Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

[Mr. Tea]

Anyway, I'm knocking these remarks off quick at work and i'm not sure they entirely add up... but I think two questions are very revealing about the book: why the rather distinctive narrative technique; and what function do readers think the photographs play in and with the text? As I say, I look forward to kicking all these ideas around a little later when we've all read the book...

I (very briefly) mentioned these two pages ago - well, not so much the narrative technique as the actual visual layout of the book. Which is part of the technique even so, I guess.
I think it adds to the sense Rich mentioned of claustrophobia or mutedness, as if his voice in inside your head as opposed to being spoken by him and heard by you.

 

[John Doe]

I (very briefly) mentioned these two pages ago - well, not so much the narrative technique as the actual visual layout of the book. Which is part of the technique even so, I guess.
I think it adds to the sense Rich mentioned of claustrophobia or mutedness, as if his voice in inside your head as opposed to being spoken by him and heard by you.

Yeah, know what you mean... I think that's because, as one reads, you're not really aware of who, precisely, is speaking at any one time (in the sense of a grounded, centred subject performing discrete and identifiable, speech acts - or dialogue - as in a classic realist text). There's a whole discursive action at work - often, if you map the layers of discourse, you find a named character, who is/has spoken to Austerlitz, who is now relating the contents of that conversation to the narrator who is relaying it to us, the reader...

 

[you]

And Harry Potter is on the syllabus for GCSE now!

This book is so fully formed and progressed I seem to find links between all things. Me and jenks went on about the metaphors a while back, but even this seems part of a metaform/structure.. The metaphors of gazing, shadows and darkness can also relate to the narration and also to hisorical recording... that its subjective, so any wonderful recollection of an opulent period probably does have albeit in the shadows, outside of the subjective pov a dark and possibly violent side.

Kinda stabbing wildly here, but its just a thought..... with all these metaphors and the awareness of a subjective recollection etc etc do you think the book opporates through a sneaky limbo of metaphorical subjective narrative and promting the unconcious...so that tugs the unconcious into 'feeling' the other side of the story/ history?? So the Austerlitz puns and multiple meanings idea pretty much sums up the book very well indeed!

So to me its like a micheal moore or adam curtis documentary ( very subjective, having an opinion ) but with subliminal images flashing through it, hinting, drawing the unconcious connections out so that the real story/history, or rather the other side of the tale/history is kind of felt at the same time....

 

[John Doe]

A
So to me its like a micheal moore or adam curtis documentary ( very subjective, having an opinion ) but with subliminal images flashing through it, hinting, drawing the unconcious connections out so that the real story/history, or rather the other side of the tale/history is kind of felt at the same time....

Yeah, quite, although the M Moore/Adam Curtis approach to structure is framed as an essay - ie non-fictional, subjective (and thus very much the product of a centred, grounded, speaking subject). Austerlitz, I think, seeks not only to undermine but almost to invert this structure - the uncertain, ungrounded vocalisation, the foregrounding of language as structure (and thus how the structuring of language determines our 'experience' of the world, and thus 'the world' itself). It is a profoundly decentred text - which brings me neatly to a passage I literally finished at lunch time:
"Ashman and HIlary, Iver Grove and Andromeda Lodge, whatever my thoughts turn to, said Austerlitz as we descended the darkening grassy slopes of the park to the city lights which had now come in a wide semi-circle before us, it all arouses in me a sense of disjunction, of having no ground beneath my feet."

F*cking cool stuff, whatever way you want to look at it...

 

[you]

I was kinda meaning the narrators recollection ( within the story, true, non-fiction ) of things Austerlitz has said, so rather sebalds structuring is kinda like what I said and that ( admittly confusing ) analogy. To my mind anyway. But Austerlitz, yeah, a total inversion.

Someone HAD to say it : This book works on so many levels!

There we are, i said it.

 

[IdleRich]

"Yes, I think you've put it brilliantly there with the spectre metaphor - the title is chosen quite deliberately for its resonances and suggestions of 'Aushwitz' (and thus the whole Holocaust). "

Thank you - although as I wrote that I have to admit I was thinking "I hope that phrase isn't too much of a lazy cliche" but it seemed to fit and I couldn't think of anything better off the top of my head. I suppose I meant spectre in the way that although the holocaust is made explicit it is never made explicitly horrible in the way that it is in a million other novels, factual books, films, documentaries and accounts. However, because you have heard all those other accounts it doesn't need to be done explicitly here, the things unsaid are always present just off the page and that is what I meant by a spectre. I suppose I meant to express the presence of some kind of ghost that you can never quite grasp although it is, nevertheless, there.

"Genoicide is never far away from much of the reflection/observation that occurs in the novel - but I think the novel is concerned with how such phenomena realize themselves, are figured in structures (be they concrete, like Antwerp railway station, or more abstract in writing, painting, stories & other traces inscribed by and in history."

True but it's never quite as close as you might expect either. I think that's what I was trying to say.

"There's a whole discursive action at work - often, if you map the layers of discourse, you find a named character, who is/has spoken to Austerlitz, who is now relating the contents of that conversation to the narrator who is relaying it to us, the reader..."

Yes, I mentioned this earlier. This sometimes feels quite clumsy though, do you think this is deliberate or to do with the translation or what?

 

[IdleRich]

Just walked past Foyles on Charing X Road and noticed that they've got Austerlitz in the window on some kind of promotion or something - they must have their ear to the ground and be anticipating the interest generated by this thread.

 

[John Doe]

This sometimes feels quite clumsy though, do you think this is deliberate or to do with the translation or what?

I don't find it clumsy at all. And it's quite deliberate I think - a strategy of foregrounding the speaking voice how the many levels of discourse within the text merge together.

 

[IdleRich]

"I don't find it clumsy at all. And it's quite deliberate I think - a strategy of foregrounding the speaking voice how the many levels of discourse within the text merge together."

I guess I mean the way that you can read a lot of paragraphs where almost every line ends "said Vera, said Austerlitz". Maybe it's not the (macro)technique that is clumsy - and it does seem to fit in with the already mentioned distancing - but the execution I found jarred the flow of those sentences.
I'm not really sure what you mean with the second bit.

 

[John Doe]

I guess I mean the way that you can read a lot of paragraphs where almost every line ends "said Vera, said Austerlitz". Maybe it's not the (macro)technique that is clumsy - and it does seem to fit in with the already mentioned distancing - but the execution I found jarred the flow of those sentences.
I'm not really sure what you mean with the second bit.

No, I didn't express myself clearly at all. I was trying not to use the word diegesis - but I think the whole novel works continually via hypodiegesis ie the narrator (one level of discourse) reports what he has heard, in conversation, from Austerlitz (hypo-diegesis, or a secondary diegetic level) who in turn often reports what he himself has heard from a secondary character (or, to put it technically hypo- hypo- diegesis) who might, in turn be reporting something they've heard... Such a technique makes it hard to distinguish at which narrative 'level' we're at (which again I think is entirely deliberate and very artfully achieved). As I say, at times, the speaking subject, as such, dissolves entirely into discourse - it is the language of the text which 'speaks' not some ficitonal construct one can identify as a 'character'. For a novel concerned so much with language, it achieves, formally, what it thematises (ie there is no 'behind' to the language, there is little beyond or outside the signifier). Seabald obviously knew his Roland Barthes very well and was very much influenced by him - evidenced also in the secondary text of the photographs/pictures which puncture the text and set up intriguing and complex relationships with the words on the page...

 

[you]

Wow, john doe, thats a really great post.

EDIT, Jenks - this is what you wanted a real discussion about a book, Im really pleased this has happened.

 

[IdleRich]

"No, I didn't express myself clearly at all. I was trying not to use the word diegesis"

That's a constant problem for me as well.

"I think the whole novel works continually via hypodiegesis ie the narrator (one level of discourse) reports what he has heard, in conversation, from Austerlitz (hypo-diegesis, or a secondary diegetic level) who in turn often reports what he himself has heard from a secondary character (or, to put it technically hypo- hypo- diegesis) who might, in turn be reporting something they've heard... Such a technique makes it hard to distinguish at which narrative 'level' we're at (which again I think is entirely deliberate and very artfully achieved)."

Sure, I would totally agree with that. That's kind of what I meant about the macro-technique of different levels (as you put it) being a good one. I just thought that sometimes the actual way that technique was realised was not so elegantly done. Possibly deliberately, possibly not, that's what I was asking about.

"at times, the speaking subject, as such, dissolves entirely into discourse - it is the language of the text which 'speaks' not some ficitonal construct one can identify as a 'character'."

Think I'd pretty much agree with that as well.

"Seabald obviously knew his Roland Barthes very well and was very much influenced by him"

Maybe so but I don't.

"evidenced also in the secondary text of the photographs/pictures which puncture the text and set up intriguing and complex relationships with the words on the page..."

You mentioned the pictures before. I'm interested to know their significance, no-one has really nailed it for me yet.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think the photographs would make more 'sense' if the text were being narrated directly by Austerlitz himself: then they'd go along with the kind of internal-monologue feel of the writing, being the images shown to us (the reader) as he himself sees them. But it's problematic as we're getting a second-hand accound from the narrator.

 

[IdleRich]

"But it's problematic as we're getting a second-hand accound from the narrator."

Well sometimes they are just what the narrator sees... although I agree, sometimes it's what Austerlitz describes.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well sometimes they are just what the narrator sees... although I agree, sometimes it's what Austerlitz describes.

Oh yeah, I suppose it is - like the animal's eyes at the very beginning - suppose I'd forgotten about that as I'm at the bit where he (Austerlitz) is travelling around the Czech Republic, seeing things that the narrator obviously doesn't see. Then there's the various London scenes that both of them presumably know well.

 

[jenks]

Wow, john doe, thats a really great post.

EDIT, Jenks - this is what you wanted a real discussion about a book, Im really pleased this has happened.

Just catching up with the thread after a day away from the computer - big smile on my face. Will jump in when i have digested the comments.

BTW - Walter Benjamin - what should i read that isn't absolutely enormous and difficult?

 

[John Doe]

Just catching up with the thread after a day away from the computer - big smile on my face. Will jump in when i have digested the comments.

BTW - Walter Benjamin - what should i read that isn't absolutely enormous and difficult?

Just read the essays collected in Illuminations - particulary 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and 'Theses on the Philosophy of HIstory'. He's a pretty accessible writer, even if he can make the occassional gnomic pronouncement...

Edit: I'm formulating a couple of thoughts on the role the photographs/pictures play in and with and throughout the text... Will post 'em soon enough...

 

[Immryr]

i just got myself a copy of this, i havent been reading the thread so as not to spoil it!

 

[Mr. Tea]

i just got myself a copy of this, i havent been reading the thread so as not to spoil it!

Don't worry, the bit where the sexy Russian spy he's falling in love with turns out to be the daughter of the man who killed his father in the rooftop fight scene at the beginning is aaaaages away...

 

[Indigo]

Books for the club

I haven't popped my head in for a while. I like this bookclub idea.
How about these titles:

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The Girl with the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Known World by Edward P. Jones