1.5. A hooking beginning that led me to believe this was going to be a great read, but how I was proven wrong. Though the first 30 pages or so sweep y1.5. A hooking beginning that led me to believe this was going to be a great read, but how I was proven wrong. Though the first 30 pages or so sweep you immediately into the narrator's world (an invisible wall has appeared, cutting her from the known world, and the people she can see on the other side are frozen in place, described like the remains of those at Pompeii), the following 200 bored me to tears. Haushofer ignores all the interesting things that she might have written about: escaping, the philosophical nature of her solitude, her past, the hunter that might or might not also be trapped inside the wall with her, and instead describes in painstaking detail every attempt she makes at milking her 'pet' cows, walking along the stream, wandering in the mountains, growing beans and playing with the dog, Lynx. Nothing happens until all the action is crammed into the last 3 pages, and even that left me completely cold and unsatisfied. I thought that maybe I had missed something as there are so many high-rated reviews for this novel, but everyone in my book club also said it was horrifically dull. None of us liked it. ...more
Finished this yesterday on the trains to Goslar from Leipzig (though I got off before Goslar). The book is warm and funny, and every sentence feels veFinished this yesterday on the trains to Goslar from Leipzig (though I got off before Goslar). The book is warm and funny, and every sentence feels very measured. And it's funny that Knausgaard endorses it as he is called a master within its pages. Explores the ever-explorable idea of the narrator and our very idea of autofiction. Kracht does say about the narrator of Faserland, being "I" and also, therefore, "me"; yet, we can guess as readers that what we are reading isn't entirely true. We can be fooled not to care, which is the enduring beauty of autofiction. I will always be enamoured with most attempts at this slippery, self-serving and self-centred genre. It's why I put myself through all five-thousand pages of My Struggle and all however many pages of In Search of Lost Time. Kracht proves, however, that you don't have to write 6k pages to get someone to take you seriously. With his humour, there is a critical eye on the rich of Europe and particularly Switzerland, and particularly Zurich (which is a shame because I was going to go relatively soon for the Joyce-echoes, but Kracht ensures us that there is none of that to be found or felt), so we get plenty of Bernhard coming through in his prose. I also like a complaining and slightly bitter writer, it seems. Readable, humorous, but not without cause. I can't say whether it's deserving of the Booker (especially now as I've decided I hardly care), but I certainly enjoyed it and found the ending somewhat touching, too....more
Interesting and enjoyable enough, a bit like the non-Moomin Jansson stuff; but even for 200 pages, it grows repetitive. You really have to worry aboutInteresting and enjoyable enough, a bit like the non-Moomin Jansson stuff; but even for 200 pages, it grows repetitive. You really have to worry about vitamins when you're out in the polar night....more
I'd never heard of Ungar, but my colleague just came back from Prague with this book and put it into my hands. I saw the preface was93rd book of 2024.
I'd never heard of Ungar, but my colleague just came back from Prague with this book and put it into my hands. I saw the preface was written by Thomas Mann, who wrote,
I owe the melancholy privilege, the happy duty of introducing this posthumous collection of Hermann Ungar's work to a German audience, to the fact that I was one of the first to recognise and call attention to the extraordinary talent of the deceased.
And talented he was. A terrifying blend of Kafka and Dostoyevsky, Ungar's stories are full of such depravity, violence, cruelty, strangeness and horror. Though unconnected, numerous narrators sound similar, demented young men who abuse animals or try to master women with force and cruelty. The first story, closer to a novella, is about a young man in a hospice who becomes infatuated with one of the maids and devotes his life to becoming the 'master' of her after failing as a boy to grope her breasts. In the second story, a young man expresses himself by stretching and drowning animals before finally committing a murder. They are all delirious, superbly written (light, with brevity, but also philosophical depth) and haunting. The collected stories towards the end, closer to four or five pages long, have some disarmingly poignant and wistful stories. "The Brothers" presents us with two brothers returning to their hometown on the train, both wishing they could say something to the other, but never quite managing. A story of suppressed emotion. Another, "A Secret War", is about a boy meeting his childhood tormenter after many years. Disturbing stuff....more
4.5. My flat-land predecessor, polyglot, female (believed by handwriting), age unknown, though I’m inclined to think young because p79th book of 2024.
4.5. My flat-land predecessor, polyglot, female (believed by handwriting), age unknown, though I’m inclined to think young because perhaps she studied the text, has written hundreds of remarks and comments in the margins of my copy of The Magic Mountain. These comments are in English, German and French, seemingly without any order other than the language she felt like writing in at the time. I doubt she has ever been “horizontal”, though so few people have been these days. Here is a selection of writings by my predecessor [all mistakes are my own in transcribing]:
‘Death’s relation to Life’; ‘Time of Storytelling’; ‘Time not natural’; ‘Úngeist’; ‘Paradox’; ‘die er damals offen gesehen’; ‘No distance from or concealment of feelings’; ‘too much Asia! ‘up here’; ‘Another lesson from Hans’; ‘spirit vs body’; ‘INTELLECT above all’; ‘Hans’ career — a matter of chance’; ‘Water!’; ‘Life is the same as Dying’; ‘The fall from spirit to matter’; ‘TIME!’; ‘love’; ‘music of death’; ‘bowler hats!’; ‘Language of Death — medieval pre-humanistic Latin’; ‘!’; ‘Homer!’; ‘Time & Human Progress’; ‘Compare Mann’s own narrative!’; ‘Dante!’; ‘Engl. gesellschafts lehre’; ‘Red and Green’; ‘strandspaziergang’ . . .
It goes on, and on. The same words appear over and over: death, suffering, life, form, east vs west . . . all the themes in the book.
And it is a magnificent book. I’ve withheld a single star for Settembrini talking slightly too much at times. Some of their discussions were fascinating, but if it was something I wasn’t interested in, then I wanted Hans to be off on another walk in the snow, or being ‘horizontal’, or reflecting on time itself. As many have said, the final chapter is astounding, and I read the final paragraph out several times to the empty room to sound it. It’s better than Buddenbrooks in that it is mature, insanely wise, complex (but simple! It’s 700 pages about death!), etc., etc.; I am glad I read it despite the time it took to do so. I’ve put Knausgaard aside just to read Mann and it’s taken me just under a month to read, which is a long time with a single book for me. It’s funny, too, warm. Life is the same as death. I fear death, sometimes for others more than myself. I can’t say The Magic Mountain has cured me of my affliction. Perhaps I need to go ‘horizontal’ for a period of time. I hate to use this, but I did find Mann’s dissection of nothing, no-time, very apt and even understandable from lockdowns during COVID. Without work, the days became short, but also impossibly long, and now time is damaged, perhaps permanently damaged, for everyone. Next year, 2020 will be half a decade away. Whatever you say about Time, it keeps moving; it will never wait for you or anyone else....more
Very good. In the vein of Kafka, Camus, Handke, Dostoyevsky, a man named Jessiersky inadvertently leads another man to a concentrati59th book of 2024.
Very good. In the vein of Kafka, Camus, Handke, Dostoyevsky, a man named Jessiersky inadvertently leads another man to a concentration camp. Then, post-war, he believes that the man he sent away, Count Luna, is after him. What's more, as the novel becomes more and more surreal and violent, that Count Luna is somehow connected to the moon itself, his namesake, and gains power from it, like Sir Gawain gains power from the sun and its position. The climax of the novel becomes a trip like the end of Hesse's Steppenwolf. It contains longwinded asides, some philosophical ruminations, and above all the book, rather than about revenge, National Socialist Germany, or whatever else this bizarre book has to offer, contains an overwhelming sense of thanatophobia. Perhaps it attempts to cure us of that, assuming we, the reader (granted we are not insane), also suffer from this affliction. ...more
Will you come to my funeral? She looks down at her coffee cup in front of her and says nothing. Will you come to my
48th book of 2024.
Kairos starts:
Will you come to my funeral? She looks down at her coffee cup in front of her and says nothing. Will you come to my funeral, he says again. Why funeral—you're alive, she says. He asks her a third time: Will you come to my funeral? Sure, she says. I'll come to your funeral.
I have a "piece" of the Berlin Wall, which I bought many years ago when I was in the city. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of little chunks of "Wall" in packets to sell to tourists. They all have faded bits of paint and old graffiti on them. At the time, I thought I really was buying a piece of history for five euros. I also bought a Russian hat with a hammer and sickle badge on the front. One time, walking drunkenly through a seaside town in England, a load of Eastern Europeans shouted from their window, I love your hat! Where did you get it? I thought for a moment and then yelled back, Berlin! And they laughed, both at me and with me, I think.
I struggled with this novel. Erpenbeck is clearly a skilled writer, but this book, despite being only 300 pages long, took me over a week to read. It's dense, full of allusions to opera and poetry and music, and plods along aimlessly. A woman chance meets an older, married man. An age-old novel idea. This time, it's set in 80s Germany and is against the backdrop of the East-West divide. The historical side of it was interesting, though I never quite got Erpenbeck's point. I guess the divide of the city and the divide of their love? A little contrived, though. As much as I tried, I never got fully invested in their story, either character, or the prose that sometimes gives two or three pages paragraphs. I'm not adverse to big paragraphs (I'm a modernist lover!), but with this, it was like wading through oil at times. The mini twist at the end felt cheap, too, a little tacked on. I respect the skill but think it was used for the wrong reasons. ...more
These reflections were provoked by the events and debates of the last few years as seen against the background of the twentieth c
43rd book of 2024.
These reflections were provoked by the events and debates of the last few years as seen against the background of the twentieth century, which has become, indeed, as Lenin predicted, a century of wars and revolutions, hence a century of that violence which is currently believed to be their common denominator.
So starts On Violence, which Arendt wrote between 1967-69. Though short, it is riddled with quotations and explorations from a number of other sources, such as Marx, Sartre, Fanon, and Chomsky. Her main line of thought seems to be in detangling the idea that power and violence are synonymous; Arendt believes, on the contrary, they are opposites. I found her idea interesting that violence is the result of failing power*. She does, state however, that violence can destroy power, whilst also being 'incapable of creating it'. In one brilliant portion of the essay, Arendt asks, 'Who are they, this new generation?' and answers her own question with, 'Those who hear ticking'. As Spender calls the future, 'a time-bomb buried'. This is very of its time, post-WW2, and in the middle of the Cold War, but it is true of today too. As she writes on the very first page (partially quoting, too, Harvey Wheeler),
The 'apocalyptic' chess game between the superpowers, that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilisation, is being played according to the rule 'if either "wins" it is the end of both'; it is a game that bears no resemblance to whatever war games proceeded it.
An interesting read, though at times a little bogged down with the insistent quoting. The argument could have been tighter, but the last few pages where she begins to conclude some ideas, are worthwhile. Sadly, she also leaves lots unanswered and unexplored. ___________________
*
Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost; it is precisely the shrinking power of the Russian government, internally and externally, that became manifest in its 'solution' of the Czechoslovak problem - just as it was the shrinking power of European imperialism that became manifest in the alternative between decolonisation and massacre. To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.
4.5. Brilliant. I can see how this is often compared with 1984, particularly as some of the interrogations felt very Room 101. Koes25th book of 2024.
4.5. Brilliant. I can see how this is often compared with 1984, particularly as some of the interrogations felt very Room 101. Koestler has written a readable and stark political novel about Stalinist Russia (he goes by Number One). Rubashov was a fascinating protagonist, his political intentions and choices, I felt, were layered enough to feel real. The bits in the prison itself were reminiscent of all great prisoner literature, in this case, The Count of Monte Cristo the most. There were almost moments of great tension, written with Koestler's deceptively simple but effective prose. Loyalty to the party and its ideologies in the face of everything? Rubashov is of an older generation to some of the younger interrogators, so Koestler explores some old vs new in a Fathers and Sons way. Like all great literature does, this reminded me of other greats. I think when there is a rich cobweb like this, it feels part of the canon. I did toy with giving this the full five but I'll have to mull it for a few days, for now I'll keep it at an incredibly strong and high 4. ...more
My mentor Swann almost never recommended me a single book in all the years I spent with him. This was because he believed I would be22nd book of 2024.
My mentor Swann almost never recommended me a single book in all the years I spent with him. This was because he believed I would be too easily influenced by his opinion of them and therefore have my own judgement clouded. Then, I baulked at this; now, it makes perfect sense to me. I remember one of the few books he ever let slip that he liked was Henry Roth's Call it Sleep. For years, I believed it was Joseph Roth who wrote that and not Henry. I didn't believe there was yet another Roth writer in the mix. So there's Henry, Philip and Joseph.
A friend of mine read this slim novella, really a short story, a while back and said it was witty, silly, a little dreamlike. It's all these things, but I like my large scope maximalist novels with plenty of words and themes. ...more
This is one of the most brutal and difficult things I've read. A horrific, contradictory post-war statement by Hoess, the commanda161st book of 2023.
This is one of the most brutal and difficult things I've read. A horrific, contradictory post-war statement by Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz. Hoess, one minute, describes in clinical and unflinching detail, the process of leading people in the gas chambers, the process of their dying, and then the subsequent hair-cutting, teeth removals, and ovens, and the next minute, how he was 'forced' to witness these things and how he was shaken by them. How going home to his wife and children was difficult. At the end of his statement he admits he is still a National Socialist but that the Final Solution was 'wrong'.
There for the first time I saw the gassed bodies in mass. But I must admit openly that the gassings had a calming effect on me, since in the near future the mass annihilation of the Jews was to begin [...] I was always horrified by the death by firing squads, especially when I thought of the huge numbers of women and children who would have to be killed. I had had enough of hostage executions, and the mass killings by firing squad ordered by Himmler and Heydrich. Now I was at ease. We were all saved from these bloodbaths, and the victims would be spared until the last moment.
3.5. Started reading this in Nuremberg but only finished now as I've been distracted by a number of things. Hesse is easy to read a156th book of 2023.
3.5. Started reading this in Nuremberg but only finished now as I've been distracted by a number of things. Hesse is easy to read as ever, understated and beautiful prose, like layers of an oil painting. The central theme of the book is about the life of an artist: can a true male artist also be a good father/husband. Hesse wrote this as a reaction to his own personal life, during his own failing marriage. Gradually, the narrative shifts in a fairly expected place (novels of this time always end up with someone dying), and the descriptions of death, its process, were incredibly vivid. Certain points were almost upsetting; I wonder if Hesse had seen the throes of death to write them. It does lack the philosophical depth of his later works (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf) but it's still as enjoyable as ever. I think that whenever art is involved, neglect isn't far behind it. ...more
I swapped between two translation as I read, mostly my brain was arguing about word choices and sentence structure: nothing seriou154th book of 2023.
I swapped between two translation as I read, mostly my brain was arguing about word choices and sentence structure: nothing serious; but when I reached the end, I realised one of my translations had an extra page or two than the other. Of course, we always treat Kafka as unfinished. K. is always there where we left him. If anything, the unfinished body of work left by Kafka is part of his Kafkaesque universe. Missing pieces, disjointed chapters, inconsistencies (a few here, for example, like describing both sisters as blonde but later calling one a brunette), and above all, lacking in resolution. All the depression, loneliness, stumbling, heartache in your life is because of the castle. K. is in a world that does not yield itself to him. I said this to a friend the other day and they responded, Yes, and aren't we all? I thought about that. One day I'd like to read Anthea Bell's translation as she does such a consistently good job with Zweig. I mostly ditched Muir in favour of Underwood, the latter being based on the Pasley Critical German Text, despite the fact that Muir's (with the additional translations by Kaiser and Wilkins) is sometimes considered the 'definite' edition.
I read most of this in Nuremberg and, naturally, in the castle there, thought of K. At one point we were let into a small building in the castle grounds with an incredibly deep well. The German tour guide spoke enthusiastically in German as he demonstrated its depth: he poured, from a carafe, five jets of water. He counted them aloud: "Eins, zwei, drei, vier," and perfectly in time with him pouring the fifth and saying, "Fünf...", the sound of the first jet hit the water at the bottom of the well. Everyone cooed in satisfaction and awe. Something about it felt Kafkaesque to me. ...more
Admittedly I took this out of a box with pure interest solely because of the words on the front, 'Translated by Jonathan Franzen', 81st book of 2023.
Admittedly I took this out of a box with pure interest solely because of the words on the front, 'Translated by Jonathan Franzen', but I'm glad I did. The Short End of the Sonnenallee was originally published in German in the 1990s, but with this new translation, it's here in England again. It's a bizarre little novel about a group of young boys living in East Berlin. It's a funny read, bordering on slapstick at times (which I detest), but this made it work. I was expecting deeper moments throughout the book, but they never fully came, from start to finish it's purely playful. One boy is desperate to get an illegal copy of the Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street (God I love 'Tumbling Dice'), our main boy is desperately trying to fall in love and get laid. The last two pages involving a real historical figure are as ridiculous as they are humorous. Surprisingly good stuff.
When I was a little younger than they are, I was in Berlin myself and I still have a chunk of the Wall in my bedside drawer which I bought from a souvenir shop. It's probably just a chunk of random rubble with a bit of spray paint on it, but I was hopeful and naive when I bought it....more
Frankl, like other Holocaust survivors I’ve read (Levi, Wiesel, etc.), writes about his experienc78th book of 2023.
Experiences in a Concentration Camp
Frankl, like other Holocaust survivors I’ve read (Levi, Wiesel, etc.), writes about his experiences with such tenderness that he comes across as an old wizened monk, who cannot be harmed by what he has suffered. As ever, the descriptions are too difficult to even attempt to explore. There is nothing to explore; the atrocities that happened during the War are, even with all this knowledge, unknowable, forever without understanding. As Frankl himself later explores in the following parts of his book, how does one find meaning in such suffering? There are two concepts that linger in my mind from this first part above all others. The first is Frankl’s admittance (it felt almost like a confession) about the apathy one feels after several days in Auschwitz. He describes seeing dead bodies, watching people trip into gas chambers, with no emotion; he becomes unreal, detached. The second is the recounting of a moment years after he returned to reality. Someone was looking at a photograph of a group of prisoners on a bed, malnourished, skeletal, unreal. This person remarked at the utter sadness of the photograph. Frankl, however, argued that they were not as sad as she might imagine. In fact, he said, they could even be happy. They had finished their work, they had survived another day, and were on their beds. That, for those men, in that time, was as close to happiness as they could get. In essence, Frankl reassures us that Dostoyevsky was right: humans can get used to anything. I felt this sadder in some respects, that men got used to that. That they were even put in a position to get used to that. The fear of constant death. Working till their bodies were puppetlike. That they would do anything to survive.
On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.
But, Frankl also writes,
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And I was brought to near tears at imagining the men who lived in that hellscape, those men who would comfort their companions, share their bread. That such humans exist, transcending regular courage and goodness, is as amazing to me as the opposite side of the coin, that such awful men could have existed. One final story: the camp’s commander, Frankl discovered on their liberation, had paid out of his own pocket to supply the prisoners with medicine when needed. When the Americans liberated the camp and began to hunt the SS, three Jewish prisoners hid the SS commander from them. Not until the Americans promised not to harm him did they reveal his whereabouts. From there, he was essentially reinstated to his position of command and helped organise the attaining and distribution of clothes for the survivors.
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Logotherapy in a Nutshell / The Case for a Tragic Optimism
A lot of reviewers, once reading their work, seem to either skip the psychological essays following the ‘Experiences in a Concentration Camp’ or claim to have skim-read it, citing it as boring. I found it in some ways more moving than the memoir part. Frankl explores, with logotherapy (but always in layman terms), what we need for a happy life, fulfilment, even the meaning of life:
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfilment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
The base of Frankl’s discussion is that without a purpose, life is meaningless. Those who survived the camps, he said, had something unresolved. Frankl himself had a book to write, for his draft was confiscated and he needed to write it again; that was simply enough. Another man had a book to write. Another man had a son to raise. These purposes kept them alive. At school I read the graphic novel series Barefoot Gen, written by a Hiroshima survivor. At one point one of the girls settles on making something, an urn, perhaps, I don’t recall. She works on it every day, and as she gets closer to finishing, she becomes sicker and sicker. So, Gen deliberately knocks it from the table and shatters her months of work. They are all angry at him. In the following days, her health recovers as she sets about creating it anew. It was keeping her alive, her creation, the process of creating.
In short: this book is life-affirming. Anyone who has found themselves in a void, lonely, depressed, disillusioned, Frankl uses the Holocaust as a vehicle for finding the truth about ourselves; the truth is that we need someone to love, a goal to pursue, and to turn our suffering into something we’ve gained. I can’t give it justice. I was deeply moved by many of the things Frankl said and the way he illustrated his experiences. ‘So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: / Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. / And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.’...more
At my new job I've got a German colleague, T., and I asked her about the original German title of this novel: Der Untergeher becaus58th book of 2023.
At my new job I've got a German colleague, T., and I asked her about the original German title of this novel: Der Untergeher because "loser" just felt wrong to me the whole time I was reading it. It felt out of place, unlike something Bernhard would use. She said that to her, the title is more like The Underdog. This changed the entire perspective of the novel for me. Loser is pathetic, shunned. Underdog is strong, to be rooted for. We vaguely wondered on the translator's decision, why "loser"? And then about translation in general, how the translation of the title, for me, changed the entire drive, even message, of the book. As for everything else: classic Bernhard: obsession, suicide, madness, art, hatred of people, of the countryside, lung problems, hatred of certain European countries. You know what you're getting with him, and he almost never misses. Interesting to have Glenn Gould as one of the characters in the book. I've always adored the fictionalisation of real people, not sure why....more
19th book of 2023. Artist for this review is German surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944).
Bricks and Mortar is a chaotic, literary kaleidosco19th book of 2023. Artist for this review is German surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944).
Bricks and Mortar is a chaotic, literary kaleidoscopic portrait of Berlin's underworld, particularly through the lens of prostitution around the collapse of the Wall in '89 to the first decade of our current century. Every chapter spins us into a new character, a new perspective; it is quite often that you do not know who is narrating each chapter, or there are only clues once you've made it part way through. Meyer moves from first to second to third person, sometimes sentence to sentence. Generally, it didn't feel necessary to me, at all times, to understand where I was in the novel's nonlinear structure or who was speaking. By reading some things later became clearly, or in other cases, never became clearer. There are prostitutes talking about their childhoods, their clients, what they offer in sex, what they like and don't like. There is a detective investigating bodies. There is a man looking for his lost daughter. We move around seedy Berlin, jump forwards and backwards in time, in and out of characters' heads. The blurb likens the book to David Lynch and Alfred Döblin. I've read a collection of Meyer's stories prior to this, which is considered his masterpiece, and found those as abstract and distant as this. Generally you bob along slightly detached from the events and the characters but slowly a semblance of the narrative and certain emotions begin to reach you. Some events are alluded to or happen in the wrong order and you only realise pages and pages later. Or two pieces fit together with great digressions between them. The seediness is unceasing: the piss, the sex, the dirty streets, the smoky train stations, the drugs. I don't know if I'd ever recommend it to anyone but I found it to be an interesting read, if not for the wild structure, the variety of voices and styles and the look into former GDR. Interesting that Meyer chose all these pimps and prostitutes to tell his story, but it was something different, so why not? Novels give voices to the voiceless, after all.
Bernhard is just great. His short stories are propelled by the same caustic rants as in his novels that pour forth in a torrent with10th book of 2023.
Bernhard is just great. His short stories are propelled by the same caustic rants as in his novels that pour forth in a torrent without paragraph breaks. I could, for some reason, read him all day. I've tried to work out what it is that makes Bernhard so addictive and readable. All I've managed to come up with, so far, is that he's like the little devil in the back of our minds (mine, at least) that just wants to hate the world and everyone in it sometimes. He plays to the anger and desperation we can sometimes feel. Maybe disillusionment would be a better word. He's so bitter and spiteful. A good portion of the rants here are against parents, such as,
Of course, we say that we love our parents but in reality we hate them, as we cannot love our begetters because we are not a happy people, and our unhappiness is not something talk into, like our happiness, which we talk ourselves into daily such that we always have the courage to get up, wash ourselves, dress, take the first sip, swallow the first bite.
Paragraphs like these are so biting, and on the surface I don't agree with them but there is some toxic depth to all of us that perhaps does agree with some of these things. I'm cynical enough to believe at certain times of day (I'm generally far more unhappy in the afternoons than say the mornings or the evenings), we do simply talk ourselves into happiness every day. Bernhard is the perfect sly philosopher for the stuff we don't like to admit. Maybe that's it.
Other portions of the book include textbook rants against Europe/Europeans. In the final story 'Bernhard' declares that all Norwegians are unintellectual and essentially insufferable. You'd just never want to meet him. The first story is about Goethe dying, the second is about a man sealing himself in a tower to read, the third about a boy talking to his friend about their awful parents and upbringings and the final, a short rant about Norway and Austria. It's all so Bernhardian: it's all so loveable in a detestable sort of way. I'll probably read all of Bernhard before I die....more
About time I read a Thomas Mann novel, having only read his famous stories/novellas (most notably his Death in Venice). He was just105th book of 2022.
About time I read a Thomas Mann novel, having only read his famous stories/novellas (most notably his Death in Venice). He was just 26 when he published this, his first novel, in 1901. Like many debuts, it's said to be semi-autobiographical. It tracks three-ish generations of the Buddenbrooks, a merchant family in Germany. Hemingway famously loved this book. It is filled with all the things multiple generations of any family (presumably) go through: marriages, divorces, deaths, scandals, financial problems/ruin, etc. I think readers, above anyone else, are most used to these sorts of events. We expect them.
Lowe-Porter is an older translation, indeed the only translation that was available for some time (thereby being the translation, I'm guessing, that Hemingway once read) though now it's said that her work often missed/omitted some of Mann's original humour. The penultimate part is charming in the novel, and has strikes of humour, though I do wonder how much from the rest of the book is missing. I'd be interested to read the Woods translation (the one I ultimately would have liked to read but couldn't source for a reasonable price) or the David Luke. I've read the latter's work on Mann before in his stories. So, perhaps I'll read this again with Woods at a later date, or try to get my hands on Woods for his other big books. Mann is good though, his realism is something to be admired, and the 'practical' world vs the artistic world in the novel played to my own tastes. Sad, sometimes funny, almost entirely readable and absorbing, a good read. The 800 or so pages went swimmingly. ...more
4/4.5. Maybe better than Concrete, actually I think it is, but not as good as Wittgenstein's Nephew which is going to be hard to top50th book of 2022.
4/4.5. Maybe better than Concrete, actually I think it is, but not as good as Wittgenstein's Nephew which is going to be hard to top. Woodcutters is centred around a dinner party, an 'artistic dinner', in which are very Bernhardian narrator (indeed, as ever, perhaps simply Bernhard himself) is sitting in a winged chair for most of the duration and pouring scorn on the guests about him. It's a giant tirade against/about intellectualism, the bourgeoisie, hypocrisy, art and suicide. This novel was originally banned in Austria and though it's relatively hard to see why, when really there's nothing overtly shocking about it other than his spiky remarks, it's more interesting to think that this was actually banned, that those it was directed at were clearly alarmed by its honesty. This novel is like a caustic (the one word everyone uses (rightfully) to describe Bernhard) Proust, a bit like Vol. 3 of In Search of Lost Time where Proust uses a wild amount of satire and humour to rip apart the Parisian upper classes. Bernhard's humour is very different but they are both tolling the same bell. Like all of Bernhard's novels this is one continuous paragraph from start to finish with no indentation or paragraphing. You have to read Bernhard in long concentrated chunks otherwise he's near-on impossible. I think Bernhard is up there with the great prose writers just because his sentences have such fantastic cadence and rhythm, which sadly goes unnoticed until you start reading it in 50 page blocks. The most striking philosophy from this novel though is the narrator attacking his own hypocrisy (as all of Bernhard's narrator attack themselves as well as their targets), the idea that we have friends we 'hate', that we 'hate' our homelands, etc., but we also don't, we can't live without them. Many times over the last few years especially I've thought cruelly about people I love, the place I live, in some strange attempt/desire to breakaway and live a completely different and somehow better life. These are on the most part delusions, and Bernhard identifies this in his horrific way. How so many of us love and hate at once, because perhaps we are always so unsure of ourselves....more
Matthew Ted
>
Books:
lit-writ-german
(55)
