'Story of an idiot told by him' is a very strange book. In hardly 125 pages,
Felix de Azua is capable of reversing
all preconceived ideas on all traditional
ingredients of the happiness of any person. The
protagonist narrates his life
like a sucessive surmountin of different stages of happiness which we all
accept passively, that is to say, childhood, religion, sex, love, philosophy, and
finally, art. He dedicates his entire life to carry out an exhaustive
investigation and he completes it close to happiness, proposing to overcome
each and every of the cited stages to settle definitively in MISFORTUNE, which
he thinks is the only Truth, the only thing except deceptopm of happiness. In
this way, the story ends up being an atypical biography, in which, apart from
the metaphysical investigation, the author carries out a ruthless critique of
the ideologies and institutions of different eras. Despite the fact that the
investigation leads the narrator to the ruin of his own life, one can not avoid
to see his reasoning, and even believe in the crazy venture of the protagonist.
This story drains the reader inside, transforming him into a blank sheet and
ready to face life again like an innocent baby. Through close reading, it
alternates sardonic passages with other very cinical passages and even others
which are more symbolic and speculative.