Auto Da Fe by Elias Canetti

If you were to go blind would it not be logical to kill yourself because you could not read?  This is one of the many challenging questions Auto-Da-Fe by Elias Canetti poses to us and it’s a difficult one for bibliophiles to answer, certainly it gives me pause to think and there are many moments like that in this book.  There is a lot of action in it but it is also very meditate and intellectual about various issues, namely about being intellectual; it has meat as well as veg.

This is a big building of a book, multi-storied and multi-leveled.  It tackles big subjects with gusto and prowess.  It is about the problem of overspecialization, of being bookish in a world of physical violence and the need for outside influence.  Very influential on Iris Murdoch, there are those who may detect the similar presentation that is almost cartoonish or grotesque, Canetti uses symbols and images to convey his messages in this surreal story.

  
Peter Klein owns a large collection of books and they are his pride and joy.  He values learning and reading immensely and tries to pass on his knowledge to others when he can, as the first pages show.  During the course of the book he his forced out of his own home by his wife and has to live for himself outside his comfortable world of books.  He meets a chess playing hunchback dwarf who guides him and helps him plot out his revenge though even he is a dubious character.  Apparently this dwarf is a chess champion but he won’t ever let anyone play a game with him, leaving us to wonder is he as good as he says he is or is he only good because he says he is?

  
It’s a very timely novel that explores a situation where books are under threat from barbarism, where those who care for it not a jot and those who dedicate their time to study infiltrate the library are cast out to the streets.  In our time of library and university cutting a whole new swathe of people should be reading this book. 

  
There are faults with Klein as he is far too specialised to really cope with the outside world and has no street smarts whatsoever and it is only because he finds someone who can help him.  In the later part Klein’s brother, a psychiatrist comes to his aid and dangerously delves into his brother’s mind.  This book is a tragedy of modern intellectuals and gives fear and terror to the book loving people of his Germany, but it equally relates to our times of fanatics and book burning ideologues, both religious and secular.

  
It can be at times a dense book, often packed with ideas and complexities and yet it still has, in its style, simplicity akin to fable and it is, in a lot of ways, a fable.  Peter Klein is a knight errant, a cuckolded character that you might find in Chaucer, on a quest to re-gain his property.  You are with Peter and are one his side but even this does not make him immune to our wondering what exactly is he good for?

  
The ending is fantastical and is elevated to such heights and leaves a lasting impression.  Auto-Da-Fe has been a book that I have been found wanting to draw and paint pictures based on it as it provides many instances that could be captured by the visual medium.  I would love to direct an animated film adaptation of this book and I can see it clearly in my mind.   

This is one of my favourite books, possibly my favourite 500 pages one at least, and I urge you, who may be interested, to read this book and feast on the delights and disgusts that it offers.

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

Margret Atwood- Prediction

 Just to clarify I don’t know a lot about Margaret Atwood but I have heard one or two things about her and let me present to you what I think of her as a candidate for the Nobel Prize.

  She deals in big ideas.  This is a major plus when considering a reasonable candidate.  Her most famous novel is ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’, which I believe is about a dystopian society and is up there with other similar fiction.  I’ve never read any of her novels but it seems to me that she writes big full blooded Literary novels dealing with complicated characters and fascinating ideas.  Her recent apocalyptic novels, ‘Oryx and Crake’ and ‘The Year of the Flood’ seem to have her at an imaginative high and she does seem boundless, exhilarated by the rush of words and the structure of narrative, which is highly commendable personality traits for a writer of Nobel Prize caliber.  Remember it’s not always about having one excellent book.  A candidate will need to have a few excellent books for the committee to be able to choose from.

  Being prolific is also a plus in this game as it gives the committee a good idea at how consistent she is in her writing and also follow her development as an artist.  She’s written fiction: ‘Surfacing’, ‘Lady Oracle’, ‘Cat’s Eye’, short fiction: ‘Dancing Girls’, ‘Bluebeard’s Egg’, ‘Good Bones’, Poetry: ‘The Circle Game’, ‘The Animals in That Country’, ‘Power Politics’ and non-fiction: ‘Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature’ ‘Days of Rebels’ and ‘Second Words’.  Her output is vast and there seems to be very little that she will not touch.  Another great personality trait for a writer: fearlessness. 

  That she is a woman is an important feature for books such as ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’ but it is not necessarily to her advantage, in fact it is difficult to discern if gender has a role with the Nobel Prize.  It probably does but I think it is more about how you use your gender or how you transcend it.  Women such as Herta Müller and Toni Morrison have won it so it is not impossible for her to win it.  In fact her chances appear, on paper, to be pretty good. 

  She seems to have a great range in her work and includes almost everything in it and saying everything that could be said.  Not only does she cover wide ground but she also produces big books that surely contain some gargantuan epics.  I can imagine her books to be whirlwind adventures with very thoughtful descriptions and scathing critique on society.  This gives a better chance at getting the Nobel Prize as candidates often have many interests and are not so narrow minded when writing over the course of most of their life.  No doubt she has enough raw material to work from and her inspiration seems to be never ending much to the jealousy of other writers and so if she carries on like this, (and with the hope that she will be with us for a while yet) I would think it very likely for her to win the Prize in the next few years.

  If she does win it it would make her the first Canadian to ever have the Nobel Prize, which would be a scoop.

Does Marget Atwood deserve the Nobel Prize?  Let me know in the comments.

Next week I look at Paul Auster.

The Interrogation by J.M.G. Le Clézio

 

His debut book written when he was twenty-three.  Now he says the book is almost a joke.  A surprising claim since the book takes itself very seriously, particularly with the intense final part of the interrogation of the title.  The interrogation is between amnesiac Adam Pollo & doctor Julienne R. in a hospital room.  Simplified the interrogation between the two characters goes along with “why are you mad?” “why are you mad?” “I’m not mad” “Neither am I, and let me explain why…” and explain he does.  Pollo’s arguments are is like trying to catch air; you can try to understand but it each point will disapper in your hands.  It’s so complicated that it must be simple.  Maybe it is a joke on those who take their literature seriously, i.e: the French. 

  Each chapter is numbered by letters in the order of the alphabet.  A, B, C etc…the book begins with a quote from Robin Cruesoe and a note from the author.

  I enjoyed the acute descriptions, even if it did border on the maniac, as if it was the descriptions, not the story, that was really important.  Certainly a young man’s book, intellectual boy trying to survive memory, isolation and intelligence, getting himself arrested so he can argue with those of institutional health profession with maddenly complex theories; but what else are young men supposed to write?

  It has an interest in anthropology and tribal behaviour. Clézio spent some time in the jungle later on in his life.  This, in part, shows how the individual produces culture from the raw material that surrounds him and how modern insanity/ sanity is a consequential reaction to the universe. 

  It’s a short book but it does not feel minimalist like some previous French Nobel Prize Winners, such as Albert Camus, but actually quite expansive with an expensive use of language.  It is rich in theory and for those who wish for their books to be top heavy then Clézio is the perfect author.  Others may find that they will get too bogged down in a plot that is going no-where.

   This pleasure from isolation and the feeling of being lost like a child I have felt at the end of term in university.  Lots of students went away back to their homes but I stayed and wandered the campus completely alone.  It was clear and cold like frost on a statue and I was almost delirious with pretending to be a dog or a ghostly angle.  Typical french philosophical novella but it seems to go beyond philosophy, as the description goes beyond description, and is determined to penetrate consciousness.  Arrogant it may seem but it also seems that to reach that secret place Clézio has to be arrogant in order to go beyond it.  Or the novel could be a set up and it’s interpretation the punchline.  It’s an admirable experiment and for the young man it showed he had a hell of a lot to give and was probably expected to be great.  It makes me want to read more of him to see what else he has described and experimented with. 

Nobel Prize Winner 2013 Possibilities

-->A hundred days there is until this year’s candidate for the Nobel Prize will be announced and so now seems like a good time to begin my predictions for it.  Over the next few weeks I will be going through a list of possible candidates and examining their worth and likelihood of winning.  I am interested in the idea of being able to ‘figure out’ the Nobel Prize as in working out how to win it and the possibility of guessing who will get it.  Let’s see how this will pan out. 

  I’ve put together a list of ten possible candidates and will be posting about them in the upcoming weeks running up to the annoucment in October. 

In alphabetical order:

Margaret Atwood

Paul Auster

Howard Barker

Jaques Derrida

Umberto Eco

Michael Frayn

Kazuo Ishiguo

Gabriel Josopovici

Milan Kundrea

Alberto Manguel

These predictions will not just be about this year but will hopefully be an ongoing ever changing list until I get it right, well we’ll see how likely that will be, won’t we?

Why Murakmi Won't Win the Nobel Prize

  -->

Of course I may be wrong, he might, it’s just that I think it would be highly unlikely.  Japan seemed to be desperate for another Nobel Prize Winner.  There last one was Kenzaburo Oe in 1994, high time for another, they seem to think.  And who is their best writer at the moment?  It seems to be Huraki Murakami.  The Japanese press really wanted Murakami to take the Swedish prize and to some he appeared to be a reasonable choice.  There is no doubt of his popularity and I try hard to think of another contempory Japanese writer still alive.  His books can be charaterised as post-modern, engaged with modern feelings and ideas.  They fizzle and dazzle and sparkle in public acceptance.  They appeal to what is mysterious, confusing, dream-like.  His books dance.  Yet Mo Yan, a Chinese writer, won last year’s prize.  Murakami is indeed a very good writer, but not, I think, a Nobel Prize candidate.  Why?  Well let us explore this issue of what makes a writer likely to win the Nobel Prize.

  First we need to understand exactly what the Nobel Prize is awarded for.  In Alfred Nobel’s will the prize is to be given to ‘the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction’ in the given year.  The prize can be awarded to any nationality but the candidate has to be alive.  Now acknowledging the most outstanding work is not the difficult bit as great literature will make itself known with volume.  The tricky part is the ‘ideal direction’ as it is at best a subjective value and at worst a vague guess.  Whose ‘ideal direction’?  What’s the goal?  Which ideal? 

  The will has been interpreted in many ways and I imagine that it is the job of the committee to argue for a particular interpretation that favours a particular writer.  How I would like to be a fly on the wall for those meetings.  This means that writers as varied as Samuel Beckett and Herman Hesse can be eligible for the award.  The award is supposed to go for the most deserving candidate not the most popular and so despite Murakami’s immense popularity he will not win it by that alone.

  So this leaves us with his books:  ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicals’, ‘Kafka On the Beach’, ‘The Wild Sheep Chase’ and most recently ‘IQ84’.  Having only have read one of them, it was the Bird Chronicals, but knowing a bit about his style and themes I will give you my opinion of Murakami as a Nobel Prize candidate. 

  First I will say that he should be read, his books are fantastic, and fantastical, journeys into everyday life where the strange and the ordinary mix and mingle.  Secondarily the main restriction from him winner the Nobel Prize is mainly what I find to be a superfical populism that pervades his work.  This is not to say that he is a superfical writer as he is able to produce the odd profound moment.  What I mean is that his style of writing is very current, very much in vogue with our times.  This is one reason for his popularity.  He is a writer that speaks to our interconnected, globalised world.  He is deep within the zeitgeist and this is the problem.

  I would imagine that one reason why the Nobel Prize Committee will not award him with the prize as he may not have lasting appeal.  Sure he’s popular now but will he still be read in ten, hell even five, years time?  They aren’t certain enough yet.  It’s important to point out that there are many Winners who are no longer read, such as Kawabata or Anatole France, so just because he’s not being read in the future will not necessarily prevent them from giving out the prize.

  Another thing is that he has not produced the most outstanding work in the field of literature at the moment.  I can think of others more deserving, and I will be giving these potentials an airing in their own posts in the future, and others who work at a higher plane than Murakami.  There may seem to be a lot going on in his books but what is there underneath the dancing?  Compare to a book like ‘Soul Mountain’ by Gao Xingjian who looks at a divided indvidual searching for meaning in his life in the countryside while trying to decide whether he should live in or outside a community, to the rest of humankind.  Yes, Murakami deals with the meaning of life but only in a very adolescent way, extenstialism as a lifestyle not a sentence as it is in ‘The Outsider’ by Albert Camus.  Even comparing him with fellow Japanese writer Oe a book like ‘Somersault’ does all Murkami can do and much more, seriously more people should be reading Oe he’s brilliant.

  Am I saying that Murakami will never win it?  Like I said at the beginning, I don’t know.  If he writes more books, which by the look of it he is bound to do, then it is certainly fesiable that he could win it, depending on who else he is contending with at the time, but I would not bet on it.  Is he a good writer?  Definitely, and a lot of fun, which sometimes the Nobel Prize literature can be barren of (we need more Dario Fo’s) so by all means read and enjoy.  But on who I would bet on?  That needs it’s own post, which I will do soon in the future. 

If you have an opinion, and it's a good chance that you do, comment below on whether you think Haruki Murakami could, or should, win the Nobel Prize. 

The Homecoming by Harold Pinter

 

Families can be difficult beasts.  You got to live with them and you can’t choose who they are.  Strangely families no longer dominate stories in the way they once did and in some ways we are poorer for it as they can offer writers rich material to work from.  In Harold Pinter’s ‘The Homecoming’ becoming a successful son does not automatically mean occupying a position of power within your own family.

  Teddy, an academic living in America, has come back home to London with his wife to visit his family but some unpleasant intentions for her are revealed and Teddy is powerless to intervene.  Sexual tension permeates throughout this play as Teddy’s siblings are clearly sizing her up right from the very beginning and though outwardly his brother, Lenny, is very warm and loving underlining his actions is a desire for his wife, Ruth.  As much with Pinter the key theme is power play between individuals and treating people as property. 

  It is cold and though raising some emotion is, in itself, not very emotional, it is in some ways calculated and undoubtedly very precise in its use of language.  Indeed it’s precision is such that it cuts to the bone and chills to the core and this is one of the reasons why Pinter is considered to be one of the great playwrights in the last few decades.  His command of words is absolute and uses them to an exceedingly great effect.

  One feels sorry for poor old Teddy, a doctor of philosopher but unable to gain any real respect from his family and unable to protect his wife from their advances.  There’s nothing graphic in this play as most of the menace comes from what is being hinted at, from what is being suggested.  The comedy is present too.  Take this example of it:

‘Lenny:  …what do you teach?

Teddy: Philosophy.

Lenny:  Well, I want to ask you something.  Do you detect a certain logical incoherence in the central affirmations of Christian theism?

Teddy:  That question doesn’t fall within my province.’

Like ‘The Birthday Party’, and maybe all of his work, the comedy only increases the tension not relaxes it, as it should. 

  The world in a Pinter play is like our world only it is skewed and strange to the point of absurdity.  Something like a blend of Ionesco and ‘Eastenders’.  It’s still recognizable and the relationships, and the tensions writhing within them, are relatable yet it is almost as if they live in an alternative reality, something more akin to sci-fi than to kitchen skin.  This is what makes plays like ‘The Homecoming’ interesting because it takes something known, parent-child relations, and turns it into something unexpected, something weird and horribly funny that perhaps only the reaction of silence is the most appropriate response.

  It is in the family that a perfect hostage situation can appear, appealing to emotional blackmail better than any jobbing terrorist might, as it poses the question:  where do you turn when your family are turning against you?  No clear answer is made only audible questions after questions and then silence.

  Pinter is famous for his pauses, the Pinter pause as it came to be known because he used it so frequently in his work, and like his words uses it to extraordinary effect.  However the pauses aren’t really supposed to be pauses as Pinter in an interview once said that the stage direction beat was a more accurate word for what he wanted but silence reigns gloriously for dramatic effect.

The Notebook by Jose Saramago

  

What do you do when you have won the Nobel Prize for Literature and your books are read and celebrated all over the globe at the beginning of the new millennium?  Why, keep a blog of course!  And this is exactly what Jose Saramago in his book ‘The Notebook’ does.  It’s a relatively new medium and as a blogger myself I find it useful for convey information and ideas to an audience with virtually no cost but there are problems for the ordinary person turned blog writer:  they may not write anything of either interest or use.  Enter Saramago who as an experienced writer raises the level of blogging from doggerel to Literature, sometimes with a capital L.  He is a wonderful example to us all who wish to write for the Internet.  Of course he does not need a blog but he does this after being asked by one of his friends to keep one and it helps that he has plenty to say and never seems to run out of things to say.

  What Saramago has to say is usually about politics, including recent events such as the 2008 financial crash, the rise Barak Obarma and other things.  In this regard he is not ambivalent, he is of the communist ilk and his opinions are regularly come from the Left side of the political spectrum.  Literary tributes are also the order of the day as he respects those who have passed away and those who have achieved awards.  And occasionally he plugs a new book but he is very tactful about this.

  The posts, or, if you are old fashioned, entries, are short and do not go into much depth.  While this would be a weakness in other columns here it works to be fed bite-sized chunks of comment as he usually returns to his subject later on.  Reading Saramago is much like reading a secular book of devotions from a literary saint giving food for thought more or less everyday and though in long sessions he may become tiresome with his, in the end, predictable view on politicians he is delightful if taken in small portions. 

  Interestingly he does have some more descriptive pieces that might be a work-in-progress or simply an exercise in writing.  I found that these were a good antidote to the relentlessly political speculations that are good if you have an appetite for politics but not so much if you want to know how a writer of his stature goes about the business of writing.  For as much as he talks about that subject he may very well know as much as us, which is both a comfort and a question.

  It gives hope to the blog-turned-book that they do not all have to be about the minutiae of everyday life nor all out rants against the world.  They can be about the cultivation of the intellect and the compassion for culture.  But what Saramago displays best in this book is his imagination, which he carries in spades, and this is probably what has made him one of the best writers, not only in his own country, but in the whole world.  Now that he has passed it will be sad not to have more books like Seeing, Blindness and The Double but he has left us with an impressive legacy for us to explore at our pleasure, and, occasionally, our edification.