A Couple Of (Metaphorical) Big Guns

The German language has produced thirteen Nobel prizes in literature so far, behind only English and French, and today's post celebrates two of those Teutonic laureates, in what could be described as skillful planning on my part, but which would be more accurately described as blind luck and quick thinking - enjoy ;)

*****
First up today is one of my favourite German authors, Heinrich Böll.  He received his prize in 1972, but today's offering, Und sagte kein einziges Wort (And Didn't Say A Word), is one of his earlier offerings.  Set in Cologne in 1950, the book relates two days in the lives of Fred and Käte, a married couple whose recent life together has actually been spent apart.  Unable to cope with living in a cramped single room with three noisy children, Fred has moved out, sending Käte his pay packet each month and occasionally meeting up with her for clandestine dates.  However, Käte has had enough of this demeaning existence, and the events of the weekend force the couple to face up to both their responsibilities and reality.

Post-war blues among the poor is Böll's speciality, and once again he portrays the plight of people going nowhere with a clear, sympathetic and, at times, ironic pen.  He also continues in his attacks on the Catholic church, an organisation which he sees as putting the horse before the cart in its insistence on adherence to doctrine above brotherly love.  By comparing the pomp and ceremony of the church with a procession of pharmacists in town for a convention (the neon signs imploring us to trust in our pharmacist are a particularly deft touch!), Böll pokes fun at an organisation that is perhaps taking itself a bit too seriously.

The book is divided into thirteen chapters written in the first person, alternating between Fred and Käte.  The couple tell us in their own voices about the struggles they face, and it is perhaps more what they tell us about the other than about themselves that gives the reader an insight into their exhausting existence.  With their contrasting ways of coping with the daily grind (Fred lives recklessly, unable to see the point of living; Käte takes each day as a battle, facing up to her enemies, whether they be landladies or dirt...), the question has to be asked: are they actually right for each other?

You'll have to read the book to find out...

*****
Gerhart Hauptmann was honoured sixty years before Böll, but ninety-nine years later I still hadn't got around to reading any of his works (now that's laziness for you!).  That has now changed, mainly thanks to the miracle of free e-texts, as I was able to download a well-known novella - plus an unexpected bonus...

Bahnwärter Thiel is a short novella featuring the aforementioned railway attendant, a gentle giant of a man who loses his first wife while gaining a son.  Unable to continue his work and take care of his child, he marries again, this time for practical purposes rather than love.  As it soon becomes clear that his new wife is less than fond of his son, Thiel is forced to choose between domestic harmony and standing up for his child.  The wrong decision could prove deadly for all involved...

The story, written in the late 1880s, is a beautiful piece of naturalism, its lengthy, elegant descriptions of the woods around Thiel's work hut reminiscent of one of my favourite writers, Thomas Hardy.  The tragic outcome of the tale only strengthens that connection, and in fact Hauptmann was greatly influenced by Hardy's writing.  Thiel could be a Hardy hero, tormented by someone whose presence should make his life more bearable, doomed to an unhappy life despite his able faculties and propensity for hard work.

However, one could argue that it is all his own fault.  The crushing blow he receives is directly related to his failure to face up to his moral dilemma.  In shying away from his duties, he fails himself and his son...  A sad story, but beautiful writing.

*****
The Kindle file showed that Bahnwärter Thiel was 818 sections long, but it actually finished a while before that, leaving a further story to fill the remaining space.  Der Apostel is a short story about a man who walks through the Swiss countryside believing he is an apostle, or even the son of God himself.  Our hero considers himself to be chosen to spread the word of peace, abstaining from conflict and from eating the flesh of animals.  He attracts amazed stares wherever he goes, crowds of children following him through the streets as he walks ever onward...

...at least that's what he tells us.  You see, I'm not entirely convinced that Hauptmann intends the apostle's ramblings to be taken completely at face value.  We never see what is actually happening around our egotistical friend, and I'm tempted to believe that the writer may just be poking fun at his creation.  Of course, I may be very, very wrong (one of the two!).  Whatever the truth is, Der Apostel is an unexpected tale in more ways than one :)

German Literature Month - 'Effi Briest' Read-Along (Part One)

A while back I got a message from Lizzy Siddal, one of the hosts of German Literature Month, asking if I'd read Effi Briest, as she had 'secret plans'.  Of course, that has turned out to be a read-along of what is arguably the most well-known and popular German classic.  I'd previously read two of Thedor Fontane's works, Unwiederbringlich (Irretrievable) and Frau Jenny Treibel (Really? You really want a translation?) - and loved them -, so I was looking forward to cracking open my Hamburger Lesehefte edition and joining in the fun.  The only problem is going to be rationing the reading out over the allotted time...

*****
The novel starts with a detailed description of the Briest house (read mansion) and an even more thorough portrait of the heroine herself.  Effi is a seventeen-year-old, mischievous, playful girl, an attractive young woman who teases one of her friends about her fervent desire for marriage.  It comes then as a surprise to the modern reader to see her engaged in a matter of pages to Geert von Innstetten, a thirty-eight-year-old baron whom Effi first meets at the same time we do - a few hours before the betrothal...

Of course, back in the nineteenth century, this kind of age gap was fairly common (it was the successful career men who could afford to support a family that had the pick of the beautiful young women), and the aristocracy have always been known for putting social mobility over love in arranging suitable (and often quick) marriages.  Even so, the fact that Innstetten is himself the former lover of Effi's mother does it make it that touch more intriguing!

On marrying the Baron, Effi is taken out of her comfort zone, both literally and metaphorically, as she is forced to leave her idyllic family home to move to the Baltic Coast, far from friends and family, surrounded only by cold, disinterested landed gentry.  Once the honeymoon is over, she begins to discover that her husband, while kind and gentlemanly, is slightly self-centred and has little time for the romantic side of marriage, leaving her to her own devices far too often.  For a high-spirited woman like Effi, this probably does not bode well for a long and happy married life.

This alone would probably give our young heroine pause for thought, but she has one more slight problem to contend with.  You see, the house she and her husband share is an old, ramshackle building, much of which is unused.  One night, when Innstetten is away, Effi is startled by what she thinks is a figure gliding through her bedroom - and the day after, she hears stories about the death of a Chinaman who used to live in the town...

*****
You don't need to be psychic to realise that things are unlikely to end well in Effi Briest.  The young couple are patently unsuited to each other, Effi's need for adventure clashing with Innstetten's attention to what other people think, and the slightest catalyst (perhaps in the form of the dashing Major Crampas?) could bring things crashing down around their ears.

But what kind of novel will Effi Briest turn out to be?  After fifteen chapters, I'm still not 100% certain.  Is it a Jane Eyre, with a former wife hidden in the attic?  Is it a new The Mysteries of Udolpho, with villains around every corner?  Or is it another Anna Karenina, where Effi will eventually succumb to the temptation of marital infidelity?  While I have my suspicions, it really could go any way...

One thing I did pick up on though was Effi's repeated comments about her youth and about other people (e.g. Innstetten, Niemeyer the priest) dying before her.  That looks suspiciously like tempting fate to me...  Am I right?  Well, I'm sure things will be a bit clearer by this time next week - happy reading :)

A Rather Masculine Set of Shorts

A while back, I sent a polite e-mail asking if I could get a review copy of Iosi Havilio's Open Door from And Other Stories, a small independent publisher over in the UK.  I got back a polite reply with a request that I accept an e-copy, one I was happy to agree to.  I was even happier when I was sent not only Open Door, but also All the Lights, a collection of short stories by a young German writer called Clemens Meyer - just in time for German Literature Month :)

*****
All the Lights, translated by Katy Derbyshire, contains fifteen stories, mostly set in the poorer Eastern states of Germany.  The protagonists are mainly men whose lives have not quite turned out as they would have expected.  Whether they are in jail, or have spent time there in the past, on the dole, working in a supermarket or living alone in an old damp flat, the protagonists of the tales (it would be a stretch to call them heroes...) have a lot to regret, and (usually) a lot of time in which to do it.

A common theme is life passing us by, or having already passed us by.  In Waiting for South America, Frank is distracted from his empty life by a series of letters from a friend who claims to have struck it lucky and gone off to chase his dreams in the Americas.  Frank's drab existence is contrasted with the glamour described in the letters he receives - although we have our doubts as to the veracity of these claims.

Fatty Loves is an excellent story, showing us an overweight, middle-aged teacher, sitting in his living room reminiscing about his earlier career, and about one student in particular.  When his thoughts start to become a little disturbing though, the reader is forced to analyse their feelings for the teacher and perhaps pass judgement on his behaviour...

The original title for this collection was Die Nacht, die Lichter (The Night, the Lights), and as childish and rhyming as that would have sounded in English, it's a very apt title.  Many of the events take place between dusk and dawn, emphasising the solitude of the characters by following them through empty streetscapes.

In Your Hair is Beautiful, a man lurks outside a woman's house in the dark, caught in an obsession which has cost him his family and his job; Carriage 29 sees a wine salesman sitting on a train at night, with no knowledge of how he got there; in I'm Still Here!, a black Dutch journeyman boxer experiences the darker side of East Germany, both inside a bar and out on the streets, after surprisingly knocking out his local opponent for an unexpected and rare win.  These are not streets you would like to be caught in...

The majority of the stories are intriguing, but I do have some reservations about All the Lights.  While there are some notable exceptions (the confusing opener Little Death and the frankly bizarre The Short Happy Life of Johannes Vettermann spring to mind), the stories did tend to blur into one another for me, and I had trouble remembering much about some of them the day after reading them.  Also, I'm a sucker for measured, flowing (florid?) prose, and Meyer's terse, sparse style didn't really do a lot for me.

Perhaps my biggest problem though was a feeling that several of the stories were one-trick ponies (the biggest, funnily enough, being Of Dogs and Horses).  There are twists, perfectly good ones, but... I'm not convinced that many of the stories would bear up to repeated reading, and that's what I'm looking for in the books I choose.

In fairness, All the Lights was slightly handicapped from the start.  I'm not a big fan of e-reading, and I felt a bit funny reading a German book in English (probably for the first time!).  I was also reading it having just completed Alois Hotschnig's Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht; I'm afraid that I found the Austrian writer's collection a much better one, and perhaps this affected my appreciation of Meyer's work.

Still, it's a pleasant collection of stories, and there are many that are well worth reading.  In the Aisles, another late-night special, set this time in a supermarket, is a well-written, poignant tale of male friendship, while the last story of the book, The Old Man Buries his Beasts, follows an old man as he takes a last look around his farm and the moribund nearby town.  These two tales are good examples of how some stories can stand up to rereading, even when the outcome is fresh in the mind.  Even if the same cannot be claimed for all the stories, All the Lights is still worth checking out.

Eerie, Austria

Welcome to German Literature Month, thirty days showcasing the best fiction, modern and classic, written in the German language :)  It's very important to note that the month is about celebrating the language, not the country - throughout the month, I'll be trying my best to mix it up when it comes to geography, chronology and genre.

To start off then, it's only fitting that I branch out a little from my usual classic German novels and novellas and introduce a collection of short stories from a contemporary Austrian writer (one which many of you may have heard of...).  Alois Hotschnig's slender collection of stories, Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht, also known by the English title of its Peirene Press translation, Maybe This Time, comprises nine tales, all of which are normal enough on the surface, but which eventually become... well, ever so slightly creepy.

The first story, Dieselbe Stille, dasselbe Geschrei, is a good example of what the collection is about.  A man who has recently arrived in his area tells us about his neighbours, a couple who spend all day lounging around on a deck by the river at the back of their house.  This seemingly innocuous behaviour gradually makes the man feel strangely oppressed, and his waking (and sleeping) moments begin to be filled with his obsession over the neighbours' lack of activity.  Very quickly though, despite the sympathetic first-person narrative, the reader starts to mistrust our guide - especially when he starts using binoculars to spy on the couple...

Hotschnig elegantly plays with the idea of a man unable to move on with his life, caught up obsessing on something he doesn't understand, and it's a theme which crops up several times in the collection.  In Vielleicht diesmal, vielleicht jetzt (the story which gives the English translation its name), it's a whole family which is unable to live their lives, waiting as they are for the mysterious, ever-elusive - and ever-absent - Uncle Walter to join them at a family gathering.  In Morgens, mittags, abends (probably my favourite of the nine stories), a whole area seems to be caught in a loop, people watching people, crossing roads, walking down the street and coming back again, all fixed in time by an event we are unaware of until the last paragraph.  One aspect of this story I loved was a girl playing the flute, practicing the same few bars over and over again, breaking off at the same point each time - very much like a stuck record.

Another idea the writer explores is the idea of watching, and the majority of the stories (if not all of them) contain the verb beobachten, to watch or observe.  In Zwei Arten zu gehen, a woman walks down the street, shadowed by a man who could be either a stalker or a former lover (we're never completely sure which...); Eine Tür geht dann auf und fällt zu, one of the creepiest of the tales, has its hero in a sort of trancelike state, observing himself at various times in the past, while being watched by a rather strange old lady (with a penchant for dolls...); In meinem Zimmer brennt Licht, a story about a man with a hidden past, is full of people observing each other, looking for hints of what might be hidden behind silence.

Most of these observers appear to be watching other people, not because the observees are doing anything wrong, but because the observers are living their lives through other people, needing other people's approval.  This idea is taken to extremes in Du kennst sie nicht, es sind Fremde, a story in which a man's identity constantly changes - an issue nobody has a problem with except the man himself.  One way of interpreting this story is that we are what other people see us as and that our identity is externally created (although this little tale takes the idea further than one would expect!).

The ideas in the stories are excellent, and they are all wonderfully constructed.  I went through the collection for a second time a week after the first reading, and if anything, I enjoyed it more the second time around (a sure sign of a good piece of writing).

However, the success of the book is not limited to the ideas as the writing style is also key to the way the stories unfold.  The majority are told in the first person, unravelling in a near-constant interior monologue mostly uninterrupted by any dialogue (what little conversation there is is reported), and the sense of things being slightly off-kilter is heightened by the frequent use of contradiction within sentences, the narrator backtracking on an idea within seconds.  If the storyteller isn't completely sure of what they are saying, then how on earth can we trust them...

There are a lot more things I'd love to say about Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht, and considering that the book comes in at a mere 120 pages, that probably gives you as much of an idea of how highly I rate this slender tome as a few more paragraphs would ;)  It has been described as Kafkaesque, and I can only agree with that assessment.  While there's little here that could be described as extraordinary or supernatural, you can't help but get the feeling that it's all just a little bit... wrong.  But, in another sense, it's very right :)

October 2011 Wrap-Up

October was a mixed bag compared to previous months.  I had a few review books to get through, a couple of slim Japanese works waiting to be read, and (of course) I wanted to get a start on reading for November's German Literature Month.  In addition to this, I had one review to write for both the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop and the Classics Circuit's Gothic Literature Stop.  Enough excitement for one month, you'd think, but wait - there's more...

You see, October marked a significant milestone in the history of Tony's Reading List.  For the first time in its three-year existence, I have managed to crack the magic century - 100 books (not out)!  E.T.A. Hoffmann's gothic thriller Die Elixiere des Teufels had the honour of being the 100th book, for those who want to know :)

Anyway, on with the show...

*****
Total Books Read: 10
Year-to-date: 106

New: 10
Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 7

From the Library: 1

On the Kindle: 2

Novels: 5

Novellas: 3
Short Stories: 2

Non-English Language: 8 (6 German, 2 Japanese)

In Original Language: 5 (5 German)

Books read in October were:
1) Jenseitsnovelle by Matthias Politycki
2) Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
3) That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
4) Die Elixiere des Teufels by E.T.A. Hoffmann
5) All That I Am by Anna Funder
6) A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe
7) Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht by Alois Hotschnig
8) All the Lights (Die Nacht, die Lichter) by Clemens Meyer
9) Und sagte kein einziges Wort by Heinrich Böll
10) Bahnwärter Thiel & Der Apostel by Gerhart Hauptmann

Murakami Challenge: 0 (3/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 2 (19/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 1 (28/15)
Japanese Literature Challenge 5: 2 (6/1)

Tony's Recommendations for October are: Alois Hotschnig's Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht and Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter

October was a good reading month with plenty of interesting books consumed.  I loved my first taste of E.T.A. Hoffmann's work, Herr Böll once again produced a wonderful slice of post-war life, and Matthias Politycki's tale from beyond the grave was also a highlight.  However, Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht and A Personal Matter were the two that jumped out at me when I was thinking about this month's recommendation, and (once again!) I was unable to split my top two :)

So, onto November, and the next thirty days will be dominated by my Teutonic tastes.  For the second time this year, I will be participating in a month of German-language reading - this time accompanied by other people!  Hopefully, you'll all stick around to find out about the joys of Central-European literature - bis bald ;)

A Fictional Slant On Fact

Stasiland, Anna Funder's non-fiction treatment of the horrors of the East-German police state is a wonderful book, one that I've read several times.  In the many years since it was released, I've occasionally wondered where her next effort was (and what was taking so long...), so I was very happy when I learned that Funder had finally written a new book (and even more so when the kind people at Penguin Australia sent me a copy!).

Unlike Stasiland though, All That I Am is a novel, Funder's first public foray into fiction.  It relates the efforts German dissidents made between Hitler's rise to German Chancellor and the start of the Second World War to let people know what exactly was happening in Germany.  While the world preferred to allow the great dictator to slowly build up his forces, hoping that he would be satisfied with throwing his weight about in Eastern Europe, people like Ruth Wesemann, Dora Fabian and the playwright Ernst Toller, exiles in London, attempted to reveal the atrocities the Nazis were committing back in their home country.

While the emigrés' main problems are initially to do with earning money and finding a way to get their message across, their situation eventually becomes more perilous.  Even in peacetime London, the Nazis have people looking out for Germans who don't follow the party line.  As opponents of Hitler's regime begin to disappear all over Europe, the small pocket of exiles in London begin to look nervously over their shoulders...

The story is told in flashbacks by two of the major characters: Ernst Toller, a poet and playwright, is sitting in a hotel room in New York in 1939, dictating changes in his autobiography to an assistant; Ruth Becker, living in the Sydney of around a decade ago, begins to recall those turbulent years in London when she receives Toller's manuscript in the post.  In alternating chapters, flicking back and forth in time, Ruth and Toller explain how Hitler came to power, what happened when he did and the price people paid for opposing him.

While the story is told by Toller and Ruth though, it is the woman who connects them, Dora (Ruth's cousin and Toller's lover), who is arguably the central character of the novel.  She is one of the leading lights of the intellectual resistance, running risks both inside and outside Germany in an attempt to open people's eyes to the dangers ahead.  Gradually, she becomes aware of what she and her friends are up against, a total disregard for human life and the idea of democracy, shown in her treatment after being arrested in Berlin, where she realises that the law can no longer protect her:

"Dora was suddenly afraid, in her filth under the too-bright light, that it didn't matter what she said.  The point had been passed where the law could protect her.  This argument was a farce, the cat playing with the mouse for the pleasure of smelling its fear." p.142 (Penguin Hamish Hamilton, 2011)

All That I Am is certainly an entertaining book, and it deals with a fascinating period of history, one I love reading about, so I was a little disconcerted when I realised half-way through the book that I wasn't really enjoying it as much as I thought I would.  I eventually realised that one of the reasons for this was that I was subconsciously comparing it to another of my recent reads, Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper.  Next to this weighty tome, another book partly set in wartime Europe, Funder's book seemed a little lightweight, fluffy even.  While I still prefer The Street Sweeper, I think the second half of All That I Am made up for (and perhaps justified) the calmer pace of the middle section of the novel. The lack of urgency here made the events depicted later on even more striking, setting the reader up for an emotional fall.

The other issue I had with All That I Am though is one which I've already seen covered in a couple of reviews, one which is inevitable considering the author's background.  The majority of the characters are real, as is much of the action, so considering that Funder has already written a non-fiction book, it's very difficult for the reader (for this reader, at least) not to wonder if this may have been better off left as fact, rather than fiction.  Perhaps the less immediate nature of the material led to the decision to fictionalise events (Stasiland was fairly recent history, with plenty of people to interview) - it would be interesting to see (in a parallel universe...) how a non-fiction version would have turned out.

Still, don't misconstrue the musings of this blogger as advice not to read the book.  It's more an unfair comparison with Perlman's wonderful novel and Funder's own fantastic non-fiction work.  All That I Am is an interesting read, set in a fascinating period, and anyone interested in this slice of history would be well advised to give it a go.  Funder succeeds in showing us why events in the 1930s turned out as they did, and Ruth's words describe as well as any why people in Germany at the time failed to stop the agony of the Reich's innocent victims.

"Most people have no imagination.  If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so... 

... But Toller, great as he was, is not right.  It is not that people lack an imagination.  It is that they stop themselves using it.  Because once you have imagined such suffering, how can you still do nothing?" p.358

A Nobel Pursuit

Nobel time has come and gone for another year, and (alas) Haruki Murakami still hasn't brought home the prize.  While the committee (hopefully) has many years yet to rectify this, it means that there are still only two Japanese Nobel laureates in the literature section - Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe.  So, while we wait for 1Q84 to arrive on our doorsteps (and ponder what might have been), I thought it might be nice to have a look at a couple of works from the writers Murakami is hoping to emulate...

*****
Kawabata's Beauty and Sadness is a novella centred on Toshio Oki, a middle-aged novelist, and Otoko Ueno, an artist whom Oki (while already married) seduced at an early age, and whose life he altered dramatically.  Decades after their affair was brought to an end, the writer decides to visit his former love in Kyoto to hear the New Year bells ringing, and on this trip he meets Keiko Sakami, a young woman who has become Otoko's protégée - and perhaps a whole lot more...

Otoko greets Oki warmly, if warily, and it is actually Keiko who shows more of an interest in the writer (whose most famous work is a novel based on his relationship with Otoko).  It soon becomes clear that the stunning and vibrant Keiko knows all about Otoko and Oki's affair, and while, on the surface at least, she appears to want to respect her teacher's wishes to treat her old flame with respect, the reader soon suspects that she has another motive for her interest in Oki - revenge.

My first thought on reading this (aided by memories of several other J-Lit classics) was that if you are to believe fiction, Japanese women are most definitely not to be crossed.  It's not giving much away to say that the most interesting character in the novella is Keiko, a femme fatale in the vein of Mitsuko (the memorable character in Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's Quicksand).  It's not just her scheming against Oki and his family which is so disturbing, it's also her behaviour when she is with Otoko.  Urgent, pouting, aggressive, meek, flirty... she is anything but predictable.

As is so often the case with Japanese literature though, nature itself is just as important as the people who move through it.  Kawabata is a master of painting pictures with words in his works, and Beauty and Sadness is no exception.  The reader is treated to sumptuous descriptions of Arashiyama and the other mountains surrounding Kyoto; we walk with Oki through the hills of Kamakura; and we gaze out over the beautiful Lake Biwa, still unaware of what is to happen there.  There certainly is a lot of beauty in Kawabata's writing - if you read this book, you'll see that behind the beauty, there is often a fair amount of sadness too...

*****
If Kawabata is the traditional, aesthetic Yin of modern Japanese literature though, Kenzaburo Oe is most definitely the foreign-influenced, hard-nosed Yang.  In contrast to the understated elegance of Beauty and Sadness, A Personal Matter, one of Oe's earliest works, is a rather modern and realistic affair.

The short novel introduces us to Bird, a twenty-seven-year-old cram-school teacher, who is hanging around in Tokyo, waiting for news on the birth of his first child.  When the call finally comes, he senses that not all is well, and on arriving at the hospital, his fears are confirmed.  His son has been born with a large lump on his head, which the doctors describe as a brain hernia.  Faced with a situation where his son will either die in a matter of days or grow up severely mentally disabled,  Bird leaves the hospital and quickly begins to unravel...

Bird's trial of character as he deliberates whether to make an effort to save his son's life, a decision which will result in him giving up his life's dream of travelling to Africa, may seem grotesque (and more than a little over the top), but it is actually a slightly exaggerated metaphor for the sense of a loss of freedom which accompanies the joy of welcoming a child into the world.  The problems his son is facing allow Bird to consider running away from his responsibilities, throwing away his career and falling into the arms of a former girlfriend in an attempt to regain his freedom.  It isn't until the last few pages, after many tortuous episodes, that we are told the decision Bird has come to.

A Personal Matter is a thought-provoking book, but in a gritty, unflinching way.  It is reminiscent of John Updike's Rabbit, Run (written four years earlier) in both its content and its style, very different indeed to Beauty and Sadness.  Where Kawabata's works are steeped in tea houses and temples, Oe shows us the underbelly of Japanese life - tenements, amusement arcades, gay bars, dodgy clinics - and doesn't shy away from explicit sex, alcoholism and violence.  Slammed by many critics at the time for his sullying of pure Japanese writing, Oe is obviously an influence on several contemporary Japanese writers.  Haruki Murakami is, of course, one that comes to mind, but it's safe to say that writers such as Ryu Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto and Natsuo Kirino were also nudged into their writing paths by Oe's Westernised style.

*****
I've now read four of Kawabata's works, while A Personal Matter is my second of Oe's novels.  Oe may verge on the disturbing at some points, but I enjoy the way he dissects the issues facing normal modern Japanese families, ones without homes overlooking the valleys of Kamakura.  Perhaps though that's why the two works reviewed here complement each other so well: the delicate and the crude, the subdued and the brash, the inside and the outside...

...the Yin and the Yang.

Don't Hassle the Hoff(mann)

"Please allow me to introduce myself,
I'm a man of wealth and taste"

Much as I'd like to believe that these lines describe yours truly, they actually begin The Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil, a tune which constantly popped up in my head while I was reading my contribution to the current Classics Circuit.  E.T.A. Hoffmann's wonderful Gothic novel Die Elixiere des Teufels (The Devil's Elixirs) is written in the style of an autobiography, a parchment discovered in a monastery and supplemented with various other documents by the publisher, and it follows the life of the monk Medardus - a man who (as you will see) has more than his fair share of problems with the man downstairs.

Medardus begins life as plain old Franz, a young boy who has grown up without a father, but with an unwelcome legacy.  His father had apparently sinned greatly before meeting his mother, and it is Franz's mission to atone for the misdeeds of the father by devoting his life to the church (a path suggested to him by a meeting with an old painter he encountered in his youth).  He grows up and enters a monastery, and it is there that he learns of the legend of the Devil's Elixirs - a story which will have a shattering effect on his future, and which is inextricably linked to his past.

Having set us up nicely in a surprisingly short space of time, Hoffmann then lets rip with an incredible story, a Gothic adventure, a road trip with a difference.  After partaking of one of the aforementioned elixirs, Medardus sets out into the big, bad world, little realising that one of the baddest (sic) things out there is himself.  As he ventures from city to countryside, inns to palaces, verdant Germanic forests to the splendour of the Vatican, our intrepid monk is pursued not only by police and assassins, but also by his destiny - and perhaps himself...

As Medardus goes on his merry way, pursued and accompanied by the devil inside, he manages to get in and out of his various scrapes, encountering many people who have interesting tales to tell him.  Interestingly, most of those stories are actually about Medardus himself, as a figure from his past (or his future) has already been where he is now.  Many a conversation turns into a story about a monk who had been up to no good somewhere in the vicinity (which often makes for uncomfortable hearing for our religious friend).

This example of a physical resemblance causing all kinds of mischief is a common plot in Gothic novels, but the idea, which could easily descend into cliché, is skilfully handled, always leaving the reader in a little doubt as to whether or not he actually exists.  We are constantly asking ourselves: Who is this second monk?  Why is he following Medardus?  What is the painter doing back in the story?  Is that person really dead?  Why does my head hurt?  After I finished the story, I read up a little on the background, and the idea of a split personality was actually supposed to refer to Hoffmann's own split loyalties between his passion for the arts and his day-to-day duties.  You really don't need to know this to enjoy the story though :)

I won't say too much more about the plot, but Die Elixiere des Teufels was cunningly designed to keep the reader on their toes at all times.  There is a distinct supernatural element about the novel, and (unlike in certain other novels) it's a feeling that you never really shake off.  Every time that we think that we are beginning to see what has been happening and to find a rational explanation for the extraordinary, we realise that certain points are still unexplained.  Indeed, some strands will remain up in the air.  One thing I will tell you though - Hoffmann likes to keep things in the family ;)

This is a wonderful story.   It's the kind of book that people who think classics are boring should read, packed as it is with event after event, twists and turns and a plot which never lets you know exactly what is going on.  It's a kind of Tom Jones with more monks, a Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice Years with more stabbing, a Canterbury Tales with more incest.  If that sounds like your cup of tea, then I strongly suggest you give it a try :)  Of course, with German Literature Month coming up in November, that would be an ideal opportunity...

To finish off (as I seem to have got a bit of a pop culture theme going today), I'll leave you with an apt film quotation.  Medardus, despite his apparent piety, finds himself unable to avoid the temptation of the elixir.  Why?  Well, unfortunately, the devil always seems to find a way to tempt those he wishes to ensnare.  In the words of Al Pacino (from The Devil's Advocate):

"Vanity - definitely my favourite sin."

And the Winner is...

Well, another Literary Giveaway Blog Hop has been and gone, and it's time for the prizes to be divvied up, and for the lucky winners to get their loot (I'm very happy at the moment because I managed to win a book myself this time!).  Thanks to everyone who dropped by to check out my blog (and the review of Jenseitsnovella).  I was happy to see so many names in the comments, and I was (once again) glad to see that everyone was happy to comply with my cheeky request for manners ;)

And the winner?  As chosen by a random computer thingy, congratulations to The Name's Kara - I will be contacting you for a postal address very soon!

But wait - there's more!  Surprisingly, several of you expressed interest in the German-language version, and I have bitten the bullet and decided to also award a German copy to one of those people who were interested in reading the novel in the original language - and that person is Lenna - herzlichen Glückwunsch!  I'll be e-mailing you too

Thank you for the interest and attention - do drop by again some time, won't you? ;)

What Might Have Been

As most people are aware, the relationship between the settlers and the original inhabitants of my adopted country has often been, shall we say, far from ideal (some would say that little has changed...).  When the British claimed the continent for the crown, they declared it Terra Nullius (Latin for 'land belonging to no-one'), conveniently ignoring the Aborignal tribes who had been living there for tens of thousands of years.  In many cases, this clash of cultures resulted in imprisonment, de facto slavery and (in at least one case) virtual extermination.

Kim Scott's novel That Deadman Dance attempts to show that this (like so many other things) happened slightly differently over in the West.  Set on the southern coast of Western Australia in the 1830s/1840s, this year's Miles Franklin Award winner depicts an intriguing slice of Australian history, a period when colonists and natives coexisted in relative harmony.  Scott has Aboriginal ancestry, and his story incorporates members of his family, from the Noongar people, and actual events of the period, using history as the base for his tale.

The novel revolves around Bobby Wabalanginy, whom we first meet as a daring young boy, dreaming of women and whales.  When British colonists arrive to establish a make-shift settlement, the leader of the expedition, Dr. Cross, takes a shine to Bobby's adoptive father, Wunyeran, and the two men become friends.  The Aborigine starts to learn English, visiting the main settlement and experiencing the thrill of travelling across the ocean waves, while Cross starts to learn about the Noongar, hoping to set an example of cooperation which will spread to other settlements in the colony.

As the story progresses, however, these initial promising beginnings are tested.  When the job of keeping the relationship alive and strong passes on to the next generation, it soon becomes clear that the balance of power has shifted - where the uncomfortable colonists were initially outnumbered by the Noongar, the settlement eventually grows, just as the indigenous numbers begin to dwindle.  Once this happens, the spirit of equal claims to the land is almost doomed to failure.

The charismatic Bobby, singer, dancer and linguist, is a member of the generation growing up throughout this period of change, still living with his people but able to pick up enough English to make himself very useful to the settlers.  His experiences mirror those of his people, at first indispensable, then grudgingly tolerated, later expected to conform to the new cultural norms, imported from beyond the horizon.  Bobby wants to believe in the newcomers (from whom he received his new name), hoping to straddle the divide between the two worlds, and he continues with this until the end, long after many people (on both sides) have given up the pretence of mutual respect.

While I enjoyed the book, I must confess that it didn't impress me as much as you would expect from a book which took out Australia's top literary prize.  It dragged a little for me, and the lack of any real plot, other than the main idea of the change in fortunes of the two groups, left me feeling that there was something missing.  However, That Deadman Dance is an entertaining novel and extremely fascinating from a cultural point of view.  The reader is shown how the lack of understanding between the two groups repeatedly complicates their efforts to get along.

The Noongar constantly expect the new arrivals to be leaving again, regarding them as guests, albeit ones who may be stretching their welcome a little.  The settlers become annoyed that the natives constantly beg (or steal) food, not realising that they themselves are doing the same when they hunt kangaroos and dig up wild vegetables.  Even friendships like that of Cross and Wunyeran are unable to paper over the cracks of ethnic differences.

Sadly, these differences eventually grow into a vast gulf between the two cultures, one Australia is still trying to close today.  Hopefully, future generations will look back on our time much as we look back on the time portrayed in That Deadman Dance - as one unrecognisable in a more civilised era...