Hello Gentle Reader
In the United Kingdom newspaper “The Guardian,” last year, there was an article, about the New York Literary Crowd, of well-educated and young aspiring authors; who had stopped looking for their literary fixes in their home country; but had started looking abroad for new and exciting works of literature. Perhaps the days of John Updike, Philip Roth, and Raymond Carver has all passed. Their less than uniquely ‘American,’ fiction – was nothing out of the extraordinary. Their attempts at bringing beauty and aesthetically pleasing concepts to the mundane have either passed or failed; the same old imitations and hacking off Hemingway’s style have become at best a bad joke, and a repetitive bore; and now days just simple entertainment fluff as some put it; of over budgeted and over paid authors who simply repeat the same formula over and over again; have all but come to play the same chord on the same old piano; and the old tune has since died out, and the listeners have moved on. As Hari Kunzru, writing for “The Guardian,” put it:
“The thing about New York (and, a fortiori, the gentrified bits of Brooklyn, where writers go when their Manhattan apartments are expropriated by the One Percent) is that it doesn't have a "contemporary master of the apocalypse" [László Krasznahorkai]. It has post-Ivy relationship anatomists, adderall-enhanced pop culture essayists, dirty realist white-guy novelists and hipster poets who transcribe their sexts and cut them up with Wikipedia entries on HPV and Jersey Shore. It has, at the last count, 247 trillion recent MFA graduates, at least a dozen of which are to be found, on any given morning, abseiling down the glassy exterior of the Random House publishing building, in an attempt to get Sonny Mehta to read their collection of short stories modelled on Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son.”
This may be why the young and upbeat and chic readers are looking for something more, away from their own shores. It may come to a surprise to many readers and people there are other countries that produce their own cultural exhibits and interpretations of the human condition. Some may feel that, because the world is now globalised there is no real ‘country bound,’ literature; and that it is all the same. Every country is now overrun with McDonald’s fast food restaurants, people from Japan to Romania to Germany to Bulgaria and Russia and so on, all surely must have drink Coca-Cola or Pepsi at some time or another. Though these experiences like eating chemically processed extremely thin burger patties that are overpriced, and carbonated sugar loaded beverages, are common experiences at best, they do not define globalization, and it most certainly does not characterize this suspected, united human experience and the entire spectrum that it itself encompasses. Eating or drinking these commercialised products (or their readily availability) does not mean that this world is unified; globalised sure; but not unified; any more than the simple acts of breathing or running unifies people or transcends cultural barriers. For that reason, I personally condemn the thought that because the world is globalised that as a Westerner of a Western Culture, does that mean I can be so repugnant and deem other countries literary abilities or talents – however miniscule; as unimportant or without value because the world is globalised, and therefore whatever they produce or write about has no value to me of any kind, because someone else over ‘here,’ can and most likely will state the same. That itself is ignorance. No one over ‘here,’ could produce the works of Ko Un, and his momentous ambition of depicting the lives of all the people he has met or crossed paths with. Nor could anyone reproduce the work of Herta Müller, who by firsthand experience has written about the oppression and abuse of language and fall of Communism and alienation under an oppressive regime and that of being an émigré in a democratic society. At the same time, no one could possibly write or imitate Alice Munro or Shakespeare. – The problem comes from the insular attitude, which works of great merit, can only be found in Western Countries. The West has become saturated in its own repetitive forms and nostalgia. Once ground breaking works of what was then called ‘post-modernism,’ have all but now become cliché formulas that younger generations are trying to re-work and call it once again innovative. Can one blame them though for a society drenched in its own nostalgia of the good’ ol‘days of Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, Thomas Pychon, Updike and Roth – all of which either were revolutionary of their times, and became sour jokes; or those attempts at bring back the Victorian nineteenth century realism, in modern ‘suburban,’ landscapes; as in a way (once again) a reaction against post-modernism and modernism. In the end however it has ended up being pop culture drenched references, colloquial conversations that orbit the same subject, and similar images that are not ground breaking. In the words of the former Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdhal “too insular and ignorant,” and for those reasons are unable to “participate in the dialogue of world literature,” because of our lack of translation.
However there is hope. With awards and publishers like The Best Translated Book Award, and Archipelago Press; there is serious recognition of the problem; and there are actions being taken place, to correct it. As well as an honourable mention of the Rochester University Press magazine Three Percent Review, which has dedicated itself to problem of translation.
László Krasznahorkai maybe better known in the film community, because of his collaboration with fellow Hungarian film director Bela Tarr; and for the cult classic film adaption of “Satantango,” which ran for a whole seven hours. Uncompromising is certainly the word to come to mind. One could say the film imitates the novel of Krasznahorkai itself. A dense piece of work, with no paragraph breaks; and long winding sentences. As the translator and poet George Szirtes put it; this one of the hardest translations he has ever done. The greatest reason though is because of the “slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type,” which is what the narrative is composed of. It took Szirtes four years to translate the novel; and it took Krasznahorkai six years to write it. Yet with sentences like the following; which in themselves appear like prose poems – it is no wonder it would take so long; but the precision of the writing itself is wonderful:
“He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity ... and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself--utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials--into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying an order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home.”
This is a demanding novel. It is not flexible like a branch, and does not bow to the wind. It is deeply pessimistic; to the point that the everyday is filled with feelings of apocalyptic doom. These are reason why László Krasznahorkai earned the title of the Poet of the Apocalypse; and often referred to as a master of the apocalypse. His work is deeply pessimistic with impending sensation of doom.
“The two clocks say different times, but it could be that neither of them is right, our clock,” he continues pointing to one above them with, his long, slender and refined index finger, “is very late, while that one there measure not so much as, well, the eternal reality of the exploited, and we do it as are as the bough of a tree to the rain that falls upon it: in other words we are helpless.”
If you wanted a summary of “Satantango,” it is the collective collapse of an “estate,” or a collective farm. After the factory (mill) had since run to ruin, the entire hamlet has since fallen into an endless cycle of dilapidation. Ruin upon ruin. Obsessive rain soaked fantasy of escape, always falling into endless pools of slippery mud, collapsing in on itself. All the inhabitants of this rain drenched, slippery mud landscape do their best to survive. Failed lives; and broken dreams, and now simply drowning themselves in nothing more than alcohol and spirits – and surveillance as if to validate their own existences; this poor little hamlet is nothing but in shambles and ruin. The world of these inhabitants is incredibly small. A tiny universe of melancholy and failure. They are forced into repetitive actions that are unique to their cosmos. Though they’re attempts at keeping the black dogs at bay has done nothing, but to further solidify their own place in their landscape of mud; a slippery earthly hell.
This world that Krasznahorkai depicts is without hope. When hope does arrive, cynically it becomes a question of whether or not it is hope; and more precisely speaking the fact it may be a con, comes to be a more than likely explanation of this almost heavenly altruistic man. Yet despite the premise, of this novel being claustrophobic and a relentless sea of black text. It is surprisingly light hearted at times. Who would have thought there would have been so much nose picking – and the occasional fart to boot?
There is certainly nothing like Krasznahorkai. Who has defamalarised everything about the world that we so happily walk into. One of the best examples is that in the second chapter, we find two men, who are lost in a bureaucratic hell hole (a staple of the former communist Eastern Europe – but this is not a novel with any real political connotations; Krasznahorkai himself, is dealing with metaphysical problems, and could not truly be bothered with the political problems of the time.), and for nine pages, these two people are not named or identified, leaving the reader, with a sense of alienation and confusion, and being lost in an endless world, that has no hope and certainly no meaning.
“The stench of sewers mixed with mud, puddles, the smell of the odd crack of lightning, wind tugging at tiles, power, empty nests, the stifling heat behind low ill-fitting windows . . . impatient, annoyed half-words of lovers embracing . . . demanding wails of babies, their cries sliding off into the tin – smell of dusk; streets pliable, parks soaked to their roots lying obedient to the rain, bare oaks, half-beaten dry flowers, scorched grass all prostate, humbled by the storm, sacrifices strewn at the executioners feet.”
This is truly a spectacular novel. Written in a high modernist style, with postmodernist tendencies. It’s opaque and abstract. Difficult for its own sake; and a classic all in itself. The merit is there. But it is foreboding; and for those reasons will most likely – and quite frankly; will never be a success. It is grandeur is palpable (as one reviewer put it) and it will be enjoyed by those who have the time and the patience, to read and re-read this book over and over again. Though admittedly one can certainly say that Krasznahorkai has certainly done something good. He has written an opaque and difficult novel; at the same time, he has written in a way that it is also accessible. It is not immovably long that it would bore one to death, to the point that one’s eyes would set aflame in their eyes socket, from both boredom and the sheer lack of progress, that one comes to realize they are making. This novels dance like structure, and interesting if only bare bone plot, is supported on the shoulders of the inadequate characters, who themselves are desperate peasants, and the lowest of the low. The forgotten and the deserted; and with the caustic and sarcastic humour, it can become a less tedious read. Personally I give Krasznahorkai kudos for his work on this novel. It is truly something. With his use of a bare bone plot, and some eccentric and interesting characters, he is able to persuade and eventually trap one into this work; of intellectual existential angst.
It is a visionary novel, and there is no surprise why it is called a classic in today’s world in regards to its publication back in nineteen-eighty five. If there was ever a doubt that experimental fiction was dying out or was a slim breed on its own, I’d have to disagree. As long as authors from all over the world like Krasznahorkai are around, it is never dying out.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
(link for “The Guardian,” article)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/13/hari-kunzru-new-york-literary-hipsters
