Carol Rumens Dies Aged 81

Hello Gentle Reader,

For readers of The Guardian, Carol Rumens column “Poem of the Week,” was an institution of the paper. The column itself provided thoughtful and engaging literary analysis. Rumens herself, carried her columns with assured authority, but not because she was an academic or former poetry editor or an accomplished poet in her own right; but rather, because she was a great reader, admirer and devoted lover of poetry. This appreciation allowed Rumens to approach poetry with a love of the form itself; celebrating its technical brilliance; a poet’s unique style; the forms historical context, legacy and roots; while delighting in the playful use of language. In Carol Rumens hands, poetry (which for the unrehabilitated facilitates a Pavlovian response, whereby they slouch in their seats, eyes glaze over, minds drifting away, as an academic lecture is unleashed from a professor teacher, droning on about meter, rhythm, rhyming scheme, syllabic count and stanza organization), becomes a pleasure and a joy. Poets, who have gradually been reduced to the ironically neglected top shelf ivory tower heights, descend and return, whereby they are read for pleasure; not requirement or assignment. Carol Rumens analyses, only enhanced the poem of the week. Rumens never pathologised or autopsied the poem; dissecting and vivisecting them to provide readers a taxonomical overview of how it operates and functions; nor did Rumens strip them back or down to their baseline components and parts. Rather than looking at poetry through a clinical lens, splayed out on a metal examination table. Rather, Rumens operates as a delighted and excited tour guide, who is never exhausted by the wonders or treasures she will impart from her research and contemplation. Rumens guided readers through the poem as if it were a cathedral or basilica or palace or castle, praising the architecture, the craftsmanship; revealing the hidden cadences and inherent lyricism; reflecting on the imagery and symbolism; before pausing to review the entire structure, and just exactly what the writer had painstakingly worked at crafting. Carol Rumens revitalised poetry appreciation, by showcasing its inherent human qualities, its ability to capture the strobe of lightning. Those flashes and fleeting moments which springboard into queries and existential ponderings, grappling with the eternal question of what is the human condition, and what is it to be alive. Carol Rumens herself, was a poet of equal renown, and had written one novel (“Plato Park,”), three plays, while being an avid translator and editor of Elizabeth Bartlett’s poems. When it came to her own column, Carol Rumens reflected on it modestly, revealing the sincere pleasure in reading and writing about poetry; while confessing to owing a duty of care to fellow writers and their poems. Though, perhaps most importantly, Carol Rumens conveyed the real frustrations about the challenges poetry faces:

“I’m sick of hearing that too much poetry is written and published. No, too little poetry is taught and read. A poem isn’t usually a butterfly or a mobile phone. It deserves a longer life. I wish I wrote better about poems and poetry, but I know I should go on writing, any way, as best I can.”

In this regard, Carol Rumens was a remarkable guide for reading poetry. Her columns were erudite and informative, but never dry in their discourse. Reading Rumens column was more like chasing butterflies in the meadows, rather than observing the lepidoptera pinned to boards encased behind glass. Carol Rumens “Poem of the Week,” columns revealed and celebrated the soul, the heart, the breath and life of poems.

Rest in Peace Carol Rumens, you will be missed.

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

M. Mary

For Further Reading

The Guardian: "Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81,"

The Guardian: "Archive: Poem of the Week,"

– LI –

Insisting on being right changes nothing, except annoying everybody.

J.H. Prynne Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader,

Some poets have the quality and fortune of forever being lauded and appreciated. Canonized into some literary sainthood. Others are less fortunate. Sentenced to dusty tomes and shelves, neglected, but adored by an almost cultish following. J.H. Prynne is a poet who embodies and could be described by some as the epitome of the later. As a poet, Prynne was considered a defining pillar of what is now reflected on as the mid-century (and therefore late) modernist school, “British Poetry Revival,” which continued the modernist traditions of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, while taking inspiration from the poets across the pond, with their postmodern sensibilities encapsulated by John Asherby, Frank O’Hara and Robert Creeley. These poets sought to push against the poetry corralled under the banner “The Movement,” which promoted a return to a traditional formalistic approach to poetics, rejecting the metaphysical wonderings and natural rhapsodizing of Dylan Thomas. “The Movement,” also claimed membership of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, who would later go on to be grouped in with the “Angry Young Men,” crowd. Truly mid 20^th century literature had no shortage of movements and ideas. They swelled, crested, crashed and receded, with alarming regularity. Difficult to imagine how some writers didn’t end up shipwrecked, stranded, or drifting as mere flotsam. As for J.H. Prynne, there is no contemporary who could be considered his equal. Prynne was a poet of competing contradictions, erudite and intellectually flexible, while being obfuscating and obtuse. Here was a poet whose love of language would also be the reason which alienated readers and was ignored by academic and literary circles. As critics and academics viewed the work as being to willfully hermetic in nature and indentured to an inflexible aesthetic form, which was not only out of fashion but out of place. Regardless, J.H. Prynne found resounding success in the avant-garde and small publishing houses, who would become his poetry collections homes throughout his long career. It wasn’t until the eighties, however, that Prynne’s poetry found academic and critical evaluation with his first collected poetry selection titled “Poems.” A further collected poems edition titled “Poems,” was published in 2024; Prynne’s prolific nature is equally a point of admiration for its industrial scale. J.H. Prynne poetry can always be viewed as the antithesis to the violent firebrand music of Ted Hughes or the pinched bleak misery observations of Philip Larkin, as Prynne’s poetry held onto a lumine opacity. Incomprehensible and argumentative, yes, but shimmering with singular opalescence. Beyond his poetry, J.H. Prynne was an influential academic teaching in Cambridge and was a Life Fellow of the Gonville and Caius College, additionally he was the colleges librarian. Despite not being canonized in the public or literary imagination, J.H. Prynne will endure in a legendary capacity, not just by his complex verse, but also due to his refusal to participate in publicity campaigns, readings, or photographs. J.H. Prynne is and was no Charles Causley or Wendy Cope in his deliberations, but his language, however difficult it was to parse, is Prynne’s enduring legacy to literature.

Rest in Peace J.H. Prynne.

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

David Malouf Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

David Malouf, one of the great Australian literary statemen has died at the age of 92. Best remember for his Booker Prize shortlisted novel “Remembering Babylon,” which captured the essence of Malouf’s literary themes, a clash of oppositional worlds and forces. In the case of “Remembering Babylon,” it is the colonial history of Australia and its Aboriginal inhabitants, bringing for questions of belonging, the nature of exile, the abject shock and horror of displacement, and the loss of a promised land. Written in Malouf’s sensuous and luxurious prose, the kind of prose writers used to aspire to. Prose that was worked at, full bodied in perspective and composition, allowing readers to appreciate the amount of kneading chiseling the writer had put into the sentences; not stripped down to a freshly flensed raw bone. David Malouf remains in many ways one of those rare writers. Whose eloquent and elegant language never worked to conceal a lack of depth or capacity for storytelling. Malouf was in continual philosophical inquiries with regards to memory and its expansive influence on individuals, but in terms of identity but also personal history; the experience of time as a component of human nature, an understanding that we age and decline; the intersection between natural landscape and personal character, how the natural world and upbringing influences ones character, in this Malouf celebrated the Australian landscape; while also being a writer who was acutely aware of the interior world of his character, teasing at their consciousness as the prism in which experience is filtered, categorized and understood. Malouf’s ability to capture the language of feeling separated him from younger generations of writers, who have all but abandoned the interiority in favour of external action and reactions. Captured in a language that is neither full bodied or eloquent in execution, but rather dry, calcified and anorexic. Though, David Malouf’s prose was not always appreciated. While an accomplished poet before turning to the novel, Malouf’s debut “Johnno,” was decried by critics and battered fiercely about in the literary circles. Though it found praise from Patrick White, and in due spread via word of mouth, leaving readers to make up their own minds about the coming age story of two youth’s growing up in Brisbane in the war time and postwar years. “An Imaginary Life,” does just that, imagines the final years of the exiled Ancient Roman poet Ovid; while the novel “Ransom,” retold and reimagined parts of the “Iliad,” on style and cue, David Malouf has always proven himself to be a masterful prosaist, capable of exploring the human condition and consciousness through a variety of lens, settings, be it autobiographical, historical or mythic. Beyond novels and poetry, David Malouf wrote essays, short stories, a memoir and libretti (including an operatic adaption of Patrick White’s “Voss,”). Australia has lost one of its great literary statesmen, David Malouf was an exceptional writer.

Rest in Peace, David Malouf.

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

M. Mary

Territory of Light

 Hello Gentle Reader,

The Guardian recently ran an article by Blake Morrison about the memoirs dilapidated positioning within the literary field in an era dominated by new social and electronic media, which has democratised the form and flooded this new media landscape not with a torrent, but a deluge of narratives and personal anecdotes, which at one point and time would have been described as literary confessionalism. A term itself reminiscent of the intimately burning style of the mid-century modern poetry of the last century, which included practitioners of the form: Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Now, however, it has subsequently been cheaply redefined as ‘oversharing.’ Morrison quotes the late Martin Amis, who in turn also wrote a memoir (“Experience,”) who best sought to summarize or at least enlighten the appeal and excuse to writing a memoir: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.” It’s not a stretch of the imagination to consider the fact that everyone in their own way, on their own terms (or as close to) is struck with main character syndrome regarding to their own life, and is in the process of mentally compiling, recording, drafting their own narrative. Though, as Morrison points out, the memoir was a reserved form with geriatric qualifications. Written (or ghostwritten) by those who were considered and defined as distinguished in life and profession; politicians, generals, starlets, celebrities; who in the process of looking back at their lives and careers, tended to their expired juvenescence, but also celebrating their accomplishments of their illustrious lives and professional careers. The battles they won; the elections they fought, the reforms and the policies they instituted; their lives of silver screen glamour and equally brilliant and beautiful personal lives, both the ones captured by the intrusive flashes of the paparazzi, but also the staged portraits elevating them from mortal to demigod; while also providing the platform to set the record straight and settle old scores. This once reserved form is now swept up in the influx of what Lorrane Adams has classified as “nobody memoirs.” Given the platform’s availability and affordability (if not outrightly free), individuals are no longer narrating their lives internally, but instead disseminating them for public consumption. What is striking regarding this cascade of personal voices and revelations entering the public sphere, is their candor. These intensely personal narratives embrace the recently revered principles of vulnerability and authenticity to new heights of unrestrained concentrated earnestness turned brutalism. Where confessionalism was ground breaking for its burlesque fire dancing qualities. Intimate narratives and poetic scopes grappling with taboo or sensitive material concerning the authors lives and their lived experience and not through allegory, persona or mythic metaphor. They were fire eating narratives of raw emotional intensity, whereby the personal is elevated through beautiful language and haunting imagery. They were rebellious exorcisms besmirching and usurping the collectively held perspective of the post-war American dream. A necessary tonic. What is on offer today, however, flagrantly reject even the sense of poeticism and instead lay bare their experiences with chisel bluntness of an austerity that is matter of fact and testimonial in nature; to the point intrapersonal inquisition.

The incursion of these unflinching candid testaments from individuals, proves to be the counterbalance to the curatorial ‘highlight,’ appeal of social media content creation, whereby individuals go to great lengths to pose, curate, stage and exhibit the supposed luxurious side of their lives. Those beach getaways. Improvised and spontaneous trips with their loved ones or their best friends. The advertised fantasy of living that life. The envy of all. Whereas the excavation and exposure of revealing personal details, satisfies another form of exhibitionism and voyeurism. The need to release and explode, coupled with the bystander’s shock at the spectacle, yet so engrossed they are powerless to turn away from it. Writers, however, have long turned to self-exploration or personal experience to mine for material. In a similar fashion to confessional poetry, the new journalism movement of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, sought to question the previously held principles of objectivity within reportage, by introducing subjective perspectives, incorporating multiple points of view, utilizing extensive dialogue beyond succinct quotes, all to saturate their reportage, beyond the cut and dry sharpness of traditional journalistic standards. Then there is autofiction, a paradoxical form employing fictional or literary devices to authorial or autobiographical experience to structure new ways of reviewing and understanding truth within the construct of lived experience. One of the most respected and well-known practitioners of this form is Annie Ernaux, who has described her bibliography as a form of personal ethnography. Ernaux staves off the indulgences of solipsism through her literary language, which the Swedish Academy aptly described as ‘clinical acuity.’ Ernaux abandons the language of confession and heightened earnestness, by recording with bleached exacting sterile language the facts of the matter. This includes distilling the hardscaped life of her parents; her mother’s dissolution with dementia; the traumatic experience of a failed back-alley abortion; the infatuation and obsession of a love affair. Before any of these forms, however, there was the Japanese literary form the ‘I-novel.’ A genre which intentionally blurred and crossed the line between first person narrative and authorial voice turned intervention to personal exploration. This form was a reaction to the previously prescribed traditional literary sensibilities, which ignored the emotional resonance and psychological acuity of the characters. As a reaction to this and from the influence of newly introduced and imported western media, the I-novel sought to explore the psychological interiority, the framework of consciousness and emotional responses in a literary perspective, these forms were previously employed in diarists structures. Unsurprisingly, many writers soon used this particular form as confessionals and literary social critiques. 

One of the forms renowned and most recognized figures is Dazai Osamu, whose novels charted the course of what is often described as nihilistic clowns or self-stylized ‘losers.' Individuals who are often considered alienated, defeated and existing on the margins of society. Naturally these narratives reflected Dazai’s own complicated and tumultuous scandalised life, which inevitably ended in suicide. Throughout his short-lived literary career, however, Dazai Osamu developed an enfant terrible reputation. While this originally eclipsed his work, it is now a marketing feature and has cemented Dazai as one of the great and daring Japanese writers of the 20^th century. Japan remains a nation that is often considered a literary powerhouse; similar to Ireland or France. Famous writers of the 20^th century include but not limited to: Sōseki Natsume, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Nakahara Chūya, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kōbō and Ōe Kenzaburō; with contemporary writers being Kanai Mieko, Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yōko, Kawakami Hiromi, Kawakami Mieko and Murata Sayaka. Japanese literature has inevitably always charted its own course and path on the international stage, with previous generations of writers (Sōseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata and Mishima) gained appeal for blending western literary traditions with Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, while contemporary writers have turned towards whimsical magical realism in the case of Murakami, or out of kilter societal critiques as in the case of Murata. While Tsushima Yūko is of the old guard, while being a seasoned practitioner of the I-novel, with “Territory of Light,” being exquisite and elegant introduction to the form and the author. 

“Territory of Light,” is framed as a novel, recounting the first year of a mother navigating single motherhood. The novel was originally serialised in the late 1970s (78-79) in the Gonzu literary journal. Each segment or chapter reads as its own fragmented vignette. The sinew connecting them is the shared perspective of monitoring the situation between the mother and her three-year-old daughter as they navigate their newfound singularity. The opening chapter states factually that the father/husband wants to separate, though remains committed to finding his former family a suitable home to live, seeing as the narrator refused to move back in with her mother. Despite his drive to depart from the marriage, no rental unit meets his standards. What is startling by Tsushima Yūko’s style is its drifting and observational nature of the writing. Where Ernaux writes with flensing shortness, stripping away all artifice to its bleached clinical base elements. Tsushima writes with a lightness of touch to point of effervescent neutrality. Problems and issues are insinuated; they are never directly delineated. For instance, the former husband (Fujino) remarks about her going to listing agents on her own, will produce no results and find the rates increasing. In the end, however, the narrators locate an apartment on the fourth floor of a dilapidated office building, whose outer walls are covered in windows embracing and filling the room with light. What follows is not a regurgitated diary of events and itineraries, outlining the logistics of commuting to work while managing daycare drop offs and pick ups, or a case study in the financial hardship of what is a socially skewered sexist dive into poverty. Rather, “Territory of Light,” captures this immediate slice of life between mother and child and their unconventional lives against a society which is renowned for having a strict sense of conformity and social structure.

The lives of the narrator and the child are difficult. The disruption of the family unit has rippling consequences for both of them. For the child there is an increase in behaviour issues and developmental slips, from wetting the bed, to violent outbursts, and an attempt to maim another child at daycare. For the narrator she has become a pariah. A single mother is the epitome of female failure and as such faces repeated criticisms, slights, and insults from the world at large. The narrator, however, is no pinnacle of innocence either. She’ll hurl insults at her daughter or physically strike her. Routinely leaving her alone to go out drinking; while neglecting to clean the apartment. Yet, the work is routinely prevented from being moored in a miserable self-expose of personal squalor, by how Tsushima Yūko works with the material, capturing the texture and interplay between light and shadow as it frames the events. These scenes are juxtaposed against other tender moments. One instance is shortly after the two move into the apartment, the roof floods pouring down into a neighbour’s commercial office space. Understandably the neighbours are less then impressed with the situation, but their indignation towards the narrator is palpable, leaving one to wonder if they would have been as aggressive or outrageous if a man was present? A similar scene plays out with a nearby sweet shop owner and his wife. In the wake of the water burst, both the mother and daughter investigate the roof to find it flooded, with the daughter delighting at the new found sea. In the closing vignette, the narrator returns to the roof looking out towards the sky as a chemical factory explodes in the distance. This is where Tsushima Yūko strengths as a writer are, capturing intensity of moments through images, not by pathologizing. The prejudices and ostracisation faced by the par are recounted as a fact of life. Tsushima is cognisant about never depicting the narrator as a victim, as she frequently perpetrates and engages in questionable behaviour herself.

“Territory of Light,” will certainly be considered a I-novel tradition, for two reasons. Tsushima Yūko was indeed a singe mother raising her daughter, but was also a product of a single mother. Additionally, Tsushima Yūko is the daughter of Dazai Osamu who died when she was one year old, and makes a brief cameo via memory in “Territory of Light.” The I-novel may be considered a natural form for her to gravitate towards and inherent, but a vast amount of Tsushima’s work is yet untranslated, and the recent novel “Wildcat Dome,” is certainly not written in the subjective singular intensity the form demands. The wonder and delight of “Territory of Light,” shines through when Tsushima highlights the inconsequential gravitas mundane life and the sense of randomness of the events, with a literary language that is understated and routinely avoiding the hysterical. When the train is delayed because of a suicide, the narrator approaches the incident and recounts the scene before fleeing back. While other moments are otherwise oneiric in their delivery. “Territory of Light,” succeeds by Tsushima Yūko observing and recording the caustics of light rippling and shimmering throughout her apartment and life. It’s a strange book which never critically stakes its claim as a social critique, but retains an undercurrent solidarity pushing against the strident conservatism and conformity of the society, which fails to provide a social net for the most vulnerable. Reading “Territory of Light,” provided further context as to why it was considered a major media announcement in 2020 when the Japanese minister, Koizumi Shinjiro announced he was taking two weeks paternity leave. The goal was to break the stigma regarding men in Japan taking childcare leave. All of which comes when the country’s decreasing and aging population are becoming defining social crises for the nation. Regardless, “Territory of Light,” reads like an effervescent dreamy book, which is in stark contrast to a great deal of autofiction with its rendered and stripped-down prose.

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

For Further Reading: 

Blake Morrison, The Guardian: "‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing,"

The International Booker Prize Shortlist 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize has come leaps and bounds over last years award. This year’s shortlist is both surprising but not without merit in its inductees and exclusions. It’s a mixture of internationally recognized giants and writers who are finding their foothold in translation. Without further delay here are the six shortlisted titles:

            “On Earth As It Is Beneath,” – Ana Paula Maia
            “The Director,” – Daniel Kehlmann
            “Taiwan Travelogue,” – Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
            “She Who Remains,” – Rene Karabash
            “The Witch,” – Marie Ndiaye
            “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” – Shida Bazyar

The most telling feature of this year’s shortlist is how easily dominated it is by female writers, with the German Daniel Kehlmann being the only male on this year’s shortlist. This further supports recent macro trends in publishing and literary consumption, whereby female readers out pace men in consumption and interest, and there are subsequently more and more women being published than men. Kehlmann is an internationally renowned writer, whose novels with their appreciation for the absurd and ability to subvert and bringing into question reality, have delighted his readers both in his native German and abroad. “The Director,” continues Daniel Kehlmann’s exploration and reinvention of the historical by interrogating the strange relationship between the director and the Nazi’s. The novel poses serious questions about the integrity of art in service to political brutality; the absolution of being a cog within the machine and spared the conviction of collaborator or conspirator; all while questioning the sanctity of survival when compared to the destitution of sacrifice. “The Director,” is by in large the biggest name on this year’s shortlist and perceived by many the breakout front runner.

The Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia equally confronts questions of brutality and violence with her novel “On Earth As It Is Beneath.” The penal colony of the novel is founded on the blood-soaked grounds of a colonial atrocity, where the enslaved were tortured and murdered, and while the penal colony was built under the auspicious understanding that it would rehabilitate its inmates to realign with societal expectations, what it actually succeeded in doing was merely detaining and retaining the inmates. Trapping them in their own world. What happens then, when this world is no longer sustainable? Violence breeds further violence. The inhumanity of it spreads with rabid fervor. In this Ana Paula Maia reckons with the baseline component of the human condition, one nurtured in our inherent primordial violent nature, which has only refined itself further into a sociopolitical context. It is here Ana Paula Maia begins to probe the unfathomable consequences of our failure as a species and as a society, to come to terms with our social and politically violent nature of our actions or as is so often common now, in action. One of you, Gentle Readers, João Böger high lighted Ana Paula Maia as quite the talent, and while the premise of “On Earth As it is Beneath,” may sound unsettling and dark in the tradition of say Golding’s “Lord of The Flies,” this novel and its thematic preoccupation with the shadow of human nature continues to be relevant to our times.

To some extent I am surprised to see Mathias Énard and Olga Ravn omitted from the shortlist. Perhaps more so for Ravn with her novel “The Wax Child,” than Énard. “The Deserters.” All the while, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and her novel “Taiwan Travelogue,” has the air of a dark horse and should not be ruled out. It is not surprising to see “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” also make it to the years shortlist, considering the events currently unfolding in the Middle East. Though all in all this year’s shortlist is decent enough. A curious offering of different genres, perspectives and narratives.

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

Wiesław Myśliwski Dies Aged 94

Hello Gentle Reader,

Olga Tokarczuk once commented on the precarious state of Poland after reviewing an archaic encyclopedia in England, which described Poland in an entry as a “country which pops up on the maps of Europe time to time.” This external perspective of the country surprised Tokarczuk who was raised to believe that Poland had always existed. Poland, however, is one of those middle powers, who throughout its existence was always in danger of being absorbed by larger power. Its sovereignty partitioned; its borders changeable, shiftable, malleable. Despite being a formidable imperial power at one point in its history, the country disappeared from maps for over a hundred years. This sense of history erasure inevitably would leave to some sense of nationalistic existential fear. The 20^th century in turn was no kinder to the nation, whereby it was subject to the avarice of its neighbours. First the Nazi’s then the Soviet Union. Each one carved out their mark on the nation with authoritarian malice. Rather than demoralizing the nation, however, Poland has rebounded, becoming an emerging contender on the world stage and is often discussed in hushed tones as an up-and-coming superpower. Recent Russian aggression towards its neighbours – specifically Ukraine – have also seen Poland further galvanize itself, investing heavily in its military infrastructure and defense capabilities. Poland understands the hard-earned truth: one’s sovereignty is only guaranteed by their capacity and willingness to defend it. Culturally, Poland is another one of those nations, which punches far above its weight. Wiesław Myśliwski was one of the grand masters of contemporary Polish literature. A master of the literary monologue, Myśliwski’s novels often found themselves framed in the ancient and primordial narrative structure of the orator’s monologue. The essence of the storyteller’s soul. Through novels such as “Stone Upon Stone,” winner of the now defunct Best Translated Book Award in 2012, and “A Treatise on Shelling Beans,” and the recently translated “Needle’s Eye,” Wiesław Myśliwski employed and perfected the dramatic monologue, which distilled the epicism of time, the upheaval and tragedy of history, into a singular individual voice, resilient as it weathers the course of both time and history. Wiesław Myśliwski was often praised for maintaining the ‘peasant narrative,’ in his novels, which is part to his rich earthly language; one which had profound understanding of hard work and hard life, forged through authenticity and experience of having tilled the soil or digging graves. This is further captured by an employment of a rich colloquial language of the rural landscape, one which is at home beneath the broad sky and open fields. The provincial and rural landscape of Myśliwski’s narratives is equally transformed beyond its meager borders, taking on a philosophical and universal appeal, being the backdrop to greater existential ponderings and questions, confronted through daily life and work. Wiesław Myśliwski’s novels are equally renowned for being rich and textured. Narratives move through memories with a meandering rivers touch, never on a direct course or in a linear fashion. Novels can be fragmented in structure, connected by the sinew of thematic concern rather than by chronological events.

The death of Wiesław Myśliwski is a significant loss to Polish literature. Myśliwski was a writer whose rustic epic narratives captured a provincial Poland through the past tumultuous century. Rest in Peace Wiesław Myśliwski.

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

– L –

Loneliness isn’t what kills people. Rather it’s the sudden realization, after the noise and din recedes, that they have no original thought; an echo of silence is deafening as it is hollow.

Young Once

Hello Gentle Reader,

There is a quote from Patrick Modiano’s novel “Out of the Dark,” which attempts to capture the essence of many of Modiano’s narrators and characters, who have, in a myriad of ways, been orphaned by time and having been left untethered and unmoored within a liminal space, one whose temporal nodal points have yet to be delineated in any chronological construct outside of the understanding they exist within the wake of ominous events and periods; specifically in these cases, the dog eared era known as “The Occupation,” and “Vichy,” both during and after, whose shadows underpin a France – and more specifically Paris – whose eagerness to change their wartime narrative, is not only a nationalistic point of concern but an existential one, which can only be achieved through demolishing the reminders of this humiliation and disgrace, and reconstruct a new one to fit their preferential image of: underground resistance, everyday subterfuge and the unyielding principles and ideals that are unmistakably French: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; while simultaneously erasing or denying any testimony, testament or evidence to the contrary, that is, competing discourse, which brings to light or gives air to the notion that France or its citizens, complied, aided, abetted, or worst of all: collaborated with the occupying forces; and so Paris and France during this interlude become shapeless and shifting, completely emancipated from time, which extends into these postwar periods, populated by Modiano’s characters and narrators: amnesiac drifters, disillusioned writers and filmmakers, questioning detectives and investigators, directionless youth, vagabonds, petty criminals and other dubious and disgraced shadows; who Modiano writes:

“We had no real qualities, except the one that youth gives to everyone for a very brief time, like a vague promise that will never be kept.”

Youth unto itself is not a subject or theme specified in the novels of Patrick Modiano. Rather it is a state. A piece of the novels landscape. A feature employed to provide some definition of narrator or the subsequent characters, in addition to placing them within some context of time. Modiano’s eternal themes are far more compelling beyond the transient mercurial period of youth; memory, its mechanics and unreliability; time, both its passage and its caustic disintegrating touch; identity, both its shifting nature and the search for it, having been obsoleted by the passage of time, erased by amnesia, or reconfigured and reinvented; all of which is wrapped up in Modiano’s signature style: unadorned atmospheric prose, a reserved language caked with dust, perpetually distant veiled by a layer of gauze obscuring any sense of clarity or elucidation. It is difficult to imagine sunlight in Modiano’s world, which instead finds itself coloured in sepia tones or the black and white portraits of the mid-century postwar noir world. Sunlight in the world of Modiano exists simply to frame, pose, texturize and characterise the shadows. Conversely, it will become such an overwhelming substance it bleaches and erases the world into a whiteout of nothingness. As a writer, Patrick Modiano is not concerned with illuminating or enlightening. Rather, Modiano is a writer compelled with asking questions, strolling through obscured boulevards, retracing a lost landscape on the verge of being redeveloped, displacing the ghosts, the memories, the evidence of ones past or their connection to it. Phone books, address books, personal notebooks – another staple of Modiano’s fiction – become the portable archives capturing this evaporating and evolving urbane world, desperate to transform itself into something new and modern, something with soft lighting and vogue products, be it clothes, purses, hats, perfumes. Whatever it is, just make it luxurious. Do away with the old dim garages with their enduring smell of petrol. The operation itself one which celebrates the notion of being perpetually: ‘in transit.’ The state of transience is the cornerstone of the conditions for back door dealings and black markets. Just imagine then, the back offices glowing behind opaque windows. Who knows what questionable business agreements took place back there. The records having been thrown into various fires. The documentation, corroboration and confirmation of all those suspicions is expelled from the chimneys in plumes of ubiquitous smoke. The means to get the conviction, and if not conviction then the ratification, of what took place have all but disappeared, having been destroyed. There is a misguided notion that this would stamp authenticity to one’s memories, affirming their sense of time and place in addition to veracity. Never forget, in a Patrick Modiano novel resolution including confirmations, affirmations, ratifications, do not take place. Conclusions are too neat, too clean. Modiano never ends in certainty, but fades further into the inarticulate incompletion of ellipses.

The surreal duality of life under the occupation as cited by the Swedish Academy in the Nobel Prize citation, is finally presented and given some tangible shape in Patrick Modiano’s Nobel Lecture:

“That Paris of the occupation was a strange place. On the surface, life went on ‘as before’ – the theatres, cinemas, music halls and restaurants were open for business. There were songs playing on the radio. Theatre and cinema attendances were in fact much higher than before the war, as if these places were shelters where people gathered and huddled next to each other for reassurance. But there are bizarre details indicating that Paris was not at all the same as before. The lack of cars made it a silent city – a silence that revealed the rustling of trees, the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves, the noise of the crowd’s footsteps and the hum of voices. In the silence of the streets and of the black-out imposed at around five o’clock in winter, during which the slightest light from windows was forbidden, this city seemed to be absent from itself – the city ‘without eyes’ as the Nazi occupiers used to say. Adults and children could disappear without trace from one moment to the next, and even among friends, nothing was ever really spelled out and conversations were never frank because of the feeling of menace in the air.”

“Young Once,” takes place in the afterimage of the occupation; but this time casts a long deep shadow, particularly through the repetitive mention of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, where Louis’s father was a bicycle racer of some noticeable renown. For the uninitiated, however, the Vélodrome d'Hiver – colloquially styled Vel’ d’Hiv – was employed by the French police during the occupation, who under the orders of the occupying Nazi forces, rounded up Jewish people throughout the city to be held at the stadium, before being transferred to death camps such as Auschwitz. The majority of those being arrested and interned were women and children. This event became infamously known as the “Vel' d'Hiv roundup.” Modiano’s casual disclosure and inclusion of the name: Vel’ d’Hiv or Vélodrome d'Hiver, and leaving it to linger in the text with the implied menace and venom, ensures readers who are not familiar with the scandalous history will be inclined to look into it. Patrick Modiano, is a writer who does not spell it out for his readers. In this instance, it’s an implied understanding that they know; if they don’t, they’ll hunt for the information. There is some appreciation for Modiano to allow the barbs and shards of the facts to settle. What originally passed as an innocuous detail suddenly transforms into horrifying reminder of the past Paris and its wartime activities.

Regardless, “Young Once,” does not linger over the atrocities or claustrophobic horrors of the occupation. Its presence is atmosphere, summoned forth by such facts as the mention of Vel’ d’Hiv; or the notes in a police file; ultimately it exists within the context of memory. The novel itself, is told from the reminiscing perspectives of Louis and Odille, who at the novels opening, are set to turn 35, whereby both are resolute and resigned in their understanding this is the age which they say farewell to their youth, while embarking on something else. Maturation perhaps? Settled fruition? They never clarify what is next; all the while, they do not mourn the end of their supposed youth. The same youth, best encapsulated by the earlier quote from “Out of the Dark,” when Louis and Odille were but two abandoned youths, discarded in the world, whereby they were circled by otherwise more menacing figures. In the case of Odille, the term menace should be replaced by cruel or more fittingly, down right deranged and corrupted. Being used as bait by the police in a sting operation to capture a violent sex offender; then there are the routine sexual advances of a club owner, and a series of disingenuous apologies and regrets from music record executives, who would love to help, but Odille’s voice just isn’t in music fashion at the moment. Louis, while not assaulted or sexually exploited, finds himself under the wings of one of Modiano’s stock archetypes, the vaguely ambiguous criminal, or possibly criminal, whose crimes are never quite brought to light. They’re merely rumbling accusations. Echoes from the past.

“Young Once,” continues in the same vein and trope of Modiano’s work, by continuing to obscure, obfuscate, and vaguely circle the insinuations of something abhorrent or rotten at the centre, without every quite settling on it or revealing it. Patrick Modiano is a writer whose novels continue to explore what has become the endless liminal space of the occupation and the immediate postwar period. The vague grouping in the dark for answers which will never reveal themselves, is the pinnacle of Modiano’s style. Readers, who enjoy Modiano though, come back for the atmospheric qualities. The delight in being for a brief period disoriented and discombobulated in the unreliability of memory. “Young Once,” is yet another brush stroke in this grisaille canvas of incomprehensible ghosts and absence, or another chapter in a novel mapping out the endless hallways, doors and rooms of an archive, complete with filing cabinets and bookshelves spilling over, a deluge of undiluted chaos of mementos, both remembered and fabricated.

 

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

António Lobo Antunes Dies Aged 83

Hello Gentle Reader,

Some writers are merely a part of the landscape. They are ubiquitous features. Ones readers routinely pass and cross over with. While there are others who are legendary. Pure forces of natures, which others aspire to. The Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes was one such writer. Few writers come to mind today who could match or rival Lobo Antunes work in its singular vision and uncompromising execution, with the exception of a few including but not limited to: Krasznahorkai László, Mircea Cărtărescu and Nádas Péter. António Lobo Antunes was renowned for his masterfully modernist deluged polyphonic novels, which raged against fascism; confronted Portugal’s dark, brutal and violent colonial past; the horrors and atrocities of war, its unending inhumanity; the inevitable decay of familiar relationships as they slide further and further into dysfunction; while always providing a testament on the landscape of memory, existential loneliness, the fractured nature of the self, and a few filtrations with nihilism. There truly is no writer quite like António Lobo Antunes, who could do it at all, and do it competently. The literary style of Lobo Antunes will always be remembered as being difficult, who captured the disillusionment of 20^th century Portugal, in a late modernist prose that was frequently compared to Faulkner for its textual, grammatical, musical complexity and density. Needless to say, many readers were often put off by this description, viewing António Lobo Antunes as a high brow literary writer which would only alienate them. Though, those who were up for the challenge, their efforts were amply rewarded. When Jose Saramago was announced as the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1998, many critics thought the Swedish Academy had awarded the wrong Portuguese writer, favouring instead António Lobo Antunes, who would remain a perennial candidate and figure throughout the early 21^st century. Personally, I have yet to make my way to António Lobo Antunes, ironically attracted and put off by the reputation of his works density and demanding nature. Yet no writer has ever written more beautiful titles then António Lobo Antunes, which I hope are the product of the writer, and not the liberties of his translators. Titles such as the recently published “Midnight Is Not in Everyone’s Reach,” “Commission of Tears,” “Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water,” “What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?” António Lobo Antunes death marks yet another grand old master leaving the mortal realm. It is difficult to imagine any successor, which is perhaps for the best, Lobo Antunes shoes would be massive to fill; his shadow alone, has enough capacity to drown the indignant and arrogant writer who though themselves worthy enough.

Rest in Peace António Lobo Antunes, its more then deserved; your work will endure.

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