Tag: club1970

The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard

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The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das Kalkwerk

Translator – Sophie Wilkins

Source – Personal copy

When I first read the list of books for 1970, I thought I read this, but I didn’t want to get a secondhand copy as they were a little pricey. I then saw it is available as a Kindle book which I rarely use so it meant I got use it I do have a couple of Bernhard’s I haven’t read on my shelves as I still thinking of doing another Thomas Bernhard week. This was his third novel, and alongside a play he had staged that year, he won the Georg Buchner Prize in 1970. I feel this had some of the pieces from later books, most of which I have read by him. It focuses on the line works and opens with a woman dead shoot and her brains all over the floor of the Lime Works.

If only he could get his book written before he grew too old, absolutely too old and unfit to write it, he is supposed to have said to Fro and to Wieser. The minute he got to his room he went to bed. But the inner restlessness into which he was driven by the outward quiet would not let him sleep even when mortally ex-hausted, and so he wandered all over the lime works, several times all over the lime works, and spent the rest of the night lying on his bed quite unable to fall asleep. Once you have passed that boundary line between fatigue and exhaustion, it is absurd to believe that you can fall asleep, absurd to try to sleep, to force yourself to sleep; you weren’t going to fall asleep. In-stead, he got the opposite of the hoped-for re-laxation, the serenity he meant when he dreamed of finding a quiet place to work; instead of being able to relax, he only grew increasingly restless, so restless that he inevitably broke his own rest by doing something or other that brought unrest into it.

We know he never quite gets to finish his book

The lime work then works to how that happened, and we meet the husband, Konard a man who has spent several years working on his scientific opus, a book called The Sense of Hearing (Odd I thought of the Herzog film of that time, the land of silence which came out a year after this book ). We meet his wife, the woman killed at the start of the book, but this is a grim world of a man who does nothing. He has spent twenty years writing or not writing the book whilst living in the Lime Works he brought with the last of his money. Add to this the locals to the lime works, and we have a slow-moving, menacing account of a man descending into a hell that could be rather like a factory that was also a concentration camp. We know little other than the ins and outs of their life and never described much of what the pair of them are like other than the wife being wheelchair-bound. A nod to his medical issues, maybe the whole atmosphere feels like a world collapsing on the two of them.

it. People don’t instinctualize any longer, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, mankind no longer instinctualizes. Aha, so that’s the idyll the Konrad couple have moved into, they may think, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, but in reality the Konrad couple, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, moved into quite the opposite of an idyll when they moved into the lime works.

The return to an idyll, they think. Compared with the lime works, everything else is idyllic, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, London is an idyll compared with the lime works, Wuppertal is an idyll; the ugliest, the loudest, the most malodorous place is an idyll in comparison. But even the surroundings of the lime works have been deliberately falsified into an idyll. An intelligent person arriving in the area, of course, will realize at once that the place is no idyll,

I cut it ioff there as the last word the lime r=works was no idyil thou ot was meant be capture a loty of what i meant about the place as a character in the book

 

This has at its heart the character that would go on to a stock character for Bernhard in Konrad, a man full of bile and hatred. Here it is both at the way his life has gone. There is a sense of inertia in his life twenty years of writing a book that hasn’t moved on in the two decades he has tried to write it . Then, his wife echoes Bernhard’s own medical issues that, in the end, would see his life cut short. Then there is the place itself. The Lime Works is a grim-sounding place he has brought that, like the pair at the heart of the book, seems to draw out the worst of those around it, like the ghosts of those who had worked and maybe even died there are there dragging those in the present down weighting them down if that makes sense. This is a tense book of a couple falling apart a man losing his grip on the world. I still have Frost his debut to read, but this seems like a writer who has honed the Konrad character in his later books. This is like the Mark One Bernhard male character soon to be replaced by the Austrian-hating Mark Two of the later books her would write like The Correction and Woodcutters. A great fourth book for this week’s club1970! Have you read this or any books by Bernhard?

 

 

Last summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

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Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Italian fiction

Original title –  L’ultima estate in città

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – Personal copy

I am always wary of the translated book that is a summer success. A beach reads a book you see on the list of books to read and the end-of-year list. I am wary as they often seem to be more commercial fiction but I had see this and that when he wrote it one of the writers that championed his cause was Natalia Ginzburg, a writer whose books I have loved, and I thought, yes, it may be popular but it is a book about Rome in the summer what is not to like9I’ve never been to Rome, I am the original armchair traveller in my reading ). He then chose to go into Film and television screenwriting. He published short stories many years later with much acclaim. The time of this book varies I had it done as a book from 1970 and over place it mention 1073, I’m assuming he wrote it in 1970 and it maybe came out on a broader audience in 1973. I can see him being a screenwriter. This book is rich in place and character that it would easily make a film as we follow Leo.

The wind was rising by the time I got to an apartment block surrounded by a damp, rustling garden. It was only then, perhaps because of the smell of the wet earth, that it occurred to me I should have brought Viola some flowers, but it was too late now, and I was so hungry I could barely stand. So I kept on, confronting the final test, an elevator that throughout the ride up emitted a menacing drone, as if complaining about my weight. Reaching the third floor, I quickly tidied my hair and rang the doorbell. Viola appeared. She looked surprised. Before I could say anything, she let out a little hiccup and burst into irrepressible laughter. I must have looked like a flood victim to her. “Come in, Leo,” she said, taking me by the arm. “God, how happy I am to see you. How did you manage to find us?”

As I say he capture the feel of the city well in the book

The book focuses on summer and our main character, Leo, as he has left his home in Milan and headed to Rome. He hangs out in Rome with a friend who is a drunkard but has a rich American wife . Leo has an air about him. He wants to live the high life but is failing a man who wants to be more than his parts (don’t we all, though). But Rome isn’t Milan; the summer is there, and he is struggling. He has friends who help him sell him an old ALFA, which adds to his wanting to be a specific type of man in the eyes of others. He then meets Arriane, a woman who, in the way she is described, feels a little like Italian Lucy Honeychurch. The two fall for each other, but it is that deep spark of flying love that either caries on and smoulders or dies. This is a case of the latter as we see the fall rise and ultimately the fall of Leo over one summer in Rome.

The city was caressing us. Gradually, it became less difficult to think about Arianna. Basically, nothing irreparable had happened, Nothing irreparable ever happened in this city — sad things, maybe, but not irreparable ones. And anyway, if I was going to leave town, I wanted to see her. At this hour, she must be in Eva’s store, playing solitaire.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, I said. “I know some people nearby who could offer us a drink.”

“Leftovers” he said, “nothing but leftovers.”

Graziano pulled himself to his feet and followed me up the steps until we got to Trinità dei Monti, then we took the street that went downhill, leading to Eva’s store. We climbed the front steps, holding on to the railing, then pushed the glass door. A bell rang as it opened. The humorist was there reading something aloud, along with the fashion model, Livio Stresa, and Paolo, that journalist with the special way with women, sitting next to Arianna. I was greeted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be joining them.

He is so caught by the Arianna

This has the feel of a classic story from maybe years before it came out. It did for me anyway. Hence  It is compared to Catch in the Rye and Great Gatsby, but neither is near the mark. This is the flip of Ginzburg. It is a male view of those years in the late seventies in Roma, with glamour and darkness, and we see both in this book. For me, Leo has wandered of a Tom Waits song or some other ballader of those men that have broken dreams. If Waits was Italian, would he write a song called “A Letter from a Friend in Rome ?”A man who wants to be in with the crowd but never is fully in the crowd. The other character in the book is the city in the summer and how it is to be in Rome when you are just another face in the crowd. Jacqui said she found it evocative and atmospheric. It has that it captures a place and a type of man. The sort of fallen man on the edge of Wodehouse novels or a side figure in Waugh, if that makes sense. Not quite in the money but likes to think he can be, and then he finds love, but even that ends up flawed. A flawed summer of a flawed man? A nice third stop on this week’s 1970 club!

 

The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky

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The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky

Russian fiction

Original title – Отель «У Погибшего Альпиниста»

Translator – Josh Billings

Source – Personal copy

As I have seen then, I brought some books from this Melville house, the Neversink library series. So when this turned up on the list of books that had been published in 1970. In one of those strange connections that seem to happen when you read many books, maybe. I signed up a few weeks ago to Klassiki, a streaming service focused on Eastern European and Central Asian films/ So. Last week, they had a series of new films on this book in its film form, which was one of the films they had added. The Brother’s books have served well for film. They were the leading lights of the Soviet Science fiction scene. But their books have also made some great films. The best-known is Roadside Picnic, which was made into the cult film Stalker. I have that on my shelves to read at some point and always welcome a chance to rewatch Stalker.

The owner didn’t respond. His eyes were glued to the table.

There was nothing out of the ordinary on it, except a large bronze ashtray, in which a straight-handled pipe lay. A Dun-hill, I guessed. Smoke rose from the pipe.

“Staying..” the owner said eventually. “Well, why not?” I didn’t know what to say to this, so I waited for him to go on. I couldn’t see my suitcase anywhere, but there was a checkered rucksack with a bunch of hotel-stickers on it in the corner. It wasn’t my rucksack.

“Everything has remained as he left it before his climb,” the owner went on, his voice growing stronger. “On that terrible, unforgettable day six years ago.”

I looked dubiously at the smoking pipe.

“Yes!” the owner cried. “There’s HIS pipe. That’s HIS jacket.

And that over there is HIS alpenstock. ‘Don’t forget your al-penstock, I said to him that very morning. He just smiled and shook his head. ‘You don’t want to be stuck up there forever!’ I shouted, a cold premonition passing over me. ‘Porquwapa, he said—in French. I still don’t know what it means.”

“It means ‘Why not?”” I said.

Even on his arrival it is a little odd

The book isn’t sci-fi as such for the most part, but it does. Ultimately, it is like they tried to write a crime novel but then remembered they were sci-fi writers. The book follows Inspector Peter Glebsky, who has been sent to see if a crime has happened at a remote hotel called the Dead Mountaineers Inn. He is also planning to ski and spend time there. The hotel is remote and has a cast of characters. Any Agatha Christie novel would be happy with a hypnotist, physicists, gamblers, strangers, and a huge dog. But as the day moves on and it becomes night, the inspector might have more to deal with than it seems at first, as the hotel is more than it appears on the surface, and strange things start happening. Will he be able to put it all together? The bodies tied up, what has happened to some of the gamblers, and will they all escape the hotel?

“The bottom line is that amazing things don’t just happen in our inn,” Du Barnstoker said. “One has only to recall, for example, the unidentified flying objects..”

The kid pushed its chair back with a crash, stood up and, still munching on the apple, made its way to the exit. Well I’ll be damned-for suddenly I seemed to be watching the slender figure of a charming young woman. But as soon as my heart softened the young woman vanished, leaving behind her, in the most obscene way, a brash and impertinent teen-ager: the kind that spread their fleas over beaches and shoot drugs in public bathrooms. Was it a boy? Or, damn it, a girl?

I had no idea who to ask, and meanwhile Du Barnstoker was prattling on:

Early on he skis and then he finds maybe a clue to things l,ater on in the book?

 

I loved this book. As I said in my post the other day, I don’t like crime novels; well, that isn’t true. I like crime books that play with the genre, and this does. I t has those nods to the classic crime of the like pof Agatha christie a selection of characters gathered together. The remote hotel and the ski remind me of the Poirot story The Labours of Hercules, which saw him cut off like Glebsky in a remote ski resort. The book then has some other touches, and we see it the way they wanted us to know the book as a crime novel. But then it turns on a few things later in the book and you see the story isn’t the way you saw it in the boo. I didn’t help myself reading half the book and then seeing the film where there is some pieces cut and the story is slightly different on the film to make it work as a film. But it is a book that would;ld appeal to crime and sci fans. A great second book for this turn of the club years a book of its time 1970. The film is worth watching if you can catch it. It is no stalker, but it is still a very quirky seventies-styled piece of soviet cinema. Have you read any books by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky?