Enrico Tesla’s The Eighteen Years That Didn’t Change Anything is a memoir depicting the life of an average man as he lives through his prime to middle-aged years. The author takes an alternative approach to contemplate the human condition and existence.

Tesla excels in portraying himself as an average man within his words, “above average prospects.” The arc of the text shows him as a young man just beginning his career and concludes with a man who has loved, lost, and been a bit weathered by life. This portrayal renders his character accessible and relatable; he is neither above nor below the reader and, therefore, human. Still, he maintains a curious ego that leads him to ponder his existence in the context of some transformative life events.

The peculiar way he regards both his existence and the human condition also attracts the reader’s empathy. He ponders his existence in a neurotic, scientific-theory-based manner that encourages the reader to ponder the intersections of humanity, an arguably subjective matter, and science, a discipline founded in concrete fact.

His careful pairing of certain scientific facts, such as natural selection and Einstein’s iconic mass-energy formula, alongside his analysis of human perseverance at the end of the novel, is his thesis on life. It is through these efforts to prove his mastery of understanding life at its core that he comes to a poignant yet sobering conclusion. He frames even the most intimate experiences, such as love, in a clinical manner and even expresses to the reader areas in which he feels inadequate. Yet he possesses a stern conviction that due to the foundational understanding he has of life and the due process of nature, life is still worth living.

Pages: 114 | ASIN : B0BBCS8FCT

Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2022/11/11/the-eighteen-years-that-didnt-change-anything/