Post-Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 Thoughts

Hello Gentle Reader,  

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2026 was awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson with the citation:  

“for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”  

The run up to 1:00pm (CEST) sits in muted anticipation. Virtually, the video captures the polite mumming of the assembled crowd, while running a few interesting facts about the Nobel Prize in Literature: number of times it was awarded and to how many laureates; the handful of times the award has been shared; in addition to the oldest Nobel Laureate being awarded at 87. There’s the little white picket carrel placed in front of the two legendary gilded doors. In the right corner of this sanctioned space, a pedestal cocktail table draped in a black tablecloth. Apparently, the announcement will be conducted once again in this fragmented and fastidious fashion. As it has been since 2019, when Olga Tokarczuk was announced as the Nobel Laureate in Literature for 2018 and Peter Handke the Nobel Laureate in Literature for 2019. Any hope that with a new Permanent Secretary this itineration will change are dismissed as hopeful at best. Then unseen, a bell chimes, now then, it’s a matter of time.  

For the past 7 years and 8 laureates, Mats Malm has been the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. Coming out of the scandal, Mats Malm’s secretaryship was one which favoured administrative reserve and brisque delivery. This often leads to heavy criticism to Malm’s tenure as Permanent Secretary as noted for being stoic and wooden in its officiation. Were previous Permanent Secretaries: Horace Engdahl, Peter Englud and Sara Danius, each brought their own sense of style to the role, be it a literary statesmanship reticence, bustling dynamism, or poised grace. Mats Malm’s formalistic endorsement came across as more suitable for presenting updates at a board meeting, rather than presiding over the announcement of a literary award.  

Though, after a rip-roaring bruhaha of a scandal that caused an existential crisis for the Swedish Academy, forcing the Nobel to unceremoniously be postponed; members resign in protest; the academy's bylaws and statutes to be reviewed and updated to allow formal resignation and removal (as elections were lifelong commitments or sentences); then the election of new members and restructuring; it is not difficult to see the Nobel Foundation demanding to see some change in conduct and protocol after a yearlong suspension, whereby the Swedish Academy was expected to get its house in order and do a bit of soul searching. Carrying on as if nothing happened would be a flagrant display of arrogance. And so, the announcement format changed. The public relations functions of the Nobel Prize in Literature announcement, is no longer the sole charge of the Permanent Secretary. During the past 7 years, Mats Malm punctually stepped through the doors, announced the laureate followed by their citation, then passed on a more detailed overview of the years laureate to be read out by the Chair of the Nobel Committee, which can be found verbatim on the Nobel Prize website for the laureate under the tab titled “Biobibliography.”

Curiosity provoked, a survey of the laureates from 1990 to 1997, revealed there was no specific biobibliography tab in their laureate pages. Biographical notes and their bibliography were delineated from one another. Whereas the press release section of their pages, provided what would later operate as the biobibliography section. From 1998 – 2003, a biobibliography section was added to the laureate’s pages, though they were succinct in composition, with the press release section retaining its function as being the comprehensive overview of the laureate’s introduction to the world and the Swedish Academy’s rationale for their decision. From 2004 until 2019, the biobibliography section replaced the press release as the Swedish Academy’s initial overview of the Nobel Laureate; relegating the press release function to encompassing merely the announcement, laureates name and their citation. Regardless of what area housed this introductory cursory information, authorship remained anonymous or was attributed to either: The Swedish Academy or Swedish Academy, Permanent Secretary. Starting in 2020, the biobibliography section of the laureate has authorship attributed to Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee.  

As Permanent Secretary, Mats Malm took a fair bit of flak for his stilted and uneasy demeanour with announcing the Nobel Laureate and their citation to the world; but good God, Anders Olsson has as about as much charisma as unbuttered toast. To be fair, however, coming out of a scandal and on the heels of the secretaryship of Sara Danius – who was ungenerously forced out of the role – it was apparent whoever took on the position would face an uphill battle. This being said, I did not always appreciate or condone the laureates Sara Danius had the pleasure of announcing, but I could admire how she handled the affairs with a grace and diplomacy, charmingly answering questions and disarming or sidestepping questions of one exceptionally controversial laureate. Despite this, Mats Malm’s quietude quickly raised questions regarding suitability for the role, where a main function is public relations. While I maintain Olssons continued presence and now inked authorship of the laureates “biobibliography,” is nothing short of a residual power grab from the post-scandal years. Then again, the argument can be proposed that it was the Nobel Foundation who demanded a ‘shared structure,’ of the announcement format, in an attempt to ground the event in a more controlled ceremony, or at the very least have standardised talking points or script to offer to the press. Rather than have one individual announce and then do a short impromptu interview providing some insight into the laureate and their work. Here again, though, there are some out there who don’t mind the new announcement format, and while there is no accounting for taste, it is the litmus test of whether or not one has a soul, which sadly those poor individuals severely lack in addition to personality and character.

Regardless, this is all disappointing, as late last year Mats Malm announced his resignation from the role and the appointment of Ingrid Carlberg as his replacement. Not to be dismissive of Mats Malm or his meticulous approach to the role, but Ingrid Carlberg proved to be a breath of fresh, despite her role within the afternoon’s proceedings being limited in scope when compared to previous office holders. What can be ascertained from the brief appearance made is Ingrid Carlberg came across as warm and gregarious. It is not difficult to see Carlberg having hold and command of the room, not just because of the position but also on the faint inclination of how open and at ease she was with being the master of ceremonies. When it came to the announcement itself, Ingrid Carlberg’s annunciation was clear and strong, there was no mistaking who this year’s laureate was. The pity is, any perceived ability of Carlberg to hold and command the room dissipates when she steps aside for Olsson to rattle off his sermon. It would have been nice to have seen more of Ingrid Carlberg to gauge how she would conduct the announcement and handled the affair; but alas, this is not the format of the announcement now. Instead, it’s an inefficient breakdown of roles and responsibilities. Fragmentedly passed off from one to another, giving the entire announcement the feel of an annual shareholders meeting. Not what is expected of a literary award announcement, which on its own should be an occasion of excitement, rather than the etherized affair that it currently is. Then again though, there are those out there who don’t mind this new announcement format. May we take pity on their soulless characterless husks. Such sad lives they must lead.

With regards to this year’s laureate, it’s difficult to imagine a writer who writes quite in the same fashion or way as Anne Carson. While always categorised as a poet; early in Carson’s literary career, other poets viewed Carson’s work as anything but poetry. While prose writers equally viewed Carson’s work as a chimeric oddity, which did not quite fit within their wheel house either. As for Carson, she remained unperturbed and unconcerned with the pedantic concerns and questions regarding literary classification and categorisation, while continuing to breach the borders of what could be considered purely poetic or prose oriented, while flirting and taking inspiration from other artistic forms, be it dance or opera and visual arts. No where is this exemplified as clearly as in “Nox.” Of all of Carson’s books, “Nox,” goes the farthest in its physical display of pushing the book as a medium beyond the literary into a physical object of art with its accordion structure. Filled with collage material (old letters, family photos, sketches) pasted in it, accompanied by Anne Carson’s text. Then there is the poetry or text itself refusing to operate on one dimension. At first, it’s an elegy and epitaph for Carson’s estranged dead brother, which is then distilled and viewed through the classicist lens of translating Poem 101 by Catullus, which is another poem about grief and mourning a brother.

While “Nox,” may reside on the extreme end of what Anne Carson accomplishes in her interest of pushing against the boundaries of what is typically defined as literary in the conventional sense, it does provide uninitiated readers a purview or a forewarning what Carson does with the written word, as she continually tests the malleability of the literary form as a construct.

Readers and admires of Anne Carson are devoted to her because of her mercurial format and writings, which delight in the alchemical blending of scholarly inquiry as a classicist, to the foray into essay and literary criticism, dancing into translation then sidestepping into poetry and flirting with the literary fragment; all of which can take place by reimagining the classic myths into disorienting contemporary settings, or by engaging in a literary dance between classic text, translation, and the thoughts engaged from there, then juxtaposed with reference to contemporary settings or pop culture. This is why there is no writer who is as singular as Anne Carson in format and style, and for good reason. Any imitation would be poor and cheap, as Carson’s intertextuality succeeds because of its blended transition in addition to her academic authority.

Personally, I’ve always found Anne Carson a bit remote. Admirable, but remote. There is always a sphinx-like quality. An intellectually reserve where the author had no interest in communicating or elucidating further. In this regard, I could admire what Anne Carson did. The structures of her books have always been interesting and their back covers always provided a thoughtful and engaging description and proposition as to why read the book, but when ever one was cracked open and perused there was always an understanding that this is not the book for you. Again though, I can admire the singularity in which Anne Carson writes and the devotion of her readers is positively acolyte, but it was apparent early on that I was not the intended reader or admirer of her work. However, for the Nobel Prize in Literature to finally makes its way to Anne Carson, the sense is not necessarily surprising, but about time.

Before Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, my thoughts were at the time if any English language Canadian writer had any chance of receiving the prize it was Anne Carson, as both Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, may be viewed as too recognizable by the Swedish Academy and therefore be open to criticism of predictability. Then Alice Munro was announced as the Nobel Laureate in Literature, which I think did wonders in recognising Canadian Literature; but more importantly it elevated the short story from beyond the novels shadow, as being a literary form with as much complexity and artistry in composition. Regardless, with limited understanding of how the Swedish Academy decides to operate, I doubted the award would return to any Canadian writer (French or English) for decades after Munro’s win. As it is not unusual for the Swedish Academy to acknowledge and then appear to turn their attention elsewhere. For example, no Japanese language writer has received the award since 1994 when the late Ōe Kenzaburō received the award. These lengthy drought periods are equally seen with the Spanish language, Portuguese, Italian and Greek languages; not to mention many languages and literary cultures who have yet to been taken notice by the Swedish Academy and graced with the Nobel.

There again though, one could argue the Nobel Prize in Literature only just began to formulate itself as a global literary award, which was never stipulated within Alfred Nobel’s will. Further defense to the Swedish Academy and its Nobel Committee, the expectation for any award is that the members evaluate writers nominated based on the merits of their work, not on a rotational roulette where there is an unwritten expectation that a writer from a specific geographic location or language family receives the award, simply because its time or overdue. Furthermore, the Swedish Academy is bound by nominations, and it’s not difficult to theorise that the academy is inundated with nominations from academics, writers’ organisations, former laureates and their own nominations. The problem is how do you whittle that down to a reasonable and manageable shortlist with a back catalogue of writers you’d like to continue to watch? It’s an impossible task.

Anne Carson, however, is in many ways the ideal (or expected) Nobel Laureate in Literature; at least when viewed in the precedence set by other laureates, and attempting to ascertain some vague picture of what the Swedish Academy admires or is looking for. For one, Carson is a innovative writer whose intertextual experimentations continually broach beyond the delineation of prose and poetry, to even the acceptable definitions of what literature is within a purely contextual format. These innovations put her right alongside Svetlana Alexviech, Elfriede Jelinek (especially in her dramatic texts), Gao Xingjian’s dramatic work, blending classical Chinese theatre with modern western drama, and it maybe argued Elias Canetti, who is best described as a polyhistor, as Canetti never quite made a literary reputation based on his fictional text or poetry, but rather his case study on the social structure and power dynamics of crowds, aphoristic fragments and his memoirs.

The saddest part to witness regarding Anne Carson’s Nobel Prize was and is how little Canadians appeared to care as a whole. There are, no doubt many great readers and admirers of Carson’s work, but for the everyday Canadian reader or citizen, the award was looked on with polite disinterest. A few half-hearted ‘oh, that’s nice,’ before carrying on. The news in turn, treated it as a minor story (at least from what I saw). A few remarks were given, then it was on to the weather. Now, this is not to say that the news should have treated this as some magnanimous occasion, but one could always hope that there would be more to it then just some paltry remarks before moving on to other pressing headlines. Though, granted its understandable considering the existential questions facing Canada with a southern neighbour turning hostile and attempting to deploy economic pressure and force to coerce or limit the nations sovereignty; while internally, quisling premiers are doing their damndest to fracture and unravel the country with separatist’s antics, if only to save their own political career. Though the level attention paid to Anne Carson’s win (and even Alice Munro’s) reveals in itself, an unfortunate incuriosity Canadians have towards their own literature and their own culture. This level of dispassion would be alarming to other nations, but to Canada, this level of disinterest is shrugged off as just an intricate part of the Canadian experience and identity; some might even go so far as to call it a part of our heritage.   

With regards to Anne Carson’s reaction to the award, it’s difficult to place. There is a sense of bemusement from the author, with also an almost cat like imperceptibility to the news. Though a photo circulating on the internet did show a surprised Anne Carson on the phone. Though even in her interviews there was an opacity to Carson’s answers, some remained held back or hidden. Though perhaps the reason I never could quite get on with her as a reader is that I never started in the middle. Still, I can admire and appreciate what Anne Carson has done. It is difficult to imagine any writer who has been as cavalier as herself in disregarding the distinction between poetry, prose, literary criticism, translation, academic review, essay and fragment, let a lone a writer who continues to find ways to incorporating new modes of expression within the literary sphere (their successes may be debatable) but the plucky grit in which they are undertaken is a marvel. Though the image of an author just sitting and listening to the wind, is perhaps the most understated way they could answer to how they received the award. Yet it suits Carson perfectly. Though I still think Doris Lessing has any Nobel Laureate beat with regards to hearing the news of being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Though at 87 years old, your about done with all the hoopla people make of most things.

Many congratulations to Anne Carson. Now after all these years I wish to an extent that I did pursue reading “Autobiography of Red,” but was put off by the incomprehensibility of “Nox,” (not to mention at the time the price of it). And while I don’t think this years Nobel Prize in Literature is a complete surprise or shock, considering how over the years Anne Carson had been touted as potential candidate – though I dismissed the notion of return to Canada so soon as unlikely – I think this is a well deserved and interesting award. Anne Carson is by far the most singular writer I can think of, and I completely agree with Steve Sem-Sandberg when he said “nobody writes like her.” Which is to say: for good reason. This evening, I read the poem “V. Here Is My Propaganda One One One One Oneing On Your Forehead Like Droplets of Luminous Sin,” from the collection “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos,” I still can’t say I’m quite able to worm my way into Carson’s poetry, as I can say Wisława Szymborska’s or Tomas Tranströmer’s or Louise Glück’s, but I did smile at seeing Ōe Kenzaburō referenced in it.

The final point that is delightful to say, in addition to Krasznahorkai László from last years award and now Anne Carson, it may be considered that the Swedish Academy is no longer (thankfully) looking at writers who write in an austere, scalpel scrapped, clean, rendered down style. These two laureates in particular have a bit more depth and weight behind their work. Krasznahorkai’s magmatic text, and now Anne Carson’s singularity. While it can be argued that Jon Fosse and Han Kang moved the needle forward to begin with, and they very well may have had more meat on their bones then say the either Annie Ernaux or Louise Glück, neither of them would be described as maximalist in scope or vision. It is nice to see the Nobel Prize in Literature award greater variety in its literary subjects and styles. I think Anne Carson’s will go down as a decent choice within the retrospect of time, rather than a miss.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2026 has been awarded to the Canadian writer Anne Carson

“for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

Congratulations are in order for Anne Carson!

 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– LVI –

Everyone becomes an expert on life and how to live it, when of course it's not their own.

Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist

Hello Gentle Reader,

The Booker Prize Shortlist has been revealed, leaning heavily towards established authorial voices with a few up and comers in the fray to even it out. Without further delay here is this year’s shortlist:

            Marlon James – “The Disappearers,”
            Elizabeth Strout – “The Things We Never Say,”
            M. John Harrison – “The End of Everything,”
            Rebecca Perry – “May We Feed the King,”
            Luke Kennard – “Black Bag,”
            Douglas Stuart – “John of John,”

The shortlist is dominated by Marlon James, Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart. Both Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have both already won the award, and by all accounts relatively recently, 2015 for James and 2020 for Stuart. There was a relatively short double award period for Hilary Mantel as well (2009 and 2012), where previous double winners waited over a decade to win the prize a second time. This has always been a massive complaint leveraged against the Booker Prize, with its inability to look beyond itself at times. Re-awarding the usual candidates who have already won or been nominated prior. This year’s shortlist is a prime example of this insularity in judging; however, Marlon James's novel “The Disappearers,” has been described as yet another masterpiece. It would not be surprising to see James win this year’s award.

Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are the two outliers on this year’s award. Both of their novels are certainly an off-kilter injection of the world. Specifically in the case of Luke Kennard whose novel “Black Bag,” has all the satire and almost implausible premise of Ali Smith’s novel “There but for the,” which was critically omitted from the Booker Prize in 2011, and was considered a massive snub. “Black Bag,” equally delights in its psychological probing and satire of the modern world, and just how warped our definition of reality is becoming. Whereas Rebecca Perry’s novel “May We Feed the King,” has been praised as a strong debut. Recounting the parrel lives of one museum curator and one reluctant king, the novel has been described as a meditation on history and the nature of storytelling, in addition to our fantasies of the past in attempts to escape from our present.

To go without saying, M. John Harrision is this year’s dark horse with his unapologetic literary science fiction novel: “The End of Everything.”

Ultimately, Gentle Reader, Marlon James appears to be the strongest contender (based on critical consensus) for this year’s prize. Though, either Luke Kennard, Rebecca Perry or M. John Harrison may challenge this assumption, with their unique visions and purviews of society. It is, however, disappointing to see some writers cut. Specifically, Gwendoline Riley with her novel “The Palm House.” There’s something compelling about Riley’s stainless-steel musical prose. How on a prosody level its euphonious intricacies ring out crystalline clarity in its brevity; a complete contrast to Riley's contemporaries, who are the usual austere anemic grey minimalists. Nothing short of a lifeless brood. Whereas Riley’s work has the surgeon’s proclivity and pathologist eye for examining the existential and urban dissatisfaction of individuals cast a drift in an increasingly alienated, damaged and fragmented reality, which reveals a loss of innocence and a growing sense of disillusionment; all delivered in Riley's signature deadpan manner; the other hallmark of Riley's dry ice wit is her gallows humour. Certainly, an underrated writer.

Congratulations to the shortlisted writers. It’ll be interesting to see who wins this year’s prize.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Eighth Day

Hello Gentle Reader,  

As they say, every season has its personality. In the same fashion as every month has its character. Spring is coloured in verdant hues. Rejuvenated and flourishing in the renewal. Easter, however, views resurrection as a possibility only after sacrifice and repentance. Regardless, rejoice in the sense of reawakening. While summer operates as a dream. Brilliant, bright and burning. A season of perpetual youth. Love enriched by the sun; the doom concealed by the haze of heat. Days spent on holidays. Beach getaways. Afternoons in the park; be it picnics or passing time. Smoldering nights, carried through by bonfires, music and dancing. For those seeking depletion and darkness, look no further then January. A month already spent and exhausted. Everyone reduced to shades shuffling into the darkness that is the shadow and tunnel of the New Year. November is a month coloured in gunmetal grey. Cemetery light hanging overhead, with an air of remembrance awash over austere fields. August is the dreams end. A month of brilliant finality, having resigned itself to the fate of extinguishment, while still bursting with summertime celebrations. When it comes to September, the argument maybe, that the year really begins then. The expectations are already understood. Leaves stiffen up, drained of summers folly. Then the adoption of the regalia of departure. As the days reduce, the light distances itself. The trees dress for the ball in their gold, yellow, orange and red. Morning dew replaced with diamond frost. What follows suit is the fall. The freefall leaving. The forest begins to close up shop. Squirrels race to stock up. Their hovels now hoarding for the future. Birds have already flown the coop. Empty nests left behind. What a fair weather of a friend they are. Still as the geese honk in their ‘V’ flock formations, as the day races for the horizon (and its only 7:30pm), you still watch them go, knowing summer has come to an end. A sentimental soul would mourn the end. Thankfully you’ve been spared such a disposition.

September does bring with it clarity and sobriety. This is the month of the Harvest Moon. And what a moon. A reassuring presence hanging over head. A lantern, whose glow baptises the night in a yellow to clearing milk white light of steady calm. Out in the country, there are desperate and later farmers still at work in their fields. Reaping away as they do, before the first snowfall. Now days, they are less reliant on the generosity of moonlight. Having been emancipated from the whims of the celestial calendar and cycle. Their machines illuminate with glaring panache. The countryside, fields and farm are now floodlit with the spotlights of these agricultural machines cutting and swathing through them. For the uninitiated, such an irradiated showcase might bring to mind a man hunt or a search and rescue mission. In the way the lights scan and pierce through the night, piercing and ripping away all its concealing cover. The nights have never been brighter. Then there is the familiar march. The back-to-school trudge. The children pack along down the street, shuffling in the weak and dim morning light. No matter one’s age, they inevitably remember being school age and dreading the return. Placed back in routine; back on schedule. The conversations about timetables, course listings and classes. Then there is the dreary walk home. Spent and exhausted from the day’s curriculum being lectured over. Older generations though insisted. Education equals opportunity. You have no idea. Despite this, in the country, before today’s automation, students whose families worked the land, hanged back to help with the harvest. Their truancy marked as absent by the teachers with brisk, tsk tsk tsks.

Since reading “A Little Party Dress,” I’ve considered myself a delighted admirer of the late French writer Christian Bobin, whose lyrical and meditative essays are a breath of fresh air. They are compositions which reflectively review the bewildering reality that surround and abound. Though, these days, people are less aware or inclined to observe the world around them. Bobin once rallied and raged against the television as the source and wellspring of evil, in the collection, “I Never Dared Hope for You.” Bobin accused that box sitting in the corner of living rooms of dispatching the horrors, carnage, chaos and tragedy from around the world into the living rooms of its viewers, as some form of cheap entertainment. Not that scripted dramas have hauled themselves up to a standard of impeachable moral probity either. In a race to being transgressive they find new ways to push the envelope of decency through their simulated acts of violence and torture. The more explicit the better. While an audiences delight with a perverse depravity. Even sex (once taboo on its own, reduced to insinuation) has been stripped of its sensuality, replaced by graphic brutality, assault and rape. Then there is reality television. This on its own has found new ways to unleash and capitalise on the carnal instincts of people. Revealing not the decadence of the soul, but its squalor. Phones have now all but replaced the television. The ‘evil,’ Christian Bobin lamented about, had spawned wings. At least with the television, there was at least the reprieve, the sigh of relief, with the knowledge it remained incarcerated in the house. Relegated to the corner of the living room. Mobile phones though, with their lamprey hold, have sucked the attention away and down. True the world spins; perhaps ever closer to calamity and crisis, and yet people appear pacified by their phones. Rather in a fashion similar to gamblers in the casino. Locked into slot machines. The lights. The anticipation. The prospect. Out in the distance bells chime and lights flash. Winner, winner. Now that could be you. Spin away. It’s a rather common sight today. To observe people strolling about looking down. Commuting on public transit and looking down. Waiting for the bus or their ride share and looking down. Queuing in lines and looking down. The worst is in the restaurants. Groups or couples sitting together and lost in the insularity of their screens. The death of the art of conversation was never silence; it was the rapid riptide of distraction. There has been no replacement of correction though. Rather, the sustained exasperation of alienation.

“The Eighth Day,” does not quite follow in the same context as “A Little Party Dress,” and “I Never Dared Hope for You,” which were two complete collections on their own. Slim volumes, but what they lacked in size, they more then compensated with artistry and depth. Both “A Little Party Dress,” and “I Never Dared Hope for You,” show Christian Bobin at the top of his game. Both collections were summarised as “lyrical essays,” whereby the author delighted in showcasing his alchemical approach to prose, by having no allegiance to any set school or parameter. Instead fusing memory, reflection, essay, fragment, vignette and meditation into these original compositions of lumine thought. “The Eighth Day,” in turn operates more as an anthology of Bobin’s work, assembling eleven different compositions from across Bobin's bibliography by translator Pauline Matarasso. Additionally, Matarasso introduced each piece with her own analysis and thoughts on the work. Furthermore, Matarasso took great pains in this anthology to depict and categorise Christian Bobin as a poet. While it was certainly meant as a great compliment, it would be a great dissatisfaction and deterrent to many readers to read or understand Bobin within the rigorous and formalistically fastidious school of poetry. Poetry as a term unto itself, will inevitably cause many to either turn their nose up at it or find themselves experiencing sudden onset nausea. Poetry has inevitably been darkened by academia and school in general, in how its taught. To quote a friend of mine: ‘poetry is as heartwarming as cold medicine or cod liver oil. It’s something you need to hold your nose to get through. It carries all the connotations of being good for you. It lacks any sense of enjoyment. Its entirely prescriptive, with no redeeming qualities.’ I do not share this perspective; I do understand and empathise with it. For readers of “The Eighth Day,” I recommend they bypass Matarasso’s introductions and analysis to the text, and come to their own conclusions with the texts on hand. Despite this, Christian Bobin still shines through. As ever, Bobin reveals himself as contemplative in approach; exquisite in prose style and delivery; while being meticulous in capturing and chronicling his descriptions of the world around him and the interior resonance within.

“On the day of her mother’s funeral, C. got stung by a bee. The courtyard of the family house was full of people. I saw the child, in the infinity of her four years, between the shock of the pain and the welling up of tears, scan the crowd urgently for her own sure source of comfort, and then cut short the search, having learnt at a stroke the meaning of absence and death. This scene which only lasted a few seconds, was the most poignant I have seen. There comes a moment for all of us when a knowledge past consoling enters our souls, and renders it. It is in this light of that moment, whether it has decidedly come to us or not, that we should speak to one another, love one another and if possible, laugh together.”

As with any anthology, “The Eighth Day,” rather bumped along. The essays never did quite jive well with each other. Rather it’s a smattering of offerings, akin to a box of chocolates at Christmas. Different offerings and testers. A unified or complete collection, would instead move through with a sense of clear transparent uniformity, rather like a window pane or glass. Frequently, with this collection, Christian Bobin’s authorial voice appeared ever present, as if the author were a vessel in which his recollections and thoughts were being released from, but acknowledgement needed to be made or due, with a double down on aphorisms or almost diary like entries. For example the above quoted passage, at his best, Bobin would let the scene rest concluding with “[ . . . ] was the most poignant I have seen,” rather then veer off into a sermon. Bobin’s strength has always been his motivation to write to get outside of himself. The assembled pieces, did not always deliver on that front. However, one particular one did: “Queen, King, Jack.” Matarasso described it as Christian Bobin writing himself his own fairy tale (it was at this point I disregarded her introductions moving forward). The piece, however, shows Bobin at his best, complete his propensity for lyricism, capturing texture, colour, and plays of light remarkably well. Other pieces were devastating in their own revelations and meditations, specifically Bobin’s fathers’ erasure into Alzheimer’s. A nice collection to read for completist measures in English (currently); but certainly not a recommended entry point. 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– LV –

I’d rather talk my ass off endlessly and nonsensically and be accused of fake snobbery then be a cunt of no consequence.

Nádas Péter Dies Aged 83

Hello Gentle Reader,

The term Proustian is at times, bandied about careless regarding, cheapening the term into some literary cliché. Quite like Marcel Proust, many writers have engaged with the individual’s relationship and experience of memory, albeit in very different ways. Patrick Modiano rejected Proust’s gilded perspective of memory and all of its sensuality. The cascading chorus of stimuli welling up from the back of the mind, infusing one with the bittersweet taste of temporal displacement and the ethereal tug and twinge of time lost. Instead Modiano viewed memory as a dishevelled archive. Unorganized and incomplete. Any to all information is fragmentary and questionable. Memory was the bits of flotsam left behind in the ocean of oblivion. The driftwood desperate characters cling to, holding on to themselves and seeking understand their identity and their own history. In the case of Annie Ernaux, memory is a recorded fact. Observed states, experiences, thoughts and emotions, captured in a staccato language flensing away the voluptuousness volume of Proust’s exceptionally pregnant sentences. Ernaux eschews all ornamentation and decoration for staccato directness. Nádas Péter, however, now there was a writer who didn’t rival Marcel Proust, but was perhaps able to match the classic French modernist in style and preoccupation of memory, human relationships and the individual’s relationship to history; specifically, the abject indifference history pays to the individual, caught up in its currents and riptides, whereby they are left to drown and be dejected. Rather like Proust, Nádas employed long labyrinthine sentences which snaked and swirled across the pages and through chapters, crossing and crisscrossing; circling their points with a vulture’s leisure. In literary world which has since turned towards the values of simplicity through subtraction to obtain universality and approachability; Nádas Péter was unapologetically maximalist in his rumination prose, which embraced an almost photorealistic attention to detail, capturing the sensory reality of consciousness and there rippling sensations in the physical realm of the body. Nádas, however, maintained a unflinching and honest obsession in detailing the corruption, trauma and unescapable horrors which made up the mid-century Eastern European history. Countries devasted by war; scared and ravaged by the receding wave of fascism and Nazism; then the slow oxidising corrosion of the Soviet communist regime, wearing everything down with its relentless ugliness, its monolithic brutalism. Nádas Péter, a trained photojournalist, never looked away from these horrors, but instead remained firm in documenting and depicting it with unflinching realism. Nádas was born into a world on fire: specifically, the year 1942, in Budapest during the siege of the city during the Second World War. Tragedy quickly followed, his mother died of cancer while Nádas was a teenager. Three years after his mother’s death Nádas father would commit suicide, leaving the orphaned writer to be raised by an aunt. What followed are the mere scant details of biography, first the foray of photography then the turn to journalism, before embracing his life as a writer, one who heavily criticised the communist regime. “A Book of Memories,” “Parrell Stories,” and “Shimmering Memories Vol I & Vol II,” remain Nádas Péter most recongisable texts. Though “Parrell Stories,” gets special mention for the uncompromising size and volume of text, in a style that the writer himself described as ‘chaos’; while Susan Sontag championed and praised “A Book of Memories.” All of Nádas work remains a testament to literary complexity, not as an idea, but as the necessary means in which to capture the incomprehensible reality of consciousness, memory and living. As a writer, and one of global critical renowned, Nádas Péter was often tipped as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, having been recongised as a giant of Hungarian literature for years now, along with his counterpart and last years laureate Krasznahorkai László.

 

Rest in Peace Nádas Péter, there will never be a writer quite like you in such singular fashion.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Causalities of Compromise

Hello Gentle Reader,

In the last post discussing this year’s Booker Prize longlist, there was a short mention of the Booker Prize in 1984, when Anita Brookner proved to be the upstart of the year, and was forever condescended afterwards. J.G. Ballard, famously imperious about the award before, became inconsolable in his disgruntlement, going so far as to snarl at the pre-eminent art historian and academic turned novelist: “You stole my Booker Prize.” At the time, though, Ballard was the bookies favourite with his classic autobiographical novel “Empire of the Sun.” A shoo-in, for sure. No contest. If not Ballard, then it was to the then young Julian Barnes with his classic novel “Flaubert’s Parrot.” Instead, the judges chaired by the historian and academic Richard Cobb; who in turn was famous for his independent mind and thought, in addition to mischievous streak; decided to award the relative newcomer Anita Brookner, with a novel that was quiet and introspective in scope and spirit. What should have been a roaring success, instead proved to be a ball and chain that would forever dog and haunt Anita Brookner through her remaining literary career. Critics (especially the young and arrogant ones) always referred to Brookner as ‘the mistress of doom’ or ‘Modest Anita,’ decrying her novels of continually circling with a vulture’s persistence over the same themes. Therefore, she was most certainly writing the same book. Yet another spinster. Yet another cardigan. Yet another hapless misadventure of a protagonist pining and yearning for the affections of an unavailable man. It was never a case of love lost, but rather, love never found. It became culturally acceptable to outrightly dismiss anything Brookner produced as just another exploration of spinsterhood. What these critics failed to see was Brookner as an accomplished eloquent and elegant surveyor of far more subtler and compelling themes, such as: displacement, loss of illusions, familiar obligations, growing old, and dare one say it, the sheer disorienting experience of being, in a world indifferent to your existence. If anything, Anita Brookner was as much a compelling examiner of the human condition as any of her contemporaries. The difference? She just happened to win a prize. The problem? The favourite to win the prize was already publicly agreed upon, anything else, just wouldn’t do. Furthermore, Brookner was no advocate or marketer for herself. Rather like her work, Brookner took a stoic approach to literary life and success, never allowing herself to be caught up in the entrapment of celebrity, let alone be coaxed into its embrace. As far as Brookner was concerned: the books spoke on their own, succeeded on their own, or failed on their own. For all of that, she would continually be crucified as ‘Poor,’ and ‘Modest,’ Anita, receiving condescending criticism; patronising pats on the head; cast down to the bottom shelf, to make room for those who were considered serious writers. Now, in September, the legendary biographer Hermoine Lee’s commissioned study and biography of Anita Brookner will be published. No doubt, Lee’s biography will renew interest into Brookner’s literary work. Though, one can’t help imagining the difficulty it was to compile some semblance of a biography of the writer who died peacefully ten years ago, with the satisfaction of having left no personal papers, records or evidence for any biographer to pick over, let alone attempt to ascertain the facts. The forthcoming biography though, may still perhaps provide some context and texture to Brookner’s life, which always remained guarded and compartmentalised, reducing the writer’s life to a mere sketch or stencil, rather then full-blown and bodied portrait.

Judging the Booker Prize is no cake walk either. Just ask Ronald Blythe or James Wood. When Blythe was apart of the judging committee for the 1980 Booker Prize, the decision was only reached a mere 30 minutes before the ceremony. Anthony Burgess, refused to attend the ceremony unless he was confirmed to be the winner beforehand. Blythe’s own allegiances and personal favourite was J.L. Carr’s novel “A Month in the Country,” but this novel of steel enforced quiet strength, would lose out to William Golding’s novel “Rites of Passage,” the first in what would become known as “To the Ends of the Earth,” trilogy. It is important to note, the shortlist for the 1980 Booker Prize was a strong one. No wonder the judges were forced to deliberate so late. In the case of James Wood, however, being apart of the judging committee in 1994, was enough to swear him off being a part of any literary prize jury going forward. Then there is the famous incident of Philip Larkin chairing the judges for the 1977 Booker Prize, who threatened defenestration if “Staying On,” by Paul Scott didn’t win the prize. Fortunately, for all windows in Larkin’s vicinity were spared, as “Staying On,” won the award. In more favoured terms, Larkin deserves thanks, for Barbara Pym being nominated and shortlisted in 1977 for “Quartet in Autumn.” Larkin’s advocacy and assessment that Barbara Pym was by far the most underappreciated and unevaluated writer at the time, saw a literary revival for Pym, who was dismissed as being out of fashion and too polite for the daring tastes of contemporary readers. The ones who considered themselves liberated and revolutionised against the stodgy attitudes of their parents and their prim domesticity.

These bouts of drama are merely part of the traditions of the Booker Prize. Over the decades there have been many lively exchanges of views, debates, insults and character assassinations shot across the bow. The last big upstart perhaps was in 2011, when the Booker Prize judges remained unapologetic in their push to prioritise and recongise novels of readability over complexity. This inevitably sparked fierce debate amongst literary critics, who sought to delineate works of literary merit for their ‘admirability,’ (relegating a complex novel to the status of fine piece of art: an object to showcase and off, but never crack open and read) to the notion of ‘readability,’ where the books could in essence be consumed and enjoyed by all readers, not just a selective few, which the judges argued was the point of the prize. In the end, the chair of the years Booker prize judges, Dame Stella Rimington, famously compared British literary critics and elites to the KGB in their campaign against that years Booker Prize and its judges. The award ultimately went to Julian Barnes and his novel “The Sense of an Ending,” which was designated the only true literary novel on the shortlist.

In many ways, it is Anita Brookner to blame for invigorating my slight renewed interest into the Booker Prize for the past couple of years. An interest further provoked by Ronald Blythe’s biography, where Ian Collins provided some details into Blythe’s experience as a judge of the prize, highlighting the authors personal favourite: “A Month in the Country,” by J.L. Carr which has now been added to my own list of future purchases and readings. Further review of the Booker prize over the years, reveals a curios list of novels and thematic preoccupations; elderly statesmen writers listed among young upstarts; stylistic achievements which are sadly missing from today’s awards, with a few exceptions such as, “The Long Take,” by Robin Robertson comes to mind. This retrospective review reignited curiosity and interest in many writers who were caressed by the Booker Prize’s Midas light, be it winner or listed contender, such as Penelope Lively with “Moon Tiger,” Anna Burns with “Milkman,” Jim Crace with “Harvest,” Penelope Fitzgerald with “Offshore,” Tan Twang Eng with “The Garden of Evening Mists,” Michael Frayn with “Spies,” Anita Desai with “Clear Light of Day,” Robertson Davis with “What’s Bred in the Bone,” and Tom McCarthy with “C.” This is only a smattering. A mere taste of the eclectic novels and writers who have found themselves in the prizes orbit. Though if I were to be asked which Booker winning author is at the point of being criminally neglected now, it would be Bernice Rubens, the only Welsh writer to have won the award with “The Elected Member,” in 1970, and who was again later shortlisted in 1978 for “A Five-Year Sentence,” another intriguing psychological novel, which I look forward to getting my hands on.

This year, I decided to write down a few titles in my journal that were considered in contention for the prize. The list was miscellaneous in scope, having been compiled and framed by personal taste, having only the descriptions and a few reviews to inform some impressionable early opinion. Others, however, were marked to be included because either the writer had previously won the award or was shortlisted, and it is almost guaranteed they are automatically nominated. Precedence is also telling in the case of the Booker Prize: once a writer wins once, it is expected that they win later down the line. Without further delay here is the list I ruminated on beforehand:

* Douglas Stuart – “John of John,”
            ** Elizabeth Strout – “The Things We Never Say,”
            Ben Lerner – “Transcription,”
            ** Deborah Levy – “My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein,”
            * Yann Martel – “Son of Nobody,”
            M.L. Stedman – “A Far-flung Life,”
            Makeena Goodman – “Helen of Nowhere,”
            Stephanie Sy-Quia – “A Private Man,”
            Neil Tully – “The Visit,”
            * Marlon James – “The Disappearers,”
            ** Ali Smith – “Glyph,”
            * Howard Jacobson – “Howl,”
            ** Sebastian Barry – “The Newer World,”
            Melissa Harrison – “The Given World,”
            ** Will Self – “The Quantity Theory of Morality,”
            Sarah Moss – “The Winter Guest,”
            Keith Ridgway – “Dooneen,”
            Anne Pratchett – “The Whistler,”
            *** Tom McCarhty – “The Rhyl Poster,”

Douglas Stuart, Yann Martel, Marlon James and Howard Jacobon all previously won the Booker Prize.

Eliabeth Strout, Deborah Levy, Ali Smith, Sebastian Barry, Will Self and Tom McCarthy all have previously been either nominated (longlisted) or shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tom McCarthy received one extra note, as I was not entirely sure his novel “The Rhyl Poster,” was published in the United Kingdom in time to be considered for the Booker Prize.

Of the listed titles, there were only a handful that truly interested me, chief among them was Melissa Harrison’s novel “The Given World,” which had all but surmised as the spiritual successor to Dylan Thomas’s “Under Milk Wood.” “The Given World,” is described as a pastoral polyphonic novel, exploring the notion of community beyond the definition of a shared place or commune, but how individual lives are woven within the landscape and history of place, creating existential and spiritual connections, in addition to a shared history, and an oncoming ecological crisis. Told between the two equinoxes of spring and autumn, Harrison has crafted a novel that has been praised for its evocative and attentive language detailing the rural landscape; while critics have singled out the narrative structure spread out amongst an ensemble of characters, creates an authentic and choir-like voice, harmonising as the natural world shifts and falters under human made change.  

Further disappointment came when both Deborah Levy and Ali Smith were denied a spot on the longlist. Deborah Levy and Ali Smith are by far some of the more innovative writers in contemporary English language literature. Initially their omission from the longlist, sparked a reaction and immediate accusations that this years Booker Prize judges have shown a complete disregard for innovative fiction. Though this accusation was quickly quelled by the induction of M. John Harrison and his novel “The End of Everything,” which pushes the genre exclusion accusation the Booker Prize is usually charged with. In the case of Ali Smith, “Glyph,” is a companion or sibling novel to the earlier published novel “Gliff,” from 2024. The first novel “Gliff,” was not part of the longlist then, it therefore seemed unlikely that its sibling novel would be longlisted two year later, unless it was to somehow to rectify an injustice by the older omission. While Deborah Levy’s novel “My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein,” showcases Levy’s delight in always breaking the rules and pushing the limits of fiction into the realm of essay and biography. Deborah Levy remains as delightfully subversive as ever, never confirming. In the case of Will Self and his novel “The Quantity Theory of Morality,” it may not be entirely surprising to see the writer not included on the longlist. Personally, I think Will Self is an acquired taste. Self’s showboating style reveals an impressive polysyllabic vocabulary and delight in word play, which are all homages to the modernist forefathers; but in Self’s hands, it becomes indulgent and inflated.

Perhaps it’s a testament to age, but one does gain a certain appreciation for chamber pieces over larger and longer epicist orchestral arrangements, where volume compensates and hides poor writing. Narratives that are distilled, contained, intimate, even claustrophobic, require a jeweller’s eye to detail and a tuners ear for tone. Despite what might be considered a limitation, diminutive narratives thrive in revealing a world of possibility and depth that are too easily dismissed as miniscule. These are the writers that understand the world is easily contained within a window, not just a globe. “Mrs. Dalloway,” for example takes place within the confines of a single ordinary day. The thought and errand of purchasing flowers becomes the catalyst, by which Woolf voyages into the consciousness, revealing all the impressionistic shimmering watercolours of memory and emotional experience. The temporal fluidity reminiscence possesses in its relation to time. Yet more importantly, it shows the possibility of a life measured within the singular drop of a day, not necessarily through a cartographic exploration of a life recounted in documented detail. Which is perhaps why I viewed Sarah Moss’s novel “The Winter Guest,” with some intrigue. The novel takes place in hotel on Ireland’s west coast on Christmas Eve during a blizzard, whereby two complete strangers are forced into each others company, and by the freedom anonymity of one another confess and reveal their stories. The novel has been described as sharp and playful character study, with a delectable dark twist. I do appreciate works that have a bit more urgency in format, but delight in curating a private atmosphere to both ensnare the characters and readers alike. Most importantly though, I appreciate a writer who values psychological acuity and engaging character studies.

The rest were all intriguing for their own reasons. The autobiographical inspired novel “A Private Man,” by Stephanie Sy-Quia, which reads as an impossible love affair, but becomes a conflux of theological service and passionate earthly desire.  Keith Ridgway’s novel “Dooneen,” appears to be a Dublin homecoming novel, compete with labyrinthine structure and linguistic zeal, as any good Dublin novel would have. Its also a digressive novel delighting in the sleight of hand in its disorientation, embracing the uncanny, the absurd and one might even go so far as to say the surreal, bringing to mind further questions regarding the nature of home (or ones memory of it) and the act of homecoming.

While the longlist was initially viewed as underwhelming, there are a few novels that have since provoked my interest. Chief amongst them is Gwendoline Riley and her novel “The Palm House.” Riley’s literary reputation is founded on the appreciation that she is a meticulous stylist. The kind of writer whose whose prose is controlled and sharp, embracing scrutinizing perspectives cutting away any sentimentality with a pathologist’s eye for examination. Then comes the rejection of traditional linear plots, instead embracing vignettes and chronological fragmentation to assemble narratives of emotional devastation and impasses caused by dysfunctional families or parenteral strife. Gwendoline Riley’s prose as described by critics brings to mind a surgical blade carving into ice: focused, determined and precise; though thankfully not without a certain gallows humour. This drollness saves Riley from being stranded either on the depths of despair or the pinnacles of dreary. In “The Palm House,” Gwendoline Riley continues to survey the existential themes of the contemporary era through the lens of young professionals who are usurped and left despondent with life, which has few carrots on offer, but plenty of stick to strike you with. Critics, however, remain unanimous that it is Riley’s style and language that is the real success of “The Palm House,” employing the poet’s dedication for distillation to economical austerity finishing with translucent clarity punctuated with revealing and understated annihilations. I also think Marlon James’s novel “The Disappearers,” is a true contender for this year’s award. A novel that moves unapologetically in the epic scope, but also as a social critique of a society with strict demands of what is considered normal and acceptable, with all the violent consequences this entails.

Now, the talk of the literary scene though currently is the controversy surrounding Rachel Cusks new novel: “Life of M.” Leave it to Cusk to inspire controversy without fail. Be it her own memoirs on motherhood or her divorce, Rachel Cusk always inspires a strong reaction from literary critics and readers alike. The supposed controversy surrounding “Life of M,” is that it unapologetically takes elements of Natalie Portman’s life and caricaturises it into a grotesque portrait of celebrity and all its superficiality, allowing to it drift away from concrete reality and distort to its own means and measure. Apparently, the actress who the titular ‘M,’ is based on is nonplussed about the depiction. All the while Cusk is able to play both victim and villain from the pillory, she finds herself in – again. The novel “Life of M,” has been called a literary assassination; a complete (alleged) defacement and exploitation of Portman’s character and personal life. Though if anyone knows Cusk or her literary work, the (alleged) brilliance of Cusk’s work is entwined with an unflinching cold and clinical detachment, which in any other terms would be defined and described as cruel. Despite this, Cusk’s unsentimental scalpel prose has never shied away from the utilisation of another’s life or experience for the writer’s own whim. In 2009 Cusk’s publisher was forced to pulp the initial run of the memoir “The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy,” after one man on holiday found himself in the book, and depicted in an unflattering way, for which he threatened legal action. Then there was the bombshell divorce memoir “Aftermath,” which unleashed he hounds of hell who gladly chewed on Cusk, and would affirm her as the most recognisable literary enfant terrible currently at work. Even Rachel Cusks groundbreaking “The Outline Trilogy,” consisting of “Outline, “Transit,” and “Kudos,” were not without controversy, with the Scottish author Damian Barr, commenting that Cusks supposed fictional stencils were “thinner than a thin thing.”

The divisiveness of Rachel Cusk is evident in how she is viewed and described in the literary canon. On the one side, she is one of the great contemporary innovators of the English language. A writer who continues to push the concept of literary self to the point of erasure, showcasing how societal progress has all but homogenised individuality and experience into one singularity. Detractors have argued and surmised her work is nothing short of narcissistic narratives, cipher-oriented novels crafted with eloquent disinfected sentences, with the end result nothing short of discombobulating diatribes of no consequence. Rachel Cusks version of autofiction is an example of the form at its worst and perhaps most indulgent, even when it’s trying not to be. Where Annie Ernaux’s unflinchingly self- flagellation of personal experience, memory and record are boiled down into a rendered chronicle of retrospective of the personal in relation to history and social adjustment. Rachel Cusk’s from of autofiction is a void or black hole. An all-consuming maw consuming, mining, utilising and exploiting the lives around or within her vicinity without consequence. “Life of M,” is no different. Unfortunately, the supposed “interrogation of fame, power, beauty and truth,” has now been besmirched by gossip and questions of literary and creative ethics, especially in the nature of autofiction. These are otherwise tired, old and boorish debates. Still, one can’t help but have some empathy for Rachel Cusk, who is always the ready-made lightning rod of controversy. Forced to defend herself or coyly deny accusations of defacement and slander on the grounds of literary merit or creativity. Yet, the work itself, especially in the case of “Life of M,” begins to move continually closer to tawdry tabloid over literary achievement. Regardless, there is no doubt the controversy certainly helped the books sales.

The Booker Prize longlist may not have had much if any of my own speculated inclusions; but many of the novels such as “The Palm House,” “Switzy,” and “The Disappearers,” have moved out of the fray and taken their position as serious contenders for the prize; while “Black Bag,” by Luke Kennard shouldn’t be underestimated as a great satire of the current absurd and maddening times we live in now. The Booker Prize perhaps still has some life pumping in its veins. It may have watered itself down in a deluge when it opened its doors on the premise of inclusion in 2014, but its back catalogue of winners and nominees have plenty of surprises on offer, if you are up to digging and sifting.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Things That Disappear

Hello Gentle Reader,

There’s a thrill in perusing through an antique dealer. Be it in an antique shop or mall. Curiosity cabinet or junk shop. Flea market or church bazaar. Estate or jumble or yard sale. The best ones are those who have accumulated their wares with a magpie eye and the temperament of a squirrel. Order be damned. It’s a stockpile of chaos. A rat’s nets with no rhyme or reason. Each new acquisition deposited in an otherwise precarious spot. Always under the understanding that transience is the name of the game. There is always the threat of upheaval. Space is occupied and relinquished in an otherwise transactional reality. Nothing is static. Especially with an influx of inventory set to arrive, meaning accommodations need to be arranged, requiring alterations and space to be made for new arrivals or another haul. Its all rather natural. This state of reassembly and reconfiguration. Each storefront a ramshackle dragons hoard where treasure, trinket and rubbish come to co-exist. They form pockets and capsules, orphaned from the river of time. Though saved from the permanent end of the landfill. An otherwise unceremonious burial. Each place will have their own layout and appearance; though the atmosphere is always the same. One might suspect its curated or a staged effect. Its merely consequence of such an accumulation. The lighting soft, almost a resin in its syrup application, pouring over the shelves crowded with an eclectic assortment; cabinets stocked with all manner of objects; tables stacked with odds and ends; an accrual of heaps piled up miscellaneously. What a pleasure it is to shuffle about, reviewing the stockpile. Objects discarded and washed ashore bring back memories due to their familiarity. A mid-century pattern pyrex mixing bowl, transports you back to your mothers’ kitchen. It’ll be autumn, the canning is finished. A bountiful harvest. You helped that year, scalding the tomatoes. Transferring them from the boiling pot to the ice bath. Whereby they were plucked and peeled, chopped and canned then processed. After processing you were shooed away. In the evening the house was interrupted by the chorus of the jars sealing. An echo of popping from the kitchen. In another cabinet, a pink depression glass candy bowl reminds you of your grandmother. An enigma of a woman. Unknowable in a myriad of ways. Though she wanted to be sweet and warm; but was lost in the mist of melancholy. The candy dish forever held the same scotch mint. Grandfathers favourite. Though he was a ghost upon your own arrival. Long since deceased. Despite this, his preferences remained intact, ritualistically upheld. One of those ways we find to preserve the memory and presence. When grandmother died and the house was packed up, the candy bowl would be discarded. Just one of those things no one had use for. The memories of these otherwise impersonal objects are what gives them just a bit more meaning through personal narrative. Though we all know they are not the same ones, they’re produced carbon copies have stumbled into these sanctuaries.

The state of impermanence is perhaps one of the defining literary preoccupations of Jenny Erpenbeck. Having been born and raised in the former East Germany (GDR | German Democratic Republic) to a privileged household; Erpenbeck’s entire early life has all but disappeared. Evaporating into the annals of history. Whereby it can be viewed behind glass enclosures, complete with accompanying text provided some context. In short, a piece of Erpenbeck’s life and existential experiences have all been carted off and away into exhibits. In The Paris Review, in an article titled “Homesick for Sadness,” with almost comical matter of fact understatement her memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the inevitability of the unification of Germany:

            “What was I doing the night the Wall fell?

I spent the evening with friends just a few blocks from the spot where history was being made, and then: I went to bed. I slept right through it. And while I slept the pot wasn’t just stirred, it was knocked over and smashed to bits. The next morning, I was told we wouldn’t need pots anymore.”

Overnight the old order fell away. Familiarity and reality had dissolved into obsolescence. How then does one get their bearings, when theirs no hand rail and barely any stairs? The transition to freedom is, unsurprisingly, a bewildering and impersonal experience. To quote Erpenbeck from the same article:

“Everyday life was no longer everyday life: it was an adventure that had been survived. Our customs were now a sideshow attraction. Everything that had been self-evident forfeited its self-evidence within the span of a few weeks. A door that opened only once every hundred years was now standing ajar, but the hundred years were gone forever. From this point on, my childhood became a museum exhibit.”

Despite this, as writers such as Herta Müller, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Imre Kertész, Svetlana Alexveich, Ismail Kadare, and Václav Havel, pointed out the Soviet Union and its ironclad communism was an oppressive authoritarian system actively asphyxiating the populace. It would be a stretch, if not a blatant farce, to call it a socialist utopia (as so much soviet propaganda heralded it as such). Regardless, it is interesting to read another perspective from behind the Iron Curtain. In “Things That Disappear,” Jenny Erpenbeck takes inventory of the state of loss. A growing refugee camp of items no longer required because they are out of sync with the times or out of fashion. Their functions, their values, their features all harken back to a lost world. Erpenbeck describes their abrupt desuetude with lamenting precision:

“Things disappear when they are deprived of their means of existence, as if they, too, have a hunger that must be satisfied.”

The inventoried items having been lost or at the risk of being lost to the dusts of history before their gradual fade into oblivion, having been catalogued in “Things That Disappear,” vary in scope and size. There is the mundane drip catcher (Tropfenfänger) which is deployed on coffee pots to save the starched clean integrity of table clothes from unnecessary dribbles. To the vague question of whether or not manners are still exercised as a form of social courtesy, or if it too has been abandoned as being out of step with the times. Other losses, however, are far larger in scale and scope, as in the case of the demolition of the Palast der Republik, a monument to the former East Germany, a glittering structure of brutalist geography with bronze tinted glass. Upon reunification its demolished. Erpenbeck, however, reminisces over its representation as some shining ideal. The ideal being the egalitarian nature of the former GDR, where the state house was by nature, the peoples house, housing bowling alleys and cinemas. Until, it too went to dust.

Jenny Erpenbeck succeeds in “Things That Disappear,” by cataloguing the material and mundane loss that inhabits the everyday life. Look no farther then any flea market, church bazaar, or antique store to see the wonders of yesteryear now being sold as vintage or a throwback. True gems though go for a higher price. This sense of palpability of the past is what makes shows such as “The Repair Shop,” so beautiful and endearing. Through refurbishment and repair the past is no longer alien or memory being summoned from the ethereal recesses of the mind, but instead given renewed and rehabilitated shape to shine once again. For a new generation to love and adore. Ultimately though, as Erpenbeck continues to survey and exemplify, nothing will last forever. Not the objects in question; not the manners; not the customs, traditions or rituals; not the buildings or monuments; not the memories; not even the countries. They are all at risk of being washed away or written off or retired. While time marches forward and what is loss is readily abandoned. Jenny Erpenbeck in “Things That Disappear,” finds and outlet to at least mourn and provide some obituary to what is being forgotten. Tiled stoves she advises should not be abandoned. Central heating is a contemporary luxury and expectation, but never be quick to denounce a redundancy in the event of a crisis, hence the advise to keep tiled stoves. Then there is the frustration when your favourite pastry is metamorphosed into a different something else that no longer resembles it. Erpenbeck succeeds capturing this private almost absurd moments of grief and frustration.

“There’s an isle of the Blessed somewhere in Eastern Germany where a Ferris wheel rises above fields of rapeseed, bran, and oats, where a boat swings, where the pop hit of sixties echo across the grounds, merci, merci, merci; where the llama grazes alongside the cow, for the hours, chérie, chérie, chérie, where the fox from the petting zoo plays with the boss’s pug, where a cup of coffee costs fifty cents, including powdered creamer and sugar cubes from the family-sized pack. Once you’ve entered this paradise (1 child + 1 adult = 12 euros), all the rides are free, even the bumper cars, for as long you want. The only things that cost extra are shooting and throwing games.”

This scene from the short column or essay “Middle of Nowhere,” describes the fate that befalls all objects and societies as they are phased out. The wistful decrepitude and eventual decay. Another touching column detailing a coal merchant, reveals a man lost and abandoned in a new world, which no longer requires him. While change is inevitable; in the same vein as progress is inevitable. The poignancy of this is realised after the world you knew and recognised and has been reshaped and recalibrated, leaving you behind in the process. “Things That Disappear,” was an interesting introduction into the work of Jenny Erpenbeck, her curated exhibit of the losses and the alienation one feels when their world has abruptly changed.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

 

For Further Reading: Jenny Erpenbeck: "Homesick for Sadness," (The Paris Review)

The Village on the Edge of the World

Hello Gentle Reader,

The prevailing advice granted to young and aspiring writers for decades now has been: write what you know. Authenticity and intimacy have dominated literary values for years. This explains the abundance of narratives merrily marching into the swamp of solipsism. Few novels produced today have the same sense of curiosity, playfulness and sense of style as their predecessors, who were by far, more daring. Though it is not all indulgent excess and portraits of an artist as a young narcissist. In the case of Annie Ernaux, the paradoxical notion of autofiction (that literary alchemical abomination; a chimeric combination, soldering the candor of autobiography with the illusionary narrative of fiction), is intrinsically linked to her bibliography and literary style. By all accounts, Ernaux is often credited as one of the progenitors of the literary genre, and if not a progenitor, then Ernaux is elevated to the heights of grand dame of the form, its most recognizable practitioner. Personal anecdote, memory and experience when stripped back of sentimentality, become the objective and intimate metrics in which a life can be measured, evaluated and assessed within a larger sociopolitical and historical context. In order to accomplish this state of objective evaluation, Ernaux flenses, prunes and renders experience down to its baseline marrow. All of this splaying, peeling, pairing and flaying is done without concern for emotional indulgences. Rather, the objective is to completely erratic the semblance of sentimentality or sensationalism. This can only be achieved by reducing and boiling the excess away. In awarding Annie Ernaux the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy highlighted and praised the “clinical acuity,” of Ernaux’s work. The scalpel style literary language, carving out and cutting away. Slicing and sliding through the fleshiness of memory and experience with steel exactitude. Ernaux referrers to the process itself as scraping the language clean. A reductionist method of literary subtraction reaching completion, when only the essential elements remain. The foundational baseline of utilitarian components. Any semblance of an emotional posturing or lingering corpulent embellishment will need to be carved away. This otherwise blanc stye ensures the veracity of the subject matter is maintained through the sterility of the testimony reflected in pristine and crystalline language preserving what is otherwise raw authenticity. Ernaux has maintained the objective of her work is to inevitably survey the intersection between individual experience and memory in relation to and consequence of larger sociological phenomena and collective memory. The intrapersonal introspection operates as the nodal point of perspective. Memories provide the furnishings, texture. While sociopolitical events and history twist, twine and lace through it all, providing the context and momentum for narrative. Annie Ernaux’s work routinely surveys and cartographs the juncture between personal recollection and public record, and despite distancing her narratives by employing third person or collective voices, Ernaux remains the lodestone of the narrative. The experiences, observations, memories all refined, distilled and channeled through Ernaux. When it comes to Herta Müller, however, biography and lived experience are treated as scaffolding for narrative. Rough outlines and sketches. Dark wells in which the writer pulls from the unflinching and unsettling details to depict with pointillistic precision the landscape of the dispossessed.

Where Annie Ernaux employes objectivity and distance to ward off the accusations of tabloid voyeuristic sensationalism. Silence is prevalent in Herta Müller’s novels. While Müller’s style is renowned and recognized for its sensory sharpness capturing the dehumanising absurdities encompassing the obscenities of daily life in Ceaușescu’s communist Romania. Biographical elements are reworked and reimagined as evidential details giving weight to the surreal cruelty defining life behind the Iron Curtain. These included a village closed off within itself, a microcosm of a depraved dictatorship in its smallness; an unforgivable betrayal of a friend; a friend’s murder staged as suicide by the state, or, a close friend pushed to the point of paranoid psychosis and eventual suicide; a mother’s displacement to a forced labour camp in Siberia, and the silence upon the return; a fox pelt rug gradually being mutilated and then decapitated. Then there is the general poverty. The endless and relentless demoralising ugliness of life being strangled by the state’s chokehold. Enforced and facilitated further by the secret service (the Securitate) who engineered a torrent of terror onto the populace, through surveillance, informants, betrayals and interrogations. Through it all, however, Müller as the point of biography or character is polished to the point of transparency. Narrative structures are abandoned, replaced by the free falling and wheeling illogical association of language attempting to capture the inarticulate sensation of life within a state of constant and persistent fear. Its anxious and unnerving, leaving individuals jostling and jumping against one another, attempting to hold themselves together, while conforming to a state of agreeable acceptance, to avoid detection or attention. As Müller writes in “The Land of Green Plums,”:

“We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.”

In “The Village on the Edge of the World,” Herta Müller pulls back the curtains of silence within her novels. The same silence which provides the staging ground to showcase Müller’s idiosyncratic literary language, which has been incubated and mutated by surviving an authoritarian government. What is revealed is an unadulterated refuse of a society, impoverished and corrupted by an ideology imposed on it by a corrupt incompetent government and state buckling under the megalomania of a dictator who is untethered from reality. “The Village on the Edge of the World,” is frank as it is austere in its unflinching recollection of a life not so much lived, but endured. Herta Müller’s biography is now fleshed out with devasting detail.

“Ugliness was ubiquitous; it was the only true form of equality under Socialism. And it was intentional; it was part of the dictatorship’s agenda. The objects produced under Socialism ensured you grew tired of life: concrete buildings, furniture, curtains, tableware, the flowerbeds in the parks, posters, monuments, shop windows. As if everything material, whether it was cement, wood, glass, porcelain, even the branches of the trees, were in of itself brutal and vulgar, as if you couldn’t possibly turn into anything more beautiful. As if, in this country, matter sprang of its own accord into the will of the regime. This ugly equality pressed on you, made you apathetic and undemanding; this was what the State wanted. For Socialism, our heady minds were ideal – a lust for life makes you spontaneous, and therefore unpredictable. Misery makes you ugly. Instead of meat, the State gave us offal: pigs’ feet, which had long claw were referred to as ‘sports shoes;’ or chicken feet with talons; or chicken heads in water that had been frozen together into heavy, blue-red blocks of ice, and which would be hacked apart into portions with a hatchet before being weighed. People would carry the frozen chicken heads home with their bare hands: in this sate of misery, even a handkerchief was of no use. On your way home the ice would drip steadily, as if the dogs were marking their territory with bloody urine. And everyone queued for hours for this offal.”

There is no room for nostalgia. Perhaps because there is no driftwood to cling to in this abyssal sea. When reviewing her own childhood, Herta Müller remains candid in her assessment. The alienating emptiness of the open prairies, where Müller was left as a child to tend to the cattle. She describes the countryside as such:

“I used to experience Nature as physical harassment.”

Then there is the insufferable smallness of the village with its refusal to distance itself from its supportive past of the Nazis. Müller recalls the frequency of the men getting drunk and singing their old war songs. Müller’s own father was a member of the Waffen-SS during the war and was later a prisoner of war. These facts of parenteral accomplice and guilt weigh heavily on her own conscious. Mixed amongst this is the childlike logic and beliefs. How plants and trees would uproot in the middle of the night and move around. The same with household furniture. Yet, where this may be seen as whimsy and the imaginings of a child with fairytale delight, this too was tainted for Müller by the never-ending nightmare of waking reality, complete with daily beatings and corporal punishments. If childhood is the idyll for many, then for Müller and others, it was the genesis and training ground for a life of sustained continued hardship. From there, what follows are the established facts and events. The translation job in the factory, followed by the cataclysmic catastrophic event when the Securitate come to recruit Herta Müller as an informer, who declines. Then it’s a saga of harassment, torment, aggravation, indignation and humiliation. Having refused to cooperate with the secret police, Müller would lose her desk and office, but needed to persist in working at the factory, in the stairwell on her handkerchief. Word spread (by the secret police) that Müller was an informer and soon everyone distanced and ostracised her in the factory, before she was dismissed. Then came hard scrabble years, of working as a tutor or a school teacher. Each one would never last before the employers or the families were forced to disassociate due to political pressure.  

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” revealed many of the personal consequences of life in communist Romania. The relentless campaign of harassment and humiliation the Securitate waged against Herta Müller and her friends. Fun fact, the flat (apartment) beneath Müller’s was entirely occupied by the secret police, surveilling and eavesdropping. The book also reveals the deeply personal tragedy and betrayal by her friend Jenny, which is reimagined in “The Land of Green Plums.” Their parting in Romania was grief stricken and stained with tears, but their reunion in Germany was shattered and ended in a grievous act duplicity, where Jenny had recorded Müller’s movements during their visit and had a key cut of the apartment. All of which was to be returned to the Securitate to continue their crusade of cruelty and torment even from behind the Iron Curtain. Afterall, Herta Müller was now a free agent and her uncensored and unapologetic criticism of Ceaușescu was surely making its way back. Jenny was then found to be in in a relationship with one of the cruelest members of the secret police. Jenny would later develop cancer and die. This event only proved how diabolical and deranged the state was in its need for total control. The two never reconciled, and this remains for Müller, a substantial wound and scar.

One of the most effective and devious attacks and acts of sabotage, however, the Securitate did against Herta Müller was when she was finally allowed to emigrant, they stamped her papers as February 29, 1987. Where in actuality 1987 was not a leap year, and this ‘clerical error,’ would do nothing but halt the bureaucratic gears going forward. The fastidiousness of the Germans difficult to please, (I’m sure) at the best of times.

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” succeeds at most in providing a panoramic view of the personal anecdotes and experiences of Herta Müller. One particular scene was when Müller meets with her western editor supporting the publication of “Nadirs,” in the early 80’s. The two retreat to some mountain resort under the guise of a skiing holiday. And while initially her editor is suspicious of the comings and goings, she soon flirts with extraordinary political danger when a delegate of Asian technocrats (be it Chinese or North Korean) arrive with their Romanian escorts. Suddenly, caution is tossed to the wind and she wants to drink and dance with the men. The previous paranoia of adject rooms and wiretaps in the hotel, prove to be delusions to this naïve editor, who when confronted with real danger, looks at it as an exotic experience. Here again, it was Herta Müller who had to exercise survivalist restraint to maintain their safety. Other anecdotes describe the depravity of the regime. Its desire for complete subjugation and control:

“The regime maned to control even the most private matters. Intimacy was nationalised. Women were forcibly examined using insidious methods: for example, they needed a certificate from the gynecologist in order to get access to dental treatment.”  

While another merely recounts the vampiric leeching proclivities of the state:

“Whenever I went into a clothes shop, I was seized by a sense of grief and repugnance. Everything looked like it sent – and it smelt of stolen life. 

For those who think salvation and sanctuary would arrive through emigration, it never quite lands correctly. The insidious irony is not lost on Herta Müller either, who remarked: in Romania I was the German; in Germany I am the Romanian. The sense of foreignness and displacement is constant companion and reality. Even upon arrival in then West Germany, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst, or German intelligence) were convinced Herta Müller was an operative working for the Securitate, delaying her citizenship.

“The Village on the Edge of the World,” is an engaging and engrossing companion piece to reflect on in tandem with the rest of Herta Müller’s bibliography. Originally, I was under the impression, “The Village on the Edge of the World,” was a collection of new essays, as the author has stopped writing and publishing since 2009 with publication of “The Hunger Angel,” and winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Instead, it is a curated transcript of conversations and lectures Müller had given over a decade prior. Initially I was disappointed by this, however, opinions changed as one realises this is Müller’s mastery at work. The seamstress of words has set down the shears, pins, needle and prints, and in their place, rolled out the material which has been fashioned with Müller’s signature poetically concentrated style, revealing as a candid exorcism, the horrors which she has attempted to excise and process. In turn, Herta Müller brings to the forefront the complications a new democratic Romania faces with regards to acknowledging this complicated and sordid history. There has been no reconciliation of the past and it is theorised if not confirmed with an official acknowledgement, the current intelligence service is compromised of former Securitate agents. Justice and redemption are lovely ideas, but often fail to come into practise. Ceaușescu may have been executed. The Iron Curtain fallen along with the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union collapsed. But as Putin is staunch a reminder from this cold ugly era, the corruption, the violence, the depravity remains; having never been brought forward, accounted for and prosecuted. “The Village on the Edge of the World,” provides the biographical context that has shaped all of Herta Müller’s literary oeuvre, while splintering off into discussions of language as a means of influencing one perspective and relationship to the world, as viewed between German and Romanian: 

“[. . .] take the pheasant, for instance: it is a bird that can’t fly very well, it gets ensnarled in the undergrowth is easy prey. All of this is contained in the Romanian expression: ‘Man is a great pheasant in the world.’ Man, too, is easy prey: he can’t assert himself, he overpays, he is no match for life. However, in German the pheasant is a braggart. The German language has made a saying out of the bird appearance, while the Romanian saying is based on its character. I feel closer to the sad Romanian pheasant. This is why one of my books is titled Man is a Great Pheasant in the World^*.”

^* The English translation of the novel “Man is a Great Pheasant in the World,” is “The Passport.” The original German title with the Romanian saying, provides greater reflection on the circumstances and character of Windisch, who becomes the pheasant from the adage. Continually at the mercy of the authorities and officials delaying his passport application, requiring more tithes. More tolls. More services. More sacrifices.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary