmire: how is one to know the "true" significance of others' words, gestures, and actions? How is one to know the "true" significance of one's own? Through the stories that follow the author stays close-cropped to this dilemma, highlighting the misunderstandings that occur between boyfriends and girlfriends, lovers, peers, colleagues, parents and children, and exploring the ways in which these fundamental misunderstandings can be rooted in or result in fundamental misunderstandings about ourselves.

Written by Stavros Stavros
Cover design by Tom Maven