Paul Fulcher's Reviews > War & War
War & War
by
by
A wonderful interview about a wonderful book
http://www.musicandliterature.org/fea...
This War & War project contains four parts, actually, more than four, but you will see why I am unsure. The first chapter, let us say the first step in this whole project, was Isaiah Has Come. The text is a short story, a big monologue of the main hero, the main character of the novel, but the place of this short story is the birthplace of this character, and the time of the story is three years before the start of the novel. This is very important to understand. That’s why I am very happy the Spanish edition solved the main problem of the English, French, and German translations, namely, that this short story belongs not directly to the text of the novel, but is a little bit secluded. My Spanish publisher at Acantilado, Jaume Vallcorba, could solve it because he understood why it’s important to make a difference between this monologue and the novel. In this monologue, the main character talks about the human condition, how the world is gone, and what’s happened in the last few hundred years, and this happens at a bar in a bus station, it’s almost empty, he’s sitting at a bar next to a man who’s absolutely silent and who’s smoking and smoking, and next to him there’s Korin, and because Korin’s absolutely drunk, really absolutely drunk, he wants to tell this Isaiah figure why the world is gone, what’s happened with the human beings. And after this monologue he wants to commit suicide, but he’s so drunk that after the first shot in the left palm of his hand he collapses, and committing suicide would be absolutely ridiculous. This is the first step of the project.
Three years later, the novel starts with the same main character. This is an almost different person, because Korin, this person, is absolutely a peaceful person, has become absolutely a peaceful person, he is absolutely calm, he has opinions about his own life, his life is absolutely unnecessary, with this wonderful emotions and sensitivities, absolutely unnecessary, but he’s not angry against the world. He wants to say, “Only in my case, this life, my life, is absolutely unnecessary.” That’s why the best solution is to commit suicide and goodbye. But before committing suicide he found a manuscript in his workplace—he’s an archivist—and this manuscript is a kind of novel about four angels who escape, in world history, from one side of the world to the other side, they want to find peace, a peaceful place, but in the world there is no peaceful place, that’s why they try to escape, and when Korin, the main hero, understands it, he decides to find a way out for these four angels, these four fictional angels, and he goes from a very small town in Eastern Europe to the center of the world—these are his words—to New York, and he wants to find a form to care for this manuscript for eternity. Everything is absolutely impossible for him: the movie, the book, every material form is destructible. That’s why when he listens in a bar to a conversation that something like the internet exists, he has the idea that the virtual space is never destructible. That’s why he goes to New York, writes and sends the text into the internet and this is an eternal place for this manuscript and perhaps this is the solution for these four angels. But at the end of the novel Korin runs into chaos, and in this chaos he goes back to Europe because of a sculpture that is very important for him: an igloo by an Italian artist, Mario Merz. And he wants to spend one hour, actually, his last hour, in this igloo, in this sculpture, in a small town in Switzerland. And he reaches this small town and this small museum, Schauffhausen, a wonderful museum, a modern museum, and this museum has three or four pieces by Mario Merz, one of them this igloo. But Korin arrived about midnight, and of course the guard didn’t want to let him into the igloo. Korin finds a man who understands him and asks this man to make a small plaque with his last sentence, and he gives some money for this plaque and afterward he commits suicide. The last pages of War & War are the sentences and opinions of the man who understood Korin, saying, “Of course we will comply with this last wish, this last plaque, of this poor man, because he deserves it.” This is the last sentence of the book, but it is not the last sentence of the War & War project.
The last sentence is on this plaque. After the novel’s publication the third chapter of this project began, only in reality. One month later, after the book’s publication, we all stood in front of the museum’s entrance and every person, every character from the last chapter of this book stood there and everybody talked about his or her relationship to the main character, Korin. It didn’t matter that this was a fictional person, but these people who were there were and are real people. After that, we unveiled this plaque, and even today, actually forever, you can see in Schauffhausen, on the right side from the main entrance, this plaque with the last sentence of the book.
But after that, what happened? Mario Merz read this book in German, and that same day, in Schauffhausen, in a small town next to Zurich, Mario Merz runs to see the director of this museum—they were friends—and he cried, “Why didn’t you let Korin into my igloo? Why didn’t you let Korin into my igloo?” And the director said, “What?” And Mario, who was always a very animalistic artist, very rough, cried much stronger and louder: “Why didn’t you let this Korin, György Korin, in my igloo?” And slowly the director understood and he tried to explain: “Dear Mario, my friend, György Korin is not a real person, this is a fictional person.” “I didn’t ask you if György Korin is a real person, I asked you why you didn’t let him into my igloo?” “But dear Mario, listen to me, this is a novel, there is a writer, László Krasznahorkai, and György Korin exists only in his imagination, in his novel.” “I didn’t ask you”—but this time Mario’s voice got louder—“I didn’t ask you whether he’s fictional or not!” The director did not know what to do. The director’s wife came in and tried to calm Mario, but that was impossible. One hour, more than one hour, the same story. And after this absolutely crazy conversation the director and his wonderful wife found a solution: they promised Mario Merz they would all go to the birthplace of György Korin, to the small city where the novel starts and there, in that small city, Mario Merz would make a new igloo to commemorate György Korin. That was the only solution. A little more than two weeks later, I waited for these characters from my novel in the Budapest airport. I rented a big car and we went to this small town because Mario wanted to build a new igloo, his first igloo in an open space. But Mario was a very rough character, and he was very cruel with everybody, except with me. Nobody understood why. But everyone showed him around and asked him if this would be a good place and he would be absolutely uninterested. Someone else would show him another. “Perhaps this is good?” “Absolutely unbearable,” Mario would say. One and a half days we walked in this small city, and everything was absolutely terrible. Everybody was out of their wits. And we went back to Budapest, and nobody spoke with anybody, and my task was to transport Mario and his wife, Maritz Merz, who’s also an artist in the Arte Povera. Maritza Merz is also an interesting figure. Mario was six feet tall, a very big man with sculpture fingers, really rough, and Maritza Merz was five foot two inches, very fragile, with huge eyes, long hair, very long black hair, she’s a dear and the vice-president of the World Association of Witches But at the airport, we were alone—Mario Merz, Maritza Merz, and me—and Mario was suddenly a different person after everyone went away. Very calm, very friendly, peaceful, and he began to make sketches, drawings, of what kind of igloos he would make for Korin, and when the airplane was ready to depart, Mario said, “No, the next one.” Maritza had to change the flight because Mario was so enthusiastic and many of his sketches were on the table. Finally they flew back to Turin and four months later, very late in the night, at four o’clock in the morning, my telephone rings: “I am Krisel”—the director’s wife—“excuse me, I am terribly sorry, I know I woke you up, but this is very important.” “What has happened?” “I know that you loved Mario Merz very much and Mario, about three o’clock, has died.”
That was the fourth chapter of this War & War project, but in reality. And in November 2011, in a small town in southeast Hungary, there was a big poetry competition between different schools and different elementary school students. The name of this competition was Competition of the Lyrics of György Korin. Of course nobody from these schools had any idea who was György Korin. They all believe he was a real person, somebody from the city. And that’s the whole War & War story.
http://www.musicandliterature.org/fea...
This War & War project contains four parts, actually, more than four, but you will see why I am unsure. The first chapter, let us say the first step in this whole project, was Isaiah Has Come. The text is a short story, a big monologue of the main hero, the main character of the novel, but the place of this short story is the birthplace of this character, and the time of the story is three years before the start of the novel. This is very important to understand. That’s why I am very happy the Spanish edition solved the main problem of the English, French, and German translations, namely, that this short story belongs not directly to the text of the novel, but is a little bit secluded. My Spanish publisher at Acantilado, Jaume Vallcorba, could solve it because he understood why it’s important to make a difference between this monologue and the novel. In this monologue, the main character talks about the human condition, how the world is gone, and what’s happened in the last few hundred years, and this happens at a bar in a bus station, it’s almost empty, he’s sitting at a bar next to a man who’s absolutely silent and who’s smoking and smoking, and next to him there’s Korin, and because Korin’s absolutely drunk, really absolutely drunk, he wants to tell this Isaiah figure why the world is gone, what’s happened with the human beings. And after this monologue he wants to commit suicide, but he’s so drunk that after the first shot in the left palm of his hand he collapses, and committing suicide would be absolutely ridiculous. This is the first step of the project.
Three years later, the novel starts with the same main character. This is an almost different person, because Korin, this person, is absolutely a peaceful person, has become absolutely a peaceful person, he is absolutely calm, he has opinions about his own life, his life is absolutely unnecessary, with this wonderful emotions and sensitivities, absolutely unnecessary, but he’s not angry against the world. He wants to say, “Only in my case, this life, my life, is absolutely unnecessary.” That’s why the best solution is to commit suicide and goodbye. But before committing suicide he found a manuscript in his workplace—he’s an archivist—and this manuscript is a kind of novel about four angels who escape, in world history, from one side of the world to the other side, they want to find peace, a peaceful place, but in the world there is no peaceful place, that’s why they try to escape, and when Korin, the main hero, understands it, he decides to find a way out for these four angels, these four fictional angels, and he goes from a very small town in Eastern Europe to the center of the world—these are his words—to New York, and he wants to find a form to care for this manuscript for eternity. Everything is absolutely impossible for him: the movie, the book, every material form is destructible. That’s why when he listens in a bar to a conversation that something like the internet exists, he has the idea that the virtual space is never destructible. That’s why he goes to New York, writes and sends the text into the internet and this is an eternal place for this manuscript and perhaps this is the solution for these four angels. But at the end of the novel Korin runs into chaos, and in this chaos he goes back to Europe because of a sculpture that is very important for him: an igloo by an Italian artist, Mario Merz. And he wants to spend one hour, actually, his last hour, in this igloo, in this sculpture, in a small town in Switzerland. And he reaches this small town and this small museum, Schauffhausen, a wonderful museum, a modern museum, and this museum has three or four pieces by Mario Merz, one of them this igloo. But Korin arrived about midnight, and of course the guard didn’t want to let him into the igloo. Korin finds a man who understands him and asks this man to make a small plaque with his last sentence, and he gives some money for this plaque and afterward he commits suicide. The last pages of War & War are the sentences and opinions of the man who understood Korin, saying, “Of course we will comply with this last wish, this last plaque, of this poor man, because he deserves it.” This is the last sentence of the book, but it is not the last sentence of the War & War project.
The last sentence is on this plaque. After the novel’s publication the third chapter of this project began, only in reality. One month later, after the book’s publication, we all stood in front of the museum’s entrance and every person, every character from the last chapter of this book stood there and everybody talked about his or her relationship to the main character, Korin. It didn’t matter that this was a fictional person, but these people who were there were and are real people. After that, we unveiled this plaque, and even today, actually forever, you can see in Schauffhausen, on the right side from the main entrance, this plaque with the last sentence of the book.
But after that, what happened? Mario Merz read this book in German, and that same day, in Schauffhausen, in a small town next to Zurich, Mario Merz runs to see the director of this museum—they were friends—and he cried, “Why didn’t you let Korin into my igloo? Why didn’t you let Korin into my igloo?” And the director said, “What?” And Mario, who was always a very animalistic artist, very rough, cried much stronger and louder: “Why didn’t you let this Korin, György Korin, in my igloo?” And slowly the director understood and he tried to explain: “Dear Mario, my friend, György Korin is not a real person, this is a fictional person.” “I didn’t ask you if György Korin is a real person, I asked you why you didn’t let him into my igloo?” “But dear Mario, listen to me, this is a novel, there is a writer, László Krasznahorkai, and György Korin exists only in his imagination, in his novel.” “I didn’t ask you”—but this time Mario’s voice got louder—“I didn’t ask you whether he’s fictional or not!” The director did not know what to do. The director’s wife came in and tried to calm Mario, but that was impossible. One hour, more than one hour, the same story. And after this absolutely crazy conversation the director and his wonderful wife found a solution: they promised Mario Merz they would all go to the birthplace of György Korin, to the small city where the novel starts and there, in that small city, Mario Merz would make a new igloo to commemorate György Korin. That was the only solution. A little more than two weeks later, I waited for these characters from my novel in the Budapest airport. I rented a big car and we went to this small town because Mario wanted to build a new igloo, his first igloo in an open space. But Mario was a very rough character, and he was very cruel with everybody, except with me. Nobody understood why. But everyone showed him around and asked him if this would be a good place and he would be absolutely uninterested. Someone else would show him another. “Perhaps this is good?” “Absolutely unbearable,” Mario would say. One and a half days we walked in this small city, and everything was absolutely terrible. Everybody was out of their wits. And we went back to Budapest, and nobody spoke with anybody, and my task was to transport Mario and his wife, Maritz Merz, who’s also an artist in the Arte Povera. Maritza Merz is also an interesting figure. Mario was six feet tall, a very big man with sculpture fingers, really rough, and Maritza Merz was five foot two inches, very fragile, with huge eyes, long hair, very long black hair, she’s a dear and the vice-president of the World Association of Witches But at the airport, we were alone—Mario Merz, Maritza Merz, and me—and Mario was suddenly a different person after everyone went away. Very calm, very friendly, peaceful, and he began to make sketches, drawings, of what kind of igloos he would make for Korin, and when the airplane was ready to depart, Mario said, “No, the next one.” Maritza had to change the flight because Mario was so enthusiastic and many of his sketches were on the table. Finally they flew back to Turin and four months later, very late in the night, at four o’clock in the morning, my telephone rings: “I am Krisel”—the director’s wife—“excuse me, I am terribly sorry, I know I woke you up, but this is very important.” “What has happened?” “I know that you loved Mario Merz very much and Mario, about three o’clock, has died.”
That was the fourth chapter of this War & War project, but in reality. And in November 2011, in a small town in southeast Hungary, there was a big poetry competition between different schools and different elementary school students. The name of this competition was Competition of the Lyrics of György Korin. Of course nobody from these schools had any idea who was György Korin. They all believe he was a real person, somebody from the city. And that’s the whole War & War story.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
War & War.
Sign In »
Quotes Paul Liked
“...and it really was extremely sudden, the way it struck him that, good heavens, he understood nothing, nothing at all about anything, for Christ's sake, nothing at all about the world, which was a most terrifying realization, he said, especially the way it came to him in all its banality, vulgarity, at a sickeningly ridiculous level, but this was the point, he said, the way that he, at age 44, had become aware of how utterly stupid he seemed to himself, how empty, how utterly blockheaded he had been in his understanding of the world these last 44 years, for, as he realized by the river, he had not only misunderstood it, but had not understood anything about anything, the worst part being that for 44 years he thought he had understood it, while in reality he had failed to do so; and this in fact was the worst thing of all that night of his birthday when he sat alone by the river, the worst because the fact that he now realized that he had not understood it did not mean that he did understand it now, because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some new form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world-puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself trying to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once, that they were in effect one and the same thing, which was the conclusion he had so far reached, and he had not yet given up on it, when, after a couple of days, he noticed that there was something the matter with his head.”
― War & War
― War & War
Reading Progress
Started Reading
May 6, 2011
–
Finished Reading
October 6, 2011
– Shelved
July 26, 2013
– Shelved as:
2011