I'm not too sure what I expected after reading "If on a winter's night a traveller...", but it certainly wasn't this.
One thing I liked about that one was the puzzle-like way it was written in, kind of like "The Solitaire Mystery", together with the smoked-up reflections on what it is to read, write, and simultaneously being part of the made-up narrative that is life. "Invisible Cities" was definitely much more loose, and more of an expressionistic way of talking about a city, or cities. Or the world. Or everything, as according to Calvino, it seems, everything relevant to human history can be learned by remembering, looking at, or imagining a city.
As usual, with a book without much of a plot, it took me a while to ease myself into it, but this one I ended up enjoying, and as the interlude-like conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan began to take shape - or rather, to more explicitly lose it in clear directions - things began to click together.
To begin with, there was the expanding conversation about language. It wasn't long before I realized that these two personas might not have actually been talking at all. Not just because they openly say something along the lines of "this moment might not be real", but because they bring up the illusion of communication all the time. While Marco Polo learns new languages through his (imagined?) travels, presumably being able to make himself more and more clear, I kept wondering more and more whether these cities were actually the ones he imagined. Suddenly, this comes to mind, especially the last verse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11uI-uy33uU
So it's not so much about what is told, but about the whole impression of the book:
- Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: "Why do you speak to me of stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
- Polo answers: "Without stones, there is no arch."
Pretty straightforward wisdom at first, if you ask me: no man is an island, we're all connected, of course. But I think they're not just talking about "the arch of human history/society", they're also talking about smaller things, like telling a story; the way you react to a certain comment; why your orange juice tastes funny right after brushing your teeth, which leaves a sense of disappointment in your mouth that lingers throughout your morning and keeps you from fully enjoying the cup of coffee you will have between your morning lectures, making you fall asleep halfway through the second one and thus feeling extremely embarrassed at your lecturer, because she's also your dissertation supervisor and oh gosh, you've already asked her to write you a recommendation letter for a postgraduate programme at Oxford University and... Well...
"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear." Which I think applies on two levels: we read others' stories filling them with our own experiences or expectations; at the same time we arrange our own histories in the order that seems to suit us best - the ear, here, being whatever is in our best interest, how we want to see ourselves.
A couple of the cities seemed riven with Christian morality. The description of one of them struck me as strongly sexist (the "inhabitants" would cyclically take up different "wives"). Another few seemed plagued with a straightforward consumerist ethos. Some others were interestingly mystical and made me think that Borges' library was actually hidden in there. One of them reminded me particularly of Caracas - one of the most grim ones. But then again, maybe I've made this particular impression of Caracas feel like all of Caracas to me, as an excuse for me to be disgusted by it. Maybe that's just me being smug and justifying the desires that draw me in other directions.
But as the last passage reminds me way too much of this:
http://italian.about.com/library/anthology/dante/blinferno003.htm
I can't help but taking the very closing line as sound advice I shall carry close to heart.
onsdag 1. januar 2014
tirsdag 31. desember 2013
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, 15.-28.12 (Sunniva)
Half of this was written as notes at home the night before I left for England, and right now I am writing it into text directly on Internet Explorer on Karla's parents' laptop.
I was definitely not entirely awake and aware when I started reading the book, since I can't remember much of the first cities. As mentioned before, I find it difficult to read short stories and poems, because they require a completely different reading pattern to my usual and preferred one. I prefer sitting down with a book and reading for a long time, and I just can't do that with shorter texts without forgetting some of them and mixing them up with one another.
That said, I really enjoyed this book once I got into it. I spent almost two weeks reading it, and only really read it at breakfast and before bedtime, so the reading pattern fit more with reading about one or two cities, which was perfect.
Here are some of my thoughts from looking through the book again once I'd finished it:
Cities and Signs were the most interesting ones to me: the importance of signs, Cities and Signs 4 with the palace being the prison and so on. 5 that there is a back to every pretty façade. The idea is repeated in several other cities, especially Cities and Eyes 5.
Trading Cities 3 where they swap their living, houses and surroundings every now and then to keep
happy seemed like a perfect but fantastical solution to the problem that pretty much every person in the world has at one time or another.
Cities and the dead frighten me. They're intriguing, but also disturbing.
Cities and the sky 2: Different cities but the same - I have no idea what this note means as I do not have the book with me.
Cities and memory, changing but having the same name. This goes into the whole theme of the book - which is not cities, to me, not even Venice, which I see it is to some, but society. The book, and specific cities, can be applied to so much, so many places and settings, that it's difficult to write about it.
Continuous cities 1: Leonia, where they buy new things every day "So you begin to wonder if
Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not,
instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity." p. 114
Leonia, to me, is Norway. Or the society we've become, which wants new things all the time, and half the reason is that we feel grand and rich and happy throwing away old things.
2: That all cities are becoming the same.
Sometimes there's an underground and skyscrapers, and so we are pointed to the meta fiction of it
all – same with Marco Polo and Kublai Khan debating their own existence.
I loved this idea in Trading cities 1: The trading of memories after one keyword.
"at each word that one man says – such as "wolf", "sister", "hidden treasure", "battle", "scabies", "lovers" – the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures, scabies, lovers, battles. And you know that in the long journey ahead of you, when to keep awake against the camel's swaying or the junk's rocking, you start summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles." p.36-37
Continuous Cities 5:
You can tell that I'm a) busy celebrating New Years with friends I haven't seen in 18 months and b) not used to writing about short stories. I just put down all my thoughts about the different cities at home when I was supposed to be packing, late at night, the day before I flew over to England. And now the rest of the group is having pizza and I am honestly going to run off and join them and we can talk more about the book in comments and real life.
Short summary: I liked it. I need another book to read on the side in case I want to sit down with it for a long while, but I could easily do that. I do want to read his other books. And I am happy that this project is soon over, because it has been a little exhausting.
This edition: Published by Vintage, The Random House Group Limited, 1997
I was definitely not entirely awake and aware when I started reading the book, since I can't remember much of the first cities. As mentioned before, I find it difficult to read short stories and poems, because they require a completely different reading pattern to my usual and preferred one. I prefer sitting down with a book and reading for a long time, and I just can't do that with shorter texts without forgetting some of them and mixing them up with one another.
That said, I really enjoyed this book once I got into it. I spent almost two weeks reading it, and only really read it at breakfast and before bedtime, so the reading pattern fit more with reading about one or two cities, which was perfect.
Here are some of my thoughts from looking through the book again once I'd finished it:
Cities and Signs were the most interesting ones to me: the importance of signs, Cities and Signs 4 with the palace being the prison and so on. 5 that there is a back to every pretty façade. The idea is repeated in several other cities, especially Cities and Eyes 5.
Trading Cities 3 where they swap their living, houses and surroundings every now and then to keep
happy seemed like a perfect but fantastical solution to the problem that pretty much every person in the world has at one time or another.
Cities and the dead frighten me. They're intriguing, but also disturbing.
Cities and the sky 2: Different cities but the same - I have no idea what this note means as I do not have the book with me.
Cities and memory, changing but having the same name. This goes into the whole theme of the book - which is not cities, to me, not even Venice, which I see it is to some, but society. The book, and specific cities, can be applied to so much, so many places and settings, that it's difficult to write about it.
Continuous cities 1: Leonia, where they buy new things every day "So you begin to wonder if
Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not,
instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity." p. 114
Leonia, to me, is Norway. Or the society we've become, which wants new things all the time, and half the reason is that we feel grand and rich and happy throwing away old things.
2: That all cities are becoming the same.
Sometimes there's an underground and skyscrapers, and so we are pointed to the meta fiction of it
all – same with Marco Polo and Kublai Khan debating their own existence.
I loved this idea in Trading cities 1: The trading of memories after one keyword.
"at each word that one man says – such as "wolf", "sister", "hidden treasure", "battle", "scabies", "lovers" – the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures, scabies, lovers, battles. And you know that in the long journey ahead of you, when to keep awake against the camel's swaying or the junk's rocking, you start summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles." p.36-37
Continuous Cities 5:
Penthesilea the city of suburbs reminds me of Managua - I'm too literal-minded but still it does. The neverendign suburbs, the non-existing city centre...
Berenice (Hidden Cities 5) is politics in my mind, even the new ones that take over are never that good even if they started with "just" thoughts.
You can tell that I'm a) busy celebrating New Years with friends I haven't seen in 18 months and b) not used to writing about short stories. I just put down all my thoughts about the different cities at home when I was supposed to be packing, late at night, the day before I flew over to England. And now the rest of the group is having pizza and I am honestly going to run off and join them and we can talk more about the book in comments and real life.
Short summary: I liked it. I need another book to read on the side in case I want to sit down with it for a long while, but I could easily do that. I do want to read his other books. And I am happy that this project is soon over, because it has been a little exhausting.
This edition: Published by Vintage, The Random House Group Limited, 1997
mandag 9. desember 2013
"Sommerboken" - Tove Jansson (29 Nov - 8 Dec)
This book fit very neatly into my life these days for a few different reasons. To begin with, university-related responsibilities finally got serious - about time, you'd expect that after three years I would be tired already, but honestly I feel that in London I usually have more free time than I had in high school back in Venezuela. Until now, that is. So even though it is pretty short, and actually much easier to read than I expected, I read it very intermittently. Because of this, the lack of a straight-up plot that I've missed in some of the previous books of this list, actually played in my favour: I would usually be content having read a chapter or two at a time.
Also, I've recently had to put quite a bit of time into planning "The Future" and whatever will become of it after this year in London. Some plans have already failed, others have come up, new ideas have arisen - all in all, it's a very tolling process. Fortunately classes finish this week, and with that comes a brief break. But these past few weeks, through "Sommerboken", I've had brief incursions into a little Baltic idyll that have been nearly as refreshing.
Well there, that's where I've been for the past few weeks. Now on with the book...
I can't remember if I read this in the foreword or elsewhere, but even though Sophia and her grandmother were born decades apart, they seem to take turns in being the driving force of their relationship. Sometimes it was Sophia's naivety that made her be so determined, and it was heaps of fun to be led by the hand by an - 8-year old? Who also happens to be a bit more obscure than your average 8-year old, I think. Not that I know many 8-year old at the moment, but this girl... This girl is up to something:
"You know what, sometimes I think it's deadly boring when everything is alright."
(I actually spent a lot of time reading this book with a dictionary beside me), which immediately reminded me of that old Garbage song, "I'm only happy when it rains".
And sure enough, Sophia ends up having some kind of fascination with storms which I found quite charming, but I can't exactly say why. I suppose that growing up, or at least spending a big part of your childhood in these windy northern archipelagos gives you fixations that a sprawling city cannot.
I also quite liked the romantic idealist in Sophia:
"There's something weird about love," said Sophia. "The more you love another, the less the other likes you."
"That's quite true," noted her grandmother. "And what do you do then?"
"You keep loving," said Sophia menacingly. "You keep loving all the more badly."
to the point that I got personally threatened when her grandmother was a bit too cynical when talking about religion, and not that I'm a religion person myself, but Sophia just kind of wants to believe in something, whatever it is, and her grandmother keeps being the nagging voice of reason and old-age behind her. The grandmother's really smart about it though: Sophia will only push her grandmother as far as her limited language allows. Once the grandmother finds the gap in Sophia's logic (like saying, "yes but I prayed before you did, so clearly it was God's answering to me"), Sophia becomes just as willing to believe her as she had been to persuade her just a minute before.
Rhetoric and beliefs aside, I appreciated the heaps of down-to-earth popular wisdom:
"Dreams require a good amount of petrol."
(There was another bit which I tried to translate but gave up after a while. Something about wanting kittens in June and a drunken cat by the first of September, and about needing something to desire in between, which also reminds me of "Singing softly to me", by The Kings of Convenience.)
As I write this I realize that this is probably the main message I'm taking from this book (this time around): these in-between periods of time - like "the summer", or at least the Western conception of "the summer" and "holidays" that we live with - are really important in more than a few ways. We need to fill them up with something meaningful, even if it has little to do with the rest of our years. I don't really know what Sophia's father was working on the whole summer on his table, and I don't know where Sophia goes to school or if the mother has ever been a part of this family, but all of these temporary adventures are essential. Even if you stop believing them afterwards, this hands-on escapism is wonderful and necessary.
Also, I've recently had to put quite a bit of time into planning "The Future" and whatever will become of it after this year in London. Some plans have already failed, others have come up, new ideas have arisen - all in all, it's a very tolling process. Fortunately classes finish this week, and with that comes a brief break. But these past few weeks, through "Sommerboken", I've had brief incursions into a little Baltic idyll that have been nearly as refreshing.
Well there, that's where I've been for the past few weeks. Now on with the book...
I can't remember if I read this in the foreword or elsewhere, but even though Sophia and her grandmother were born decades apart, they seem to take turns in being the driving force of their relationship. Sometimes it was Sophia's naivety that made her be so determined, and it was heaps of fun to be led by the hand by an - 8-year old? Who also happens to be a bit more obscure than your average 8-year old, I think. Not that I know many 8-year old at the moment, but this girl... This girl is up to something:
"You know what, sometimes I think it's deadly boring when everything is alright."
(I actually spent a lot of time reading this book with a dictionary beside me), which immediately reminded me of that old Garbage song, "I'm only happy when it rains".
And sure enough, Sophia ends up having some kind of fascination with storms which I found quite charming, but I can't exactly say why. I suppose that growing up, or at least spending a big part of your childhood in these windy northern archipelagos gives you fixations that a sprawling city cannot.
I also quite liked the romantic idealist in Sophia:
"There's something weird about love," said Sophia. "The more you love another, the less the other likes you."
"That's quite true," noted her grandmother. "And what do you do then?"
"You keep loving," said Sophia menacingly. "You keep loving all the more badly."
to the point that I got personally threatened when her grandmother was a bit too cynical when talking about religion, and not that I'm a religion person myself, but Sophia just kind of wants to believe in something, whatever it is, and her grandmother keeps being the nagging voice of reason and old-age behind her. The grandmother's really smart about it though: Sophia will only push her grandmother as far as her limited language allows. Once the grandmother finds the gap in Sophia's logic (like saying, "yes but I prayed before you did, so clearly it was God's answering to me"), Sophia becomes just as willing to believe her as she had been to persuade her just a minute before.
Rhetoric and beliefs aside, I appreciated the heaps of down-to-earth popular wisdom:
"Dreams require a good amount of petrol."
(There was another bit which I tried to translate but gave up after a while. Something about wanting kittens in June and a drunken cat by the first of September, and about needing something to desire in between, which also reminds me of "Singing softly to me", by The Kings of Convenience.)
As I write this I realize that this is probably the main message I'm taking from this book (this time around): these in-between periods of time - like "the summer", or at least the Western conception of "the summer" and "holidays" that we live with - are really important in more than a few ways. We need to fill them up with something meaningful, even if it has little to do with the rest of our years. I don't really know what Sophia's father was working on the whole summer on his table, and I don't know where Sophia goes to school or if the mother has ever been a part of this family, but all of these temporary adventures are essential. Even if you stop believing them afterwards, this hands-on escapism is wonderful and necessary.
Sommerboken by Tove Jansson, tried to start both 30. November and 3. December, read in its entirety 7. December (apart from the introduction by Tove Nilsen because it seemed spoilery and I forgot about it until now) (Sunniva)
As "randomly"
as we selected these books, we still selected authors we knew, or at
least one of us knew, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that all of
the books (7 so far, out of 9) have been enjoyable, even if they have
all also had their problems.
This
book I really like as well. It has no moral problems as far as I can
tell (trespassing doesn't really
count),
and the parts that I don't outright enjoy, I still enjoy for their
quirkiness and something which I've chosen to think of as a Northern
Scandinavian something.
Yes, I am clearly a master of words.
After looking through many book shops and second hand shops for this
book, I finally found it in a commercial book shop in Oslo last
weekend, when I was there for the Global Dignity evaluation meeting,
and also to meet friends – some of the girls I went to Nicaragua
with, and my friend Maja whom I both studied and lived with in
Falmouth. I had a brilliant but tiring time, since I've been moving
house, finishing the layout of our Nicaragua photography book,
working almost full time in day care centres, and then this Oslo-trip
came in the middle of my post-move-and-no-sleep-week-developed-cold.
I finally realised I would be better off reading the book on my trip
to Harstad this weekend, when I was spending six hours return on a
boat on Saturday... And I read it in about two hours, even reading
slowly.
The way she writes... This might be imagination, but I do think it
represents a Scandinavian way of thinking, a Northern way of
thinking, which she is aware of, with her comments on the people
coming from town, and the different ways of the island dwellers.
Sophia's grandmother must be the one I identify with the most. Partly
in the ideas of child rearing – which again I see reflected in the
day care centres where I work – and again I (maybe vainly) think of
as Nordic – but also in being very independent and in need of time
away from the people she has around her, in being stubborn and doing
stuff because she has decided that it should be done or she wants to
do it, and starting to prepare for leaving the island way before
time, preparing for all eventualities... I could go on for a while,
it seems.
I wonder what the dad's work is. Writing? Or sculpting? I believe I
read that Jansson's parents were artists.
As I finished this review, I quickly read the introduction, to see if
I'd missed something. The only thing was that Tove Nilsen wants to
see it as a novel, talking only of one summer. I disagree, or if it
is, then the chapters are in a jumbled order, because we move from
midsummer to late summer (with darkness) and back to the flowers
blooming in May. An impression of different years also gave itself to
me, for unknown reasons. Maybe Sophia gets older? I can't be sure.
The only thing I can say with certainty is that I will have to read
this many times, and that I hope to discover new things again and
again.
Now, my last comment will be that I wrote all this on my laptop
without the letter 'e'. Please give me some kind of prize?
fredag 15. november 2013
"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" - Milan Kundera (8-13 Nov)
Between 2008 and 2009, a much younger Juan had begun to wander into the fields of post-modern and erotic literature. It was only convenient that two kinds of changes were taking place in his life, which contributed to his liking "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" so much: first of all, he was becoming a young adept at juggling different kinds of affections with women, and secondly, he had recently left the place where he was born, never to settle there again. So this two-fold sympathy with Milan Kundera was a fertile foundation for his pretentious blend of intellect and spirituality, which, much to his disappointment, brought him some complications with women throughout the following couple of years.
Some years later he came across "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". In reading it, he re-discovered some less likeable traits in these problematic men, which he had ignored some years back with a youthful gaiety. At the same time - because it seems like Kundera does have a habit of intertwining the historical with the romantic - he was able to trace many common threads between the political reality of these people and his own. Alas! He has lived first hand the struggle of blotching out bits and pieces of the past to shape his new self. But while Kundera rightly point out that this is a problem when applied to a nation, why should it be so when one talks about oneself?
It was a tough book. On the one hand, Kundera's scattered and impressionistic style has always been a challenge for our Juan - which doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy it - as his recent experiences with Murakami have demonstrated. Juan likes consistent plots (no matter the size, and regardless of whether they are winding or not) and when the author himself becomes self-aware and throws in bits and pieces of advice ('[this] is a novel about Tamina, and whenever Tamina goes off-stage, it is a novel for Tamina'), he feels tricked. Kind of like when somebody says "don't think about a white elephant". On the other hand, because there are so many precise questions he can relate to, it becomes harder to keep track of all the common threads. So this time Juan has attempted to collect some of the most interesting ones he came across, and just write them down with some of his own to try and make some more sense out of them:
'"I don't really get what it means, that they all turn into rhinoceroses," said Gabrielle.
"You have to see it as a symbol," Michelle explained.
"That's right," said Gabrielle. "Literature is made up of signs"'
Yes, yes, this is a good start.
He also finds a good laugh when he reads about symbols written from an Eastern European perspective, that easily apply to his Latin-American upbringing:
"Things deprived suddenly of their supposed meaning, of the place assigned to them in the so-called order of things (a Moscow-trained Marxist believing in horoscopes), make us laugh". Or adherents to a radical 21st Century socialism who rush into a home-appliances store to loot flat-screen tellies larger than their bookshelves. http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/actualidad/economia/fotos-y-video---saqueos-y-destrozos-en-daka-valenc.aspx
"You know," said Banaka, "the novel is the fruit of a human illusion. The illusion of the power to understand others. But what do we know of one another?"
"Nothing," said Bibi.
"That's true," said Joujou.
"All anyone can do," said Banaka, "is give a report on oneself. Anything else is an abuse of power. Anything else is a lie."
This surprised Juan at once, as it echoed one of the first thoughts introduced by Murakami, when Toru Okada wonders how much he actually knows Kumiko. Only it seemed to be a problem for the Okada, not so much for the merry and the not-so-merry folk in Kundera's universe. But what do we do if not tell our own stories? Isn't every personal account a novel of sorts? I think we structure our stories in a way that makes sense to us, and it might be misleading, but it's what we've got, and I'd much rather believe that we can actually do so intending to cross personal boundaries, as opposed to the so-called 'graphomaniacs'. It seems to Juan that Kundera has more than just a handful of criticisms directed to particular authors or people he knows, and since speaking from outside of his novels is not Kundera's cup of tea, he has to give up on that question.
In other respects, Juan struggles with (one of) Kundera's definitions of love: "(...) because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love." Juan thinks he knows some more suitable definitions (though not necessarily more lofty or romantic), but because he's also an aspiring writer, he's saving those for later. Mind you, they are of coursed based solely on his experiences of love, and the ones he has witnessed around him.
Then, as he realizes his ramblings have been drawn out too long, Juan tries to tie some loose ends in the shoelaces of Kundera's helplessly childish and spoiled male characters: many of the men in this book remind him of someone, as if they were shadows or sketches of somebody else he has known for a while, but who could this be... Ah, yes! Of course! It is Tomas, the slightly more complex (but hopeful) womaniser of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Could it not be? The difference being that Tomas actually wanders back and forth in this cycle of 'lightness' and 'weight'. It doesn't mean that he has overcome his oppressive desires, but Tereza does seem to keep him true to himself, in her innocence and gentleness.
In the dreamlike island of the children where Tamina finds herself at a loss, she feels a hollowness in her stomach. "That hollowness in her stomach is exactly that unbearable absence of weight. And just as an extreme can at any moment turn into its opposite, so lightness brought to its maximum becomes the terrifying weight of lightness, and Tamina knows she cannot bear it for another moment. She turns around and starts to run." Much like Tereza fears Tomas.
"'When a woman says "No," she really means "Yes."' That male aphorism has always outraged me. It's as stupid as all human history."
"But that history is inside us, and we can't escape it," replied Jan. "A woman fleeing and defending herself. A woman giving herself, a man taking. A woman veiling herself, a man tearing off her clothes. These are age-old images we carry within us!"
"Age-old and idiotic! As idiotic as the holy images! And what if women are starting to be fed up with having to behave according to that patter? What if that eternal repetition nauseates them? What if they want to invent other images and another game?"
"Yes, they're stupid images stupidly repeated. You're entirely right. But what if our desire for the female body depends on precisely those stupid images and on them alone? If those stupid images were to be destroyed in us, would men still be able to make love to women?"
Edwige broke into laughter: "I don't think you need to worry"
Silly, silly Jan... You haven't been paying attention, it seems, to all the talk about how capable we are to alter our history.
Some years later he came across "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". In reading it, he re-discovered some less likeable traits in these problematic men, which he had ignored some years back with a youthful gaiety. At the same time - because it seems like Kundera does have a habit of intertwining the historical with the romantic - he was able to trace many common threads between the political reality of these people and his own. Alas! He has lived first hand the struggle of blotching out bits and pieces of the past to shape his new self. But while Kundera rightly point out that this is a problem when applied to a nation, why should it be so when one talks about oneself?
It was a tough book. On the one hand, Kundera's scattered and impressionistic style has always been a challenge for our Juan - which doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy it - as his recent experiences with Murakami have demonstrated. Juan likes consistent plots (no matter the size, and regardless of whether they are winding or not) and when the author himself becomes self-aware and throws in bits and pieces of advice ('[this] is a novel about Tamina, and whenever Tamina goes off-stage, it is a novel for Tamina'), he feels tricked. Kind of like when somebody says "don't think about a white elephant". On the other hand, because there are so many precise questions he can relate to, it becomes harder to keep track of all the common threads. So this time Juan has attempted to collect some of the most interesting ones he came across, and just write them down with some of his own to try and make some more sense out of them:
'"I don't really get what it means, that they all turn into rhinoceroses," said Gabrielle.
"You have to see it as a symbol," Michelle explained.
"That's right," said Gabrielle. "Literature is made up of signs"'
Yes, yes, this is a good start.
He also finds a good laugh when he reads about symbols written from an Eastern European perspective, that easily apply to his Latin-American upbringing:
"Things deprived suddenly of their supposed meaning, of the place assigned to them in the so-called order of things (a Moscow-trained Marxist believing in horoscopes), make us laugh". Or adherents to a radical 21st Century socialism who rush into a home-appliances store to loot flat-screen tellies larger than their bookshelves. http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/actualidad/economia/fotos-y-video---saqueos-y-destrozos-en-daka-valenc.aspx
"You know," said Banaka, "the novel is the fruit of a human illusion. The illusion of the power to understand others. But what do we know of one another?"
"Nothing," said Bibi.
"That's true," said Joujou.
"All anyone can do," said Banaka, "is give a report on oneself. Anything else is an abuse of power. Anything else is a lie."
This surprised Juan at once, as it echoed one of the first thoughts introduced by Murakami, when Toru Okada wonders how much he actually knows Kumiko. Only it seemed to be a problem for the Okada, not so much for the merry and the not-so-merry folk in Kundera's universe. But what do we do if not tell our own stories? Isn't every personal account a novel of sorts? I think we structure our stories in a way that makes sense to us, and it might be misleading, but it's what we've got, and I'd much rather believe that we can actually do so intending to cross personal boundaries, as opposed to the so-called 'graphomaniacs'. It seems to Juan that Kundera has more than just a handful of criticisms directed to particular authors or people he knows, and since speaking from outside of his novels is not Kundera's cup of tea, he has to give up on that question.
In other respects, Juan struggles with (one of) Kundera's definitions of love: "(...) because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love." Juan thinks he knows some more suitable definitions (though not necessarily more lofty or romantic), but because he's also an aspiring writer, he's saving those for later. Mind you, they are of coursed based solely on his experiences of love, and the ones he has witnessed around him.
Then, as he realizes his ramblings have been drawn out too long, Juan tries to tie some loose ends in the shoelaces of Kundera's helplessly childish and spoiled male characters: many of the men in this book remind him of someone, as if they were shadows or sketches of somebody else he has known for a while, but who could this be... Ah, yes! Of course! It is Tomas, the slightly more complex (but hopeful) womaniser of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Could it not be? The difference being that Tomas actually wanders back and forth in this cycle of 'lightness' and 'weight'. It doesn't mean that he has overcome his oppressive desires, but Tereza does seem to keep him true to himself, in her innocence and gentleness.
In the dreamlike island of the children where Tamina finds herself at a loss, she feels a hollowness in her stomach. "That hollowness in her stomach is exactly that unbearable absence of weight. And just as an extreme can at any moment turn into its opposite, so lightness brought to its maximum becomes the terrifying weight of lightness, and Tamina knows she cannot bear it for another moment. She turns around and starts to run." Much like Tereza fears Tomas.
"'When a woman says "No," she really means "Yes."' That male aphorism has always outraged me. It's as stupid as all human history."
"But that history is inside us, and we can't escape it," replied Jan. "A woman fleeing and defending herself. A woman giving herself, a man taking. A woman veiling herself, a man tearing off her clothes. These are age-old images we carry within us!"
"Age-old and idiotic! As idiotic as the holy images! And what if women are starting to be fed up with having to behave according to that patter? What if that eternal repetition nauseates them? What if they want to invent other images and another game?"
"Yes, they're stupid images stupidly repeated. You're entirely right. But what if our desire for the female body depends on precisely those stupid images and on them alone? If those stupid images were to be destroyed in us, would men still be able to make love to women?"
Edwige broke into laughter: "I don't think you need to worry"
Silly, silly Jan... You haven't been paying attention, it seems, to all the talk about how capable we are to alter our history.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, 29.10-7.11 (Sunniva)
So, how
will I write about this book?
Will I
mention the autobiographical and non-fictional blended with the fictional and
slightly fantastical? Will I mention the history and factual and political
inbetween the sexual and sensual and philosophical? Or will I most of all
mention the disturbing parts that creep up on you without you really noticing?
I really
don’t know where to start. All right. I started reading the book on the plane
the morning I left for Tenerife with my cousins and aunt, to celebrate my mum’s
50th on a restaurant in Spain. I read a lot of it, then listened to
music, looked out the window, talked with my cousins, and saved the last
hundred pages or so for the last bit of the trip when all electronic devices
must be switched off. Then we were landing, and I still had eighty pages to go.
It was impossible for me to pick it up again while on holiday, for nine whole
days the book stood in my room, went in my backpack and waited to be read. I
couldn’t read this book, which had captured me, while lying on the beach in a
bikini, or slouching on the sofa in our rented flat drinking Fanta limón (the
most important drink of my childhood vacations in Spain, when Norway only had
Fanta orange).
On the
plane back, however, I did read it. So, you see, I didn’t read it between October
29th and November 7th, I read it on October 29th
and on November 7th. But I am stalling.
How does
Kundera make this perfect (although imperfect, but still perfect in its own
way) mix of stories that become a book that makes sense, even if I can’t say
what sense? I enjoyed the separate stories. I realise that together, they make
a book about Prague, and history, and memories, maybe people in general but
more about Czechs.
What
disturbed me was the SPOILERS YES THEY’RE
HERE amount of mentions of rape, while now that I’m thinking back, I couldn’t tell you that there was any explicit
rape mentioned in the book. Let’s see. There is the one time Kundera – because we
must suppose the I, who is, I think, named Milan or Kundera is the author himself – there is the one time
he gets an inexplicable urge to rape his friend. He is confused himself as to
why. And I wonder what the author is trying to say with this scene. Do all men
have this dormant urge inside them? Or is he trying to comment on our ideas of
rape, and saying that we should call it by its right name more often? Then
there is the scene with Tamina on the island of children, which I thought was a
strange scene, but still it seems to happen with her consent, even if Kundera
calls it rape a few pages later. Finally, the discussion between Jan and Edwige
had me enraged at the author, until Edwige got more of her say and I remembered
that I often project main characters’ views on the author themselves, and
probably without reason. It also brought up an issue I was thinking about while
reading Murakami. Even though Murakami can write some strong women into his
stories, as far as I can remember, the weaker women far outnumber the strong
ones, and the strong ones (example: May Kasahara) often become weak, or
dependent on the man. I remember hearing that in Japan, or perhaps in some Japanese
subcultures, there is a fetishization of rape. It goes back to the idea that
Jan is talking about, that women are supposed to be chaste, fleeing from sexual
encounters, while men attack and are very manly for doing so. Apparently, there
is an idea that a woman should say “no” several times when a man propositions her,
even while they are having sex, even to the point of saying “stop, stop, this
is rape” or something similar. It is completely ridiculous and undermines our
free will, and also blurs the lines between regular intercourse and a sexual
assault. This comment partly belongs with the Murakami review as well, because
while his books and texts never go as far as that, they have a milder version
of the idea that the men want to have sex, the women resist, or they accept the
act but can’t say that this is what they actually want. Toru Okada says
something like “Then we had sex for the first time, in Kumiko’s apartment. I
think that is what she wanted, because even though she was just lying there [so
and so]”. This is a man who’s been married to this woman for how long? Six or
eight years? And he still doesn’t know.
What am I
trying to say? That there is a dark streak throughout the book, lying
underneath the funny and serious and poignant stories about everything and
nothing? I’m not sure. This is a book to be read again, and probably one that will change in my mind as I get older.
I did enjoy
the book very very much, and I am already looking forward to reading The
Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I have in Norwegian and have owned for two
years without getting as far as reading it yet.
fredag 1. november 2013
"Doktor Proktor og Verdens Undergang. Kanskje." - Jo Nesbø (23-31 Oct)
Well this was heaps of fun - as in, cracking up sitting in my living room, and trying to contain that a little bit whenever I heard one of my house-mates walking down the stairs for not wanting to seem silly or too childish-fun.
The thing is (a bit about my daily life at the moment), thanks to our house's composition of house-mates, most of our conversations over dinner or about books revolve around issues of post-colonialism; power structures inherent in migration policies in Europe; everything that's wrong with the global patriarchal tradition; the ways in which sociolinguistic structures reveal these power relations; why and how we should collectivise the food we buy in the house to accommodate for vegetarians and how all of this is tied to the dissertation topics that everybody's working on - all of this usually accompanied by exquisite and perfectly enjoyable German and Venezuelan cuisine. Don't get me wrong though! I wholeheartedly enjoy and appreciate this sense of community and discussion we have in the house right now, and I couldn't ask for more. But (perhaps unfairly and because I'm a bit prejudiced), I felt that laughing out loud to children farting their way up into the sky with a para-glider was something I'd best keep to myself.
This book though. Admittedly, it had been a while since I read a proper children's story (I think "Stardust", "The Lionheart Brothers" and "The Solitaire Mystery" are the closest ones, but they're very, very different), and this one was so cartoonish that I enjoyed it a lot. Of course, there is also a lot of political commentary in it, which I think is perfectly suitable and even necessary in children's literature, along with a few healthy references to mortality and all that. But the way the characters are built and the tension and misunderstandings that happened between them all too often:
(A sudden blast far off - "what the hell was that?!" - "a perfectly tuned A-flat, I believe")
made me really enjoy it every single time I picked it up. I also liked the fact that amongst the odd team of heroes there were all sorts of personalities, and each one of them was absolutely necessary to overcome one or another impasse of the story.
I'm not going to make any unfair comparisons with children's literature from Venezuela or Latin-America or the ones I grew up with, because, I must admit, I never did read many children's stories from the place I grew up in. I'm inclined to say we imported most of it, produced very little, and until not too long, many families tended to value the foreign over the national, which is in great part a shame. Not in all parts though, as I was a happy child with Harry Potter, Robinson Crusoe, The Lord of the Rings and a few anonymous Spanish folk tales about gnomes and fairies. So it might as well be the same in children's literature in other places, but in any case, I've noticed some things I really appreciate from Scandinavian stories, and that is the plurality in characters and portrayals, which leads me to my last and more formal remark about this book in particular.
It might be particular to Norway because of the lively discussion around language, but I think the way Nesbø (and other writers, I remember noticing that Anne B. Ragde does this too) writes "in dialects" whenever people from Trøndelag or elsewhere show up, is a very effective and positive habit in several ways: it is efficient in describing characters, as one makes up an image about them without the need for so much description. Even if kids might not pick up on these things because they might not have been exposed to them that much, it begins that process of exposure and acceptance to the fact that people speak differently. This, at least, is something I really would like to see in more literature. Spanish being my main frame of reference, I can say it is somewhat disappointing to what extent authors enshrine "Spanish" Spanish, missing out on so much that could be said through writing differently. The only author I can remember who differentiates between sociolects in his characters (and I've already referenced him before in this blog) is Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, but even then, there is much more that could be done and much fun to be had with language.
So all in all, I'm convinced that Nesbø's books (at least Doktor Proktor's ones) would "incidentally" find their way into my hypothetical children's bookcases in the future.
The thing is (a bit about my daily life at the moment), thanks to our house's composition of house-mates, most of our conversations over dinner or about books revolve around issues of post-colonialism; power structures inherent in migration policies in Europe; everything that's wrong with the global patriarchal tradition; the ways in which sociolinguistic structures reveal these power relations; why and how we should collectivise the food we buy in the house to accommodate for vegetarians and how all of this is tied to the dissertation topics that everybody's working on - all of this usually accompanied by exquisite and perfectly enjoyable German and Venezuelan cuisine. Don't get me wrong though! I wholeheartedly enjoy and appreciate this sense of community and discussion we have in the house right now, and I couldn't ask for more. But (perhaps unfairly and because I'm a bit prejudiced), I felt that laughing out loud to children farting their way up into the sky with a para-glider was something I'd best keep to myself.
This book though. Admittedly, it had been a while since I read a proper children's story (I think "Stardust", "The Lionheart Brothers" and "The Solitaire Mystery" are the closest ones, but they're very, very different), and this one was so cartoonish that I enjoyed it a lot. Of course, there is also a lot of political commentary in it, which I think is perfectly suitable and even necessary in children's literature, along with a few healthy references to mortality and all that. But the way the characters are built and the tension and misunderstandings that happened between them all too often:
(A sudden blast far off - "what the hell was that?!" - "a perfectly tuned A-flat, I believe")
made me really enjoy it every single time I picked it up. I also liked the fact that amongst the odd team of heroes there were all sorts of personalities, and each one of them was absolutely necessary to overcome one or another impasse of the story.
I'm not going to make any unfair comparisons with children's literature from Venezuela or Latin-America or the ones I grew up with, because, I must admit, I never did read many children's stories from the place I grew up in. I'm inclined to say we imported most of it, produced very little, and until not too long, many families tended to value the foreign over the national, which is in great part a shame. Not in all parts though, as I was a happy child with Harry Potter, Robinson Crusoe, The Lord of the Rings and a few anonymous Spanish folk tales about gnomes and fairies. So it might as well be the same in children's literature in other places, but in any case, I've noticed some things I really appreciate from Scandinavian stories, and that is the plurality in characters and portrayals, which leads me to my last and more formal remark about this book in particular.
It might be particular to Norway because of the lively discussion around language, but I think the way Nesbø (and other writers, I remember noticing that Anne B. Ragde does this too) writes "in dialects" whenever people from Trøndelag or elsewhere show up, is a very effective and positive habit in several ways: it is efficient in describing characters, as one makes up an image about them without the need for so much description. Even if kids might not pick up on these things because they might not have been exposed to them that much, it begins that process of exposure and acceptance to the fact that people speak differently. This, at least, is something I really would like to see in more literature. Spanish being my main frame of reference, I can say it is somewhat disappointing to what extent authors enshrine "Spanish" Spanish, missing out on so much that could be said through writing differently. The only author I can remember who differentiates between sociolects in his characters (and I've already referenced him before in this blog) is Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, but even then, there is much more that could be done and much fun to be had with language.
So all in all, I'm convinced that Nesbø's books (at least Doktor Proktor's ones) would "incidentally" find their way into my hypothetical children's bookcases in the future.
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