It would be very easy to write a 10,000 word review on this but I couldn't do it justice. So just an observation of what I believe to be the most complete book ever:
The Brothers K is, along with Oblomov (note: I lifted this from an old forum post, and in this forum I would reference Oblomov again and again. I'm in the process of tracking what I originally wrote about Oblomov down to put on this blog) the only book to make me feel some very weird things. However, whereas Oblomov basically explores and does its best to explain ennui, existentialism and, as an overall theme, how we treat our loved ones in the way we do and what that says about how we treat ourselves in a highly effective and moving away, Brothers K is so much more. In Brothers K, Dostoevsky pulls the human condition from out of your head, unfolds it, strokes it a little, then hammers that fucker into the wall and puts it on display for everybody to see. The swathes of glossy surface, its well-intentioned folds, the curls at the corners and the dirty great stains you've done your best to hide for your whole life. One chapter in particular (The Grand Inquisitor) is still the only passage I've read in any book that made me put it down halfway through to actually catch my breath. My heart was beating, I was sweating. Was that a tear or had I been staring at the page too hard? Difficult to say. Absolutely astonishing ideas and penmanship. I want that chapter to burn with me when I die. It's at once gruesome, disgusting and life-affirming. Brothers K was written soon before Dostoevsky's death and you can tell. Every single sentence is gorgeous and pregnant with the significant of a rich life.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Thursday, 4 November 2010
And Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris
'And then we came to the end' by Joshua Ferris.
This book is about an advertising agencies and the small (and sometimes big) dramas that occur within the mind-rotting timeframe of your standard vaguely creative 9-5 job.
The book employs a very simple narrative device, but it's completely original, to my knowledge at least. It uses the collective noun 'we' to tell the story, dipping into a character every now and then. It's quite difficult to describe, really, but it means that it's narrated by nobody and everybody all at once. An interesting experiment in perception and point of view. It's really rather good. The book is set during the dot-com burst, and although it's extremely Americanised in its language and tone, using phrases such as 'couple things' rather than 'couple OF things', which may annoy just me, but nevertheless do annoy. It's quite touching in places and very funny in a detached kind of way, which totally fits in with the narrative style. The cover is wicked too. Very retro and my copy is made of that material that never seems to warp or show fingerprints. It even survived a journey to the beach. I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I've a feeling it's going to break my heart.
As an aside, I just scanned through some reviews of this book. Barely any of the big papers (Guardian, Times etc.) mention this narrative style, whereas most of the Amazon reviews do. The press just give a low-down on the story. The press really is worthless.
Edit: I've since lent this out and lost it because the person moved from his job. If you've read this book then you'll know how fitting an end to And Then We Came to the End this is. And yes, it was depressing as hell in the end. The best stories tend to be, though.
Recommended, although the heavy contemporary Americanisms can grate at times.
This book is about an advertising agencies and the small (and sometimes big) dramas that occur within the mind-rotting timeframe of your standard vaguely creative 9-5 job.
The book employs a very simple narrative device, but it's completely original, to my knowledge at least. It uses the collective noun 'we' to tell the story, dipping into a character every now and then. It's quite difficult to describe, really, but it means that it's narrated by nobody and everybody all at once. An interesting experiment in perception and point of view. It's really rather good. The book is set during the dot-com burst, and although it's extremely Americanised in its language and tone, using phrases such as 'couple things' rather than 'couple OF things', which may annoy just me, but nevertheless do annoy. It's quite touching in places and very funny in a detached kind of way, which totally fits in with the narrative style. The cover is wicked too. Very retro and my copy is made of that material that never seems to warp or show fingerprints. It even survived a journey to the beach. I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I've a feeling it's going to break my heart.
As an aside, I just scanned through some reviews of this book. Barely any of the big papers (Guardian, Times etc.) mention this narrative style, whereas most of the Amazon reviews do. The press just give a low-down on the story. The press really is worthless.
Edit: I've since lent this out and lost it because the person moved from his job. If you've read this book then you'll know how fitting an end to And Then We Came to the End this is. And yes, it was depressing as hell in the end. The best stories tend to be, though.
Recommended, although the heavy contemporary Americanisms can grate at times.
The Pillow Book - Sei Shonagon
The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon is a fascinating collection of little chapters - thoughts and ideas and strings of categorised words;observations and jokes, poems and lists - written by a person believed to be called Sei Shonagon around the year 990. She served the Empress Teishi at the time as a gentlewoman in Japan.
The book doesn't have a strict narrative - instead it drifts in and out of dates and times and situations as though in a dream (this is in now way related to book's title, by the way) - at one point the author even tries to start a novel, but this is quickly abandoned. Aside from the historical interest - as you can imagine, the book is a rich source of utterly absorbing information on medieval Japan, and there are all sorts of controversies pertaining the authenticity of certain chapters etc., what with there being so many different versions of the book - what this book does for me is reinforce the belief and confidence in humanity. It's 1000 years old, yet the writing is punchy, witty and modern. This isn't due to the translation; Sei Shonagon wrote light-years head of her contemporaries. She reaches across time and holds your hand because she is just the same as we are now. She laughs at others' misfortune in unbelievably cruel ways, and in the next sentence she writes about a peasant she saw with an aching sense of empathy. One passage that sticks in my mind especially is of her description of a pretty young girl's hair sticking to her contoured face from the tears produced by the agony of toothache. All at once you are swept 1000 years into the past in complete heartbreak, the savage reality of that time almost making your own teeth sting.
Shonagon lived in a very different time, where class and social standing ruled the day, yet her humanity shines through this when her defences are down. She writes about the sound the lid of a kettle makes when it closes and at how she delights in the way a light tree branch springs upwards once the required amount of morning dew has burned away in the early afternoon sun. She writes about the expression in a man's eyes when he leaves her bed in the morning and she knows she won't see him again. She writes about how young adults are ruining the language by dropping certain letters. She discusses her fears at her new job and, eventually, how she quickly settled in. She is introverted and extroverted at the same time, confused, happy and sad. She is completely real and it's very easy to forget just how old this text is.
Another thing that strikes is the description of the clothes. I think that we're used to food being a huge indicator of culture and time. In Japan it was clothes, and Shonagon takes a lot of time to describe the colours, shapes and patterns on clothes. She writes with complete passion about how it's unseemly to wear certain shades of autumn green at certain times of the day and the way a sleeve will roll up slightly, revealing a gorgeous colour of some sort. It's too early in the morning for me to think of any examples, but you can almost taste the colours as she writes about them. It's so charming to read somebody writing with such strength of passion - and of course her tastes just sound scrumptious.
Nobody knows what happened to her once she left service. Some say she went on to lead a life every bit as exciting as the one she details in the book, whereas one story speaks of her old and decrepit and bitter. I don't know which one is more romantic to me.
There were some problems with my translation, in that it suffered from the translator forgetting that she isn't some superwoman genius above the rest of us - a common problem I find with old Japanese fiction. I'll explain: the notes and appendices are extensive, but too much so; words that describe the shape of a roof or a certain cloth will be starred and noted, fine. Words like 'mat' and 'room' do not need to be explained to us. Russian books do not suffer from this patronising state - it's just Japanese fiction in my experience. A typical side-effect of the fanboyism an interest in that culture seems to fuel (and I write this as a bit of a J-dork)? I don't but it's annoying.
I challenge anybody to read this and not fall in love with Sei Shonagon.
The book doesn't have a strict narrative - instead it drifts in and out of dates and times and situations as though in a dream (this is in now way related to book's title, by the way) - at one point the author even tries to start a novel, but this is quickly abandoned. Aside from the historical interest - as you can imagine, the book is a rich source of utterly absorbing information on medieval Japan, and there are all sorts of controversies pertaining the authenticity of certain chapters etc., what with there being so many different versions of the book - what this book does for me is reinforce the belief and confidence in humanity. It's 1000 years old, yet the writing is punchy, witty and modern. This isn't due to the translation; Sei Shonagon wrote light-years head of her contemporaries. She reaches across time and holds your hand because she is just the same as we are now. She laughs at others' misfortune in unbelievably cruel ways, and in the next sentence she writes about a peasant she saw with an aching sense of empathy. One passage that sticks in my mind especially is of her description of a pretty young girl's hair sticking to her contoured face from the tears produced by the agony of toothache. All at once you are swept 1000 years into the past in complete heartbreak, the savage reality of that time almost making your own teeth sting.
Shonagon lived in a very different time, where class and social standing ruled the day, yet her humanity shines through this when her defences are down. She writes about the sound the lid of a kettle makes when it closes and at how she delights in the way a light tree branch springs upwards once the required amount of morning dew has burned away in the early afternoon sun. She writes about the expression in a man's eyes when he leaves her bed in the morning and she knows she won't see him again. She writes about how young adults are ruining the language by dropping certain letters. She discusses her fears at her new job and, eventually, how she quickly settled in. She is introverted and extroverted at the same time, confused, happy and sad. She is completely real and it's very easy to forget just how old this text is.
Another thing that strikes is the description of the clothes. I think that we're used to food being a huge indicator of culture and time. In Japan it was clothes, and Shonagon takes a lot of time to describe the colours, shapes and patterns on clothes. She writes with complete passion about how it's unseemly to wear certain shades of autumn green at certain times of the day and the way a sleeve will roll up slightly, revealing a gorgeous colour of some sort. It's too early in the morning for me to think of any examples, but you can almost taste the colours as she writes about them. It's so charming to read somebody writing with such strength of passion - and of course her tastes just sound scrumptious.
Nobody knows what happened to her once she left service. Some say she went on to lead a life every bit as exciting as the one she details in the book, whereas one story speaks of her old and decrepit and bitter. I don't know which one is more romantic to me.
There were some problems with my translation, in that it suffered from the translator forgetting that she isn't some superwoman genius above the rest of us - a common problem I find with old Japanese fiction. I'll explain: the notes and appendices are extensive, but too much so; words that describe the shape of a roof or a certain cloth will be starred and noted, fine. Words like 'mat' and 'room' do not need to be explained to us. Russian books do not suffer from this patronising state - it's just Japanese fiction in my experience. A typical side-effect of the fanboyism an interest in that culture seems to fuel (and I write this as a bit of a J-dork)? I don't but it's annoying.
I challenge anybody to read this and not fall in love with Sei Shonagon.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
I understand that this has been made until a film recently, which I have absolutely no intention of seeing. What a ridiculous choice of book to make into a film. I really do despair of the film industry.
This is a quiet, personal tale which deals with some strange and rather gruesome subject matter from the point of view of a bunch of kids.
I really like this story - but I can see why others don't. It's very passive and careful and sort of hovers over the meat of the story - but I found this to be rather refreshing. I know that Ishiguro is capable of writing in a much more direct way - see 'When We Were Orphans' for an example of this – but I think that this narrative style suits the main character herself. Kathy is careful, and she's hesitant to come to quick conclusions, and this is her story. So I have no complaints with that. In addition, I found the horrifying nature of the subject matter was dealt with very well using this technique. If the narration had been more in-your-face it would have cheapened it somewhat, I feel. I like the counterpoint of the narrative style versus what is actually happening. As for the twist - well, I saw it coming a mile off, and it was my understanding that this was intentional.
This was less of a 'what the hell happens' story and more of a 'why does this happen' story, and again, the slow, careful plotting makes the eventual understanding on the characters' part all the more shocking. They take the news like world-weary adults resigned to their fate, and this otherworldly, unnatural reaction seems somehow inevitable while still making me want to shake some fight into them.
I've read better, and from the same author too, and I can understand the disappointment that some have, but I think that it took an incredible amount of skill to tell a tale like this with such a simple, naive, charming cast of characters that is both fatalistic and doomed yet utterly content. It's the closest approximation of an utterly alien way of thinking that I've read in some time. A lot of sci-fi authors should read this before tapping out yet another Quuuaaaxxx'roghtor warrior-beast who feels triumph, despair and love just like us meatbags do.
Basically I love the way that this does everything a young writer is told not to do, and not only gets away with it, but does so with panache and style. Classy sci-fi human drama - not something I come across too often.
This is a quiet, personal tale which deals with some strange and rather gruesome subject matter from the point of view of a bunch of kids.
I really like this story - but I can see why others don't. It's very passive and careful and sort of hovers over the meat of the story - but I found this to be rather refreshing. I know that Ishiguro is capable of writing in a much more direct way - see 'When We Were Orphans' for an example of this – but I think that this narrative style suits the main character herself. Kathy is careful, and she's hesitant to come to quick conclusions, and this is her story. So I have no complaints with that. In addition, I found the horrifying nature of the subject matter was dealt with very well using this technique. If the narration had been more in-your-face it would have cheapened it somewhat, I feel. I like the counterpoint of the narrative style versus what is actually happening. As for the twist - well, I saw it coming a mile off, and it was my understanding that this was intentional.
This was less of a 'what the hell happens' story and more of a 'why does this happen' story, and again, the slow, careful plotting makes the eventual understanding on the characters' part all the more shocking. They take the news like world-weary adults resigned to their fate, and this otherworldly, unnatural reaction seems somehow inevitable while still making me want to shake some fight into them.
I've read better, and from the same author too, and I can understand the disappointment that some have, but I think that it took an incredible amount of skill to tell a tale like this with such a simple, naive, charming cast of characters that is both fatalistic and doomed yet utterly content. It's the closest approximation of an utterly alien way of thinking that I've read in some time. A lot of sci-fi authors should read this before tapping out yet another Quuuaaaxxx'roghtor warrior-beast who feels triumph, despair and love just like us meatbags do.
Basically I love the way that this does everything a young writer is told not to do, and not only gets away with it, but does so with panache and style. Classy sci-fi human drama - not something I come across too often.
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