Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

[you]

I got it yesterday, last night I read the first 50 odd pages. Yeah, memory loss, memory erosion through constant details... I like the slow meandering from one notion to another, makes the content or the images just wash over me, maybe I wasnt concentrating, but every now and then after a passage like, say, p32-36, the memory of the smell of soap reminding him of such and such who used to do..... and that actually sounded like but when he was aboy etc etc....

I havent expressed myself very well, this is possibly the worst book for trying to flip through to find a part one liked. *sigh*

Or on page 4 or 5- in the station after the zoo, he writes of the idea of zoos in stations because zoos so often have tiny trains and railways, and because of this idea he looks at the staff canteen ( which used to be a waiting room ) which reminds him of the Nocturama...

I guess to me its kinda "meta" in that the details within the narrative through these meandering thoughts mean I drift and forget as much as the narrator?????? Kinda meta....... ( whats that word? )

There does seem to be a snowballing of detail, slowly fading any narrative past or history, but maybe im just not used to his writing yet, i dunno...

Maybe of interest

Its at the tate britain

The Printed Path
Landscape, Walking and Recollection
Saturday 29 September 2007, 10.00–17.00
If ‘place’ is the settling of history onto landscape, is everywhere, in some sense, imprinted with memories of the past? Taking the late German-born writer WG Sebald as their guide, artists and writers consider our relationship to place and its recollection. This event includes key contributions from Marina Warner and Iain Sinclair, amongst others, as well as films, readings and other interventions from artists Tacita Dean, Alec Finlay and Simon Pope. Curated by Jeremy Millar and Steven Bode.

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/symposia/9972.htm
K-punk is talking at it in september as he mentioned on his blog.

 

[Mr. Tea]

i am only about 40 pages in and i am colossally bored... i will stick w/ it, but i am not quite seeing the point yet...

There's a distinct lack of gaint-robots-destroying-Neo-Tokyo, I'll give you that.

 

[IdleRich]

"i am only about 40 pages in and i am colossally bored... i will stick w/ it, but i am not quite seeing the point yet..."

Well, I hope you stick with it but I have to say that I fear for your overall enjoyjment. I guess the nature of democracy is that you are going to end up with a compromise and someone might hate the chosen book.

 

[Dial]

"Yes it is beautiful. Allow me to to be a little contrarian, though, and say that like much of the book it teeters on the edge of being poetry prose cheese."

Well, a sentence like that one I just quoted is bound to walk that line but I think it came down on the right side of it on that occasion.

Yes, as I noted, the style suffers when taken out of its flow. Lack of paragraphs, punctuation, and so forth a significant aspect of a well turned whole. Point being that, it is without doubt carefully constructed as a whole.

"At bottom, dare I say, its hugely indulgent."

Who is being indulged? That's not reall a feeling I got at all.

Ah, you're right, really. I was thinking self indulgence/depression/ back on my 'quietist' bag. For now, at least, I'll grant that I'm being a bit simple minded.

And I certainly think these are worth consideration

Memory, Loss, History

 

[IdleRich]

"Ah, you're right, really. I was thinking self indulgence/depression/ back on my 'quietist' bag. For now, at least, I'll grant that I'm being a bit simple minded."

I mean, I guess that you could argue that Austerlitz character is self-indulgent and wallows in sadness (whereas some might see him as uncomplainingly and unflinchingly accepting and describing his life) but that sentence I linked to was from some minor characters in a scene where you just get a brief insight in to a tiny part of their life through the eyes of a child. I found that the small images you get of them suggested a whole life that was somehow desperately sad for unexplained reasons although presumably to do with a lack of emotional warmth. That's why I was asking who was being indulged.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I was flicking through the bits of the book I haven't read yet to look at the photographs and came to the photo of the author on the inside of the back cover, with the dates "1944-2001" under it. Somehow it seemed to increase the poignancy for me to know that he died the year the book was published. Now I'm half-expecting Austerlitz himself to die at the end of the book. (Please don't say anything, those who've finished it.)

 

[you]

Quite liking this book really, its kinda growing on me.

I really liked the moth story Austerlitz recalled, about how a moth could stray from the group and find itself in a room clinging to a door till death, I thought it was a wonderful metaphor for Austerlitz later recollection of his seizing up in London remembering his upbringing in wales..... good stuff, I also thought it was a great parallel for his thoughts about people and time and how the sick, the dead, the wounded live outside of time and its structure.... when he goes on about time being the most absurd of all human inventions it really reminded me of the sentiments expressed in Vonneguts "slaughterhouse 5" how time is an invention, and people are not nessesarily in time but create time for themselves....... so the sick and depressed live without time away from the flock who build time for themselves...... again going back to the moths analogy/Austerlitz's seizure in London whilst remembering his upbringing etc etc.

yeah.

 

[jenks]

I also like the way that revelation does not bring relief. When he has his breakdown I am not sure if it is weight of what he has learnt about his parents or his inability to connect. He spends so much time disassociated, he is out of the time, unsentimental yet plagued by the feeling of what he has lost, had removed from him.

I've got thirty pages to go and have really got into it, purposely taking it slowly to savour it.

The other thing is the way the structure of the novel appears to rough and baggy but is actually a well wrought thing. Seemingly random excursions ending up being metaphors (the moth thay You describes above is a good example). I like the way that the defence buildings at teh beginning keep cropping up, becoming more sinister each time they appear, like a symphonic leitmotif.

What do we think of the pictures? Those ones from Theresienstadt of doors - portals even.

Anyway, I am aware that we are all at different stages so I'm trying not to put spoilers in here - can't wait we can talk about it unhindered!

 

[you]

Yes - the moth clinging to the wall, out of time, away from his flock is a great metaphor for Austerlitz'z place before his breakdown.

The homing pidgeons are also a wondeful metaphor, that no matter what happens, you could release them in fog in the north sea ( read bala ) and they would still return to their home.

The more I think about this book, the more time I spend inbetween readings the more metaphors and leitmotives crop up. At first i just thought all the small snippets of trivia were exercises in expressing how time and place are such a subjective and transient thing but more and more I realise that they are this but also powerful metaphors for Austerlitz...

Jenks - the defense buildings! Shit, your so right, all his interest in architecture is a defense, his academia is part and parcel of his defense, then while hes trying to put together his study ( on architecture ) it all falls apart, because, like he said, they all have weakpoints and by the time the structure is built another weakness is also born....

Its interesting stuff, i think im getting more out of it than I would without the group.

 

[jenks]

Its interesting stuff, i think im getting more out of it than I would without the group.

I totally agree - also you've expressed the idea about the buildings so much better than me!!

 

[IdleRich]

You two are both making really good points that I wouldn't have been able to make. I like your comments Jenks about savouring the book. I think I understand what you mean in the sense that I can't think of anything I've read that is so beautifully written and where it's a pleasure just to read a few lines regardless of where that takes you in the narrative. I remember when The Line of Beauty came out everyone I knew who read it spent ages talking about the quality of the writing but I couldn't really see exactly what they were getting at, however if someone was to make the same points about this book I would (and in translation too! How is that possible?). On the other hand I can sympathise with PeterGun to some exent, if you are not enjoying the style in which the book is written then I think it's a hard book to get excited about. I think what I mean is I could very much understand that if you weren't on the right wavelength then you might hate it.
Mr Tea what are you thinking so far? Your criticisms of Jane Austen could equally well apply to this book but you voted for it so I hope you are enjoying it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Hi Rich,
yeah, I'm really digging it. If you'll forgive the pun, it struck me that both the protagonist (such as he is) and the book itself could almost be called 'Austere-litz' - although, having said that, the prose is often incredibly rich and evocative, it's just that the inner world it describes seems very austere.

Edit: my slagging off of Austen comes from having to read (never a good start) Mansfield Park and finding the 'heroine' the most unengaging, unlikable character I've probably ever come across in a novel. I'm finding Austerlitz (the character) very interesting.

 

[IdleRich]

" If you'll forgive the pun, it struck me that both the protagonist (such as he is) and the book itself could almost be called 'Austere-litz'"

But would that pun work in German? When I read his name the first thing that came in to my head was Auschwitz.

 

[jenks]

Was thinking about his name. Obviously the battle itself - Napoleon as The Sun of Austerlitz - the acme of achievement and this is seeminly ironic because our Austerlitz is so far from being a man of great achievement. But he is the Son of Austerlitz and the novel ends very much with this in mind.

Austerlitz as a historical place is of course in The Czech Republic, not that far south of Brno and this would give his character a reason for the name but it is a grand name - theatrical even. (fitting with his mother)

Finally, of course it is a station in Paris and that seems to fit with all the references to train travel - kindertransport, the revelation at Liverpool Street, Wilson station in Prague, the journey through Germany which allows for the epiphany and connection with childhood.

I am at work and just musing aloud really, i have afeeling that this thread is about to really get going.

 

[IdleRich]

"Finally, of course it is a station in Paris"

I didn't know that but what you are saying makes sense.

 

[Mr. Tea]

But would that pun work in German? When I read his name the first thing that came in to my head was Auschwitz.

I heard that the popular stereotype of the Germans as humourless comes from the very precise, analytical nature of their language (in contrast to English, which is a jerry-rigged pidgin by comparison) which doesn't allow much by way of puns, double-entendre and all the intentional misunderstandings that so much of English humour depends on.

When we're not giggling about farts and poo, of course.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Started reading the book yesterday and was impressed by the author's efficient boredom-off-staving ingenuity in polishing off another page for his novel by listing what he can see out of the window whilst on the train from his lecturing job in Norwich to whatever academic function he had to attend in London. Excellent killing-two-birds-with-one-stone-ism.

 

[John Doe]

But would that pun work in German? When I read his name the first thing that came in to my head was Auschwitz.

And I think there, in a nutshell, you've hit the central meaning - and the method - of the novel bang on the head IR...

Anyway, I'm happilly immersed in the novel now (third or fourth reading since it was published) and look forward to taking up the discussion of its meaning(s) when we've all completed our reading of the text.

Very encouraged, though, that so many posters are enjoying the work.

Name drop corner: I met Sebald, in a glancing fashion, once or twice when I was at UEA doing my post-grad. Lovely fella. Although he did have a disturbing resemblance to Pinnochio's father in the Disney cartoon. My friend Virginia used to call him 'The Evil Toymaker' and I really knew what she meant

 

[IdleRich]

"And I think there, in a nutshell, you've hit the central meaning - and the method - of the novel bang on the head IR..."

What, you think it's a deliberately similar name that is supposed to kind of snag on your sub-conscious and suggest the spectre that overhangs the whole book?
Edit: and that that is being applied throughout the book to suggest a variety of ideas and feelings that remain as hints?

 

[John Doe]

What, you think it's a deliberately similar name that is supposed to kind of snag on your sub-conscious and suggest the spectre that overhangs the whole book?
Edit: and that that is being applied throughout the book to suggest a variety of ideas and feelings that remain as hints?

What, you think it's a deliberately similar name that is supposed to kind of snag on your sub-conscious and suggest the spectre that overhangs the whole book?
Edit: and that that is being applied throughout the book to suggest a variety of ideas and feelings that remain as hints?

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). I think the text is all about language and naming actually - what can be articulated, what is left unsaid or is rendered unsayable (culturally, individually, historically) via the abstract forces of history and power. I think the novel traces a certain 'dialectic of enlightenment' in Adorno and Horkeheimer's meaning (ie all attempts to foster progress, civilization etc often, if not always, equally create disaster/death/destruction). If there's one central metaphor which underlies Sebald's writing - in The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn as well as Austerlitz - I'd argue its Walter Benjamin's dictum that 'There is not one document of civilization which isn't, at one and the same time, a document of barbarism' (a factor that figures most vividly in the opening chapters in the narrator and Austerlitz's reflections on Antwerp railway station and its relationship with the time when Belgium was imperially raping the Congo). 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. There's a certain Lacanian logic at work in the choice of title, and in its polysemy (ie Austerlitiz is a place, a battle, a 'proper' name that is lost then recovered, but it also gestures toward other words, other historical events which can be perceived, albeit in a shadowy and somewhat indistinct sense). That's why the novel is also driven by a binary relationship of blindness & insight - the suggestive opening images of the nocturama and the picture of the pair of eyes that prompt the reflection about 'the fixed inquiring gaze foundin certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking'. The narrator, when he meets Austerlitz in the Great Eastern Hotel for the first time in 20 years has visitied London because of an occlusion in his sight - and thorughout the text things seem to fall briefly into focus before being lost again in shadow...

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...