Tag: vintage

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by Jose Saramago

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Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by Jose Saramago

Portuguese fiction

Original title –  Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia

Translator – Giovanni Ponteiro

Source – Library edition

I’m having a slow Spanish / Portuguese  Lit month this year, but I aim to review mainly books from Portugal, which is the second from Portugal. This is also from the best-know Writer from Portugal, the late Jose Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize. I picked this from the library because it was an earlier book I have reviewed a later novel and the earlier novel by him Skylight that came out a few years ago in English for the first time. It also came not long after the fall of the fascist regime in Portugal that had reigned the country for many years. The book looks at the later part of the Salazar regime and the use of the Painter and Industrialist as the book ends those hit by the government.

It was not until fifteen days later that S. explained why he wanted this portrait, so much at variance with his nature and outlook as a man of his time. I never ask my clients in this blunt manner why they decided to have their portrait painted. Were I to do so, I should give the impression of having little esteem for the work which provides me with a living. I must proceed (as I have always done) as if a portrait in oils were the confirmation of a life, its culmination and moment of triumph, and therefore accept the inevitable fact that success is the prerogative of the chosen few. To ask would be to question the right of these chosen souls to have their portrait painted, when this privilege is clearly theirs by right and because of the large sum of money they are paying and the sumptuous surroundings in which they display the finished work, which they alone appreciate according to how they value themselves.

Talking about the painting

The book follows an artist called H, who is commissioned to do a portrait of an Industrialist called just S. There is a fun line early on in the book when he passes comments on the art and how S looks in real life. While doing this, he also beds the great man, the secretary of S, while doing the painting. All this is told by H a man in the Bourgeois world of the regime just keeping in there by his art, which isn’t the best, but he dreams of being like the great artists of the world as he talks about their paintings, this saw a lot of looking up art like the man with grey eyes.All this is because he is having his fling with Olga. Alongside this, a close friend of his is arrested by the secret police and is in prison. He meets and has another fling with his friend’s sister. He talks about the pictures he has seen as he works on this second portrait of the great S. Another interesting was a list late on of great Portuguese novels and then trying to find them in English and discovering there were only a couple available to us in English.

In the presence of the couple from Lapa (reminiscent of certain characters in Portuguese novels: Os Fidalgos da Casa Mourisca by Júlio Dinis, A Morgadinha de Val-flor by Pinheiro Chagas, Os Teles de Albergaria by Carlos Malheiro Dias, As Donas dos Tempos Idos by Caetano Beirão, O Barão de Lavos by Arnaldo Gama, Os Maias by Eça de Queiroz and O Senhordo Paço de Ninães by Camilo Castelo Branco) the chameleon did not change its skin.

Boring but this was the liost of portuguese novels with just a few availlable in English

I like this book steeped in art. I think this is Saramago making a personal voyage around the art that has touched him as a writer. It is a very visual book but a book full of relationships that are passionate in nature but brief, firey sex and games. He fleshes out H as an artist with this. He is a man who has that artistic charisma, if not maybe the talent that always goes with it. It also has the backdrop of a secret police coming and taking artists and intellectuals.The latter bitter and of the Salazar regimes is burning in the background. the creative process seen through H eyes but also a man struggling with the desire to be like those great portrait artist he has seen over the years. Have you a favourite book by Saramago? Where next do I want to leave his big ones to review last. Have you a favourite book by him,

Winston score – B exciting look at an artist and what inspires him in the later years of the Salazar regime?sa

Götz and Meyer by David Albahari

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Götz and Meyer by Daivd Albahari

Serbian Fcition

Original title – Гец и Мајер

Transator – Ellen Elias – Bursac

Source – Personal copy

Do we all have that list of books you have seen reviewed a long time ago and said I’ll get that when I see it in a second-hand shop? Well, I have a long list, and I must admit this has always been near the top. Had I seen a new copy in a shop at some time, I’d probably have brought it. So when IO saw it last week I had to get I’m sure the last mention I remember of it was on the Mookse podcast and I think the first time I read about it was on the complete review Michael has introduced me to so many great writers over the last two decades I had read another book by David Albahari, set in Canada, where the writer spent the latter part of his life. But I knew he had written some books about his Jewish heritage, and he was from a Sephardic Jewish family. So he wrote this book around a writer in the present trying to find out what had happened to his Jewish Family in Blregrade during World War Two.

Götz and Meyer. Having never seen them, I can only imagine them. In twosomes like theirs, one is usually taller, the other shorter, but since bothwere SS. non-commissioned officers, it is easy to imagine that both were tall, perhaps the same height.I am assuming that the standards for acceptance into the SS were rigorous, below a certain height you most certainly would not qualify. One of the two, or so witnesses claim, came into the camp, played with the children, picked them up, even gave them chocolates.We need so little to imagine another world, don’t we?But Götz, or Meyer, then went off to his truck and got ready for another trip. The distances were not long, but Götz, or Meyer, was looking forward to the breeze that would play through the open truck window. As he walked towards the truck, the children returned, radiant, to their mothers. Götz and Meyer were probably not novices at the job

The opening lines  and he finds these two names

As our narrator is trying to pick apart what had happened to his family. The one thing he found out was that they had been put onto an SS truck. Many in the camps at that time felt these trucks were tacking them to a better life. But they were about to be gassed with fumes and buried. He only knows that the two non-commison officers driving this van around Serbia are Götz and Myer. What follows is him trying to imagine what these two unknown characters were like as people to put a face to evil, so to speak. What did they feel about their jobs? How were they looked at by those around them? What part did they play in the wider picture of the war? But he does it with a sort of darkly comic way of making these two come alive and the events they were caught up in. He often asks if Götz or Meyer did such and such, trying to weigh them up.How did the evil they did match with them as a people? They drive around Belgrade as they go about the job of taking the truck to fetch and kill people. Cogs in a killing machine or true evil? This is the question we face as readers.

Götz, or was it Meyer, the one who gave sweets to the children, clearly was not as squeamish as I am. Perhaps at home, in Germany or Austria, he had a dog, so he was used to fleas, was quick to catch them and, with a little crunch, crush them between his fingers. I never saw Götz or Meyer, so I can only imagine them, but somehow I feel certain that Götz, or Meyer, had a poodle, a small fluffy thing called Lily. If Lily had only come to the Fairgrounds camp once, what joy she would have brought those children! They would have crowded round her, touched her little nose, patted her little tail and paws, forgotten all about the chocolates. In a report dated February 6, 1942, sent by Commander Andorfer to the Municipality of Belgrade, there were I, 136 children at the camp who were under 16 years of age, and 76 children still nursing.

He oimagines one with a dog as he talks about the kids killed at the time

 

As we enter the writer’s mind, this is told in a stream-of-consciousness style. He imagines these two lowly SS officers as the last people a lot of his family would have seen in the war. He is putting the face to them at times. They sound like they fall out of a Beckett play, a darker pair to Vladais and Estragon as they wait for evil to engulf them. They are faces left, but they are on the page. Taking evil out of the dark into the light. There are nods to writers like Bernhard. He has the acid humour that Thomas Bernhard had in his writing. These never fully come alive, but the sense of the presence is in the book as you read along the war years and the part in the final solution and how it killed so many of our narrator’s family. All he has is this as a small thread to that horror, which is these two characters and their names, as he tries to fill in the gaps in the information he has . A darkly comic book at times I ‘m pleased I have got to it and hope to find more books by him to read. Have you read David Alahari ?

Winston’s score – A -a pair of SS truck drivers brought to life as someone in the present wants to uncover the horrors that happened to his family.

 

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

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Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Japanese fiction

Original title – Onna Men,

Translator –  Juliet Winters Carpenter

Source – Library

I am bringing a new voice to the blog today. I had seen this Vintage cover just before Christmas; someone had posted it somewhere, and I liked it I then looked and found it was a writer I had missed. Privately tutored in literature. She began writing in the late thirties with a play and some early novels. and wrote during the war. Burt was bombed out of her house at the end of the war. She was married to a journalist. She had numerous health struggles in her life, and this novel came out in the fifties when her writing focused on female psychology and Sexuality. This book took its inspiration from the main character from the Tales of Genji.

Yasuko was the widow of Mieko Toganö’s late son, Akio.

Their marriage had lasted barely a year before Akio was killed suddenly in an avalanche on Mount Fuji. After the funeral.

Yasuko had not gone back to her parents but had remained in the Togano family, helping her mother-in-law edit a poetry magazine and auditing Ibuki’s classes in Japanese literature at the university where he was assistant professor. She was also involved in a detailed study of spirit possession in the Heian era, a continuation of research that Akio had left unfinished. Ibuki and others supposed she had chosen this as a way of staying close to her husband’s memory.

Yasuko introduced as her husband dide on Mount Fuji

The novel has a lot of nods to Traditional Japanese culture. It had been split into three sections, each named after masks from the traditional Japanese Noh. The book opens as a two men meet at the station and the y are both in love with a widow they know. Yasuko had lost her husband in an accident. The two men, Ibuki and Mikame, also mention her mother-in-law, an overarching figure in the book. One of them takes the daughter and mother-in-law to see a collection of Masks and costumes. When an incident happens, and they see a particular mask, Yasuko faints. She is torn between two men one is married she likes more but is maybe drawn to the bachelor. She lives with her. mother-in-law and her husband’s twin sister. Then she has nightmares about her husband. The is a lot of reference to classic Japanese text and works, and the mask was a lot of googling. The book has two other parts as the relationship between the widow and her two male friends is also affected by the mother-in-law of her late husband.

They’re at the Camellia House on Fuya Street, said Ibuki. ‘This afternoon Mieko is going to call on Yorihito Yakushiji, the Nö master. He’s showing some of his old masks and costumes, and she’s invited me along.

‘Really? How long has she known him?’

‘It seems his daughter is one of her pupils. Their storehouse is open for its autumn airing, and I’ve heard that some of the costumes are three hundred years old or more. Don’t vou want to come?’

‘Well, old masks and costumes aren’t exactly what I had in mind for today, but then again I would like to see Mieko and Yasuko. I had thought when I came in here, I’d just stop for a minute and then maybe go and look up a friend of mine in the medical school, but I think I will join you, if you’re sure no one will mind.’

They get invited to look at tsome old masks and she is shocked by one of them

This is one of those post war Jpaanese books that maybe deals with the big change in the country I was remind of this woman living with the in laws after her husbands death. But with two men one married the other a bachelor. But then having her mother-in-law sort of playing these all off together was interesting, and I loved the part of the book.I struggled that my knowledge of classic Japanese text and culture isn’t maybe as good as it shou,d be I am aware of the Tales of Genji and knew a little about it but haven’t read it. I may need to read more of these classic works over time and return to this book. I like the recurring theme of masks, which are influential in Japanese culture. I remember watching the Onibaba, a Japanese horror classic where a man in a mask played an important role. This would have made a great film by Japanese master Ozu, who made so many great films of the life of Tokyo’s everyday people and relationships this would have worked. I found I struggled just because I would have loved to have known more about the masks each section was named and how they tied into the story itself. But it is worth reading a story of a widow and a mother-in-law trying to move the piece around her daughter-in-law’s life. Have you read this book or any books by Fumiko Enchi?

Winston’s score of B was interesting and made me want to learn more about the masks and things mentioned in the book.

History of Violence by Edouard Louis

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History of Violence by Edouard Louis

French Auto Fiction

Original title – Histoire de la violence

Translator – Lorin Stein

Source – personal copy

As I said on my last post this book links in with the previous book I reviewed Black Box by Shiori Ito this book is the account of Edouard Louis when he was rapped. He is a writer I have read before I read his debut novel The end of Eddy like this book was a work of AUTO FICTION HE IS THE HEIR TO A WRITER LIKE Anne Ernaux he is able to write about his life in a way that it lingers long with you as a reader after you have put the book down. He is a fan of Faulkner even in the middle of the book he pulls up the parallel between his experience and that of Temple drake in Sanctuary.

I showed up at her house four days ago. I’d told myself, naively, that time in the country was what I needed in order to get over the weariness and passivity that had consumed my life, but no sooner had I walked through the door, thrown my bag down on the bed, and opened the bedroom window, with its view of the woods and the factory in the next village, than I knew it was a mistake and that I’d go home feeling even worse than before, even more, depressed by my own inertia.

When he shows up at his sister after the event of that night.

The book follows the events leading up to during and after a rape that happened to Edouard Louis, it is told in a non-linear order as the events after the rape form the early part of the book. as Edouard tries to piece together the events of that night. He makes his way to his sister and he recounts to her the events of the night that lead up to the Rape. Burt when his sister then tells her husband the story her brother told her. She recounts the narrative differently and makes it seem like not was partly Louis’s fault what happened. He takes exception to this and we see the events as he portrays them. AS He met and took home a man called Reda he is a man of Kabyle (not arabic as his family think later) descent. The two meet get on as Edouard is heading home on Christmas Eve excited about the night he has had with his friends. Then he invites himself back to Louis’s for a drink s. When they arrive at the flat Reda reaches into Louis’s pocket for the keys which turn Louis on. So far it is all ok and the evening moves pin the shower and grow closer. But then when he sees something has disappeared the face of the man he spent the evening with changes and the night starts to take a turn for the worse and the events that follow he describes how it felt to be attacked and then raped.

He told me that he was Kabyle and that his father had come to France in the early sixties. This was twenty years before Reda was born. When we met, Reda must have been in his early thirties. They sent his father to a designated immigrant hostel somewhere to the north of Paris, I forget the exact town, with no more than a change of clothes and a few things stuffed into a little suitcase – and not because he had nothing, though it’s true he didn’t have much, but because he wasn’t allowed to bring any more with him; as if it weren’t enough to be poor, he had to seem poor too. Reda began to tell me all this when we were standing outside my building, but it was later – when we were lying together in bed and I was begging to know more about him, about his life

They initially get on and he learns about the young man he has met Reda.

I said yesterday it was connected to the book I had read yesterday Black box the story of a Japanese rape victim that was a powerful story and this is too we have not had so many male rape novels, well I haven’t read the many and one like this that recounts the worst night of Louis life in such detail is a brave narrative but one that has to be told yes race plays a part after his family blame the fact of this on what happened to Edouard. But as he says he isn’t Arabic and that wasn’t caused by the events of that night. He records the detail of that night but also the aftermath this is where it differs from the book yesterday as it shows how he went to the police and they took it seriously and the trauma that followed that night the PTSD and how he has to make sure he hadn’t got aids the worry of that after that attack. As I say he is an heir to Ernaux he is very much in the style of a writer in Autofiction also he has a visceral nature of Faulkner as in the middle of the book when he compares his events to those Faulkner wrote. Have you read any of the books from Louis?

Winston’s score – B one mans worst night recounted and the aftermath of it.

The end of Eddy by Édouard Louis

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The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis

French Auto-Fiction

Original title – En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule

Translator – Michael Lucey

Source – Personal copy

Any of you that have followed this blog for any amount of time will know I am wary of what I would call the “It Book “. One of those books that seem to be everywhere when they come out and here is such a book from the current star of French Literature  Edouard Louis a young man that grew up in a small town in Northern France in the Picardy region. In a working-class family in a working-class town. His father had an accident and was unable to work making their lives even harder having to live off government handouts. Anyway, he has written a number of books about his life using that great French tradition of Autofiction so Edouard becomes Eddy Bellegueile from The small French town of Hallencourt which is also Edouard Louis hometown.

The Kicks to my stomach knovcked the wind out of me and I couldn’t cath my breath. I opened my mouth as wide as I could to let in some oxygen. I expanded my chest, , but the air wouldn’t go in, as if without warning my lungs had filed up with some dense kind of sap, with lead. They felt so heavy all of a sudden. My body was shaking, as if it had a mind of its own, as if I had no control over it. The way an agening body that is freeing itself from the mind, or is being abandoned by it, refuse to obey it. A body becoming a burden.

A descriptioin of an attack to him at school.

I was drawn to read this book when I saw it on holiday last year and read the Blurb. I am a fan of Autofiction, although I am not gay I was a skinny backwards kid soft-spoken and into arty things and had a stepfather that made my life hell so I knew that this story is one I would really connect with. We meet Eddy a young boy that is subject to Bullying he has always been out of sync with his family he is just one of those boys that like me at that age stands out. He also has a double-ended problem with school and home life equally being hard. From the Bullies that act him in school a particularly brutal attack in the school corridor reminded me of some of the bullying, I had school I endured at school. Then at home his father lack of accepting his son. We see Eddy’s life the poverty and the homophobia of the town are shown it is a place out of time with other places like many small towns and villages this place isn’t as forward as it should be. Will he make it through?

(WE would go there once a month, it was true, to collect the boxes of food they gave out to the poorest families. The volunteers grew to recognise me and, when we arrived, they would slip me a few extra chocolate bars beyond our allotted share. There’s our little Eddy, how’s he doing ? and my parents would tell anyone, no one, that we go to the food bank, that’s a secret that stays in the family. They didn’t realise thart I’d already understood, without being told, how shameful this was, and that nothing would have made me tell anyone about it. )

The family really struggle with money and have toi go to a food bank such a common occurance these days for so many.

But what sets this apart is how evenly he tells the story it is written with an eye that hasn’t painted the world with a biased brush no this is a view of someone in the eye of the storm observing the storm. The poverty, the bullying, the racism and the homophobia are all written with the sense that they can’t help their views and having grown up in a similar environment with the Bullying and a hard father in my stepfather luckily we weren’t as poor as Eddy to add to his woes. But this book is the first step in books like this that show the horror of being in the eye of a storm you can’t stop the storm only batten down and brave it then tell others about it when you make it to the other side a survivor of the events and that is what this is a person that got through those events and struggles when many others didn’t and so it is a powerful work. I regret leaving it so long to read this book in fact the same thing has happened today with another book. Have you ever left a book because of Hype or do you think it may not be a book for you? Do you love connecting with books on a personal level, for me this is what reading is connections inspirations and discoveries an endless journey we should all be on?

Winstons score – +A – A tough childhood told without prejudice even though they suffered it so much.

 

 

Winstons books Sheffield and Chesterfield

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Well I did review yesterday The boy who stole Attila’s horse which was one of three books I brought earlier this week from Sheffield as I have been off this week and we both had monday off we went for the day and as there waterstones has a slightly better selection of translated books I always love a look round.

20160129_160447First up is a trilogy of Novels by Samuel Beckett , which mix’s my wanting to read more Irish fiction and still reading translation add to this I see that World republic of letters have two translation of the same book out a Gaelic classic , I feel I be reading both Irish lit and Translated books. The second book is A school for Fools by Sasha Sokolov, which grabbed me for two reason first it is from NYRB classic a name I trust the other reason is a quote on the back if James Joyce had written in russian this would be the last two chapters of Ulysses.Another for my russian list this year.

20160129_160538

Then I meet Amanda after work yesterday and we spent a few hours in town I found three books, the first two in Oxfam Two Adolescents by Alberto Moravia is made up of two novella Agostino and Disobedience , I remember someone  reviewing last year  the first novella Disobedience , which is a NYRB classic book now. The second book is a book by Roland Barthes on how myths are made and semiotics have come to me so much.

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Strange how books I get connect in some way talking Myth and semiotics, the one writer we may think of is Umberto Eco and I happen to get this Baudlino is the one of two novels by him I don’t own I haven;t Numero Zero but I have read it over christmas but I want to have all his books on my shelves.

What books have you brought recently ?