After the Circus by Patrick Modiano -fiction in translation-Mark Polizzotti translator

Previously published in the New York Journal of Books, November 30, 2015

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/after-circus

Review by Amy Henry

With age usually comes wisdom, and when waxing nostalgic, one usually sees the significance of youthful events in a new and understanding light. However, for our protagonist in Patrick Modiano’s new novel, After the Circus, it appears that even the passage of time has left him confused about the time when he was just reaching adulthood, alone in Paris.

author Patrick Modiano

Modiano’s writing is minimal in the extreme: He doesn’t share pages of descriptions of landscape or weather or clothing styles or significant architecture of the city of lights. Even night and day are hardly distinguished. The main character Jean is hardly described at all in terms of appearance or mannerisms. His new companion, Gisele, is noted tangibly only by the mention of her raincoat and skirt and sweater. Beyond that, nearly every supporting character is without distinguishing marks.

Perhaps the minimalism is to focus on the story’s plot, which also is quite minimal. A tight story arc gives the novel its focus, and it’s entirely intentional. Modiano’s lack of specificity creates a fog or haze over the city of Paris as its characters move and act below. And writing as he does from the viewpoint of an older man looking back, the lapses in memory (from choice or age) are entirely appropriate.

While lacking much description, he does give the novel a mood. A sense of foreboding that is at odds with the simplicity of many early scenes. The mood pervades, however, as day and night and meal after meal in nameless restaurants demonstrates the couple’s idle and unfocused path. Dark streets are traversed repeatedly, lending a sort of symbolism to their future.

translator Mark Polizzotti

Of note is Modiano’s little trick for springing unexpected revelations on the reader. For example, on their first night together, Jean roles over in the bed they were sleeping in.  At first the reader is led to believe they shared it platonically. But he notes that she is nude beneath her raincoat. And the story proceeds. As a reader, the reaction is, “Wait! What was that? Were they intimate and thus she was nude? Did she remove her clothes to sleep? Or, (more significantly) had she been nude underneath her raincoat all day long? During the police questioning?” It’s a small detail that impacts the story a great deal, and Modiano doesn’t feel obligated to explain.  As the novel progresses, you begin to wonder if Jean even knows that answer.

The plot itself is simple: a young man, newly freed from parental control is living temporarily on his own (with an oft-missing caretaker) after his parents move to Switzerland. He’s under age and bored. We first meet him being questioned by the police because his name was found in a suspicious address book. He has no answers for their ambiguous questions. After he leaves, a woman enters and is similarly questioned, but out of his earshot. When she leaves, he meets up with her at a café, and after she asks the dangerous question, “Will you do me a favor?” they somehow become inseparable, based on their shared police experience and nothing more.

She’s slightly older but appears years wiser and often takes notice of his naiveté with merely a look or a long pause. Silent mostly, they spend the next few days sharing his old apartment, walking the dog, and eating out quietly. Their conversations are minimal and one can’t help but wonder where their attraction lies. 

Soon, she introduces him to some friends, older businessmen, and Jean admires the attention they show him. He feels they are benevolent and ready to assist his exciting new future. Jean’s sense of self-absorption is noticeable, perhaps from his sheltered youth, convincing him everyone is looking out for his best interests. 

Again, the reader feels exasperation, wanting him to realize more has to be going on around him. Older Jean, looking back, expresses this: “If I could go back in time and return to that room, I would change the bulb. But in brighter light, the whole thing might well dissolve.”

Gisele shields him from any ugliness (often leaving him in the car with the dog), and now in love, they decide to move to Rome after one last favor for her friends. So kind her friends are! They’ve provided them with cash for the move and even that car! Again, just for a brief favor. Jean only begins to sense, as they pack for Rome, that something may be amiss. It’d be a good time for his parents to advise him, yet they’re gone. The question then jars the reader: Why exactly did his parents move in the first place? 

Time is a tricky player in this novel: Jean lives and makes decisions in present time, his older self is observing backward in memory, and then older Jean actually returns to the places and haunts that clouded his mind so many years ago. Clarity is never fully attained, lost in that same fog and mist that romanticized Paris and served to confuse young Jean years before.

Published by Yale University Press

A Margellos World Letters title

The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul, translated from the Danish

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Okay…there’s the unreliable narrator. Annoying but usually enlightening. But what about a protagonist who is an unlikeable narrator? One that has you, more than once, considering tossing the book across the room? Well, meet Bess. She’s awful. Ghastly. A terrible woman in so many ways I can’t even list them all.

She’s married to Halland, who is murdered immediately as the book begins. It’s a shock, because the brief time he’s mentioned makes him seem like a decent guy. And yet, there’s the sense that we, the reader, may be grieving more than Bess. She’s a cold fish, and the first big question is, is she really just a brat or is this grief overwhelming her? She’s left her child for this man…but she worries about what her search engine may contain. She kisses her neighbor before Halland’s body is cold. She’s appalling, and yet:

"I loved reading and had always thought of it as a refuge. I even read the labels on bottles, if only to keep myself occupied on trains or in restaurants. I read in bed at night. If I lay awake for more than two minutes after switching off the light, I switched it on again to avoid lapsing into thought. To avoid thinking."

Wait. That’s exactly what I do. Can it be that I have more in common with Bess than I’d like to think? As the story unfolds, author Juul makes us ask this question over and over again. Subtly, of course. Because no one wants to admit who they are, deep inside, not even to the character in a novel. That’s what makes Bess so compelling. She’s unlikeable, but then again, so is virtually everyone in her little world. She seems to have no real connection with another human…did she even have one with Halland? While she has lovely flashbacks of him, how tainted are they by grief and how real are they? Was he as messed up as everyone else she deals with? There’s a hint that he was seriously ill…but little to tell us how long she’d been caring for him. Was she at all?

She gets many visitors, all who seem to point her to her own failures. Her ex-husband, her daughter, neighbors…all seem to show up and make her look bad. Who is the mirror and who is the reality? Why are all the reflections so skewed? Why does she say that she “experienced the world with provisos”? What holds her back? And, then again, lest it be forgotten, who killed Halland?

Pia Juul’s writing is never dull…she also throws in quotes from everyone from Eugene Ionesco to Charles Dickens to Hans Christian Anderson. The pithy little quotes fuel a mood for the chapter that they precede, and yet…are they steering the reader in the correct direction? It’s significant that she also has a quote from Agatha Christie, who would have winked at the way nearly every character mentioned could have been the killer. And is that Bess flirting with the detective again?

At one point, Bess craves the simplicity of a television crime, not real life.

"All I needed for happiness was a detective series….Simplicity was a virtue. First a murder, nothing too bestial. Then a police inspector. Insights into his or her personal problems, perhaps. Details about the victim. Puzzles and anomalies. Lines of investigations. Clues. Detours. Breakthrough. Case solved. Nothing like real life.


The puzzle attracted me—the solution left me cold. Nothing like real life."

There it is again…that perplexing bit of humanity (who hasn’t been soothed by a rerun of Law & Order or Inspector Frost??) that makes Bess almost likeable again.

Peirene Press has produced yet another startlingly sharp novel. It’s the first of theirs that I wanted to throw, that had me arguing out loud over a character's bad decisions and pouting at their lack of response, but one that immediately pulled me back in.  Who killed Halland is only one question that will arise....

Special thanks to Meike for the Review Copy.

Spring Tides by Jacques Poulin (French translation)

Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman

Supporting the translator, to every means possible, seems to be the theme of this unsettling and comic book from Jacques Poulin. The story told is held up by the elements of myth and fable that make the island setting and bizarre visitors seem to impart a greater meaning than had they been placed anywhere else. Translator (Teddy) seems to be the focus, there’s also a Prince, an Author, the Boss, the Organizer, a Professor, a ghastly woman called Featherhead, and an Ordinary Man who come to share the small island with a princess named Marie and a family of cats. Of course, the Author is a grump.

Teddy arrives first, and his work as a comic book translator appears top-secret as his boss frequently flies in to check on him and his work, while also delivering, via helicopter, any possible item that Teddy might find helpful (which is how Marie arrived). Teddy works and swims, and focuses on the tides that isolate the island but also seem to keep it, while stationary, in fluid motion.

Interactions between characters are what propel the events, more so than the arc of a plot. Each character reveals something completely different to what we’ve understood about Teddy. So as they arrive, he appears to unravel a bit, both in our perception and in his literal mental health.

Reading this felt relaxing and amusing. The little digs at publishing, especially the character of the Author, felt spot-on. But something about this made me feel I was missing a bigger picture. Almost as if it might have been even more tragic-comic had I known what the joke was. Because that’s what I felt, as if I only had heard the punch line and was missing the setup of an “in” joke between the author and the story. What am I missing? I tried to find some literary link to another island with similar characters and all I could get was Gilligan (and don’t worry, this is not Gilligan’s Island).

Despite that, I did enjoy the word play, especially the behind the scenes nature of translation and why Teddy chose particular words over others, and his explanations for doing so.

While I review for Algonquin, this was acquired as purchase I made two years ago.

Georg Trakl: Poems, translated by Stephen Tapscott

Originally published in the May issue of Gently Read Lit, edited by Daniel Casey.  You can find this literary journal at http://issuu.com/gently_read_literature/docs/grl_may.
--------------------------------

Translated by Stephen Tapscott
Oberlin College Press/FIELD Translation Series

Stephen Tapscott’s new translation of Georg Trakl’s poetry illuminates an internal dimension to the poet that is often ignored in favor of the more external and controversial elements that sidetrack a serious discussion of the poet. Trakl isn’t well-known, but those who’ve heard of him are likely to think of his mental illness, suicide and suspected incestuous relationship with his sister and stop there, leaving examination of the poetry aside.

Tapscott lets the reader know immediately that his translation isn’t going to cover the scandalous factors of Trakl’s life, or categorize him as disturbed genius. Instead, “I wanted to try to register, in English, that droll ascetic tone. I tend not to hear the cri de Coeur of a young Expressionist victim…” This viewpoint is new and recognizes that the six years of Trakl’s writing career contains much deeper elements than controversy. In fact, viewing him as a victim seems to minimize much of the breadth of his lasting oeuvre. Tapscott finds wit, bravery, and elegance in the few poems Trakl wrote:

His lyricism is lean and acute: pointing lucidly toward what both is and is not there, firm in its stillness. In his silences I hear confidence, not victimized muteness, and I see clean, conscious craftsmanship in his sentences, lines, and patterns of repetition.

With this in mind, Tapscott’s translation looks instead at Trakl’s contemplation of self, and notes that in his poems, Trakl “details dynamic facts of the physical world – seasons and landscapes and times of day –as if they were already constituent elements of the self.” In doing this, Trakl creates an indivisible line between the exterior and internal, making each element stronger and yet more fragile.

Georg Trakl 1887-1914

In his Foreword, Tapscott mentions the essayist Martin Heidegger who wrote extensively about Trakl’s work. “Every great poet creates his poetry from one single poem,” Heidegger stated. Heidegger states that he feels that one underlying current, a single unwritten poem, outlines the work of each individual poet. It begs the question stated by Karsten Harries in his essay “Language and Silence: Heidegger’s Dialogue with Georg Trakl” (boundary2: Winter 76 Vol 4 Issue 2): “Even single poems are often too ambiguous to rule out different, even antithetical interpretations. Is such ambiguity only superficial, to be penetrated by more searching interpretation? Can we assume that a particular poem possesses one determinate meaning?” The interpretation Tapscott seems to deliver in this collection is that the language comes first, and that only within the complexities of the language and semiotic images that Trakl chose can an understanding be reached.

In his essay, “From the Evening-Land to the Wild East,” Richard Millington wrote that that the poems contained “visions of natural and historical decline that within the poems themselves are figured concurrently on several time-scales: diurnal, seasonal and cultural-historical” (German Life & Letters, Oct 2011, Vol 64 Issue 4). That this could apply internally on the part of Trakl is reasonable, especially in that Millington notes Trakl’s “symbolic geography” as well as his literal locations in Austria. Most of the poems take place out of doors, at night, with the play of shadows in action in the words.

In "Helian", the movement between locations in that symbolic geography is most obvious. Never still, it appears that Trakl’s words make the same journey as his subjects: motion is always present either in the walking or in the streams of water or wine, even the flight of birds.

It’s lovely, the quiet of the night.
On a dark plain
We meet shepherds and white stars.

When autumn has come,
A solemn clarity appears in the grove.
Gentle, we drift beside red walls,
Our wide eyes following the flight of birds.
At evening white water settles in urns.

Millington spoke too of the “semantic nuances” that Trakl’s poetry contains. In discussing the poem “Evening Song”, Dean Rader (Masterplots II:Poetry Jan ’02) notes that the poetic device “that Trakl employs in almost every one of his poems is silence…and Trakl is also fond of silencing objects that cannot speak anyway.”

Evening Song


At evening, when we walk the dark paths,
Our own pale forms appear before us.


When we feel thirsty,
We drink white water from the pond,
Sweetness of our poignant childhood.

….And yet, when dark harmonies haunt the soul, then
You appear, Whiteness, in your friend’s autumn landscape.

All of the details that Millington refers to are apparent in this poem, and the “if…then…” style of the poems suggests a forward motion that is unified and purposeful. “We” becomes the variable that can change the meaning of the poem per the reader’s impressions.

Color is another factor that is repeated throughout Trakl’s poems, however, the usages are never typical. The wine is brown, not red. Dew is black, not clear. Silence and sleep are both depicted as blue in some poems, black in others. What is intriguing is how he chooses these colors to seemingly catch us off guard and re-examine the cultural images of what a color should mean.

Trakl’s tragic death, after days of horrific experiences, makes many of the poems that much more meaningful. Yet, we have to remember he didn’t know how he’d die when he wrote these. Clearly distraught, and likely emotionally damaged already, he couldn’t have known of the chain of events that left him in charge of a hospital of wounded soldiers who he was helpless to assist. The mobs outside and bodies and decay all around him…one can only imagine that the exit he chose made sense in the world of madness he was locked into.

Christian Hawkey’s book, Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) is an excellent companion to Tapscott’s translation. In it, Hawkey analyzing Trakl’s work but uses radical ways to translate the work: experimental translation that literally rips Trakl’s poetry apart and reconfigures it in a way Trakl would likely sanction. Hawkey also dissects photos of Trakl and experiments with an imagined interview. Combining that book with this translation would give any reader a solid background in Trakl’s works, history, and indelible contribution to Austrian and global poetry.

----Amy Henry 2012

Irish Journal by Heinrich Boll (travel memoir)

Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz

At a pub before evening mass, Heinrich Boll observes a shrewish woman harassing and threatening a hungry child that she thinks is using too much vinegar on his chips. By chance Boll notes that "the savior was approaching"...a banged-up brute who pretends to kiss her hand, offers her a ten-shilling note, then interjects, "May I request you, Madam, to regard these ten shillings as sufficient payment for the six drops of vinegar?"

The woman takes the money, embarrassed, and the man left her with one last reminder, "May I moreover remind you that it is time for the evening service? Please convey my respectful regards to the priest."

Oh snap.  Such a moment captured is one of the unforgettable scenes in Boll's Irish Journal, a collection of essays he wrote about his visit to the Emerald Isle in the 1950s that comes across much like a love letter to the Irish people.  In the event above, he doesn't just leave it at his own observation, he brings it to the reader's consciousness, by making us wonder about the benefactor:

"The man who lives poetry instead of writing it pays ten thousand percent interest. Where was he, the dark, blood-stained drunk, who had had enough string for his jacket but not for his shoes?"

Just outside, in the same scene as above, he depicts the buildings:
"King John's Castle reared grimly out of the darkness, a tourist attraction hemmed in by tenements from the twenties, and the tenements of the twentieth century looked more dilapidated than King John's Castle of the thirteenth; the dim light from the weak bulbs could not compete with the massive shadow of the castle, everything was submerged in sour darkness."

The image he creates mixes characters caught between faith and tradition and modern change, yet still capable of vast generosity in the face of poverty.  Anger mixes with empathy, and somehow the way he connects the fight over "vinegar" to the "sour" light makes it contain so much depth.  And of course, the bum's reminder to the woman about mass, a dig at her less-than-charitable spirit, shows how Boll could see the irony in the situation.

Many of the images that Boll writes about are not far off from our pop culture image of Ireland, a place romanticized by many as a place of quaint cottages and endless green.  (Those of us unfortunate enough to have seen the film, PS I Love You have further embellished that image with scenes of Gerard Butler and Jeffrey Dean Morgan meandering the countryside, spilling charm everywhere.  Neither of whom are Irish.) Having come off a semester of Irish Studies, I realize that the reality is far different, yet the timing of Boll's trip and his ability to write about the people of Ireland without delving into the politics make this a lovely read. 


In "Skeleton of a Human Habitation", Boll writes of the abandoned village he discovers on a walk with his family.  "Everything not made of stone gnawed away by rain, sun, and wind--and time, which patiently trickles over everything; twenty-four great drops of time a day, the acid that eats everything away as imperceptibly as resignation."  He describes the village much as a human body, with spine and heart and limbs--he puts the church as the head.  He observes that the town has been left alone and not plundered, and how the doorways and walls, while decrepit, still remain.  Only his own children, outsiders (the Bolls are German), attempt to raze what they can.  It seems that he's making a distinction between the identity of a nation towards its own things, and notes that "this, then, is what a human habitation looks like when it has been left in peace after death."  How many places permit this return to the soil?  Is it perhaps that the soil feels alive, a dignified presence deserving of respect?

Boll draws attention to generous train conductors that help out when they can't change money, and good-hearted people determined to help without question when they are short on funds.  He even describes something quite new to me:  the private drinking booth.  Inside it's leather curtain, "the drinker locks himself in like a horse; to be alone with whisky and pain, with belief and unbelief; he lowers himself deep below the surface of time, into the caisson of passivity, as long as his money lasts; till he is compelled to float up again to the surface of time, to take part somehow in the weary paddling: meaningless, helpless movements, since every vessel is destined to drift toward the dark waters of the Styx." 
 
Incidental details make Boll's journeys rich, and he describes them in a voice that is simple and clear.  I say that because I've been recently reading other German authors, namely Bernhard, Kafka, and Trakl, and at times I feel frustrated by my lack of understanding.  At the time I was reading this, Irish Journal, I also read Boll's The Bread of Our Early Years, just to see how different his memoir voice was from his narrative voice.  Both are deep reads, full of subtle clues, yet with surprisingly uncluttered prose.  Fortunately, Boll wrote a great many titles, and I'm eager to delve into more. 

As a side note, I found it interesting that the translator was the same for both books.  This led me to discover that Leila Vennewitz was pretty much the only English translator for Bolls, and received numerous awards for her translations.  In an interview in 2006, she stated that "she had always wanted to be a translator, she never made a major blunder in her work, she never had much trouble with editors and she preferred to take her time on each project. Vennewitz preferred to view the translator as "the boss," not unlike an orchestra conductor. She never had an agent and she pioneered the ability of translators to gain copyright for their own translations. She maintained she had always followed the early advice of a fellow translator: "Be bold." (BCBW 2007 archive, "Translation")

It should be said that while the essays were written in the 1950s, he did add an Epilogue dated 1967.  In this, he does acknowledge more of the political problems that were developing and the change present all over Europe, but seems focused on not taking a political position.  He has a bit to say about how the birth control pill will change Ireland, and it struck me as a bit unexpected, maybe naive.  Because of his love of all things Irish, especially the children, I wonder if he was heartbroken when some of the little children he so admired died in hunger strikes years later.  How pained he must have been.

From this all, of course, Ireland is still number one on my wish-list destination, and Boll's personal biography is the next thing I'm going to hunt for.

Special thanks to Nathan at Melville House for the Review Copy.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago, Wolf Haas

Translated by Stephanie Gilardi and Thomas S. Hansen

“I think that's...pretty wonderful.  That someone even pays attention to the weather of the past. The weather is the kind of thing you’re only interested in to know it’s going to be tomorrow.”

I’ve never read a book quite like The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas. It doesn’t proceed in any typical sort of narrative, but instead is simply a conversation between an author and a book reviewer. That’s it. Back and forth, chatting. Sometimes trivial, sometimes bitter, but always, back and forth. It should be boring as hell, but it’s wonderful.

When I first began the book, I wasn’t sure I could tolerate the style. Then I became hooked, on both the underlying story and the snarky conversation of the two. Over the course of several days, the reviewer and author meet and discuss different elements of the story. The reviewer questions the use of certain words and phrases, asks why characters behave as they do, and generally tries to get the author to admit to certain prejudices in the story (regarding women, national culture, etc). The author, for his part, gives new meaning to the term “unreliable narrator”, because you never really know if it’s the author Haas or a character created by Haas who is beguilingly called Hass (who happens to be an author). It’s really not as confusing as it sounds!

The book they discuss is the account of a man who is obsessed with the weather at the resort he stayed in as a child, where all kinds of influential events took place. Even as he seems to forget the place, the habit remains: he finds out the weather and keeps track. The story is told backwards, and characters are introduced randomly that fill out the plot and keep it lively. Yet, it has to be remembered…as interesting as their conversation is, there is no book for you to pick up to read. The interview is the book. It’s an entirely different way of reading, because every detail has to be discerned by direct (or offhand) comments by the speakers. It’s almost like eavesdropping on a juicy story.

And while it’s clever and witty, it’s also sort of profound. Haas describes the complexities of writing and creating characters:

“You can’t tell everything about a person and still make them appealing. People are appealing because you don’t know too much about them.”


“After all, I think that for the purposes of the book, having one defined direction is more dynamic than multiple compass points. I always say that artifice begins with symmetry.”

The reviewer tries to draw out intentions from Haas that may or may not exist, and provokes him a bit as she tries to uncover sentiments that she senses are there. Thus they discuss the ways people interpret and misconstrue plot and character elements. Essentially, this is two stories in one: the interview, and the plot of the book that you’ll never get to read. When you finish, you actually feel bummed out that you can’t go and order it immediately.

Special thanks to Ariadne Press for the Review Copy.

Fado by Andrzej Stasiuk

Translated by Bill Johnston.

Winner of the Vilenica International Literary Prize

My final impression, closing this book, was that Andrzej Stasiuk loves people. His essay collection, Fado, demonstrates this as he examines the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and the other regions that form Central Europe. In all, he writes with obvious affection for the human condition surviving in a complicated place and time. He quietly observes people and their activities: from children playing games, the routines of the working man, the women washing their steps, and the teenagers pining for escape to the West. This is not a travel journal, told by a curious visitor. Stasiuk resides there and his impressions are that much more knowledgeable and profound.


It begins with a road trip: a car driving at night in the rain, and a suggestion of mystery.  He reflects on the dark houses he passes, and how no matter what ethnic heritage a person has, they are all the same when asleep in their beds. A map is essential to reading this, as he goes to a variety of cities and recounts what he sees as well as historical details and anecdotal stories from each individual place.

Much of his writing discusses the changes from Communism to newer political states, some still in their infancy (Slovakia). The past is complicated in Central Europe, and progress is equally difficult. Of Montenegro, he writes:

“Everything that was, becomes rejected in the name of a modernity that assumes the nature of a fiction, an illusion, a devilish apparition. To a greater or lesser extent this applies to all postcommunist countries. But it’s only in Montenegro that it can all be observed within the space of ten miles.”

This battle between old traditions and new identities is a continual subject, but it remains fascinating because each town he visits handles the conflict differently. He talks about the emptiness that is felt in places, where modernization has left many without a purpose. Yet he uses almost poetic words to describe these impressions:

Of Pogradec, “Pool has taken over the town. That noble game, combining geometrical abstraction with kinetics, allows a person to forget the everyday. The men circled the tables like they were hypnotized. They moved back, moved forward, judged distances, stepped on tiptoe and held their breath as if afraid that the moving spheres would change direction and the cosmic harmony of the game would be disturbed.” It’s not difficult to see the underlying correlation with the region in finding their place in history after the divisions of Russia and Yugoslavia.

In Levoka, he observes the local police, who group together in anticipation of a rebellion by Gypsy residents. The violence never occurs, but the image of the bored policemen, playing with their police dog and throwing snowballs, reveals a truism of the place: “Brute force, tedium, and play were combined in perfect proportions, but instinct told you that any one of these three elements could take over at any moment, and for no particular reason.”

In another essay he writes about the changing of the face of paper currency throughout Russia and the Slavic states. In earlier years, the images featured working men and women in simple settings. The implied meaning being hard work garnered money. Then as years passed, the illustrations became more abstract and conceptual, until they evolved into paper faces of famous heroes. There was a political meaning behind each image, and Stasiuk shows how the meaning of money changed too.  Change occurred yet again, during difficult economic times, to another theme: “the patrons of this inflationary series were of course artists and writers. In my part of the world, when times are uncertain we usually turn to culture, since it’s a domain whose failures are not so glaring…”

Stasiuk’s ability to combine history with contemporary issues is amazing because it’s so readable, never dry or boring. He doesn’t get off track trying to make a political statement or place blame, and at times it’s difficult to even guess his position in the controversial matters he discusses. He never judges the people or even presumes to suggest a solution.  An especially fascinating scene was played out at the end of the day in Rasinari, when the cows, oxen, and goats returned from grazing loose into the village, all on their own.

“This daily parade was like a holiday. The whole village came out of its homes onto the road and watched the passage of the livestock. Children, old women in headscarves, men in small groups smoking cigarettes-everyone watched as the animals unerringly found their way to their own farms and stood by the gate waiting to be let in. This ritual had been repeated for centuries and everything in it was self-evident, complete, and in its own way perfect.”

Special thanks to Martin Riker of Dalkey Archive Press for this Review Copy.

The Russian Version, Elena Fanailova, Best Translated Book, poetry

The Russian Version was recently awarded the prize for 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry by Three Percent (University of Rochester), an international literary translation site (link on left sidebar). 

In most instances I avoid prologues and forewords...they usually tell me too much about the work and influence me to look at it in a often slanted light.  I tend to read more into it of another's opinion than my own reactions.  However, in this beautiful poetry collection (beautiful as in subtle and elegant), I must break from tradition and read the Introduction by Aleksandr Skidan.  It's worthwhile in that he explains some biographical details about Fanailova and also about the style of poetry that is contained herein.  It's not simply free verse or heteromorphic but a compiling of various clues from her consciousness:  random bits of pop culture, socio-political commentary, painful details of war, conflicted thoughts of family and a tiny bit of ironic humor.  It is probably the most complicated political poetry I've read, in that it isn't just commenting on Chechnya or Afghanistan but more on the Russian character as a whole:  both the stereotype and the reality.  One of her poems mentioned Gogol, and having confused him with Pushkin and Chekhov I have to look him up, so I googled Gogol (!) and the first sentence I saw was that he "says something very essential about the Russian character";  in this she seems to dispute what typifies the Russian persona.

Additionally, another key factor to most enjoy these selections is to go to the back and read her text notes on each section (and these are excerpts, portions of other books and works).  These illuminate details that may be foreign to many Western readers.  For example, in "Freud and Korczak", she explains that the Korczak was a Polish pediatrician who remained with his young Jewish patients in the Warsaw ghetto, though it cost him his life.  The poem talks about the meaningless of murder, the irony of how insignificant a single murder can seem, and yet how a magnificent tool, capable of so much fine workmanship, ends up being a tool of destruction on a massive scale.  It concludes with the question "Why War?", which Fanailova remarks is the name given to letters exchanged between Einstein and Freud, which leads to further meditation on how perplexed those great minds were by the same things that confuse us now.

One of the most revealing selections is her explanation for her one of the poems "Again they're off for their Afghanistan", where she describes a chance meeting with the couple that it is based upon, and how "the whole course and mechanism of this conversation call for a kind of opening of a window in time, and through this window the draft of the eighties begins to blow.  The details, taste, and feel of the time all had to be captured, whenever possible, without distortion....The sense of violence is the main thing that I remember about this era; this sense permeated all entertainments, pleasures, sensations and feelings, not to speak of work...They speak about monstrous things in a rather ordinary way, even with some animation, because it is their youth they are referring to."  Given that my grasp of the eighties was big hair and Duran Duran, I feel shamed for my ignorance. 

A favorite passage:
Recall:  how fine it is to embrace your beloved
Shirking all responsibility.
Love will change with age,
Become even more magnificent,
Maybe more tender, or perhaps more combustible.
Try to stick around long enough for this.

These aren't easy or pretty;  they require some meditation and perhaps further research.  This selection is not for the masses but for those willing to journey somewhere outside their realm of comfort, and who would undoubtedly return richer for the experience.  I'm not going to pretend I understand every reference, or even every poem.  Some made me laugh in places I wasn't sure was appropriate ("Black Suits").  I hope to enjoy this collection and get more out of it as I return to it.

Special thanks to Ugly Duckling Presse for the Advanced Review Copy.

The Man from Beijing, Henning Mankell

Can hate be hereditary? Does our DNA include code for revenge? Reading The Man from Beijing is likely to make you ponder these very questions. Mankell’s novel is a first rate thriller that goes beyond mystery into incredible historical narratives. It spans three continents (Europe, Asia and North America) and several generations, travelling from remote villages in China to the U.S. and the building of the rail lines of the West.

The novel starts with the grisly discovery of 19 dead bodies in a remote village in Sweden. The eerie crime introduces us to a three unique female characters: a detective working the case, a federal judge from Skane and a Communist Party member from Beijing. All three are linked in the complicated puzzle of the crime, one that originates more than 100 years before the murders.

The pace is brisk, the writing lean and the plot complex. At times I needed to pause and mentally regroup, just to get my bearings. This isn’t a quick or easy read because the author digs far deeper into historical details than most novels. Much of the story relates to experiences of men who have a little authority and who use it to demean and debase others. Additionally, there is no place for CSI style details in this, as the details of police work lie in the background behind the incredible story.

I really appreciated Mankell’s writing style because it didn’t get tied up in unnecessary details. He focuses on the narrative but also on the complex relationships between marriage mates and the inevitable changes that occur in friendships over time. The three prominent women are all powerful characters and do not show the typical neediness or passive aggressive tendencies that are sometimes portrayed alongside a strong will.

The only hesitation I felt in reading this was from a baffling string of terribly unlikely events that led to finding evidence and to solving elements of the crime. A few of these stretched any sense of realism away and left me disoriented, especially considering how well thought out the plot is. All in all, it’s a worthy read but requires a commitment and time to absorb the details of the various time periods presented.

Special thanks to Lauren Helman of Knopf for this Advanced Readers Copy.

The Waitress was New, Dominique Fabre

"I'm only a barman, and when I forget that, the world around me seems like a bunch of different movies running at the same time.  There are romance movies and sad movies, and if you pay attention most of their stories start to get all mixed together, till there's no way you can go on telling them to yourself.  It's like they're all chasing after each other..."


This excerpt shows the complications inherent in the life of the "simple" bartender.  Rather than being the nameless face behind the bar, important only in his quick delivery of a cocktail or beer, this novella by Dominique Fabre goes much deeper into the life of a very complex man.  The story takes place over only a few days, yet we see, in detail, the conflicts within him and within his profession in the upscale cafe Le Cercle, where he's worked some eight years.

There's an abundance of unique characters, from the black-dressed young man who covers his poetry books with paper to hide the contents, to the articulate, kindly man who argues with the Moon and on to the beautiful but betrayed owner's wife.  One of the underlying themes appears to be the pathological desire for order that Pierre, our fifty-six year old barman seeks.  From his keeping the restaurant functioning to the way he does his laundry, Pierre is the picture of routine efficiency mixed with constant self-analysis.  Yet his memories, that flood him often, reveal a past far from the orderly and efficient one he is living now.

This version is translated from the French by Jordan Stump and published by Archipelago Books. 

Georg Letham, Physican and Murderer, Ernst Weiss

The classic symptoms of a sociopath are a wanton disregard for right and wrong and an inability to care about the feelings of others or the tenets of law or societal norms.  Most sociopaths can be defined fairly early in life by their behavior and attitude. 
With this in mind, I began what I thought was a story about a sociopath.  In Georg Letham, Physican and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, the main character Letham is a classically trained physician who specializes in research in the distasteful specialization of vivisection.  In the initial chapters he confesses his role in the murder of his wife with no apparent remorse.  In fact, he only did it because he needed her money and she refused to "voluntarily" die of her own volition.  He complains about his wife and his father, both of whom held the key to his financial betterment:

"Neither of them could give me what I yearned for in the depths of my soul, but there was one medicine that they could have given me to ease my suffering:  the original medicine, money."

Circumstances after the murder unravel and his perfect plan fails spectacularly.  He ends up carted off as a 'common' criminal to a life sentence, a fate made more demeaning by the extremely high opinion he had of himself.  As he acclimates to incarceration and is transported to a tropical prison camp, he explains more of his childhood and more of his relationship with his father.  He reveals in slow and painful detail exactly what his father did to make him a strong man, and suddenly the diagnosis of classic schizophrenic becomes vague.  Because while he clearly was influenced by his father's hateful and moral deficiencies, he never outright blames him or uses him as an excuse.  He accepts all responsibility himself for his crime and also acknowledges his own moral failure.  A true schizophrenic never accepts blame.  Throughout this first half of the book to this point, the reading has been complicated and painful;  the details were horrifying and unsettling.

However, in his new location in the tropics, a change occurs in his life that confirms that Georg Letham is no sociopath.  He is allowed to work in the medical field again, this time doing research to find a cure for the deadly Yellow Fever that haunts the tropical regions.  A parallel is drawn between the rats his father abhorred and tried forever to eliminate with Georg's efforts to find a remedy for this similarly persistent and deadly danger.  While his father was led into the depths of moral depravity because of his inability to control the deadly rodents, Georg rises morally by putting himself at risk for the welfare of others by trying to have some effect on the deadly disease.  Throughout the second half of the book we see him change, yet he never transforms completely.  That would be too easy and too unrealistic.

A fascinating part of the text is the medical aspects of the study of disease, and how diseases like Yellow Fever are transmitted.  This is a far more interesting way to learn about biology than high school science!  No details are omitted in the search for a cure, and Weiss never dumbs down the medical language.  Reading about the treatment of criminals in the early twentieth century as well as the service of military doctors and their dedication in this time period is absorbing.

This is not an easy read.  Details of the animal testing are gruesome. His own attitude is obnoxious, but changes to more of a snarky sensibleness as events progress.  His father's heartlessness is painful, and many events are described so brutally that you may cringe and have to put the book down for a few minutes.  One thing is constant:  Georg is honest even when it would suit him to be less so.  And despite the difficulties, this book is something you can't put down and certainly won't want to.

Special thanks to Jill at Archipelago Books for this review copy.  This translation from the original German text, by Joel Rotenberg, is available at Archipelagobooks.org or Amazon.com.