The novel begins with "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Highly off-beat, post-modern and at times close to surreal, this novel has enthralled many a young person longing to be a writer. It is a full self-analysis of its own purpose. Narrated in second person, it breaks the binds of form that less aspiring books easily succumb to.
The stories in the book are all different and intertwine, shifting in each to a different protagonist and setting. Each story is unfinished, with the intention of motivating the primary "you" to search for the genesis script. What could a continuously interrupted narrative look like, becomes a prominent question for the reader.
Personally, the book is difficult at times to decipher, especially as the amount of characters and narratives increase. It revels on showing the world as a place of labyrinths and mirrors in its own unique manner. This unfortunately comes at the expense of enthralling the reader. That being said, Calvino has a number of philosophical thoughts on the purpose of the book in general that are worth remembering. From "In a network of lines that enhance": "Ideally, the book would begin by giving the sense of a space occupied by my presence, because all around me there are only inert objects, including the telephone, a space that apparently cannot contain anything but me, isolated in my interior time, and then there is the interruption of the continuity of time, the space is no longer what it was before because it is conditioned by the will of this object that is calling. The book would have to begin by conveying all this not merely immediately but as a diffusion through space and time, of these rings that lacerate the continuity of space and time and will." Musings such as these are golden, but interrupted stories, abstract to begin with, means the reader can and should only invest a limited amount of emotional capital in the overall novel. In short, "If on a winter's night" is clever but not life-changing such as other works of literature. In short, the philosophy overtakes the narrative.
Calvino harbours on the stereotype of reading and sex. "If you are together, if you lie down in the same bed like a settled couple, each will turn on the lamp at the side of the bed and sink into his or her book.....you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness where all separations are erased before divergent dreams draw you again, one to one side and one to the other. But do not wax ironic on this prospect of conjugal harmony. What happier image of a couple could you set against it?" As David Mitchell put it, it is the "plumbable" sentences of Calvino that truly give the book life.
To Calvino, "reading is a discontinuous and fragmentary operation.....the reader's attention indicates some minimal segments, juxtapositions of words, metaphors, syntactic nexuses, logical passages, lexical peculiarities that prove to possess an extremely concentrated density of meaning." "If on a winter's night" requires re-reading to capture all sense of meaning from Calvino.
So while the novel meanders and is exhaustingly abstract, it is also worth preserving for further archaeological study. "If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbark, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave." It is worth preserving for the sake that one day it will all come together for you.
***
Tuesday 22 December 2015
Saturday 5 September 2015
Karl Ove Kanusgaard-My Struggle-Part 4-"Dancing In The Dark"
For Part 4 of "My Struggle", the 18 year-old Knausgaard heads towards northern Norway to spend a year working as a teacher in a small village school. He is doing this mainly because he wants to have his own space to work on his desired dream of becoming a writer. During his northern escapade, some writing gets done, but mainly, in the fashion of a male his age, we find he is predictably preoccupied with women and liquor intake. Knausgaard's magic touch as a writer is how he lets down personal safeguards and digs into his own humiliating confessions, seemingly without any type of self-censorship. Little, if any. ego protection is present and self-loathing is rampant. His sexual stumbling block of premature ejaculation, along with his desires for young teenage girls are strongly present in the book. Until the end of the book, he remains an 18 year-old virgin. Why would a reader want to embark on a journey of an 18 year-old's desire to get laid? That simplistic question is irrelevant to the reader, who is once again finding themselves fascinatingly preoccupied with his story.
One of the writing techniques Knausgaard masters is the ability to have long flashbacks in the middle of his novel and not lose the reader's engagement. His further capability to capture the reader's attention during scenes of banality(although Part 4 is not done quite as breathtakingly as Parts One and Two)is another reason we get caught up in the narrative of his story. He is able to capture the essence of the young man who is both insecure and arrogant, sensitive and narcissistic. He has apparently no time to delve in the physical nature surrounding him but is moved by the Arctic darkness and scenery.
The translator, Don Bartlett deserves a significant amount of credit for Knausgaard's overall shaking of the English literary world. Bartlett seemingly captures all of Knausgaard's insights from his beleaguered self-loating to his sublime humour(there are at least 3-4 times I laugh out loud with each part of My Struggle). The central themes of My Struggle continue in Part 4, only in a different age context. The tyrannical alcoholic father, sexual longing and the battle between the internal vs. external self. My Struggle is a memory flow with illogical breaks, shifts and diversions. It captures the messiness of life. That being said, Part 4 cannot reach the philosophical depths that Part One, Two and even some of Three could. With solipsism, Knausgaard has the rare ability to be interesting, tormented and self-critical enough to not only keep the reader engaged but have the reader think of his/her own past memories in relation to "My Struggle."
At the beginning of the novel the eighteen year-old mentions all of his favourite books with an overall description of them. "Books about young men who struggled to fit into society, who wanted more from life than routines, more from life than family; in short, young men who hated middle-class values and sought freedom. They travelled, they got drunk, they read and they dreamed about their life's Great Passion or writing the Great Novel." Eye-rolling aside, do we not in middle age, still feel like this, just in a more reserved manner? He continues with opening "a new subdivision in my life. 'Booze and fornication' it was called, and it was right next to insight and sincerity." This is a middle-aged man's sarcastic droll of being 18.
The unspeakable or unexplainable, also come into play on Knausgaard's rational and irrational observations of northern Norway. This, in fact, is one of the more interesting parts of the book. It gives Part 4 its own character. Everything is surrounded by the "ocean of darkness." As much as he tries to dispel nature he is awed by the extreme darkness and the isolation of the north. He adds that "I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others, I loved it and the changes to the world it brought." In northern Norway he walks around at night feeling empty, "like a shadow, aghast." At the same time, the surrounding shorelines, the mountainside all give him a way to appreciate this isolation("There was something about this small enclose place. There was something about seeing the same faces everyday. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school."). On one of his social outings, it amazes him when he realizes that all members of the community, regardless of age, are present in the community hall. "I loved it, couldn't help myself, there was a freedom in this I had never encountered anywhere else."
In the flashbacks of the years just before his teaching stint, we have a highly immature, at times unlikable adolescent in the midst of the aftermath of his parent's divorce. The silent and awkward parental conversations. With mom, "I lived a completely different life, my real life, with her I discussed every thought that went through my head, apart from anything to do with girls, and the terrible feeling of being on the outside at school and what dad was doing." In the model of dad, Knausgaard subconsciously develops two conflicting worlds. One world "contained everything that was good and cool and one that contained principles." As well, dad's continued demonic-like presence in Knausgaard's life has a silence that "burned like a fever inside me."
The alcoholic world of irrational behaviour give Karl the feeling that everything is possible. When he is in this state memory is lost. Solipsism is put aside. The two world collide through the "thread" of shame. This conflict is present throughout all of "My Struggle" and is the major perplexity Knausgaard has about his own life and in turn, the purpose for writing the book. It is his attempt to find the why behind the shame.
I took a great interest in Knausgaaard's critique of Milan Kundera. He begins about how he "intuitively" dislikes the author. He goes on to say that "he completely lacked this embracing of other worlds, with him the world was always the same.....he kept withdrawing his characters from the plot...then you saw the plot was only a plot and that the characters were only characters, something he had invented, you knew they didn't exist and so why should you read about them?" This is somewhat ironic from a writer with many solipsistic tendencies of his own inner self, similar to Kundera. That being said he is much more personal than Kundera. He dispels philosophy and instead tries to recognize the questions instead of giving the answers.
Part Four displayed a young man who wants to intellectually dispel the "trivialities" of the norms and day-to-day occurrences, while having to experience them externally as a teacher. The conflict between "everyday life with its endless round of petty demands and obligations" and the intoxicated world when "it was all open spaces and grand gestures." Yet the humilities, touched upon almost on a masochistic level, showcase how Knausgaard has the bravery and skill to let go of any guards and show all his vulnerabilities. The ending of the book shows that his age of innocence is over. We all can't wait for Part 5!
****
One of the writing techniques Knausgaard masters is the ability to have long flashbacks in the middle of his novel and not lose the reader's engagement. His further capability to capture the reader's attention during scenes of banality(although Part 4 is not done quite as breathtakingly as Parts One and Two)is another reason we get caught up in the narrative of his story. He is able to capture the essence of the young man who is both insecure and arrogant, sensitive and narcissistic. He has apparently no time to delve in the physical nature surrounding him but is moved by the Arctic darkness and scenery.
The translator, Don Bartlett deserves a significant amount of credit for Knausgaard's overall shaking of the English literary world. Bartlett seemingly captures all of Knausgaard's insights from his beleaguered self-loating to his sublime humour(there are at least 3-4 times I laugh out loud with each part of My Struggle). The central themes of My Struggle continue in Part 4, only in a different age context. The tyrannical alcoholic father, sexual longing and the battle between the internal vs. external self. My Struggle is a memory flow with illogical breaks, shifts and diversions. It captures the messiness of life. That being said, Part 4 cannot reach the philosophical depths that Part One, Two and even some of Three could. With solipsism, Knausgaard has the rare ability to be interesting, tormented and self-critical enough to not only keep the reader engaged but have the reader think of his/her own past memories in relation to "My Struggle."
At the beginning of the novel the eighteen year-old mentions all of his favourite books with an overall description of them. "Books about young men who struggled to fit into society, who wanted more from life than routines, more from life than family; in short, young men who hated middle-class values and sought freedom. They travelled, they got drunk, they read and they dreamed about their life's Great Passion or writing the Great Novel." Eye-rolling aside, do we not in middle age, still feel like this, just in a more reserved manner? He continues with opening "a new subdivision in my life. 'Booze and fornication' it was called, and it was right next to insight and sincerity." This is a middle-aged man's sarcastic droll of being 18.
The unspeakable or unexplainable, also come into play on Knausgaard's rational and irrational observations of northern Norway. This, in fact, is one of the more interesting parts of the book. It gives Part 4 its own character. Everything is surrounded by the "ocean of darkness." As much as he tries to dispel nature he is awed by the extreme darkness and the isolation of the north. He adds that "I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others, I loved it and the changes to the world it brought." In northern Norway he walks around at night feeling empty, "like a shadow, aghast." At the same time, the surrounding shorelines, the mountainside all give him a way to appreciate this isolation("There was something about this small enclose place. There was something about seeing the same faces everyday. My class. My colleagues. The assistant at the shop. The occasional mother, the occasional father. Now and then the young fishermen. But always the same people, always the same atmosphere. The snow, the darkness, the harsh light inside the school."). On one of his social outings, it amazes him when he realizes that all members of the community, regardless of age, are present in the community hall. "I loved it, couldn't help myself, there was a freedom in this I had never encountered anywhere else."
In the flashbacks of the years just before his teaching stint, we have a highly immature, at times unlikable adolescent in the midst of the aftermath of his parent's divorce. The silent and awkward parental conversations. With mom, "I lived a completely different life, my real life, with her I discussed every thought that went through my head, apart from anything to do with girls, and the terrible feeling of being on the outside at school and what dad was doing." In the model of dad, Knausgaard subconsciously develops two conflicting worlds. One world "contained everything that was good and cool and one that contained principles." As well, dad's continued demonic-like presence in Knausgaard's life has a silence that "burned like a fever inside me."
The alcoholic world of irrational behaviour give Karl the feeling that everything is possible. When he is in this state memory is lost. Solipsism is put aside. The two world collide through the "thread" of shame. This conflict is present throughout all of "My Struggle" and is the major perplexity Knausgaard has about his own life and in turn, the purpose for writing the book. It is his attempt to find the why behind the shame.
I took a great interest in Knausgaaard's critique of Milan Kundera. He begins about how he "intuitively" dislikes the author. He goes on to say that "he completely lacked this embracing of other worlds, with him the world was always the same.....he kept withdrawing his characters from the plot...then you saw the plot was only a plot and that the characters were only characters, something he had invented, you knew they didn't exist and so why should you read about them?" This is somewhat ironic from a writer with many solipsistic tendencies of his own inner self, similar to Kundera. That being said he is much more personal than Kundera. He dispels philosophy and instead tries to recognize the questions instead of giving the answers.
Part Four displayed a young man who wants to intellectually dispel the "trivialities" of the norms and day-to-day occurrences, while having to experience them externally as a teacher. The conflict between "everyday life with its endless round of petty demands and obligations" and the intoxicated world when "it was all open spaces and grand gestures." Yet the humilities, touched upon almost on a masochistic level, showcase how Knausgaard has the bravery and skill to let go of any guards and show all his vulnerabilities. The ending of the book shows that his age of innocence is over. We all can't wait for Part 5!
****
Monday 24 August 2015
Elena Ferrante-"My Brilliant Friend"
In the age of social media, which spurns on self-indulgence, Elena Ferrante's choice to be an outlier of social anonymity is refreshing. She once said to her editor that "I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors." This brings back some type of purity-false or not-to the eternal art of storytelling.
"My Brilliant Friend" is the first in her four-part Neapolitan series. It is a picture of a post WW-II, early modern Naples. LIke her contemporary Karl-Ove Knausgaard, her writings tread the murkiness of fiction and non-fiction. The major difference between the two is that unlike Knausgaard, Ferrante's own life is behind a thin veil of discretion.
In a sensory manner, the novel elicits a tactile presence along with many propensities of high emotion. There is a definite emphasis on how women are negatively shaped and limited by their social surroundings and expectations. There seems to be an intensity of purpose with her writings. Ferrante finds little if any redemption in the traditional female experience. It is a fatalism, a ring of fire, an unbroken circle.
This book marks the beginnings of the main characters Elena Greco and the undefinable Lila Cerullo. Lila, the daughter of a shoemaker, is the brilliant friend but also vindictive, confrontational, obsessively problem-solving and eventually, stunningly beautiful. Elena is continually under the influential guise of her friend. As Elena moves on to higher education, Lila resorts to quitting school and marrying young. The two end up being almost exact inverses of each other. For Elena, the question becomes a matter of whether she plagiarizes or honours Lila in her writings?
Ferrante is intimate and candid in her bildungsroman or coming of age story. Elena seems to go through the motions("I did many things in my life without conviction...I always felt slightly detached from my own actions"), while Lila has actions of both propensity and intensity. The Naples childhood in the 1950's "was full of violence....life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us." When they were young children, Lila threw Elena's favourite doll down the dark cellar and Elena in return does the same to her. Later on, Lila describes Naples as a place without love, which in turn, makes the people sterile and promotes violence. In many ways this book is also a sociological photo of a time and place, through the eyes of both class and gender. Elena realizes by the end of "My Brilliant Friend" that by marrying young to a grocer, Lila kept "chained in a glaring way to that world, from which she imagined she had taken the best." Elena, on the other hand, managed to escape that world. In external appearance, she would no longer be a pleb.
Elena's feelings of inferiority and awe of Lila persist. All Elena can come up as a reason is some sort of shrouded theory. "I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her." Elena herself feels separated from her own words and actions and is still in pursuit of discovering her own true identity, while Lila looks to have been certain from day one.
****1/2
"My Brilliant Friend" is the first in her four-part Neapolitan series. It is a picture of a post WW-II, early modern Naples. LIke her contemporary Karl-Ove Knausgaard, her writings tread the murkiness of fiction and non-fiction. The major difference between the two is that unlike Knausgaard, Ferrante's own life is behind a thin veil of discretion.
In a sensory manner, the novel elicits a tactile presence along with many propensities of high emotion. There is a definite emphasis on how women are negatively shaped and limited by their social surroundings and expectations. There seems to be an intensity of purpose with her writings. Ferrante finds little if any redemption in the traditional female experience. It is a fatalism, a ring of fire, an unbroken circle.
This book marks the beginnings of the main characters Elena Greco and the undefinable Lila Cerullo. Lila, the daughter of a shoemaker, is the brilliant friend but also vindictive, confrontational, obsessively problem-solving and eventually, stunningly beautiful. Elena is continually under the influential guise of her friend. As Elena moves on to higher education, Lila resorts to quitting school and marrying young. The two end up being almost exact inverses of each other. For Elena, the question becomes a matter of whether she plagiarizes or honours Lila in her writings?
Ferrante is intimate and candid in her bildungsroman or coming of age story. Elena seems to go through the motions("I did many things in my life without conviction...I always felt slightly detached from my own actions"), while Lila has actions of both propensity and intensity. The Naples childhood in the 1950's "was full of violence....life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us." When they were young children, Lila threw Elena's favourite doll down the dark cellar and Elena in return does the same to her. Later on, Lila describes Naples as a place without love, which in turn, makes the people sterile and promotes violence. In many ways this book is also a sociological photo of a time and place, through the eyes of both class and gender. Elena realizes by the end of "My Brilliant Friend" that by marrying young to a grocer, Lila kept "chained in a glaring way to that world, from which she imagined she had taken the best." Elena, on the other hand, managed to escape that world. In external appearance, she would no longer be a pleb.
Elena's feelings of inferiority and awe of Lila persist. All Elena can come up as a reason is some sort of shrouded theory. "I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her." Elena herself feels separated from her own words and actions and is still in pursuit of discovering her own true identity, while Lila looks to have been certain from day one.
****1/2
Thursday 20 August 2015
Jorge Luis Borges-"Labyrinths"
This selection of stories, essays and parables presents the myth of the blind man on an eternal and epic scale. Borges has epitomized Latin American literature yet he only shows himself in his miniature writings, in which stories are often only several pages. His skill, similar to Kafka, is the ability to present a vast propensity of depth in only a few words.
In this collection the short stories are the main focus but I find his essays to be of a certain valour that I have not seen addressed by many other critiques before. His stories are a bare cabinet of plot and focus on the alienated male, which in itself is a bit yawning of a theme. Borges however is superb in getting all of us to question the sanity of how we perceive our own universe. His writings have made him the king of magic realism. He challenges the reality of nature. He is absorbed in the various fascinations of mere existence. Overall, "Labyrinths" is an embrace of solipsism. The universe is in your mind. What we perceive to be reality are our own ideas, largely coming from past inheritance. Therefore, both our purpose and burden in life is to create meaning for ourselves.
In "Tlon, Uqhar, Orbis, Tertius", Borges describes Tlon as "surely a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men." This statement stands for Borges' praise of solipsism. When one builds perception based entirely on mind, this creates the labyrinth. In a labyrinth, we can only be abstract perceivers. Time is a plurality where divergence, convergence and parallelism are all involved as the different colours of paints used in creating our perceptions.
In "The Library of Babel", Borges determines that our world is infinite. "Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end-which is absurd.....The Library is unlimited and cyclical." In other words, knowledge has an order to its disorder. It is a world we have to not only face but add our own ideas to. Discerning a beginning or ending is beyond our scope. Pleasure cannot go much beyond the internal("There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought"-"The Immortal"). Many of our perceived thoughts are abstractions. An example of this is money. "It(money)can be an evening in the suburbs, or music by Brahms, it can be maps, or chess, or coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold"("The Zahir"). It also symbolizes free will. There is some form of an inferno circling around us, containing both our griefs of oppression and our hopes of vastness.
In Borges' essays a greater clarity comes forth. It gives a transparency to his thoughts. In analyzing Kafka in "Kafka and His Precursors", he compares him to the unicorn: "a supernatural being of good omen....the unicorn constitutes a favourable presage. But this animal does not figure among the domestic beasts, it is not always easy to find, it does not lend itself to classification." On top of that, "we could be face to face with a unicorn and not know for certain what it was." As reiterated in "The Mirror of Enigmas", the unicorn can be thought of as us in terms of the everlasting uncertainty surrounding us("It is doubtful that the world has a meaning: it is even more doubtful that it has a double or triple meaning, the unbeliever will observe....No one knows who he is").
While analyzing the arguments of Schopenhauer versus Hume in "A New Refutation of Time", he repeats his embrace of solipsism by saying that "time, if we can intuitively grasp such an identity, is a delusion.." There is nothing beyond consciousness. The consciousness of the mind is to Borges like a theatre: "Where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations." Borges ends up taking Schopenhauer's side in as far as agreeing that we can only live in the present. In short, "Labyrinths" is an excellently choreographed collection of Borges' explanation of his solipsism perspective on life.
****
In this collection the short stories are the main focus but I find his essays to be of a certain valour that I have not seen addressed by many other critiques before. His stories are a bare cabinet of plot and focus on the alienated male, which in itself is a bit yawning of a theme. Borges however is superb in getting all of us to question the sanity of how we perceive our own universe. His writings have made him the king of magic realism. He challenges the reality of nature. He is absorbed in the various fascinations of mere existence. Overall, "Labyrinths" is an embrace of solipsism. The universe is in your mind. What we perceive to be reality are our own ideas, largely coming from past inheritance. Therefore, both our purpose and burden in life is to create meaning for ourselves.
In "Tlon, Uqhar, Orbis, Tertius", Borges describes Tlon as "surely a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men." This statement stands for Borges' praise of solipsism. When one builds perception based entirely on mind, this creates the labyrinth. In a labyrinth, we can only be abstract perceivers. Time is a plurality where divergence, convergence and parallelism are all involved as the different colours of paints used in creating our perceptions.
In "The Library of Babel", Borges determines that our world is infinite. "Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end-which is absurd.....The Library is unlimited and cyclical." In other words, knowledge has an order to its disorder. It is a world we have to not only face but add our own ideas to. Discerning a beginning or ending is beyond our scope. Pleasure cannot go much beyond the internal("There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought"-"The Immortal"). Many of our perceived thoughts are abstractions. An example of this is money. "It(money)can be an evening in the suburbs, or music by Brahms, it can be maps, or chess, or coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold"("The Zahir"). It also symbolizes free will. There is some form of an inferno circling around us, containing both our griefs of oppression and our hopes of vastness.
In Borges' essays a greater clarity comes forth. It gives a transparency to his thoughts. In analyzing Kafka in "Kafka and His Precursors", he compares him to the unicorn: "a supernatural being of good omen....the unicorn constitutes a favourable presage. But this animal does not figure among the domestic beasts, it is not always easy to find, it does not lend itself to classification." On top of that, "we could be face to face with a unicorn and not know for certain what it was." As reiterated in "The Mirror of Enigmas", the unicorn can be thought of as us in terms of the everlasting uncertainty surrounding us("It is doubtful that the world has a meaning: it is even more doubtful that it has a double or triple meaning, the unbeliever will observe....No one knows who he is").
While analyzing the arguments of Schopenhauer versus Hume in "A New Refutation of Time", he repeats his embrace of solipsism by saying that "time, if we can intuitively grasp such an identity, is a delusion.." There is nothing beyond consciousness. The consciousness of the mind is to Borges like a theatre: "Where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations." Borges ends up taking Schopenhauer's side in as far as agreeing that we can only live in the present. In short, "Labyrinths" is an excellently choreographed collection of Borges' explanation of his solipsism perspective on life.
****
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