Hamsun, Knut "Pan"

(Norwegian Title: Pan) - 1894

We were lucky to have a Norwegian member in our book club who is a huge fan of this author, she was the right mediator between us and the world Knut Hamsun takes us too.

She had a difficult time to choose her favourite book of her favourite author, the other good ones according to her: "Victoria", "Hunger", "Growth of the Soil". She studied this one at school.

It’s fascinating how the author describes nature and makes it come alive. He smells the forest, paints a picture, reminds us of our youth, love, culture, nature, civilization. It’s an echo of childhood and youth for some of us, the inner soul of the human being, he loved to explore that. There is a struggle between opposites, men and women, nature and town, the love story is eminent, there are obstacles, pride, jealousy.

We liked the symbolism and the metaphors, e.g. the changing seasons.

Mythology plays a big part in the novel, the division between his love of nature and with people, we were taken by his love of nature.

The descriptions both of nature as well as the characters are beautiful. There were a lot of interactive descriptions as well as psychological analogies and comparisons.

Someone approached the book with an obtuse mind, yet, she could identify.

Conclusion: this tells us something about the dream and the longing, better than the life itself.

And even though not all of us were swept away by the story, we agreed it had been a very interesting read.

The question came up whether his characters in other novels are also dysfunctional? The answer to that: absolutely. He investigates the mind. His love to nature is tremendous, there is some extreme nature above the arctic circle.

Knut Hamsum has and is one of the favourite authors of many of his colleagues, even other Nobel prize recipients like Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Ernest Hemingway. He has influenced all sorts of literature and not just written his own. Definitely deserved his Nobel Prize.

From the back cover: "One of Knut Hamsun's most famous works, "Pan" is the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, an ex-military man who lives alone in the woods with his faithful dog Aesop. Glahn's life changes when he meets Edvarda, a merchant's daughter, whom he quickly falls in love with. She, however, is not entirely faithful to him, which affects him profoundly. "Pan" is a fascinating study in the psychological impact of unrequited love and helped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for Hamsun."

Knut Hamsun received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 "for his monumental work, 'Growth of the Soil'". 

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Andrić, Ivo “The Bridge on the Drina”

(Serbo-Croatian Title: На Дрини Ћуприја or Na Drini Ćuprija) - 1945

This is the story of a bridge. From the day it was built in the 16th century up until a couple of hundred years later in the 20th.

It is amazing what such a building or the river below it goes through during the centuries. We people only live a very short time compared to anything around us. In the long run, the life of one person is nothing compared to history.

The author manages to describe this very well. The river runs smoothly, or sometimes not so smoothly, and so does the history of man. Leaders come and go, war rages, natural catastrophes, the bridge still stands and watches over the lives of the people who cross the river .

Reading this makes you almost feel like being the bridge seeing the river flow below you.

But it also shows you a lot of the history of the Balkans that was always in the middle of the Western and Eastern Empires, the Occident and the Orient. As with most Eastern literature, there is quite a bit of poetry in the book, as well. You might want to concentrate on one part at the time. The book certainly brings you to a different part of this world.

Once you read it, you will understand why he was awarded the Nobel Prize for just writing one piece of fiction. It is a masterpiece.

From the back cover: "In the small Bosnian town of Visegrad the stone bridge of the novel's title, built in the sixteenth century on the instruction of a grand vezir, bears witness to three centuries of conflict. Visegrad has long been a bone of contention between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but the bridge survives unscathed until 1914, when the collision of forces in the Balkans triggers the outbreak of World War I.
The bridge spans generations, nationalities and creeds, silent testament to the lives played out on it. Radisav, a workman, tried to hinder its construction and is impaled alive on its highest point; beautiful Fata leaps from its parapet to escape an arranged marriage; Milan, inveterate gamble, risks all in one last game on it. With humour and compassion, Andric chronicles the lives of Catholics, Moslem's and Orthodox Christians unable to reconcile their disparate loyalties."

Ivo Andrić received received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country".

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

Elias Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1981. Auto-da-fé is an interesting story, confusing, even disturbing at times. If I were asked to use only one word to describe this writer’s only fiction work I’d probably call it weird.

At first, it seems to be a critique of society. On the one hand, there’s the well-to-do people (represented by the sinologist Peter Kien) who exaggerate the value and importance of education and reading to such an extent that it makes them unable to understand or at least cope with real life. On the other hand, there’s the common people who fight for survival every day and who have learned to care a lot about money, so much, in fact, that they don’t shrink back even from murder.

However, I think that the novel’s original German title – Die Blendung which is 'blinding' or 'deception' in English – hints at something else. Each one of the protagonists of the Auto-da-fé is to a certain degree obsessed by something: Kien lives for and through his private library of 25,000 volumes stored in the four rooms of his flat; his wife Therese – the former housekeeper, an old maid who deceived the inexperienced and asexual Kien into marrying her after eight years – only thinks of money and property, beauty and sex; the caretaker of the house is wrapped up in his past as a police officer and keeps living out his violent traits in order to press money from the tenants who he’s 'protecting' from bad lots like beggars and door-to-door salesmen; and last, but not least, the crippled Jewish crook Siegfried Fischer, called Fischerle, who is obsessed with chess and with going to America in order to prove that he’s better at that game than the current world champion, for which scope he – of course – needs a lot of money.

The obsessions of all those people result in an inability to see the world the way it really is. They always give information, conversations, and events a meaning which is consistent with their very own idea of a perfect life. So in a way, all of them create an imaginary world within themselves which differs from reality to a certain degree.

But you should see for yourself…

An interesting fact about the background of the story:
Elias Canetti wrote it in the early 1930s under the impression of rising National Socialism in Germany and of the first auto-da-fé of books on 10 May 1933. Even being Jewish himself he could hardly have imagined then what was still to come … the concentration camps. Heinrich Heine's saying that 'Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings' unfortunately proved right…

This review was first published on Edith's Miscellany.

Red Sorghum by Yan Mo

Chinese Title: 红高粱家族  Hóng gāoliang jiāzú - 1987 

Every year I am eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature. I have found the most brilliant writers among them and always choose to read one of their novels. I haven't been disappointed so far and this year was no exception.

I hadn't heard of Chinese author Mo Yan before and was surprised to hear that he was the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

The story takes place during the second Sino-Japanese war between 1937 and 1945, so approximately the same time the whole world was at war. The narrator tells the story of his ancestors, mainly that of his father, who was a teenager at the time, and his grandfather and grandmother. As in most war stories, there is a lot of brutality in the book, the author has a very picturesque way of describing the atrocities committed by both parties. But he doesn't just talk about the war, we also get to know the way people used to live in the eastern part of China at the time.

Red Sorghum, the title of the book, means so much for the Chinese, it is not just food, it represents their country.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The writing style is at times a little confusing but very interesting to read, he paints the world in his own words. I have always been very interested in China, starting with the books of another Nobel Prize winner who wrote a lot about China, Pearl S. Buck. Mo Yan tells reports from another perspective, and from another era. Definitely worth the read.

Mo Yan "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

From the back cover:
"Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.

As the novel opens, a group of villagers, led by Commander Yu, the narrator's grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men; but as Yu's wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food, the Japanese start firing and she is killed.

Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present and the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between the Chinese warlords and his family's history."

This review was first published on  Let's Read.

The Plague by Albert Camus

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

Having a focus on African literature, it’s almost inevitable to give Albert Camus a special place in the limelight. Most people think that the existentialist, who always considered this label as rather inappropriate, was a French writer to the backbone, but the truth is that the roots of the Nobel Prize laureate of 1957 were North African, more precisely Algerian. What makes Albert Camus’ most popular and accessible novel The Plague an even better choice for today’s review is the fact that it’s set in Africa, namely in the city of Oran, Algeria. 

Albert Camus was born in Dréan, Algeria, in November 1913. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers and joined the Algerian Communist Party that later expelled him. From 1938 on Albert Camus worked every once and again as a reporter. When he moved to Paris in 1940, he got into fiction writing. His first books, The Stranger (L'étranger) and The Myth of Sisyphus (Le mythe de Sisyphe), were published in 1942 and well received in literary circles. In 1945 his first play, Caligula, was successfully put on the stage. The best-selling novel The Plague (La peste) was published in 1947 and made the writer famous. Several other novels and plays followed until 1957 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Albert Camus was killed in a car accident in January 1960. Two of his works, A Happy Death (La mort heureuse) and The First Man (Le premier homme), were brought out posthumously in 1970 and 1995 respectively.

Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

I wonder how many other readers have been provoked into reading Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic Worstward Ho courtesy of Dublinesque, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize? Vila-Matas references so many works in his novel it’s hard to know where to begin, but having seen a couple of Beckett’s plays (Endgame and Waiting for Godot) I was curious about his other works and so I went exploring. Worstward Ho is included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it’s only 40 pages long, and you can read it online, so why not, eh?

Well, some might agree with this cursory dismissal in something called Brief Notes:

A sterile, dreadful exercise, it might be said, and one does not, as Dr. Johnson remarked of “Paradise Lost,” wish it longer than it is.

I don’t blame this unidentified reviewer because I think I would be still struggling with the first couple of lines if I had not stumbled onto Colin Greenlaw’s elaborations, which showed me how to read it.

I printed it out, and read each section aloud, tried to make sense of it my own way, then read the elaboration to clarify it, and by the end of page two in my printout I was (mostly) able to skip the elaborations because I’d got the hang of it. For what it’s worth, this is my interpretation:

Firstly, I don’t think it’s ‘about’ anything. It’s Beckett, in his unique Beckettian way, playing with the idea of reducing writing to less rather than more. (What else can an author do, after James Joyce’s Ulysses, eh?)

So the reader witnesses the author trying to say the absolute minimum. Obviously there has to be something to say, or the task/quest/game can’t be done at all, it would be an empty page or maybe not even that. But to fit Beckett’s self-imposed brief, the fiction needs to be the very least it can be and yet not be nothing. (Are you still with me? I’m having great fun trying to explain this …)

We witness the author exploring setting: what is the very least it can be? Only dimness, dimness so dim that there is nothing there – but not a void because a void is nothingness, and there has to be something.

So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to dimmer still. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst. (Beckett)
Thus they plod on towards the least, so long as there is dim still, undimmed dim. Or dim dimmed to dimmer still, to the most dim dim. They plod on leastmost in the most dim dim, in the utmost dim. They plod on leastmost in the utmost dim, in the unworsenable worst. (Greenlaw)

We witness his efforts with character. Can there be just one character in a piece of fiction? (It’s labelled a novella, but really, it’s not, trust me). He messes around disposing of crippled hands and hats and boots and faces till left with nothing but a stare (which whether it was meant to or not brought to mind Munch’s Scream) and (I think) comes to the conclusion that even if they are only shades (i.e. spirits of people) and as ‘good as gone’ and yet still be there, there must be three, a man, a woman and a child – or else there is no future, people will cease to be.

Back unsay shades can go. Go and come again. No. Shades cannot go. Much less come again. Nor bowed old woman’s back. Nor old man and child. Nor foreskull and and stare. Blur yes. Shades can blur. When stare clamped to one alone. Or somehow words again. Go no nor come again. Till dim if ever go. Never to come again. (Beckett)
I’ll go back and unsay that the shades can go, can go away and then come back again. No, the shades cannot go away – much less come back again. Nor can the bowed old woman’s back, nor the old man and child, nor the front of the skull and the stare. They can blur, yes: the shades can blur – when the stare is clamped to only one of them, or when somehow there are words again. But they cannot go away, nor come back again: not till the dim itself goes (if it ever does), never to come back again. (Greenlaw)

What about thought? Can there be a mind without people? Can there be words without minds? There must be, enough for joy. (This, farcically, made me think of IT in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This was surely not intended by Beckett.)

Remains of mind then still. Enough still. Somewhose somewhere somehow enough still. No mind and no words? Even such words. So enough still. Just enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only! (Beckett)
There are still remains of mind then, still enough: still enough of someone’s, somewhere, somehow. Can there be no mind and yet be words? Even such words as these? So there are enough remains of mind still – still just enough to joy. (Joy!) Just enough still to joy that there are only they. (Only!) (Greenlaw)

If you enjoy getting horribly tangled in your own thoughts, Worstward Ho is a fascinating game. This fiction (if that’s what it is) revolves around trying to write fiction describing almost nothing, portraying the least that anything can be without being nothing. Because if there were truly nothing, there would be no one around to define it. Even when you have a vacuum inside something, if you can see it there is light, so it’s not nothing and you are there describing it, and you’re not nothing either.

But what makes this game hard, is that Beckett (being Beckett), is also reducing the words to their bare minimum. He is using a minimum of short, sharp words, ditching verbs, prepositions and articles, and forcing the reader to infill with clichés such as ‘stretch‘ for ‘stretch of the imagination’. And doing this to accomplish a task that has had philosophers struggling for years. As he gropes towards his goal he changes his mind, has to go back and un-say things or acknowledge that his words were mis-said. Sometimes, in order to keep going with his project, he just has to say, ok, let’s just say this for now, otherwise he would get stuck. And in the end he has to be satisfied with not knowing.

Enough still not to know. Not to know what they say. Not to know what it is the words it says say. Says? Secretes. Say better worse secretes. What it is the words it secretes say. What the so-said void. The so-said dim. The so-said shades. The so-said seat and germ of all. Enough to know no knowing. No knowing what it is the words it secretes say. No saying. No saying what it is they somehow say. (Beckett)
There are still enough remains of mind to allow me not to know: not to know what they say, not to know what it is that the words the mind says say. (“Says”? Secretes, rather – for better or worse I’ll say “secretes”.) What it is the words it secretes say, what the so-called void says, what the so-called dim says, what the so-called shades say, what the so-called seat and germ of all says. It’s enough to know that there is no knowing: no knowing what it is that the words it secretes say, and no saying it – no saying what it all is that they somehow say. (Greenlaw)

I couldn’t have read it, or made any sense of it without the crib sheet to start with, and maybe Beckett scholars are scratching their heads in dismay at my ramblings, but hey, I had fun!

PS Don’t try this at home without reading it aloud.

PS This is Beckett’s Nobel Prize citation:

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 was awarded to Samuel Beckett “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”.

Author: Samuel Beckett
Title: Worstward Ho
Source: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/w_ho.htm at Samuel Beckett Resource Pages.

Cross-posted at ANZ LitLovers

The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

In his biographical novel ‘The Way to Paradise’ the Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa displays the lives of the French trade unionist and early women’s rights activist Flora Tristán (7 April 1803 – 14 November 1844) and of her famous grand-son, the post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903). The author highlights the common traits of their character as well as their search for the ideal and free life. When I first read the historical novel a few years ago, I was quite impressed by the double biography of those two outstanding and strong characters, so it seemed obvious to me to review it here. 

Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in March 1936. Already as a teenager he took to writing and worked as a freelance journalist for local newspapers. While studying law and literature at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, he began to pursue his literary ambitions more seriously. His first short stories were published. For two years Mario Vargas Llosa continued his studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and moved on to Paris in 1960 where he started to write with more verve. His first novel, ‘The Time of the Hero’ (‘La ciudad y los perros’), came out in 1963 and was an immediate success. In 1966 ‘The Green House’ (‘La casa verde’) followed receiving even more acclaim and being considered the finest as well as the most important of Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels up to the present day. During the following decades the prolific author brought out a new novel every three to four years along with non-fiction work. ‘The Way to Paradise’ (‘El paraíso en la otra esquina’ which in Spanish is the name of a children’s game, by the way) was first released in 2003. For his life’s work Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. 

‘The Way to Paradise’ starts in April 1844 in a room in Paris, France, when Flora Tristán awakes at four o’clock in the morning, the day when she travels to Auxerre where she’s expected to give a trade unionist speech. Memory takes her back to her childhood. As the illegitimate child of a rich Peruvian she grew up in Paris with her poor French mother whom she despised for her miserable existence and for giving her away to the first man who wanted to marry her, the owner of the graphics and lithography workshop where she had been an apprentice, a syphilitic and violent drunkard without any respect for women. Paul Gauguin’s story, too, is told mainly through flashbacks and streams of consciousness. The account begins in Mataiea, Marquesas Islands, in 1892, when the painter had already been living in the Pacific Islands for a couple of years. In the novel the lives of Flora Tristán and her famous grand-son are interweaved although in reality they never met as Flora Tristán died before her grand-son was born. Alternating their stories throughout the twenty-two chapters of the novel, Mario Vargas Llosa shows the parallels of their respective flight from the social conventions of their time. Flora Tristán left her husband and devoted her entire life to the fight for women’s rights, workers’ rights and socialism. Paul Gauguin gave up his comfortable existence and his family in France in order to be a painter who seeks inspiration not only abroad, but also in sexual excesses with often very young Polynesian women. Their longing for freedom implied that they both had to face many struggles and hardships along with failing health caused by syphilis. 

Overall ‘The Way to Paradise’ gives an interesting insight into the character of those two historical figures who themselves never arrived in paradise, but inspired others to follow their way and continue their strivings for an ideal life and society. I’m not in the position to judge the historical accuracy of the novel, to me it seems close enough to the facts, though, and it introduced me to Flora Tristán who I had never heard of before. The narrative is written in a style that can capture readers like me and that shows that the author was an experienced one who knew what he did. At any rate, I enjoyed reading the book very much although critics say that in this novel Mario Vargas Llosa didn’t show his usual genius. I can’t judge it since ‘The Way to Paradise’ is the only work of Mario Vargas Llosa that I know so far. Besides, there’s no accounting for tastes, is there?

This review was first published on Edith's Miscellany.