Lost in Translation Reading Challenge

guest review: the story of zahra

Richard from Caravana de Recuerdos just posted this review of The Story of Zahra by Hanan al-Shaykh

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post.

The Story of Zahra [Hikayat Zahra] (Quartet Books, 1986) by Hanan al-Shaykh (translated from the Arabic by Peter Ford "with the author's cooperation") Lebanon, 1980. 

"We had grown used to the idea of a cease-fire at the beginning. We did not dare to think or believe that fighting meant war any more than a cease-fire meant peace." (The Story of Zahra, 106) 

I'm not sure why exactly, but I'd half expected that I wasn't going to like this work very much. I was wrong. Oft cited as a classic of contemporary Arabic literature and an important work in international women's studies courses, Zahra pursues its troubled, mentally-disturbed title character from a disfunctional home in southern Lebanon, on to Africa for a failed marriage, and back to Beirut where she suffers through the ravages of the Lebanese Civil War. Multiple narrators close to Zahra recount their interactions with the character, and Zahra herself bookends the accounts with her own pre-war memories of electroshock therapy and a harrowing account of her wartime "romance" with a rooftop sniper. While al-Shaykh does a tremendous job at bringing the horrors of war home with descriptions of the daily bombings in Beirut, she's equally adept at evoking the profound sense of interior trauma suffered by Zahra (note: I loved the fragmentary nature of the narrative--both the multiple points of view and Zahra's own instability as a witness--for reinforcing these feelings of disconnect). Throughout, one senses that the real horrors for the character aren't the war itself but rather the non-war sources of her own feelings of displacement and exile: the undiagnosed mental health issues that plague her, various abuses at the hands of men, her complicated responses to her own sexuality, and her role as an individual suffering within the stifling, patriarchal culture in which she was raised. That being said, for all the things I admired about the work, for all the interesting things it has to say about colonialism, gender relations and the like, the one thing I didn't care for was a rather big one: the ending. In fact, I'd probably have to read it again before deciding whether it was overly simplistic from a thematic standpoint or an unavoidably logical conclusion to everything that came before it. Bummer. (Quartet Books, London) 

Hanan al-Shaykh

The Story of Zahra was self-published when it first came out because it was deemed too hot to handle by regional publishers. For a recent newspaper piece from Hanan al-Shaykh on her mother's life, see "I Am Too Young to Marry" from The Guardian UK here.

guest review: a quiet life

Emily from Evening All Afternoon just posted this review of A Quiet Life by Kenzaburo Oe.

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

In a piece of remarkable serendipity, I happened upon A Quiet Life at Powell's just after reading Claire's post about the authors she planned to read for the Japanese Literature Challenge. Knowing the lady has taste, I picked it up and started reading. I got through the first chapter in the store, bought it, came home and devoured the rest of it over the course of three days, letting it eclipse any other reading I might have been doing. I've been reading a lot of the bizarre and macabre lately, and the understated, minimally-drawn yet intimate realism of A Quiet Life felt like exactly the contrast I needed. It's always such a gift to happen upon something so precisely calculated to resonate with my mood at a particular juncture, and when it happens I always try to welcome it with open arms. 

Two things really made this book for me: the quality of the writing, and my warm liking for the main character, Ma-chan. The plot, which is apparently an artful mixture of fiction and autobiography, concerns the three adult children of a famous Japanese author, K, who retreats to a temporary post at UC-Berkeley to deal with one of his recurring existential crises (which he calls "pinches.") His wife accompanies him, leaving the three kids, the eldest of whom (Eeyore) is brain-damaged, to fend for themselves. They are all making their ways through that liminal space between adolescence and adulthood, and the quietly-narrated events of the year or so in which they live alone in their parents' house serve to deliver them a bit closer to realizing who they are as human beings. 

I've seen several reviews that claim this book is essentially written from Oe's (or K's) own perspective, and only "ostensibly" narrated by his daughter, Ma-chan, who is used as something like a smokescreen. I didn't find this to be the case at all. Ma-chan, for me, is vividly her own person, and I feel a great deal of wamth and tenderness toward her. It's been a while since I've read a book whose main character I flat-out liked as much as I like Ma-chan. She's struggling with all the universal difficulties of being 20 and figuring out what kind of adult she's going to be, and, as a young Japanese woman, she's been socialized in the importance of filial piety, respect for her elders, and some degree of submissiveness. These things are genuinely important to her; she's no cultural revolutionary. At the same time, there is a core of confidence and vehemence to her that coexists with her diffidence. She is honest with herself about her growing consciousness of faults in her parents, particularly her father, and of the feelings those faults arouse in her. She sees herself as "a coward" in social situations, yet she finds the courage to do a wide variety of scary things - call attention to an assault on a young girl, care for her brother, write her college thesis on a writer everyone says she is too female and inexperienced to understand. When she encounters attitudes and actions that she doesn't like, she may not say anything out loud, but her inner refrain of "Hell no! Hell no!" articulates her strong selfhood. 

As a side-note: Ma-chan is writing her undergraduate thesis on Céline, who she was inspired to read after meeting Kurt Vonnegut (K.V. in the novel) and having him autograph a volume of Céline's work for which Vonnegut had written the introduction. Coincidentally, I also came to Céline first through Vonnegut. I think this must be pretty common for American readers who read Céline at all - after all, Vonnegut is extremely popular, and praises the French writer in one of his most famous books, Cat's Cradle - but it was yet another endearing connection with Ma-chan. 

Above all, I love Ma-chan's thoughtful intelligence. Not only does she cultivate a loving and observant relationship with Eeyore, but she thinks deeply about the ways in which people interact with the mentally handicapped. She and her siblings (and their parents) live a rich life of the mind, conversing about films, novels, and philosophy in a way that is real and profound without ever seeming ostentatious. Despite the difficulties in Ma-chan's relationship with her father, I felt so tenderly toward them both for the way they respect each other's intelligence and do their best to help each other along their diverging paths. 

I don't have the ability to comment on French style, but with Céline, I get the impression that he writes in a way that, contrary to what I had imagined, presents a serious subject in a light and straightforward manner - and I like this. I had copied this passage on one of my cards a few days before, and was translating it far into the night, when I realized Father was standing beside me, having snuck up without my noticing - which is another reason this passage, in particular, remains in my heart. Father doesn't dare touch my letters, but he readily picks up the books I read, or the reference cards I make, and looks at them. He does this all the time, and it has irritated me since I was in kindergarten. And that night, while I was copying down some more passages from the book, he picked up a few of the cards and said, "Hmm ... 'the old have nothing more to hope for, these kids, all ...' How true." His voice was so unusually earnest and sad that I couldn't make a face at him for having read my cards without asking me. 

The next day, however, Father brought me volumes one and two of Céline's Novels, from the shelf of the Pléide editions he especially treasures... 

One of the things that struck me about A Quiet Life was how enigmatic the supposedly autobiographical character - the novelist/father K - is to all the other characters. Wherever Ma-chan and Eeyore go, people are speculating about the cause of K's "pinch." His old friend Mr. Shigeto thinks that K is having some kind of religious crisis - that his all-or-nothing "lack of faith" (K perceives a necessity for sacrificing all worldly entanglements in order to be a "person of faith," and he has chosen instead a family and material success), is throwing him into a metaphysical quandary. Ma-chan's aunt, with whom the main characters converse while attending K's brother's funeral, theorizes that K was frightened by the looming reality of his brother's death, and ran away to California in order to avoid dealing with end-of-life issues. Ma-chan herself wonders whether her parents have retreated to the United States in order to repair damage done to their relationship over the years - damage partly caused by K's attitude toward Eeyore. Ma-chan's mother suggests that K's "pinch" may be caused by his feelings of inferiority and failure as family patriarch, which were touched off when he was forced to call a professional plumber to sort out a sewage problem. 

In the midst of all this theorizing, K himself comes almost to resemble a blank canvas, onto whom each character projects their own interpretation of his actions. Even his name, K, while possibly short for "Kenzaburo," is also familiar to Kafka fans as the shorthand for "everyman." I wondered whether this blankness was a comment on the traditional, patriarchal family structure, in which the father is supposed to be removed and inscrutable, and is therefore left without any confidantes. It also occurred to me that the reduction of palpable selfhood in K, which allows all the other characters to project their own theories onto him, is a good approximation of severe depression, in which the sufferer often feels less and less "like himself" the longer the malady continues. Compared with this sliding into a lack of self, Ma-chan's refrain of "Hell no! Hell no!" seems even more remarkable, as does Mrs. Shigeto's insistence on standing up for the basic human dignity of oneself and all the other so-called "nobodies" with whom one lives: 

"Ma-chan," she said, "the little relief I find in what you told me, if I can call it that, is that you apologized for Eeyore before the girl called you dropouts and not afterwards. I wouldn't have gone so far as to slap her in the face, but if I'd been there, I would at least have made her take it back. I wish you had. It's very important for a human being to take such action." 

I strongly recommend this understated story of figuring out what actions are important for human beings to take. A big thanks to Claire for putting me on Oe's track; I anticipate enjoying more of his novels in the future.

guest review: rupert: a confession

JP from Bad Texas posted this review of Rupert: A Confession by Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer. 

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

Rupert: A Confession by Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer is an unfortunate exploration in the first person of the psychoses of a porn-obsessed voyeur with troubling rape fantasies and delusions of grandeur. The book is organized into a monologue delivered over the course of three hearings as Rupert attempts to defend himself in court against the accusation he committed a crime (we only learn the crime in the last pages of the book.) The premise is an interesting one, one that kept me reading to the end of the book. Despite this, Rupert's pompous tone and narcissism were difficult to read; it was exactly the kind of person I am least interested in hearing from: a misogynistic, self-obsessed man prone to repition and longwindedness. At times, it felt like listening to sick, secret thoughts of a rightwing talk radio host. Most of the book is devoted to Rupert's lonely wanderings around the city as he stalks women or derides them silently to himself in bars and cafes. Not only is this material really depressing and gross, it also seemed like the kind of vicious misogyny I've seen and read so many times before in movies and books. 

Publishers Weekly called this book "a deliberate provocation" and even the promotional material from Open Letter says the book is "offensive." No doubt, I do not think all literature needs to be uplifting or inspirational; I like dark and disturbing as well. I also think literature should question established norms, including the confines of leftist doctrine about what is "right" and "good." However, this book seemed to provoke for no real reason other than to make obvious something that I already knew: men can be sick and cruel, arrogant and self-centered. The book made all of this disgustingly clear. Perhaps some would find something exceptional in the prose (which seemed well translated by Michele Hutchinson) but while it was captivating, the language itself wasn't enough to mask the essential vacuousness and insanity of the main character. I should mention here that I am a dedicated fan of Open Letter, the publisher of Rupert: A Confession. 

I support their mission of publishing and disseminating literature from around the world in English translation. 

Despite all this and especially after reading Rupert, I have to wonder if it isn't time for Open Letter (now in its second year of publishing) to provide its readers with a few more books from outside of Europe (and by non-Euro women!). The only non-European books (all by men) offered by Open Letter are by Rubem Fonseca of Brazil, Macedonio Fernández of Argentina and Jorge Volpi of Mexico (and his book seems to be set in Russia and other northern climes). As far as forthcoming titles, there will be three more one author from Argentina, Juan José Saer. Now, I definitely understand that the press is young and new, but I do hope in the future to read translations from other languages and other continents. If the mission of the press is to "open cultural borders," I'd hope the fluid and cultural borderlines demarcating the "European" tradition from the rest of the world would also be crossed. And for now, a moratorium on self-centered, psychotic European men.

guest review: every man dies alone

Tim from Progressive on the Prairie posted this review of Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada.

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post.

It’s what every reader longs for but experiences all too rarely. Just a few pages into a book and you realize there’s something special in your hands. German author Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone is just such a book. And what makes it perhaps that much more remarkable is that it is now being published in the U.S. for the first time more than 50 years after it was written. 

Every Man Dies Alone is far from the perfect novel. No one would expect it to be given the fact Fallada, the pseudonym for Rudolf Ditzen, wrote it in 24 days. From today’s perspective, his style tends to reflect the era in which the book was written. Additionally, he likes to wander a bit and uses coincidence as a plot mechanism perhaps a bit too much. Even with such flaws, the book deserves to be on plenty of this year’s “best of” lists. 

Every Man Dies Alone is based on the true story of a married couple who dropped postcards containing anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler messages throughout Berlin during World War II. In fact, the book includes reproductions of the Gestapo file on that case, including photos of several of the cards. Here, the couple is Otto and Anna Quangel, whose campaign begins after their only son is killed in the Nazi victory over France in 1940. Otto is a taciturn, staid foreman in a factory that goes from producing furniture before the war to coffins as the war progresses. Anna is a homemaker who, despite her self-imposed subordination, is close to an equal partner in their crusade. 

The book, translated by Michael Hofmann, essentially follows the investigation into their campaign and those — both noble and despicable — whose lives somehow intersect with their defiance. There’s plenty of people who are directly or indirectly swept up or affected by their actions. They include Eva Kluge, the postal worker who delivers their son’s death notice; other residents of their apartment building, from petty crook Emil Borkhausen to ardent and brutal Hitler Youth member Baldur Persickes to retired Judge Fromm. There’s also the fiancée of the Quangels’ son, the investigators, Anna’s brother and sister-in-law, and Enno Kluge, Eva’s ne’er-do-well, estranged husband who gets caught up in Emil Borkhausen’s mischief. 

Although the fact Fallada approaches the story from the investigative standpoint might lead one to think it’s a thriller, it isn’t. Rather, this is a book about life in exceedingly difficult times and how people react both ethically and morally. Fallada, who died in 1947 just weeks before the book was published, gives us a story that examines and raises the question of the value and impact of resistance. Each ensuing chapter takes us through another step in the investigation or the events that unalterably impact the lives of each character, always crafted with an almost palpable sense of dread. 

While I don’t usually put much stock in book blurbs, the statement on the front cover by Holocaust survivor and memoirist Primo Levi right on the mark: “”The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.” That is particularly a huge statement given that Fallada is German. Yet that is perhaps what makes Every Man Dies Alone so powerful. It comes from someone who lived under the Nazi regime, who was familiar with the fear and surveillance, who was one of millions who, to at least some extent, went along to get along. But the book looks at the converse: what if you don’t go along. It is not the story of a broad-based and wide-ranging resistance movement. 

It is not the story of a pattern or campaign of industrial or other sabotage. It is simply a story of individual conscience on the part of an older couple. “At least I stayed decent,” Otto Quangel says at one point. “I didn’t participate.” Theirs is a story of resistance undertaken without knowing whether it produces results. It is a story of the ramifications of even mild defiance in a society where the Hitler and the Nazis are “everything, and the people nothing.” 

There is little doubt even such small acts of resistance are courageous. The more profound question is whether they ultimately have has any meaning after balancing the personal principles and redemption against the likely futility and body count. In exploring this dilemma, Every Man Dies Alone is a remarkable success. 

As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean that we are alone.

guest review: unseen

Danielle from A Work In Progress posted this review of Unseen by Mari Jungstedt.

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

A few months ago when I was reading Mari Jungstedt's most recent Anders Knutas novel I was enjoying a little mystery binge. How quickly things change as I've slowed down considerably on reading mysteries of late. I did just manage to squeeze in Jungstedt's first novel, Unseen, however. I'm glad I decided to go back and start at the beginning of the series. I felt as I was reading The Inner Circle that I was missing out on important backstory as relationships were already developed that I knew nothing about, and this helped me fill in the picture. Inspector Knutas became a more rounded character to me as well as his colleagues in the police department. 

One of the strong points in this series is the setting. Gotland is a picturesque island off the southeast coast of Sweden and tourism is one of the main sources for the island's income. And Visby, where much of the action takes place is a medieval city which provides a nice atmospheric backdrop for a crime novel. Jungstedt spends much more time in Unseen describing Visby and the other locales and you get a sense of how people there live and how it looks and feels. It goes without saying I'd like to travel there now. 

Unseen opens with the grisly discovery of a murdered woman and her dog. The husband is the obvious suspect as they had had a violent argument the night before which had been witnessed by a houseful of people. To make matters worse the murder weapon is an axe which has his fingerprints on it, though perhaps this is not so surprising as it had been taken from the couple's property. It is not long before he's taken into custody and the case is considered closed. After two more brutal murders the detectives must start from scratch but are floundering this time with no credible suspects, and pressure is mounting from not only the mayor but the press as they call for fast results before more women are murdered. 

It's high summer and the tourist trade is about to take off, but with each new body that pops up both islanders and tourists alike become more and more fearful and anxious. Gotland is usually a quiet, serene place to live, violent crime being virtually unheard of. The population swells in the summer with so many holidaymakers particularly at Midsummer, which is their equivalent of our Fourth of July. 

Of course the press quickly descends ready to cover the salacious story of Gotland's serial killer. Johan Berg, a TV news reporter from Stockholm is sent to the island to cover the case. A source within the police ranks is sharing details of the crimes not meant for the public's ears, which causes tension between Berg and Inspector Knutas. Berg, always looking for new angles to the story begins interviewing the witnesses and ends up falling for Emma Winarve, the best friend of one of the murdered women. The situation is complicated as she's already married with children. It's an agonizing (yet exhilarating) situation for both of them as they try and resist but can't stay away from each other. 

This was very much a character driven story to me. Jungstedt has a knack for twining the characters' lives together and getting inside their heads--victims and murderer alike. Of course you expect this with a murder mystery (wanting to know the psychology of the why behind the crime), but it was this aspect of the story that really drew me in. The actual mystery thread felt a little bland to be honest, a problem I had with previous novel by her I read. Inspector Knutas seems to be of the intuitive school of detective work. There are lots of meetings of the detectives to sort through evidence and motives as well as interviews with witnesses and suspects. Really this sounds like typical detective fiction, but it somehow felt a little bit pedestrian and I'm not sure I can put my finger on just what about it that made me feel that way. 

Still, I found myself compulsively reading the novel, particularly when it came to the climactic final pages and the suspense built to the surprising end. I plan on picking up the next book in the series, Unspoken to fill in the gap and will read as much for the mystery as for the characters, as I expect them to continue developing and am curious to know more about Johan and Emma and how exactly they come together. Having already read the third book, I know that it ends with a cliffhanger, so I'll have to read that as well, though first have to wait for it to be published over here! In the interim I really must read Henning Mankell and some of his and Jungstedt's Swedish compatriots!

possibilities: night train to lisbon

Night Train to Lisbon 

By Pascal Mercier 

Translated from the German by Barbara Harshav 

Grove / Atlantic, Inc. 

"A huge international best seller, this ambitious novel plumbs the depths of our shared humanity to offer up a breathtaking insight into life, love, and literature itself. A major hit in Germany that went on to become one of Europe’s biggest literary blockbusters in the last five years, Night Train to Lisbon is an astonishing novel, a compelling exploration of consciousness, the possibility of truly understanding another person, and the ability of language to define our very selves. Raimund Gregorius is a Latin teacher at a Swiss college who one day—after a chance encounter with a mysterious Portuguese woman—abandons his old life to start a new one. He takes the night train to Lisbon and carries with him a book by Amadeu de Prado, a (fictional) Portuguese doctor and essayist whose writings explore the ideas of loneliness, mortality, death, friendship, love, and loyalty. Gregorius becomes obsessed by what he reads and restlessly struggles to comprehend the life of the author. His investigations lead him all over the city of Lisbon, as he speaks to those who were entangled in Prado’s life. Gradually, the picture of an extraordinary man emerges—a doctor and poet who rebelled against Salazar’s dictatorship." (from the publisher)

guest review: norwegian wood

Gege from Islandhopper Lives It Up posted this review of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. 

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

So I have decided to be a Murakami fan. And this book made me do it. Not because it's the best one I've read of his thus far, even though it is. But because Murakami's voice is becoming a familiar one, and I'm liking it. Of course, a big part of that voice is that of translator Jay Rubin. And then there are the voices of his characters, each one distinct and to me quite endearing.  

Toru Watanabe narrates in a voice reflective of Nick Carraway's in The Great Gatsby, Toru's favorite book. His is a voice that tries to subdue itself as the other characters assert themselves, loudly, emotionally. Just a few steps away from being a fly in the wall, he observes life around him and lets the other characters move him. He moves as the seemingly sane and stable character in a sea of broken souls.

I fell in love with the most broken among them, Naoko. Naoko and her beautiful sadness. And her hair slide. And her troubled past. And her attempts to set her life right in an asylum where the objective is not just to "correct the deformation" in their characters but to recognize and accept them, and still continue to live. "That's what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another." She makes me think about my deformities, those I acknowledge and those I hide.

Like Toru, I was also torn between Naoko and Midori. Midori, the light against Naoko's dark spirit, the one who represents hope amid and despite a life filled with death and pain. Lively, wild, offbeat, her voice is a necessary one in a novel that would otherwise be too dismal for enjoyment. Her quirky language, her micro-minis, her bizarre dreams, her even stranger daydreams and fantasies, all lovable.

And then there's Reiko, the one who should have had the life of a successful pianist. Instead, she lives her days in an asylum to escape the outside world, a world which has battered her soul. Her voice is the most musical of all in a novel that's typical Murakami, heavily spiked with music. Reiko plays her guitar for her healing as much as for the healing of others around her. The Beatles' Norwegian Wood is among her repertoire.

There are other voices as well. The voice of Japanese youth in the 60s. Nagasawa's (Toru's college buddy and sexcapades mentor), charismatic, intelligent. The world is his for the taking, and he takes all that he possibly can. Kizuki's (Toru's childhood best friend and Naoko's boyfriend) voice from the dead, that continues to haunt and affect Toru's and Naoko's life.

But Toru speaks back to Hizuki: Hey there, Kizuki. Unlike you I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do... I have to pay the price to go on living.

These voices haunt me even weeks after the reading. And I've got Murakami to blame for it.

guest review: detective story

Tim from A Progressive on the Prairie just posted this review of Detective Story by Imre Kertesz.

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

Orwellian. Kafkaesque. Both terms are universally recognized shorthand for certain types of tales. Yet the terms are bandied about all too often. While the title of Detective Story by Imre Kertész calls to mind some noir novel, it is far more faithful to Orwell and Kafka than most other books for which those authors are invoked. 

Kertész, an Auschwitz survivor, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, the first Hungarian author to do so. Originally published in Hungary in 1977, Detective Story is actually set in a fictitious Latin American country. Its appearance in the U.S. this year sadly reinforces it is still relevant. 

Detective Story actually has three narrators. The main one is Antonio Rojas Martens, a career policeman who transfers into “the Corps,” a secret police outfit. His story, however, is introduced by a defense attorney representing Martens, who has admitted to and been convicted of various counts of murder after the regime he served has itself been overthrown. Essentially, Martens wants to explain his involvement with and what happened to “Federigo and Enrique Salinas, father and son, proprietors of the chain of department stores that are dotted all over our country, whose deaths so astounded people.” In so doing, Martens quotes extensively from Enrique’s diary, which was confiscated in a search of the Salinas home, making Enrique co-narrator of the memoir (although it beggars the imagination that Martens would have access to the diary while incarcerated.) 

The country, led by “the Colonel,” has become a totalitarian society in which surveillance is endemic. “There are these police types everywhere, eavesdropping, sniffing around, and they think nobody is paying any attention to them,” Enrique notes in his diary. “They’re right, too, people don’t pay them any attention. All it has taken is a few months, and already they have grown accustomed to them.” For example, the Corps shoots 120 rolls of film when Enrique spends a bit of time at the beach with a group of college-aged acquaintances Martens calls “shaggy-haired weirdos.” 

Enrique’s diary reveals that he is chafing under the government’s state of emergency, particularly since it has closed the universities. But other than what Orwell called “thoughtcrime,” Enrique has done nothing to attract the attention of the Corps, other than to be photographed with the presumably subversive “weirdos.” That matters not. “Any person who was in the records was going to end up a suspect sooner or later, no question,” Martens writes. Moreover, simply being in the records meant “Enrique was going to perpetrate something sooner or later. As far as we were concerned, his fate was sealed, even if he himself had not yet made up his mind.” 

Thus, Kertész blends the Orwellian world with a Kafkaesque one. Whether Enrique or his father are guilty of treason or trying to overthrow the government is wholly irrelevant. They, like almost anyone else in the country, are powerless to change their destiny. Having been identified as a potential threat to “Homeland security” due only to association, Enrique and, in turn, his father are inexorably entangled in the jaws of the leviathan. Detective Story is, thus, like many detective novels. The story isn’t in the end result, it’s what brought the characters to that end. At just more than 100 pages, this is more a novella than a novel. It is written in sparse, straightforward prose, something retained in Tim Wilkinson’s translation. In fact, Detective Story was on the longlist for the first annual Best Translated Book Award. Characters are portrayed more from a psychological standpoint than any other. Martens seeks to expiate his conscience, noting that although the Corps “brainwashed” him, it wasn’t enough. Yet he still invokes some bit of excuse, saying that as the “new boy” on his interrogation team, “I was aware that a different yardstick applied here at the Corps, but I thought there was at least a yardstick.” 

Enrique’s conscience is similarly plagued by guilt, but guilt over the benefits his family’s status affords him and the perceived complacency of the citizenry, himself included. He expressly takes an existential view of the meaninglessness of life under the current regime and he burns to do something, anything, to bring value to his life. His father’s conscience, meanwhile, will suffer the repercussions of his own deceptions. Thus, the power of Detective Story is not in its character description but showing how easily it is for evil to be viewed as a temporary necessity until it simply becomes accepted. As the defense attorney says in introducing the story, “Let me add, not in his defense but merely for the sake of the truth, that this horror story was written not by Martens alone but by reality, too.” 

The present is just temporary.

guest review: solaris

Joy from Joy’s Blog just posted this review of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.

Have you read this one too? Email me the link to your review, and I will add it to this post. 

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Published by Harvest/Harcourt, 1987, 205 pages

Translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox

Translation copyright 1970, Faber and Faber Ltd.

What's It All About?                 

From the publisher's synopsis: "When psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds himself confronting a painful memory embodied in the physical likeness of a past lover. Kelvin learns that he is not alone in this, and that other crews examining the planet are plagued with their own repressed and newly real memories. Could it be, as Solaris scientists speculate, that the ocean may be a massive neural center creating these memories, for a reason no one can identify?" Kelvin and the other researchers on the Solaris space station are being "visited" by loved ones who should not be there. Are the visitors as real as they themselves seem to believe? And if so, why are they there? How have they materialized in this place at this time? And is their sudden appearance benign or is it part of a more sinister development, somehow tied to the planet the scientists are studying? 

What Did I Think About It? 

In his novel Solaris, first published in 1961, Polish author Stanislaw Lem managed to pull off that most difficult and most vital of tricks for the science fiction writer – the creation of a completely unique and authentic (even though mysterious) fictional world. Or, in the case of Solaris, a unique and authentic body of literature and information about that fictional world. Much of the book is taken up with detailed descriptions of the discovery and documentation of the planet Solaris, and the academic industry that grows up around it over a period of years. I suppose, depending on your personal tastes, this can be endlessly fascinating or endlessly boring. I have to admit that after a few chapters of "Solarist" minutiae, I started skimming over the details in order to get to the actual story. 

I've had Solaris on my TBR list for over thirty years now, ever since I first heard about it in the 1970s. But I probably wouldn't have been nudged into reading it if I hadn't finally seen the Steven Soderbergh movie from 2002, starring George Clooney as Kris Kelvin. It's a haunting, thought-provoking film that really caught my attention; I've watched it several more times. And since I read the novel, I've also seen Andrei Tarkovsy's 1972 version. Neither film is completely faithful to the book, though each is different in its own way. And the novel is, to some extent, both more and less interesting than either film. It's certainly more cerebral. 

For me, one thing that really stood out in the novel (as opposed to the films) was the relative lack of modern computer technology. Which is a little odd, since science fiction of the time was full of early imaginings of cyberspace and computers. After all, 2001's HAL was only five or six years down the road. However, there's very little of that in Solaris. When Kelvin begins his research on the possibly sentient ocean that covers the surface of the planet, he does it the old fashioned way – using books from the space station's library shelves. In a way, of course, that was refreshing; but also a little strange and disorienting. 

Would I Recommend It? 

Though I hate to admit it, I was a little disappointed in the book. Maybe it's just a result of reading about it for so many years: I've seen it receive so much praise from so many reviewers, perhaps my expectations were just too high. I didn't hate it, though; and I'm still very impressed with Lem's achievement. But if you like your sci-fi speculation mixed with more than a passing nod at action and drama, this probably isn't the place to look.

possibilities: poetry in translation

Favorite independent bookstore here in DC, Politics and Prose, recently posted this list of poetry in translation. All currently available of course. From them would be great as you won't find this list on Amazon.