2666 - post II

Having taken the characters from the first part to a god forsaken town in Mexico the second part expands on one of the minor characters who lives there.

I use the expression minor because in the first part the Chilean philosophy professor Amalfitano is described in more detail. The academic is also plagued by dreams and starts hearing voices. Like the others he is also trapped not by his obsession with a reclusive author, but by his inability to leave somewhere he hates living in.

In one sense you see the second part a bit like a spoke on a bike wheel, adding more of the picture before it moves into the middle. Because in terms of story development it is hard to see where this is now going.

More when I have read the third part...

2666 - post I

There is a dream like quality to this story with dreams being described, shared and things to fear.

Three critics of a long forgotten german author meet and become friends as they share their work and talk at conferences around the world. A spaniard, german and italian are then joined by a female from London. the first part of the book then develops around the idea of their relationship with the English woman having affairs with them all as well as their search for the reclusive author they all study.

At the start it is enough for them to share an interest in the author but then an obsession starts to grow that they should try to find him. There are warnings of what that might involve with the parallel case of a lost artist they discover and the dreams are also there to warn them off.

But the journey proves to be too tempting after an obscure sighting in Mexico but rather than find anything they risk losing themselves in a dreamlike state of stagnation.

More tomorrow...

Having the right attitude

When it comes to reading a large book or a series you need the right mental preparation. I am not sure that the right attitude has been taken with Roberto Bolano's 2666.

The problem is not made easier by the note at the start that reveals that this should have been five seperate books. This possibly might have been a better way of doing it or at least put those comments at the end. Maybe that is too much of an excuse but with the weight, the odd storyline and the reputation of brilliance I should have perhaps prepared better for the 2666 journey.

The dilemma of choice

There is always that moment of excitement when you finish one book and get ready to start another. My problem is that given a spare couple of minutes I will happily pick up something and as a result there are several books i have started to make in roads into but not yet really got stuck into:

2666 by Roberto Bolano

Headlong by Michael Frayn

Spring on the Oder by Kazakevich

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light by Ivan Klima

Might just number them 1 to 6 and roll the dice and start to get through them. Otherwise there is always the problem this list of half first chapters might be added to making it completely unmanageable.

The Interrogation - post IV

With the story being told from the basis of notebooks it is clear a turning point has happened.

That change comes as a result of Adam's desperate Pershing of Michele and his demands for money. He lists the things he needs for a simple life but most depend on money. So he goes after it. but that brings the police, the owners of the house he is squatting in as well as an assualt charge against Michele.

After a break he reappears and launches into an impromptu speech that lands him in a mental home. Once there the interrogation begins.

Without giving the ending away it is possible to say that the reader is provoked onto considering just what is madness and whether it is possible to escape from the world by escaping into yourself.

A review will come soon...

The joy of reading aloud

I have to confess to being a bit of an inconsistent reader to my children but when I do get round to it the magic is in the air and almost touchable. I have just finished the first Famous Five book and by the end the kids were clapping hands, perched on the end of their beds and wide eyed as the story reached its conclusion.

I wish my commute was slightly shorter so I could build in reading as a core component of the evening routine but alas it is ad hoc and dependent on tiredness and the time I get back.

But if you have not read to your kids then start now and for those looking for some adventure and good old-fashioned high jinks then Enid Blyton deserves to be tried.

The Interrogation - post III

There is a slight shift in the narrative with the story of Adam being told through hiS abandoned notebooks.

It probably helps to get some distance from Adam because he has become more and more miopic and a trouble to his girlfriend michele.

For the reader it also works using notebooks because it condenses down days worth of activity. before that he was following the dog round the town and brooding on a life of complete isolation.

You know that he is not going to be able to maintain this life for much longer.

More tomorrow...

2666 - post I

This is such a mammoth book not just in terms of the actual word count but also the font and leading on the page make it a dense reading experience.

A collection of characters are introduced all with the interest and passion for studying a reclusive German author in common. The academics from Germany, Spain, Italy and England meet regularly at conferences and start to investigate the possibility of tracking down the man they have dedicated so much of their lives to studying.

In terms of style it is clearly determined to make the reader think and some of the terms used to describe the academic world of obtuse literary conferences is something that from the start you have to work to stick with.

But the hope is that a story perhaps more interesting than trying to track down a reclusive author will emerge with the quartet of main characters.

More when I finish section one...

The Interrogation - post II

Having established that Adam is stuck in a house all alone and prone to odd behaviour it comes a little surprise he decides to build into his routine the chance to follow a dog.

He trots after the dog through the town and then returns to find a big white rat sitting near the billiard table. He destroys the rat with the two swapping personalities during the battle.

Although that sounds odd but simple those moments are accompanied by heavy description with not just the wind blowing through the reeds but the heat of the summer coming across in the words he chooses to put down on the page.

Adam is so anti-social that it is almost beyond him to try and figure out ways he could avoid people if he was ever evicted from the house he is squatting in. he even admits that he hasn’t got the ability to fill 24 hours a day of peace. That is his major problem living alone with that much time eventually becoming more and more strange.

More tomorrow…

The Interrogation - post I

This book is almost like watching a film stood right up next to the screen with the wider picture reduced to small details that end up being concentrated on by the main character Adam Pollo.

Pollo appears to have done a bunk from national service, he is French, and found a home on the coast that is deserted. He has moved in and leads a relatively lonely and quiet life. The result is that he becomes obsessional about things and when he does talk to other people the lack of exposure to normal conversation causes him to sound abrupt, rude and odd.

There is a girl friend of sorts but they play games, which seem to involve some sort of rape that it is not clear whether it is part of the game or if it happened. That relationship reminds you a bit of Les Enfants Terribles but the coastal beach setting has echoes of Camus’s Stranger.

But the less that Adam does the more uncomfortable it becomes to read. His introspection heightens and he starts to focus on things that most of us would not notice. That creates a growing sense of unease that this odd character will say and do the wrong thing and offend the general sensibilities of the local community.

Okay, so its only 50 odd pages in, but already this feels like it is going to be the sort of story that gnaws away at the imagination for quite some time to come.

More tomorrow…

Crabwalk - post IV

If this book was part of some sort of literature course then possibly it could provoke you to fill pages and pages commenting on the questions it raises.

But as this is a blog and written by someone of only moderate intelligence the response will not be quite as grand.

The main takeaway here is the fact that history, even a corrupted version of it, continues to influence future generations. Even when that history seems to be best left gathering dust – something connected with the Nazi era – it still has the power to capture the imagination and push people into extreme positions.

Is the son guilty because he tries to act out some historical based fantasy of killing a Jew to revenge the Nazi martyr he idolizes? Is the grandmother wrong for filling her grandson’s head with historical biased nonsense? Is the father guilty for never being there to address these issues until faster too late when he decides to put them down as some sort of writing exercise?

Or is there a larger finger being pointed here at the German state for failing to face up to its past and as a result allowing misinterpretations to take hold among amateur historians?

Of course the answer is a mixture of all of the above. The problem is that it is almost impossible to identify and sympathize with any of the characters. Even the murdered boy turns out to be a liar and a fantasist disowned by his parents. There are no rights in this story. Even those who played their parts at the time ended up fading from glory.

A challenging book and one that is attacking a wide number of targets, not least of all is the power of the internet to disseminate false information and spread racial hatred, but it is not that easy to read and as a result is a frustrating experience.

A review will follow shortly…

The Future of the Book - post II

This is starting to become challenging not just in terms of keeping up with the arguments but keeping track of the references, which are coming thick and fast.

Chapter 2: The Pragmatics of the new: Trithemius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus by James O’Donnell.

By looking at several critics of change the point is made that resistance to change is not a new phenomenon. Neither of course is trying to predict how the future will impact books and publishing.

If anything the prophets of doom (McLuhan) have turned out to have been wrong. Others (Trithemius) have been more concerned with protecting the status quo. But there is a questioning about the whole obsession with books.

“It is not strange that we take the spoken word, the most insubstantial of human creations, and try through textuality to freeze it forever; and again, try to give the frozen words of those who are dead and gone, or at least far absent, control over our own experience of the lived here and now?” pg 54

“Books are only secondary bearers of culture.” Pg 54 making the point that western civilisation is as much to be examined as its physical output.

Chapter 3: Material Matters: The past and futurology of the book by Paul Duguid

Technology often fails to deliver what it promises and so the question of leaping too quickly to sweeping generalisations about the future is difficult.

(This probably explains why so many publishers ignored the ebook threat for so long).

“Liberationalists hold, as another much-quoted aphorism has it, that ‘information wants to be free’ and that new technology is going to free it. The book, by contrast, appears never to have shaken off its restrictive medieval chains”. Pg 65

You have to understand the social and material complexity posed by books. Before technology can replace the book its 360 degree position in society has to be understood.

You cannot dismiss the past because if you do so it would be at the risk of losing heritage, learning and intelligence.

The book was the authority when it was read and produced in isolated rural environments but then became something to enjoy more casually as the gentry started to emerge in towns.

“In all then, I suggest it’s important to resist announcements of the death of the book or the more general insistence that the present has swept away the past or that new technologies have superseded the old. To refuse to accept such claims is not, however, to deny that we are living through important cultural; or technological changes.” Pg 72.

Books and information are interdependent and the idea of liberating information from the book is one that he challenges. He warns that it is easy to praise information and demonise the book.

Things then go off slightly with some stuff on hypertext with the argument that hypertext has existed for donkey's years in the form of footnotes and as a result those expecting some sort of reading revolution might well be dissapointed.

The Future of the Book - post I

This is one of those books that makes you realise that the moment between casual interest and something more dedicated has been crossed.

This is a weighty text book type collection of papers given at a conference looking into the future of the book. In some respects the immediate problem is the way they have dated with technology moving a great deal quicker than most of the contributors here expected.

But aside from that there are some interesting points that are worth drawing out from the different chapters.

Introduction by Geoffrey Nunberg

Some like to say we are at a crossroads of post modernism driven there by technology. As a result there is plenty of conjecture whether or not the book is going through its death throes.

There are some books that benefit from a swift move to digital – encyclopaedias, reference books and travel guides. As a result the role of the library changes.

With hypertext going beyond the book how does that work? How can the reader be guided?

Chapter one: Books in Time by Carla Hesse

The history of the book needs to be understood: The medium is not the mode.

A modern literary system emerges in the late 18th century and authors became entities that are similar to those today. But books were never the most prevalent form of printed matter.

“…books have never been the exclusive, or even the most prevalent form of printed matter, though they have been the most privileged and most protected.” Pg 23

Books have also been debunked before being cast as a repository of falsehoods according to Locke and it fixes knowledge and pins down authors in ways that are seen as a constraint according to Condorcet.

Technology is helping to remake the literary system with the question of authorship again something debated. There is a reinvention of the intellectual community.

“The introduction of these new technologies has radically destabilised and transformed the legal, economic, political and institutional infrastructure of modern knowledge exchange…”pg 29

Giving the joy of reading

It has been my son's birthday today and for the first time there have been genuine squeals of excitement as he tore the wrapping off some books. I'm hoping it is a sign of a growing interest in books that will be with him for life.

The only downside is that as a result I have not had a chance to do any really constructive reading/thinking and this is probably all i will blog tonight.

Still aim to make up for it tomorrow...

Crabwalk - post III

Here is a question posed by Gunter Grass: Can those drowned on the losing side in a war be classed as victims?

Of course it is not as simple as that but one of the main aims of this book does seem to be to make you question your own attitude to who deserves pity and who is worthy of damnation.

On top of that conundrum there is the ongoing battle between the extreme right wing and those prepared to engage in a debate representing the Jewish side of that argument.

In the middle Grass describes a man trying to make sense of his own life by writing about his past. Instead his life continues to fall apart and the one constant in it, his mother, seems to be the cause of the majority of his problems.

Last chunk tomorrow…