Month: November 2015

Winston’s books A nobel and a night film some new books

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I had a few appealing books arrive this last couple of days from some well known writers and also a bargain find. I collected a number of parcels from post office and found –

death by water by kenzaburo Oe

A new book from a Nobel Laurate is always a welcome book to read and I have only reviewed on other book by Kenzaboro Oe on the blog A personnel matter a story inspired by his son. This seems inspired by his father and a case of writers block it follows Kogito Choko a nobel winning writer struggling to write about his late father with whom he had a trouble relationship that was never resolved before he drown. So a red chest from his sister full of his fathers possessions maybe hold the secrets from the past.

for two thousands years by Mihail Sebastian

The second arrival is a classic from Romania Mihail Sebastian was a prominent figure in literary circles in the Romania in the early 1930’s. This autobiographical novel follows him as Facist takeover and deep rooted Anti semitism starts to take hold. The quote on the cover is Arthur Miller who compares his writing to Chekov.

same old story by Ivan Goncharov

I read Goncharov masterpiece Oblomov years and years ago so when Alma said they had a translation of his first novel The same old story a tale of alexander a poet who moves from the country to the city. He sees his ideal of life in the city changed as he struggles with the ruthless world of the city.

night film by Marisha Pessel

Now last is one of those bargain books we all find. I am a cfan of pound shops we always visit the one in town mainly for some lotus biscuits, but there is always something to find that is a bargain and I can’t help shifting through books most time I know it is going be a lot of books I don’t want but once in a blue moon a gem turns up and this is one such book it came out two years ago and is a novel about a horror director that hasn’t been seen in public for ear then his daughter dies and this gives a chance to a Journalist McGarth that has want to expose the director Cordova for a number of years but has lost a lot in this journey. The book also has an app to unlock interactive feature although I need use my old iphone to use it.

What books have you had arrive recently ?

The Flounder by Günter Grass

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The Flounder by Günter Grass

German Literature

Original title – Der Butt

Translator – Ralph Manheim

Source – personnel copy

I wish I was a fisherman
tumbling on the sea
far away from dry land
and its bitter memories
casting out my sweet line
with abandonment and love
no ceiling bearing down on me
save the starry sky above
with Light in my head
and you in my arms

I wish I was the brakeman
on a hurtling, fevered train
crashing headlong into the heartland
like a cannon in the rain
with the beating of the sleepers
and the burning of the coal
counting the towns flashing by
in a night that’s full of soul
with Light in my head
and you in my arms

Fisherman blues is one of those songs that evoke a bygone age .

I have long been a fan of Gunter grass and have reviewed him twice before her with Cat and Mouse , From the diary of a snail , I was sad to see his passing earlier this year as when I reviewed Siegfried Lenz earlier in the month Grass was one of three or four big German writers who were break out  and widely translated, he was gruppe 47 those writers trying to but a spin on the new Germany. He is best known for Tin drum, but as a writer this book from the mid 1970’s sure a change in style and direction for him.

The third beast

Iisebill put on more salt, before the impregnation there was a shoulder of mutton with string beans and pears, the season being early October. Still at table, still her mouth full, she asked “should we go to be right away, or do you want to tell me how the story began ?”

The opening lines of the book were pick as the best opening lines in German literature in a poll in Germany .

The book is set in nine chapters and follow the pregnancy of Iisbill the fisherman’s wife. But the book is historic tour of German folk history and women in general as their part in the world.. This is summed in little side tales of history food and women. The book follows The area of germany Grass was from that northern part just by and including at various times parts of Poland, Add to that a talking fish descriptions of food being made and we have one strange yet unique book.Hard to describe other than it has nine chapters and a couple await their child while we hear about the world they live in to that point from every angle in a way .

Delay

A pinch or redemer salt

another delay when my question- which

century are we playing mow ? – was answered

Kitchenwise: when the price of the pepper fell …

 

Nine times she sneezed over the bowl

where lay the hare giblets in their broth

she refused to remember

that I was he kitchen boy.

Darkly she gazed at the fly in the beer

and wanted( no more delay)

to be rid of me no matter what

I choose a poem that echoed somewhat the opening lines of placing salt on the food .

I said it marked a change in Grass style it was the first book he wrote that wasn’t influenced or involved the second world war as its main subject matter. You also see maybe for the first time his love of Grimm and the fairytales the story evolved out of the Grimm story The fisherman and his wife , he would later use Grimm to form the third part of his memoir a dictionary of his life an Homage to the one Grimm did in their day. I seemed to have described little of what is in the book that is because it one of those books that is more a collection of small almost one would say flash piece some a paragraph others a tens of pages ranging from Tales , memoir , history , poems , the story of Iisebill and her husband , the talking flounder and even  food described .The talking fish tells of his life from stone age years to the 70’s when he has to face a feminists panel. This is a book that has divide people for its view of women through history. I feel it was a book of its day so to speak and maybe looking back at it 40 years on it can seem out step with feminism, but that is not for me to say fully. For me it was a writer trying a new style of writing in this book he tried similar things later on in books like My century where he used a patchwork of hundred stories to describe the 20th century. For me it is sad that Grass is read less than he was twenty years ago I know writers come in and out fashion , but from what I gather his last work was a piece on refugees so maybe he was more up to date than it seemed. Grass was never afraid to speak his mind and campaigned for the german SPD party for many years in fact the idea for this book came when he was on the road with Willy Brandt. So as we see another great German chancellor Helmut schmidt died a book that was published in his time as chancellor seems a fitting book.This is my new favourite Grass till I start soon on his first two volumes of Memoir Peeling the onion and the box ready for the Grimm book when it gets translated.

have you a favourite Grass

 

Gone to ground by Marie Jalowicz Simon

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Gone to Ground

Gone to ground by Marie Jalowicz Simon

German Memoir

Original title – Untergetaucht

Translator – Anthea Bell

Source – Library book

In Berlin, by the wall
you were five foot ten inches tall
It was very nice
candlelight and Dubonnet on ice

We were in a small cafe
you could hear the guitars play
It was very nice
it was paradise

You’re right and I’m wrong
hey babe, I’m gonna miss you now that you’re gone
One sweet day

Oh, you’re right and I’m wrong
you know I’m gonna miss you now that you’re gone
One sweet day
One sweet day

I choose Berlin by Lou Reed as in this book it is the character in the background

I want to add a few non fiction works for this German lit month and this is one I found in my library system. Marie Jalowicz Simon lived in Berlin all through the second world war even thou she was a Jews, she hid and change  her identity to escape capture. Shortly before her death her son Hermann got her to tell her story and this book was put together from the tapes Hermann her son recorded and the writer Irene Stratenwerth to make this book of her war years.

A few months later, on 18 march 1941, my father died. He must have guessed that it was coming. A few day before his death the notes in his diary that he kept, finally, in five-pfennig octavo notebooks, were headed, “like being on the high seas”. He must have been feeling as if he were seasick. He had lain down for a moment , he wrote, he had felt so dizzy, and then it had passed over. But he had realised this was a case of life or death

Her father’s death after he has to stay unable to get out of Germany .

Gone to ground follows Marie’s story from telling of her youth a Berlin with a lively Jewish population to the first signs of the future when the Nazi’s take power. Her father attempts to get them to safety fail when he can’t a permit to travel in 1941 to Palestine as he is unable to be a lawyer under the Nazi rule. At this point the family is in forced Labour and everyday she is seeing those around her disappear at this point with a little help Marie disappears into the city where she will spend the next few years traveling from cellar to flats  staying in hiding. Going deeper as what she called a Uboat after she was nearly caught  she is helped by a collection of characters some with good intentions others with bad wanting a young woman in their home. But Marie manages to get through just to study after the war and make her living translating .

Little girl

All alone

to the Heller’s house has gone

what a fuss, who’s to blame?

I must bear it all the same.

As so often, I was singing to myself in my mind as I carried my suitcase from Schierker Strasse to Schinleinstrasse. It was a day late in february 1943. I wondered whether it was wicked to sing when Heller was possibly being tortured to death at this very minute. then I adapted a little more of the” Hanschen Klein” nursery rhyme to suit my own situation.

Never fear

be of good cheer

Things may yet be better here

The first winter Marie is in Berlin on the fun going from place to place .

This is one of those stories that needs to be told , we all have to be thankful to her son for recording his mother’s story one of the few Jews to make it through the war in the heart of the Nazi war machine Berlin. The story has been well put together by the writer and what is Marie’s voice shines through a strong young woman, her luck in find a block of flats whom tenants help her for most of the war, thus making one feel the strength of the human spirit in the darkest times. I said when I got this book it had reminded me of the great German Film Europa Europa another true story of a young Jewish boy who decide to become an Aryan and get through the war that way.Both show how the drive to survive can drag people through the darkness either trying to fit in or trying to hide. This is a powerful book to sit alongside the like of Primo Levi and Anne frank as a testament to how people escaped some got through and others didn’t .

Have you read this book ?

Sheffield day with Amanda some books

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This past weekend saw Amanda and I both off for the weekend for the first time in a long while so we decided to have a day in sheffield. We started the day with a trip around the large indoor shopping centre Meadow hall , it has two small waterstones bookshops but I was waiting for later in the day and the chance to go too the large main city centre branch of waterstones but one treat I did have in Meadowhall was a Donut .This was a Biscoff donut anyone that knows me is I love my Bicoff lotus biscuits the perfect coffee biscuit I say and this donut went great with my espresso.

biscoff donut

I have a rule of three in bookshops never buy more than three books in one shop these days so my three choices weren’t so easy but in the end I settle for an old favourite writer and two new names ,

Laszlo krasznahorkai

 

I brought war and war earlier in the year but had wanted to read The melancholy of resistance more , so brought it to complete my Laszlo Krasznahorkai collection. THe book rather like Satantango follows a small town as it reacts to an incomer , this time it ia s mystery show with the worlds largest Whale and just that the locals are wary of these new circus folk. I’m in a circus mode as we are busy watching the fourth series of american horror story the freak show series. The book has also been made into a film by Bela Tarr who also did the film for Satantango.

Schlump Grimm

I had this on my list of books to buy since its Translate Jamie first mentioned this book  Schlump is the story of a 17-year-old on the German front at world war two a story that is brutal and funny at the same time the writer wasn’t truly known to 2013 many years after Grimm had died he later was in the nazi party even thou this book was burned he bricked up his original manuscript in his house, he later was called in 1950 to talk about his war-time record and two days later he committed suicide .I hope have this read for end of German lit month .

Ippolito Nievo

The confessions of an Italian is the story of Carlo altoviti an old man looking back at his life in Italy this happens to be in the period called the Risorgimento, which saw the small states that had made Italy at the time join together to make it a bigger country. An epic novel Italo Calvino called it the one 19th century Italian novel which has that charm and fascination so abundant in foreign literature . What better recommendation could you have .

What books have you brought recently ?

 

 

The rings of saturn by W G Sebald

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sebald-rings_of_saturn

The rings of Saturn by W G Saturn

German literature

Original title – Die ringe des Saturn

Translator – Michael Hulse

Source – Personnel copy

 

would tell you about the things they put me through
The pain I’ve been subjected to
But the Lord himself would blush
The countless feasts laid at my feet
Forbidden fruits for me to eat
But I think your pulse would start to rush

Now I’m not looking for absolution
Forgiveness for the things I do
But before you come to any conclusions
Try walking in my shoes
Try walking in my shoes

I choose Depeche Mode try walking in my shoes as we all feel we do this in this book

Well week two of German lit month and I finally get to review a book by my all time favourite German writer and the first book by him I read 16 years ago when it came out The rings of Saturn is one of those books you read and go I’ll never forget it and I want to read everything the writer has written at once .Well I did I later decide to leave a few of his lesser books for a later date. I have been meaning to return to reread them but have been held back by a fear of something I love being less on a second reading than it was on the first. So last week I watch Patience (after Sebald) the film by Grant Gee about this book I went well I got read it again Sebald lived in East Anglia at the time he wrote the book. He taught a UEA international Literature.

In august 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end. I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work. And in fact my hope was realized up to a point; for I have seldom felt so carefree as I did then, walking for hours in the day through the thinly populated countryside, which stretches inland from the coast I wonder now, however, whether ther might be something in the old superstition that certain ailments of the spirit and of the body are particularly likely to beset us uner the sign of the Dog Star

Linking dog day to a dog star is great and that is just the opening lines .

So rings of Saturn what is it , it’s not a novel, memoir, travel or biography a Christopher Maclehose said in the Gee film Sebald could be put anywhere in the shop. So rings of Saturn follows Sebald on a walk through East Anglia in his mind as he is taken to hospital. The hospital reminds him of Thomas Browne whose Skull is stored nearby .He is also a link to the two threads in the book Him as a writer he mentions brown a few times through the book and the fact Browne is descended from Silk merchants and Silk is another recurring theme in the book. From the silkworms of china to fish glistening like silk. As he follows the route his mind tells us both of place but also that wonderful knack Sebald has of digersion going off on a tangent inspired by a picture or a place to tell a story of something and somewhere. He also links back into his own past and the dark days of Germany’s years under Nazi rule.

Which the entire herring fisheries threatened to go under, beneath a truly catastrophic glut of herring. It is even said that vast shoals of herring were brought in towards the beaches by the wind and the tides and cast ashore, covering miles of the coast to a depth of two feet and more.The local people were able to salvage only a small portion of these herring harvested in baskets and crates .

I was reminded of the lady I support an old Herring girl, this also brought the image of those bodies drifting on to beaches of refugees I have seen recently on TV.

I often wonder how I would feel after rereading this book would it still be a favourite well the answer to that is yes and more so I feel inspired to go back to vertigo and the emigrants in the next year or so. For me time had served to connect me more with Sebald but also more with the story. In the film he talks to someone about having a friend from the small town of Goch where it is mentioned in connection to a map the man making the film knew someone from there , strangely I have been there as it was very near to Kleve where I lived many moons ago. Then there is Browne I reviewed his Urn Burial here which is one of my most view posts on this blog .Sebald also talks of Roger Casement a man whose connection to places I have been is strange he was converted to a catholic in Rhyl in Wales where my own grand parents lived for a time and then was in Ballymena in Ulster which is where my own Milly came from and I have also reviewed the book by LLosa The dream of the Celt all about Casement. Then there is a picture that Sebald connects to the Holocaust of a river of fish on one of the streets, but to me remind me of a woman I looked after that work as a herring girl following the fishing fleets up and down the coast getting the fish ready .As you see for me this book is about connections Seblads but then as a reader it is easy to connect your own life and books you have read.It is like the map that has been put together of the book following the walk but also connecting out to places mentioned in the book .Sebald maybe best capture how a mind can drift and the interconnections we all make at times.

 

5 short German Novellas chosen by Gregor Hens

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I  decide to ask the German writer Translator and Critic Gregor hens , whose new book Nicotine is out this week and will be reviewed here in due course his favourite German novels he wrote back .
I couldn´t give you a list of my favourite German books, but here´s a list of books that have two qualities in common, both of which I value highly: They are extremely unsettling and they are short. Best wishes – Gregor’

1. Heinrich von Kleist: Michael Kohlhaas
Kafka claims to have read it more than ten times. The powerful and radical story of a vigilante horsetrader, set in 16th-century Saxony, was the basis for E. L. Doctorow´s modern classic Ragtime.I reviewed Von Kleist  here Kohlhaas was one of the stories in that collection

2. Thomas Bernhard: Ja / Yes
The self-absorbed master of the tragicomical at his best… the title, Yes, is in anwer to the question whether the protagonist, a Persian woman, intends to kill herself. I’ve not reviewed this book by Bernhad but here is a lot Bernhard post on the blog

 

 

3. Marcus Braun: Delhi and Peter Rosei: Wer war Edgar Allen? This is a tie. Two amazing books whose plots I remember only hazily, possibly because copious amount of alcohol and heroin are consumed by their wandering, disoriented protagonists.Two titles yet to reach us in english

 

 

4. Michael Kumpfmüller: Durst / Thurst
Heart-wrenching, raw and yet subtle story of a woman who leaves her small children to die in a hot apartment. If you think you understand human behaviour – read this and think again.Michael has had another book glory of life translated My review here 

5. Angelika Klüssendorf: Das Mädchen / The Girl
Brutally straight-forward, unsentimental story of a girl who escapes from an East-German childhood of parental neglect and tyranny. Beautifully written. Should have won the German book prize for which it was short-listed.Another book to reach us .

Thanks Greogr I do hope the ones yet to be translated get translated The girl looks great and was sortlisted for German book prize .Gregors book Nicotine is out this week from Fitzcarraldo 

A Minute’s Silence by Siegried Lenz

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9781906598440

A Minute’s silence by Siegried Lenz

German fiction

Original title –  Schweigeminute

Translator – Anthea Bell

Source – personnel copy

What will you do when the war is over, tender comrade
When we lay down our weary guns
When we return home to our wives and families
And look into the eyes of our sons
What will you say of the bond we had, tender comrade
Will you say that we were brave
As the shells fell all around us
Or that we wept and cried for our mothers
And cursed our fathers
For forgetting that all men are brothers

Will you say that we were heroes
Or that fear of dying among strangers
Tore our innocence and false shame away
And from that moment on deep in my heart I knew
That I would only give my life for love

I choose tender comrade a song about forbidden love

I move on to another great German writer Siegfried Lenz is maybe less well-known in English the Boll and Grass . I won this Siegfried Lenz  as well in a German lit month competition .He was also in Group 47 , which was a group of writers that was brought together to promote the new democratic west germany after the war Gunter grass was also a member of it .He won most of the big prize in germany including the Goethe prize .He died last year this was a book he wrote this novella in his later life.

“Here sit we down in tears and grief ” sang our school choir at the beginning of the hour of remembrance. Then Herr Block, the principal, went over to the rostrum, which was surrounded by wreaths. He walked slowly, hardly glancing at the crowded school hall, and stopped in front of Stella’s photograph on its wooden easel. He straightened up or seemed to straighten up then bowed very low.

The opening as they have the memorial service at the school for Stella .

A minute’s silence is told on two timelines the present is a memorial service for an English teacher Stella in the crowd is one of her Pupils Christian .But Christian was more than a pupil the second timeline is the building of the relationship between Stella and Christian , from her starting to teach him Orwell in class to the pair draw closer together whilst meeting in secret at school they finally start meeting out of the school as Christian meets Stella at her father’s house her father makes his living by finding stones in the sea . Just before she is due to take a boat trip with her friends and spend time away from Christian.this is where on the boat something happens to Stella .

“A stone fisher can always tell where to go ” I said “My father knows whole stone-fields and artificial reefs built a hundred years ago, and he goes searching for those. He carries the sea chart showing the richest sources of big blocks around in his head ”

I’d like to see those stone fields sometime said Stella.

A stone fisher is a job I hadn’t heard of till this book what a truly unique job fishing for stones .

This is a great novella a romance doomed but end before it was doomed two young people joined together even thou one is a teacher and the other is pupil the years between them although not said isn’t many she had just started teaching.He is great at describing the relationship blossoming between the two , but also the world things like Stella’s father talking about his job scrapping stones from the sea bed. I must admit Anthea bell did a wonderful job on this book it is so poetic and delicate i forgot it was a translation, which is why she is still one of my favourite translators .The tale of two lovers told through the younger christians eyes as he tries in the minute’s silence to remember miss Stella Peterson his teacher and oh his lover as well .Is Short yet lingering in the reader’s mind I will be reading more books from him.This is the perfect Novella doesn’t get bogged down in too much history glimpse of the romance and the present give you enough .

Have you read Siegfried Lenz ?

 

 

Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll

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Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll

German Memoir

Original title –Irisches Tagebuch

Translator – Lelia Vennewitz

Source – personnel copy

The last time I saw you was down at the Greeks
There was whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks
You sang me a song as pure as the breeze
On a road leading up glenaveigh
I sat for a while at the cross at finnoe
Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom
Heard the men coming home from the fair at shinrone
Their hearts in tipperary wherever they go

Take my hand, and dry your tears babe
Take my hand, forget your fears babe
There’s no pain, there’s no more sorrow
They’re all gone, gone in the years babe

Well who else but the Pogues Broad majestic shannon a song about having Ireland in your heart .

I have reviewed three  other books by the late great german writer Heinrich Boll Billards at half past nine ,The lost honour of Katharina Blum  and Safety net. I won this one a couple of German lit months ago with the copy of safety net so it seems fitting to review it for German lit month. Heinrich is a writer I have been a fan of for years in fact he was one of the writers I had in mind reviewing when I started this blog , since then I feel yes the Melville house books came out but in some ways he is fading from the limelight which is a shame he was an important voice of post war West Germany .

Once a year I have to go there to visit my parents, and my grandmother is still alive. Do you know County Galway ?

“No” murmured the priest ”

“Connemara?”

“No.”

“You should go there , and don’t forget on your way back in the post of Dublin to notice what’s exported from Ireland : children and priests , nuns and biscuits, whiskey and horses, beeer and dog ..

THe point is a lot of things were leaving Ireland as Boll travel to Ireland .

Well this is a memoir piece by Boll where he recounts his visits over time in the 1950’s to Ireland. He arrives and even before he has set foot there feels the need to defend this land he has wanted to go too, the land of Joyce etc. When he hears someone dismissing it before he has seen it himself. He arrives and loves what he sees the slow languid pace of 1950’s Ireland a land run by tradition and the Church. The contrast from the war ravaged and damaged Germany that is caught up in rebuilding to the Neutral and untouched Ireland. We see the land through a man who has fallen for the place faults included .

That a church service can only begin when the priest arrives is obvious; but that a movie can only begin when all the priests, the local ones as well as those on vacation, are assembled in full strength is somewhat surprising to the foreigner used to continental customs.He can only hope the priest and his friends will soon finish their supper …

He has to wait for the priest to watch the film, I believe this my other grandparent told me of banks of priests at football matches at Manchester united in the forties.

I was reminded of my own grandparents talking of the trips to Ireland, well to the south from their home in Derry, They went to Dublin most years to the Antique fair or to Donegal to a cottage they rented for years so the world Boll talked about to me seemed like theirs. The way it seemed the south was always at that time so far behind the North but was always more relaxed as said when a  Train is late well god made time and there is plenty of it. A lot of the towns He visited Mayo Limerick and of course Dublin I went to as a kid and young adult as well (it has been a few years since I last had a visit ). We see a man in love with a place because it hasn’t caught up with the times and seemed out place but he seemed to get it, but he wasn’t blinked he did see the darker side of this land the poverty and lack of direction somewhat (This was before the Celtic tiger took off ) This is the land that the character in a book like Brooklyn were going to america to escape (and of course then remember they came from their for decades after ). I enjoyed this but do wonder if it was a little rose-tinted it was a tough place to live in the 1950’s Ireland but was still one green unspoilt country .I choose an older cover mine is the Melville cover but liked this one more.

Have you read this ?

All days are night by Peter Stamm

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All days are nights by Peter stamm

Swiss fiction

Original title – Nacht ist der tag

Translator – michaael Hofmann

source – library book

Have I said something wrong?
How can I know if you’re not going to speak to me?
There I am, in your eyes
And we’re only playing, but what am I saying?
Oh, what am I saying?
Oh, what am I saying?

Oh, there’s no one like you, no one like that now
There’s always some way that you could bring me down

Maybe it’s just that I fly too high, that the ground is hard
It always hurts me
When I fall over sideways and break out in sores and people start laughing
But it’s not what I’m into

I don’t expect you to know
I don’t expect you to

I’ve  choosen an old wedding present lyric as no one caught heart ache and bitterness better than David Gedge in his songs Gillian could been in one of his songs .

 

This the second book by Peter Stamm I have reviewed here, I reviewed Seven years two years ago and was blown away, but I then download his stories to my late kindle but never got to them so when looking for some ideas for this years German lit month I decide it was time to try another book by Peter Stamm. Stamm started out working at accounts then decide to return to university and studied subjects as varied as English , business and Psychology .He started in radio drama in the early 1990s and has written a number of novels stories and plays Since I last reviewed him he won the frank O’Connor short story prize and been on the man booker international list.

Half wake up then drift away. alternatively surfacing and lapsing back into weightlessness .Gillian is lying in water with a blue luminescence. Within it her body looks yellowish, but wherever it breaks the surface, it disappears into the darkness. The only light comes from the warm water lapping her belly and breasts, It feels oily, beading on her skin.She seems to be in an enclosed room, there is no noise, but she still has a sense of not being alone. Love is somewhere filling her up

The opening lines as she wakes up to what has happened to her .

All days and night is the story of a woman Gillian, she starts the book waking after a horrific crash after she had argued with her husband. He did in the crash leaving her with a broken life , broken body and worse of all in a way a broken face.The book follows her struggle to piece together her life together and also we see how the point at which the crash happened her pre crash life with her husband Mathias he was an editor and she was a presenter on tv , this is where she meet the man the caught the problem and why they had a drunken fight that lead to the crash Hubert is the man.He is an artist and took Nude pictures of her , that is what he does takes pictures of women naked at home and Mathias saw them which leads to the crash but why had she a problem with Hubert what part has he in her future ?

The day before the second operation, a sunday, Gillian visited her parents.She hadn’t seen then since the accident. When he mother opened the door and saw her, she turned aside and started crying.Her father stepped up and with an expression of annoyance pushed her mother out of the way

Come on in , he said

The new Gillian after the crash is to much for her mother .

This book has just the same feeling I had when I read seven years Stamm seems to be very good at cold characters, Gillian is a cold woman in a way her life is all face and scratch below that her life with mathias was all for show really. She was jut the face on tv her life had become a show really so when she loses nearly everything and everyone around her as she is now faceless looking for her old face but getting a new face and outlook. Yes Gillian is one of these woman who seems to have everything , but when it comes to that point of the crash what has she nothing for me that is what stamm captures so well in his prose a woman broken rebuilding herself but at the time she does the flaws of before are clear. Stamm has said all character are fiction even if based on real people such is the case her Gillian and mathias are a mix of characters but when you see them on the page you instantly know the sort as I would say .

Have you read Stamm

The egghead republic by Arno Schmidt

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

The egghead republic by Arno Schimdt

German fiction

Original title –

Translated by Michael Horovitz

Source –  library book

 

“SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)”

This is my job
I don’t come around and put out your red light
When you work

What’s the matter?
Didn’t you get enough attention at home?

If shit were music
La da da, la da da
You’d be a brass band

Know what?
You should get an agent, oh yeah, yeah
Why sit in the dark handling yourself

I choose a scott walker Lyric just for me he maybe is like Schmidt a one off unique mind .

I have been reading about the work Dalkey archive are doing to translate the Magnus opus from Arno Schmidt Zettels Dream which is a 1000 plus big book that is considered one of the best german books of the 20th century So Arno Schmidt is maybe a writer that most people haven’t heard of he is maybe the hidden gem of German literature his books didn’t sell greatly in his life but have grown over the years and through a foundation set up by his friend Jan Philipp Reetsma (a wealthy tobacco heir ) his works are getting new translations over time and republished Dalkey have already published some but this is actually an older translation from 1979.

 There: a zebroid-girl! : a black stripe parted her narrow impudent face down the middle, from her forehead down to the base of her throat: (bu tthen it slanted right, one white the other black, did that look elegant! And a mane of very coarse silver hair!)

One of the strange mutants seen by Charles waiting to enter the island on the western side in the US

Well The egghead republic maybe shows how unique Arno schmidt was it is a truely odd book .Well on the surface it follows a reporter visiting a man made island that has been filled with a group of selected genius in what is a republic of Artist and scienctist. The report Charles henry winter has fifty hours to discover what this “Egghead republic ” is all about.He has had to jump through hoops in what is the US after a nuclear war surrounded my mutants  .We see him trying to find out more about this strange island and the people that live their .As we see his thoughts and the answers is this really the paradise that it seems.

“No! I must move on : I’m allowed in for 50 hours as a journalist; of which – oh, my god – 18 have already gone: really,I’ve nothing further to relate; and you are in the middle of your work; I only wanted to keep my promise!” shock his leastpainted elbow. And then, in the waker of Inglefield, into the posh residential quarter .

Charles finds time slipping through his hands on the island with nothing to show .

when I started this blog one of my goals as a reader was to find out the best writers around the world read and review them. But mainly for me to learn about different styles of fiction and what one can do with the form. Schimdt is one of those writers I had in mind at that time this book may from what I’ve  sound like is rather like a Jules Verne novel man made islands full of strange people is right up his street.You could also see a line from the novel Glass bead game which is about a community of intellectuals .There is also a real feel of the time when the book was written in the late 1950’s you jsut have to think of the culture of the time the start of the cold war fear of a second nuclear war , which as this book is set in the future has happened and the outcome that was imagined in many a b-movie of strange creatures appear is shown in the first part and the second part tries to show maybe what men can acheive .But even then the island is divide into east and west .The style of this book is statments almost spoken then the thought beghind it is  followed in a short  paragraph .I enjoyed my first dance with schmidt and really hope to get hold of Zettel’s traum when it comes out more about it here  from the english translator . The well known US translation blogger Michael Orthofer has written a book about Schmidt .A challenging read for my second German lit month book this year .

Have you read Arno Schmidt ?