Just glanced at the opening. A strange over-voluble voice here, which may mitigate as we go. We'll see. Most notable were a few clunky metaphors, whicJust glanced at the opening. A strange over-voluble voice here, which may mitigate as we go. We'll see. Most notable were a few clunky metaphors, which I can't imagine ever seeing in Gardner's fiction. Reads like lecture transcripts. But as I say, this is just my first glance....more
Superb. A note to page 99 by Robert Chandler, the translator, emphasizes the novelty of this text, which the author last revised in 1964.
"Grossman wroSuperb. A note to page 99 by Robert Chandler, the translator, emphasizes the novelty of this text, which the author last revised in 1964.
"Grossman wrote Everything Flows at a time when there was almost no reliable published information on such topics as the Gulag, Collectivization, and the Terror Famine [Holodomor]. Given his dependence [solely] on oral sources, it is remarkable how little he has got wrong."
So the book is a feat of reportage as much as it is one of fictional narrative. It's part harrowing novel and part shattering exposé. The argument about how Lenin had to preserve the old system of slavery in Russia in order to advance the Revolution is fascinating.
"It is, indeed, tragic that a man who so sincerely loved Tolstoy and Beethoven should have furthered a new enslavement of the peasants and workers, that he should have played a central role in reducing to the status of lackeys — State lackeys — such outstanding figures of Russian culture as the writer Aleksey Tolstoy, the physical chemist Nikolay Semyonov, and the composer Dmitry Shostakovich. ¶ The debate begun by the supporters of Russian freedom was finally resolved. Once again, Russian slavery proved invincible." (p. 182)
And later: "Stalin united within him all the most ruthless traits of slave Russia." (p. 191)
Be sure to read Life and Fate, too, Grossman's great Tolstoyan masterpiece....more
Mr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than hMr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than he can chew in a mere 400 pages. The scope of the book is vast and too much feels rushed. He might have narrowed his scope, but alas he wants it all. Because of the enormous narrative breadth, this reader never got the level of satisfaction in the area of character development that he would have liked; there are so many characters and after a while they all seem to blur. (2) There is a rushed, headlong quality to the book, probably this is intentional but I do not like it. (3) I find the levels of Catholic motivation to be too much; probably for a Latin American reader these levels are just right. For these and other reasons I did not finish the book and give it two stars.
The book breaks into three stories: (1) that of Urania Cabral, set in the present day, when she returns to a now democratized Dominican Republic years after Trujillo's assassination to confront (torment) her father who was a "senator" (read crony) under the Benefactor; (2) that of Trujillo himself in the weeks before his assassination; and (3) that of the group of men, mostly young men, who will kill him.
The story Urania tells to her incapacitated father, who is now in a wheelchair, is most unsettling. Urania is visiting from New York City where she now lives. She has done extensive reading on the subject, now knows much about those dark mysterious years of her youth. For example, how Trujillo, habitually cuckolded his ministers. Urania spares her mute father none of it. She is so cruel.
Dictator Trujillo is a megalomaniac on the model of Stalin. He terrorized his own people for 31 years. In October 1937 he ordered the slaughter of about 20,000 Haitians in what came to be known as the Parsley Massacre. Typically, the US backed him as a bulwark against Communism. (Now where have we seen that pattern before? Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea spring to mind, to mention a few.)
Trujillo's a compulsive neat freak who seeks through personal cleanliness and punctilio a semblance of the moral standing he can never command. We first come across him undergoing his daily toilette with great care. Trujillo's story begins in 1961 some 16 months after a Pastoral Letter has been sent by the Vatican to the Catholic community in the Dominican Republic. Since then the Church has, Trujillo feels, harassed him from the pulpit for his flagrant human rights violations and turned the people against him. The two Catholic leaders responsible for this he imagines feeding alive to sharks, as he has so many other opponents.
The assassins's storyline is set on May 30, 1961, as they await the Generalissimo's car on a stretch of road. There are 4 of them in the car and as they wait there are flashbacks outlining the motivations of each. This is tedious.
In some ways The Feast of the Goat is a counterpart novel to Graham Greene's The Comedians. That excellent book--set in Haiti on the other side of Hispaniola in the 1960s when the corrupt Duvaliers were in power--is a model of narrative pacing and economy.
Merged review:
Mr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than he can chew in a mere 400 pages. The scope of the book is vast and too much feels rushed. He might have narrowed his scope, but alas he wants it all. Because of the enormous narrative breadth, this reader never got the level of satisfaction in the area of character development that he would have liked; there are so many characters and after a while they all seem to blur. (2) There is a rushed, headlong quality to the book, probably this is intentional but I do not like it. (3) I find the levels of Catholic motivation to be too much; probably for a Latin American reader these levels are just right. For these and other reasons I did not finish the book and give it two stars.
The book breaks into three stories: (1) that of Urania Cabral, set in the present day, when she returns to a now democratized Dominican Republic years after Trujillo's assassination to confront (torment) her father who was a "senator" (read crony) under the Benefactor; (2) that of Trujillo himself in the weeks before his assassination; and (3) that of the group of men, mostly young men, who will kill him.
The story Urania tells to her incapacitated father, who is now in a wheelchair, is most unsettling. Urania is visiting from New York City where she now lives. She has done extensive reading on the subject, now knows much about those dark mysterious years of her youth. For example, how Trujillo, habitually cuckolded his ministers. Urania spares her mute father none of it. She is so cruel.
Dictator Trujillo is a megalomaniac on the model of Stalin. He terrorized his own people for 31 years. In October 1937 he ordered the slaughter of about 20,000 Haitians in what came to be known as the Parsley Massacre. Typically, the US backed him as a bulwark against Communism. (Now where have we seen that pattern before? Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea spring to mind, to mention a few.)
Trujillo's a compulsive neat freak who seeks through personal cleanliness and punctilio a semblance of the moral standing he can never command. We first come across him undergoing his daily toilette with great care. Trujillo's story begins in 1961 some 16 months after a Pastoral Letter has been sent by the Vatican to the Catholic community in the Dominican Republic. Since then the Church has, Trujillo feels, harassed him from the pulpit for his flagrant human rights violations and turned the people against him. The two Catholic leaders responsible for this he imagines feeding alive to sharks, as he has so many other opponents.
The assassins's storyline is set on May 30, 1961, as they await the Generalissimo's car on a stretch of road. There are 4 of them in the car and as they wait there are flashbacks outlining the motivations of each. This is tedious.
In some ways The Feast of the Goat is a counterpart novel to Graham Greene's The Comedians. That excellent book--set in Haiti on the other side of Hispaniola in the 1960s when the corrupt Duvaliers were in power--is a model of narrative pacing and economy....more
A tale of enormous narrative power about military exploits and love. It's an absolute heartbreaker. The narrator is Persian eunuch and great beauty, BA tale of enormous narrative power about military exploits and love. It's an absolute heartbreaker. The narrator is Persian eunuch and great beauty, Bagoas, who acts as Alexander's valet, adviser and lover. In this novel Alexander is an optimist and a gentleman. He sees his wars as making the world a better place. He is a young man whom we see ever so gradually worn down by duty, grief and injury. Somewhere it is said that he lived multiple lives in the span a normal man would have lived only one. In the end, the intensity with which he lives is impossible, unsustainable, reckless — even for someone held to be part divine. The recurring motif here is Homer's Achilles, half man and half god. I encourage you, prospective reader, not to think of the book as mere historical fiction. It transcends genre; it's literary fiction of considerable merit. It's tonally masterful and utterly gripping. I wish I could say how it's done. Staggering....more
The feuilletons are interesting. Most were written during Walser's late twenties and early thirties in Berlin. If they pale they do so because of a reThe feuilletons are interesting. Most were written during Walser's late twenties and early thirties in Berlin. If they pale they do so because of a relentless Berlin boosterism. In fairness, one must say that this is what Berlin's newspapers editors buying and the always impecunious Walser found himself able to supply. Even "The Little Berliner" suffers from this obsession, but that story, written in the voice of a twelve-year-old girl, is more assured and tonally solid and seems to transcend the feuilleton formula. The story is so good in fact that it put me in mind of Walser's four fine novels, and his wonderful Selected Stories, the volume introduced by Susan Sontag. Otherwise the book is a bit of historical and biographical piece work. Essential for the Walser completist, but not the place to start reading him....more
I. B. Singer's first novel. It was first serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward in the late 1940s. This English translation appeared in 1950. Singer'sI. B. Singer's first novel. It was first serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward in the late 1940s. This English translation appeared in 1950. Singer's style is reminiscent of Tolstoy, but not in slavish imitation. He's unique.
Heading an enormous cast is the old man Meshulam Moskat. Richer than Croesus and in his 80s, he has just returned from taking the waters at Carlsbad with a 3rd wife. It's some years before World War 1. Moskat has put his children in charge of collecting his rents — and he hates them for being dependent upon him. He is a horrible, bitter, egomaniacal old fuck. And yet he's the head of this huge clan who gather around him thinking about their inheritance. But the joke is on them because he dies without a will. The greedy scramble afterward is not pretty.
A theme in The Family Moskat is the split between religious (Hassidim) and secular (assimilated) Jews. Asa Heshel, grandson of a prominent rural rabbi, reads Spinoza and comes to Warsaw for further study. A daughter being pressured into an arranged marriage, Hadassah, runs away from the family home with Heshel. Their flight to Switzerland fails. Hadassah is returned to her scandalized family by the police after several days in prison. Heschel, stuck in Switzerland, marries the wrong woman.
An extraordinarily strong sense of community arises from persecution. When Marilynn Robinson writes about Christian folks, or when Naguib Mahfouz writes his Muslim characters, there is no similar sense of danger because they are writing about largely unmixed societies.
One of my favorite things about Singer's novels is his deep knowledge about the rituals and traditions of Judaism. Not surprising, I suppose, when you learn he came from a family of rabbis. You get both the cultural richness and the petty vindictiveness and everything between. Here we are in a Polish prayerhouse before World War I:
"They came to the antechamber, stopping to wash their hands at the copper urn, and went into the prayerhouse. A candle flickered in the Menorah. The pillars that enclosed the reader's stand threw elongated shadows. The shelves around the walls were packed with books. Some of the students were still bent over the tables, reading in the dim light. Worshippers paced back and forth, softly chanting. A youth swayed fervently in a corner. Near the Ark was a framed inscription in red: 'God is always before me.' On the cornice of the Ark two carved gilded lions held up the Tablets of the Law. There was a heavy odor that seemed to Asa Heshel to be compounded of candle wax, dust, fast days, and eternity. He stood silent." (p. 237)
I love it when the characters are walking around pre-war Warsaw, and the reader gets all this description of a city that for the most part no longer exists: the neighborhoods, streets, buildings, public parks and street life. The following is from the scene in which Hadassah runs away from her family and her arranged marriage to be with her true love, Asa Heshel.
"The evening was coming on when they left the coffee house. They passed the prison at the corner of Nalevki and Dluga and went along Rymarska Street and the Platz Bankovy. On the Iron Gate Square the street lamps were already burning. A cold wind came from the direction of the Saxon Gardens. Tramcars rolled along. Crowds of people thronged the market stalls. Hadassah held Asa Heshel's arm tightly as though afraid she might lose him. Farther along, at the bazaars, stall-keepers presided over mounds of butter, huge Swiss cheeses, bundles of mushrooms, troughs of oysters and fish. The torchlights were already ablaze. They passed a slaughterhouse. Floodlights blazed in the building. Porters with hoses were swishing water on the stone floor. Slaughterers stood near blood-filled granite vats, slitting the necks of ducks, geese, and hens. Fowl cackled deafeningly. The wings of a rooster, its throat just slit, fluttered violently. Hadassah pulled at Asa Heshel's sleeve, her face deathly white. A little farther on, in the fish market, stood tubs, barrels, and troughs. In the stale-smelling water, carp, pike, and tench swam about. Beggars sang in quavering voices, cripples stretched out stumps of arms. Away from the glare of the lights inside, the darkness of the court was intensified." (p. 158)
I know of no other novel that shows us so plainly what we have lost. The rabbis and elders fear the Jewish way of life will soon be destroyed. They are correct, but their downfall will not be effected by the Most High as a punishment for secularization, rather it will be carried out by Nazis about to enter the scene.
The characters are so vibrantly realized. There are scenes of great religiosity in which the core of the characters never wanes. One Sabbath scene is pure ecstatic joy. This scene marks the return of Asa Heshel to Warsaw after five years of war. He was in the Czar's army and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution. Asa travels from house to house and is greeted with a Sabbath celebration in each. I wish I could better describe the sheer scope of the book, both its big-heartedness and its moments of gravity, but that's beyond me. That said, this excellent novel is not Singer's best. It has a tendency toward melodrama, sometimes very amusing melodrama — Singer had a gift for humor — but grave moments of doubt and personal danger too.
Rhys uses a technique I've never seen used in quite this way. Where the reader expects dialogue, Rhys will instead pull away to an interlocutor's thouRhys uses a technique I've never seen used in quite this way. Where the reader expects dialogue, Rhys will instead pull away to an interlocutor's thoughts of the scene unfolding, and toggle, if you will, between thought and speech. The device allows Rhys to slow down the action thereby enriching it. Here's a quote from page 108 in which Julia — no longer young and turned to drink — goes back to an old lover asking for money.
Then, when the man had brought the whisky and retired, he [the old lover] said: 'There's your whisky. Go on, drink it up?
For the first time she looked straight into his eyes. She said: 'My dear, I wouldn't harrow you for the world. "No harrowing" is my motto.'
She drank the whisky. Gaiety spread through her. Why care a damn?
She said: 'Look here, why talk about harrowing? Harrowing doesn't come into it. I've had good times - lots of good times.'
She thought: 'I had a shot at the life I wanted. And I failed... All right! I might have succeeded, and if I had people would have licked my boots for me. There wouldn't have been any of this cold-shouldering. Don't tell me; leave me alone. If I hate, I've a right to hate. And if I think people are swine, let me think it....'
She said: 'Anyhow, I don't know how I could have done differently. I wish I'd been cleverer about it, that's all. Do you think I could have done differently?'
He looked away from her, and said: 'Don't ask me. I'm not the person to ask that sort of thing, am I? I don't know. Probably you couldn't. You know, Julietta, the war taught me a lot?'
'Did it?' she said, surprised. 'Did it though?'
'Yes. Before the war I'd always thought that I rather despised people who didn't get on?'
'Despised,' thought Julia. "Why despised?'
'I despised a man who didn't get on. I didn't believe much in bad luck. But after the war I felt differently. I've got a lot of mad friends now. I call them my mad friends'
—
I'm not sure this truncated passage expresses how well the author uses this technique throughout. But its effect is startling, moving....more
Unfortunately, this short novel did not find an appreciator in me. But John Updike loved it. See his essay collection Due Considerations.Unfortunately, this short novel did not find an appreciator in me. But John Updike loved it. See his essay collection Due Considerations....more
Céline hates everyone. Everyone gets it in the neck in his books. And he's irresistibly readable. This is the first volume of his postwar trilogy — thCéline hates everyone. Everyone gets it in the neck in his books. And he's irresistibly readable. This is the first volume of his postwar trilogy — the second book is North and the third, Rigadoon — which recounts his flight from Montmarte to Germany during World War 2 and back.
Céline says he fled only because he was vilified by the Paris press and had to go somewhere to escape the murderous mob. That somewhere was Germany. In Germany he mostly dodged the Allied Flying Fortresses which seemed perpetually roaring just above the treetops. His position is that he is not a collaborator so much is someone simply running for his life. It doesn't quite fly. He was after all a writer of virulent antisemitic screeds.
Now here he is after the war, after his vindication by a French military tribunal — on what basis, Lord knows —living in Meudon (Paris), but very much despised and impoverished, writing these three last novels which he only does for to survive. The novels are highly autobiographical, and they take aim at almost everyone, giving it to them in the neck. These personal attacks on others are combined with Cèline's lament that his books no longer sell. Very amusing.
Céline can be entertainingly vulgar, but he's also very smart and his analyses ruthlessly penetrating. A lot, too, is bitter recrimination. It occurs to me again, for I've mentioned this in my notes, I believe, for North, that Céline's hypervigilance is a form of mental instability. He was said to be trepanned during World War I for service for which he was later decorated. This constant wariness must have been stressful and exhausting.
After seeing a patient on the former Quai Faidherbe, he has a phantasmagorical fit. He sees phantoms debarking from a barge in the nearby Seine which is said to be piloted by Charon. This sequence is long and fascinating and completely without parallel in the others books of his I have read. It turns out to be an attack from an old malaria infection, but it’s harrowing while it's underway and a bit spooky.
After this prelude we get to Céline's recollection of Schloss Sigmaringen — a 12th century Hohenzollern castle. Actually he stayed with his wife at the nearby Lower Hotel. But he was almost daily in the castle where the collaborationist French government (Petain, Naval, et al.) were holed up after being run out of Vichy. Especially amusing is his description of the Hohenzollern portraits:
"Those mugs . . . whole processions of them . . . fascinating . . . between patients, between doors, I went to see them . . . especially the ones of the twelfth, thirteenth century ... wait till you see them! all monsters! really? . . . that's easily said . . . but when you take a good look at them and think it over . . . more like devils . . . cloven hoofed! . . . with lances! . . . horns . . . founders of dynasties! that family resemblancel demons! . . . it was when they stopped being devils that their family collapsed! (p. 134)
Here's another amusing bit:
"Every time I leave the Lowen [hotel] to see this one [patient] . . . or that one . . . it never fails . . . you run into some lunatic that stops you short . . . every doorway . . . every street corner . . . wants to know what you think . . . how things are going . . . and not some other time! right away and frankly! the whole truth! a slap on the back . . . enough to throw your shoulder out of joint! a handshake that makes you reel and stagger! . . . 'Ah, why, there's our dear doctor!' my, what a pleasant surprise! . . . what rejoicing! . . . ah, but watch your step . . . supercareful! . . . extra caution! this is the time for spontaneous, dynamic, optimistic answers! absolute conviction! the man who's asking you your opinion isn't any ordinary rank-and-file stool-pigeon! don't stutter! don't mince! give him the works! . . . 'The Germans are winning, victory is in the bag . . . the New Europe is here to stayl . . . the secret army has destroyed everything in London . . . absolutely kaputt . . . Von Paulus is in Moscow but they won't announce it until the winter's over! . . . Rommel is in Cairo! . . . it will all be announced at the same time! the Americans are suing for peace . . . we . . . you and I on the sidewalk . . . are practically home again! parading on the Champs-Elysées! . . . only a question of trains, transportation! . . . not enough trains! . . . matter of weeks return trip via Rethondes and Saint-Denis!'" (p. 226)...more
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