The Greatest Time Spent is With a Book

Hello Gentle Reader

There is always a pleasure of purchasing books. The entire process is an enjoyment: from discovery, research, reflection, deliberation and internal debate, to the final purchase. A book carries between its covers, enclosed in its pages, and held in the binding, a personal dialogue that transcends the conventional and basic forms of communication, and in my reading habits: geography, culture, and linguistic boundaries, through the tiresome and invisible work of translator, who work toward erecting bridges through translation. Recently my mailbox has sporadically been filled with packages of books—so far though only on a singular level. Yet three of the seven ordered authors have arrived! What pleasure it is have them in my company now. Sadly my reading wish list grows, while the purchases and procurement of these parchment beauties can only happen on sporadic moments, when the financial forecast is favourable. This means the pleasure of purchase and procurement is immediate and fragile. The purchases must be precise. There is little room for regret or resentment. The books must be of the highest merit to the point they border on the impalpable realms of perfection; which means care and consideration is undertaken when reviewing and contemplating any book purchase. Buying a book is not like buying a lottery ticket there is no room for hope, faith, luck or chance. The final purchase must be absolute certainty. This means reviewing the author’s biography, reading or listening to interviews, reading reviews of previous published book, if none exist: read reviews via poor automated translations in their native language to try and decipher literary themes, tropes, ideas, and predilections, what endears them to their readers at their home? Surely, this same admiration and adornment can be transferred if even in the smallest percentages across linguistic and cultural waters. When it’s all said and done with, there should be enough evidence and testimonial to reach a verdict and pass judgement. If for the time being an author doesn’t reach the requirements this round or time, they are merely put back on the wish list. It should also be noted, even if an author strikes the marks, and when it comes to find a copy of their book and it’s too expensive, they too must fall back to the wish list. In some situations not all authors go through the bureaucratic process of analysis, review, and rumination. These authors who bypass the preliminary screenings have precedence on their side. Anytime I see a new release for such authors as: Antonio Tabucchi or Herta Müller, I am filled with the urge and desire to procure, purchase and devour their books with ravenous and gluttonous haste. Of course neither of these two has released any books of recent memory—though the late Tabucchi, does have a new collection of short stories coming out next month, and with grace and fortune I’ll be able to purchase it without issue.

Of course the seven books chosen for this round—and why—will be disclosed below:

(i)                 Han Kang – “Human Acts,”

(ii)               Han Kang – “The White Book,”

(iii)             Annie Ernaux – “The Years,”

(iv)             Jacques Poulin – “Autumn Rounds,”

(v)               Patrick Modiano – “Paris Nocturne,”

(vi)             Ersi Sotiropoulos – “What’s Left of the Night,”

(vii)           Olga Tokarczuk – “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,”

There is no denying Korean literature is finding its steadfast foothold in the English language and other foreign markets, in large part thanks to the Korean governments grants and investments. Publishers all over took immediate advantage of the grants and financial assistance to bring Korean writers and their works into new markets and languages. Dalkey Archive Press is one of the major examples of this, their series: “Library of Korean Literature,” has twenty-seven titles under its banner, which includes novels and short stories from a multitude of writers. It should come to no surprise other publishers took advantage of the opportunity including: Granta Books, Deep Vellum Publishing, Open Letter, and White Pine Press. Ko Un the famous Korean poet, no longer held the exclusive monopoly on the market, as the sole Korean writer available to be read and reviewed. Soon he was competing with other writes such as: Bae Suah, Hwang Sok-yong, Yi Mun-yol, Kim Hyesoon, Eun Heekyung, Kim Yi-deum; and of course: Han Kang.

I’ve sampled a few books from Korean writers over the past couple of years and have researched others. Bae Suah has had the most sample and review with two novels. Her work is striking, autodidactic, and refreshingly strange, making her the dark horse of contemporary Korean literature. Eun Heekyung is more linear by comparison, her stories and novels are socially topical, meticulously crafted rather than expansively abstract, and cynically observe and criticize contemporary Korean society. Yet despite these two writers, they were completely eclipsed by another. Han Kang continually circled above. She won large literary prizes, including the Man Booker International Prize with her novel: “The Vegetarian.” The following year she was shortlisted again for her personal and strange novel “The White Book.” She became a bestseller, and was sought after for reviews and interviews. There was little another author could do in order to compete.  Yet, comparisons would be made between Bae Suah and Han Kang. The two authors began their debuts around the same time and have made the largest impacts in the English market. Bae Suah gained notoriety when she was longlisted for “The Best Translated Book Award,” in two-thousand and sixteen for her novel “Nowhere to Be Found.” The novel was praised for its striking juxtapositions, stream of consciousness surrealism, and its budding interest in experimenting with narrative. Since then, more and more of her experimental works were published, ensuring Bae Suah was known as a vivid force of uncanny literature reigning from (South) Korea.

On the flipside, Han Kang, is considered less daring and experimental then Bae Suah. Her novels are equally as surreal, socially critical and observant, but they do not jar and juxtapose; unsettle and eviscerate. Rather they gracefully meander through the passages with emotional intensity, rather than the cerebral vigor employed by Bae Suah. Han Kang, however, has received greater success then Bae Suah. When she won the “Man Booker International Prize,” for her novel: “The Vegetarian,” Han Kang, became a striking success. All over readers clamored to read the novel, which had been described as poignant surreal novel addressing our unique times. From there, Han Kang’s subsequent works: “Human Acts,” and “The White Book,” were received with warm and favourable reviews. She is considered a writer of powerful emotional intensity, with an acute eye for social commentary and reconciliation, and graceful precise prose.

Of course, with no surprise, the immediate success of Han Kang played against her, for me as a reader. I didn’t want to follow the immediate reactions of others, and decided to let the waters settle before I decided to read her work. Now they have certainly settled, and I reviewed her three books currently translated into English: “The Vegetarian,” “Human Acts,” and “The White Book.” When I researched and read about each one, I knew immediately “Human Acts,” would entice me with its discussion of political protests and uprising and subsequent violence. This treatise and testament discussing power and authority as well as revolt and resistance, would fit in with my usual reading interests and habits. I probed and pondered “The Vegetarian,” with muted interest, deciding to forgo it for now; while “The White Book,” piqued my interested for its unique premise, before ensnaring me in its poetic language and reflective passages. Through it all though, it’s the works that as of yet have not been translated into English (such as her short stories) that interest me the most in author, which each vary in length or format or narrative, they all maintain the delicate gentleness, austere atmosphere, and keen predilection towards narrating and presenting the world in its poetic state of fluctuation between Zen and zeal, to discord and despair.

Many books have already be superficially scanned and considered when they have been inducted on a reading list. From there they casually orbit in a chaotic trajectory, stumbling and staggering into each other, before retreating to the wings and the peripherals, until the cycle continues and they fling themselves forward for consideration and rumination. Others, however, are not always initially conceived on the list, whereby they seek chance and opportunity. Rather they boldly come to ones attention through other haphazard means and measures. Annie Ernaux is one such writer.

I am sure Annie Ernaux has come to my attention on a multitude of different occasions, and each time there was a failure in connecting and registering. As a writer, Annie Ernaux is famous for her personalized memoires, diaries, and autobiographical fictional accounts. She is considered one of the greatest writers in the French language, and is praised by critics, academics and readers as an unflinching recorder and documenter of society over the past half century. Despite this she never registered. Perhaps it’s the format? There is something discomforting about publishing what is generally regarded as private and personal. In today’s world they are but discretionary terms, as people everywhere confess and rejoice in their liberating freedom of ‘sharing.’ Yet, the notion carries connotations of self-absorption and narcissism, along with a dose of histrionics. Meaning, no matter how many times Annie Ernaux was introduced and reintroduced, the associations surrounding her output and format would be deemed distasteful.

Yet as this years “Man Booker International Prize,” released its longlist and shortlist, happened to change my mind as I did a quick overview of the candidates nominated. There is no denying Ernaux had made an immediate impression. Critics and readers alike where singing praise for her unique memoir, which has been deemed her magnum opus in France, and had been compared to Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” due to its forceful exposition on time, history, age, and memory. Further research revealed, that Ernaux eschewed the highly personalized first person narrative discourse, in favour of objective and mercurial ‘one,’ or at times the third person perspective of ‘she,’—while in English this has been translated as a plural chorus of ‘we,’ ‘us,’ and the peppered  perspective of ‘she.’ Furthermore, Annie Ernaux only uses the personal or the private, as a vantage point, and anchor to the passage of time taking place throughout the work. The goal is not to document the personal or share the private, rather the immediate objective is to provide a social commentary as the world changes, from the perspective of the ghostly unknown narrator, only alluded to being Annie Ernaux herself.

In this Annie Ernaux writes beyond the entrapping pitfalls of memoires and autofiction, due to her discourse being more societal in dissection and discussion, rather than exposing and exploiting the cheap sentiments of emotional trivialities with tabloid sensationalism. The fact that she writes about sociological issues, showcases the changing societal values and ideals, provides palpable political presentations, all distilled through the private viewpoint of a curious, observer, moves the narrative beyond just another memoir. In return it becomes a codified decree and testament, encapsulated as a palpated record for the future, showcasing the progression and evolution of sociological standards of the time, through their routine discourse of history. Now that, Gentle Reader, interests me. In this my immediate distance turned to interest. Annie Ernaux is not a panhandling pauper, seeking pity through penance, and in return absolution. She’s scribe positioned to document, record, and archive the experiences, progresses, and evolutions of the personal, the immediate, and society, with a resistant pen against the passage of time, the decaying futility of mortality, and the eroding whiplash of the sands of history, in order to erect the monument of what has been as an exemplary understanding of where to continue. In this, Annie Ernaux shares the same space with authors such as: Herta Müller or Svetlana Alexievich. Müller for instance, took her own experiences and perspectives from life in Ceaușescu’s Communist Romania, and created striking narratives that depicted the land of the dispossessed, recounted the horrors and the paranoia, the rampant disenfranchisement, disillusionment, and the destructive power of ideologies, political corruption, and social exploitation of language, to create a portrait of a world now lost to history, due to the little supporting information with regards to the mundane, everyday banalities of life behind the iron curtain. It is thanks to Herta Müller’s pixelated poetic language and experiences that the lost is not forgotten, and remains relevant. Svetlana Alexievich is the ear and oral historian of the gritty and shadowy world of the former Soviet Union. Alexievich does not just review the documents, the reports of the incidents or life; she seeks the find the seeds and stories of the people who lived and experienced the times. Their stories are riddled with the disordered complications of life: war, nuclear disaster, political oppression et cetera—but in each one beats the human heart, unchanging, unwavering, and unapologetic in every circumstance. In this Svetlana Alexievich is able to listen to, record and document the unsung heroes and stories of those who lived through the times, providing a complete overview of a society through its population. Annie Ernaux is much the same: an observer of the times and society, who with a personal perspective and a steady hand recounts the times.

The four remaining authors are not new here. Each of them has two or more books read and reviewed. Despite this, they are still enjoyable authors and their returns, with a new book is eagerly anticipated. Jacques Poulin, for example, is no stranger here. I’ve read three of his novels:

(i)                 “Mister Blue,” – First read in 2012

(ii)               “Wild Cat,” – First read in 2014

(iii)             “Spring Tides,” – First read in 2015

I’ve enjoyed them all the same and for their own reason. “Mister Blue,” and “Spring Tides,” are both published by the amazing: Archipelago Books. While “Wild Cat,” is published by Cormorant Books, who also published the newest acquisition: “Autumn Rounds.” The covers of both “Wild Cat,” and “Autumn Rounds,” are what originally drew me to both. “Wild Cat,” is deeply blue—almost indigo in colour; and in the middle of it, sits a small box, which inside shows the golden hour through a window with a cat gazing outside. “Autumn Rounds,” swings to the opposite end of the spectrum: a deep burgundy, framing a small square opening to a misty autumnal day on a country road, ubiquitous and easily forgettable. Jacques Poulin is one those undervalued and under stated writers. His work is minimalist in style with an added homage and admiration to Hemmingway in may circumstances. Yet his prose is more airy then bare bones. He teases the tropes of sentimentality and melodrama, like a cat toys with a mouse before killing it with instinctual amusement or growing bored of the hunt. Yet his work is a particular flavour, which echoes in the back of one’s mind now and then. After seeing that Archipelago Books was seeking to print “Autumn Rounds,” again in the near future, I decided I needed to procure this version. After finally finding a affordable volume—some were asking for a hundred plus dollars—I quickly scooped up my used copy (which is in wonderful shape), and am ready to devour it. It’ll be nice to enter the minimal airy world of Poulin again, where there is the inclination all is possible, but it nothing mystical or magical or supernatural happens, but the threat exists, before submerging into the impossible once again.

Patrick Modiano could not possibly be considered a new name either! How many books have been read and reviewed(?) ten. If so he is the most read and reviewed Nobel Laureate in Literature on this blog—if only due to the volume his work is translated into English. Though of all the Nobel Laureates in Literature of recent memory, Patrick Modiano, is perhaps one of my favourites alongside, Herta Müller. His novels are not huge, the prose is minimalist and simple, his narratives and plots are almost always tracing and retracing the same ground, the anamnestic wastelands, the unreliability of one’s self, the duplicity of others, the short comings of life, disappearing people, absent parents, and disappointment—all wrapped up in the austere noir atmosphere. Another Patrick Modiano novel added to set is never a poor reading venture. He’s always delivered, and adding another ‘chapter,’ to his oeuvre spanning novel is always a welcomed prospect.

Ersi Sotiropoulos is an author who I find is under translated. Her first collection of stories translated into English “Landscape with Dog,” was a unique collection of stories, showing her powers as a author, one who quickly showed a keen interest in dissecting and vivisecting the traditional and conventional notions of human relationships. She pulled back the skin to reveal the sinew, muscles. Pulling further she strummed the tendons, and splayed the nerves. She removed organs for immediate inspection. She showed the complete failure for people to conduct meaningful communication, and presented the unique quiet lives of her characters as prone to immediate changes in temperament, connection and meaning. Her prose is riddled with surgeon’s precision, as she acutely depicts the changing landscape of her characters, showcasing just the slightest environmental change—be it light or scenery—can immediately render the familiar into the foreign. “What’s Left of the Night,” appears to move in a different trajectory, this time recounting the three days of the modernist homosexual Greek poet Constantine Cavaf in Paris. The novel I hope, will blend the stylistic precision of Ersi Sotiropoulos’s already noted work, with the historical imaginings of the days of the Greek poet, while also being a lesson in character development, depiction, as well as historical lesson in the private and personal poetry, of a poet otherwise unknown.

The last author is none other than: Olga Tokarczuk, a personal favourite. I first had the pleasure of reading Tokarczuk in two-thousand and thirteen with: “Primeval and Other Times.” I fondly remember the novel, as being bright and baroque, as it provided the account of the residents of the small Polish village Primeval through the latter half of the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. It was written in Tokarczuk’s famous fragmented consciousness prose, and had was riddled with an ensemble cast of characters, each one eccentric, troubled, and bound to their own fate all the same. It was a riot of a read! I enjoyed the first half with an overjoyed pleasure. Even now it’s easy to imagine the world of primeval with its hermetic mayor huddled away from the world, playing a divine game; or the river that overflowed every spring, much the priests irritation; or the abandoned Cornspike wandering to get food from whoever had any to spare; or the woman gone mad with alcohol and anger, who would shout at the moon with her pack of dogs. “Primeval and Other Times,” is not considered Olga Tokarczuk’s breakthrough novel, despite it being a beautiful baroque romp, showcasing the authors unique prose, her use of multilayered narratives and perspectives, and her ability to provide psychological and philosophical insight through the use of anecdotes, dialogue, and Jungian symbolism. Rather, it was her most recently published novel “Flights,” which gained Olga Tokarczuk immediate attention in the English language. “Flights,” or in Polish, Bieguni, was a major with the reading public, winning the “Nike Award,” and was considered a masterful example of Tokarczuk’s fragmented prose and episodic consciousness. The novel details through vignettes, excursions, discussions, tangents and deviations, all recount the idea of traveling in its numerous fashions—literal and metaphorical. There is no denying it was a immediate marvelous novel; but “Primeval and Other Times,” remains special, for its simple baroque beauty, its own treasured hide way, that remains mine alone on the bookshelf, where I tantalizing go to re-read once again, but find myself frightened at the idea of trespassing the grounds once again. What if the solicited response is altered or muted, will it destroy the memory? With trepidation it is always placed back on the shelf, restricted from rereading in the immediate future.

For the meantime, “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” will have to sate ones appetite. In her native Poland, ““Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” caused a minor controversy with some, who believed, Olga Tokarczuk advocated for the vigilante killing poachers and hunters, and the zealotry for ecological terrorism. Of course the critics missed the point, as they often do.  Olga Tokarczuk merely wished to discuss the concept of how people treat animals, and affect the environment with little to no thought of the consequences. It’s a novel of green perspectives, imbued with the playful postmodern use of genres—specifically mysteries and suspense—coupled with the proliferation of astrology, Jungian psychology, and a pinch of mysticism for interesting effect.

I look forward to reading these books in the coming months, Gentle Reader, and expressing my experience of each of them in reviews. I am excited to read each of them with bitter sweet enjoyment, and cherish the experience whole heartedly. For now though, we wait for them to arrive, and once they do begin the experience only reading can offer. Aferall: The Greatest Time Spent is With a Book.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary