Solenoid by Mircea Cǎrtǎescu

Romanian fiction

Original title – Solenoid

Translator – Sean Cotter

Source – Personal copy

Now this is one of those books that over the time I have been blogging goes in an aerc in my Head, I remember first hearing about this labrythine book and how it was surreal and gritty and just one of those books that when described I think in my head oh this is so much above my head as a reader. I also hate it when a book is everywhere and everyone just focus on one book at the cost of other books this happens a a lot in the translated world I find there is usually a couple of books every year that p-eople seem to get hyped thus in my eyes become I book I don’t want to review. I always feel my voice isn’t much in the cacophony of praise for a book. I am not a critical thinker,I am maybe not the most profound reader at times. So when it came up on the long list for the Booker International part of me thought it could be the one book I miss this year as I did;t want to rreread it as I hadn’t review it two years ago.

I am, thus, a Romanian teacher at School 86 in Bucharest. I live alone in an old house, “the boat-shaped house” I have already mentioned, on the street called Maica Domnului, in the Tei Lake neighborhood. Like any other teacher in my field, I dreamed of becoming a writer, just the same way that, inside the café fiddler playing from table to table, a cramped and degenerate Efimov still lives who once thought himself a great violinist. Why it didn’t happen— why I didn’t have enough self-confidence to overcome, with a superior smile, that evening at the workshop, why I didn’t have the maniacal conviction in my beliefs in spite of everyone else, when the myth of the misunderstood writer is so powerful, even with its concomitant measure of kitsch, why I didn’t believe in my poem more than I did the reality of the world—I have searched for an answer to all these questions every day of my life. Starting in the depths of that damp autumn night when I walked home, blinded by headlights, in a state of paranoia I had never felt before. I couldn’t breathe for rage and humiliation.

My parents, who opened the door for me as always, were left speechless.

His day job as a teacher

ANnyway the book is set in the 80s and has a main character that isn’t named but in some ways can be taken as a sort of Cartaescu if he hadn’t had the success he had with his writing this is a teacher in Bucharest teaching and tlivin g in that city at the time it comes across as a grim city. I was reminded that this must have been how the industrial towns of England must have been fifty years earlier. As our main character talks about his life, we follow his day-to-day life, as if he is about to read an epic poem. This is based on actual events in the writer’s life. Now this is the straightforward part of the book. But then we have a surreal other-world touch from the life of a mite or lice. In fact, at times, this reminds me of Hrabal, another writer obsessed with dirt and the sort of dirtier side of the world in his writing. So we go from the micro to the macro in these sorts of dream-like sequences (dream or even maybe Nightmare )in the book. ADD to this, he seems to be obsessed with his body and its inner workings as someone who has a tendency to have health anxiety and can see a fellow person that maybe other thinks their health. Add to that side stories around his reading of the book The Gladfly,  written by Ethel Voynich, whose husband, a book dealer, was the man who discovered the famous Voynich manuscript. If this had been lost for a thousand years, would the book itself be treated in the future as some sort of wondrous work whose actual text is unknown, like the Manuscript is?

The mantis turned around in Virgils palm, as he spoke in a monotone, as though reciting a text he knew by heart, and then it shot up in flight, suddenly an enormous locust, over the dew-pearly garden. It disappeared over the fence woven with Jericho roses.

Caty nodded at every phrase, as though her frivolous being, made of pre-tentions and silk, had only then awoken, had at that moment escaped from the Neckermann with its perfect men and perfect women, and had entered the dictionary of skin diseases, the forensic treatises, the anatomy of melan-choly, the history of infernos with their sinister illustrations of the crushed, burned, amputated, oligophrenic, hanged, starving, and paralyzed people emerging triumphant from pits of horror, showing their green lunatic faces and their eyeballs slung into the backs of their heads like broken dolls. From that morning on, the sweet, multicolored woman with her sparrowlike mind led a double life, one I heard of for the first time sitting in front of her in the deserted office where the last ficus tree rotted away. By day she was still the chemistry teacher, envied by all her colleagues for her clothes and shoes and purses, her house with 156 panes of glass, and her ministry husband, but by night, two or three times a week, dressed in black without makeup or per-fume, in a headscarf and shoes the janitors wore, with tears dancing in her eyes and dark hatred over her face like a dead god of love,

Surreal imagery at times like here

Now that is it, of course, this is just the barest description of a book that is one of those works of postmodern fiction that none will always struggle to describe. It is a book you must wade into and hope you get to the other side. As I said, it made me think of the dark satanic mills of the industrial age. The city he describes seems like that. I was reminded in the talk about getting lice, this might surprise you bu tit remind me of my love of kitchen sink novels those grim working class classic of the 50’s and 60’s. At other times, it was like a Romanian Joyce and a sort of nightmarish ode to a place and time gone, if he had been in 80s Bucharest and a failed writer, this might have been his take on the world. Other parts remind me of William Burroughs. I know it was written in a single draft, but there is a feeling of the surreal worlds that Burroughs always did so well. Anyway, this is my take on this book.I love it, but think the hype somewhat has made it a book overshadowing other books, if that makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if it won the Booker. In my head, it is the winner, and I haven’t felt that for a book on the longlist for a few years. I’m unsure what this will add to the discussion on the book. But don’t be scared of it. What are your thoughts on this book?