Moon, valley, dew, death. Hypnotism, spell, candle, book. War, peace, fight, talk. I have no idea what I am talking about. "And this condition, said Korin, for someone like him, who saw clearly that this tragic turn of events was not the product of supernatural agency, not of divine judgement, but of the actions of a peculiarly horrible heterogeneous bunch of people , there was nothing left to do than to use the rest of his speech to lay the most terrible, most incurable curse on them.""Let the world be cursed, he declared, choking, a world in which there is neither Omnipotence nor Last Judgement, where curses, and any who pronounced them, were held up to ridicule, where glory could only be bought with trash." I am cursed. Korin is cursed. I had a "Well, that leaves me out" moment when reading War and War. I had more than one of those moments. I don't want to admit on goodreads which those were. This book reminded me to feel self conscious about admitting that kind of thing (again). Curses, swears, names in vein (oops vain). Korin is cursed too. He goes on and on, a sort of railing against the established wall of collective not giving a shit at the same time he doesn't notice the back that's turned to him (turned against its own wall. Gotta be). This back is literal and figurative. (I was shocked when he noticed his "listener" fell asleep during his demonstrations.) Would he notice it if it were staring him in the face? (He might notice that the face was pleasing to him.) Cursed, cursed, cursed. And it moved me because I feel it too. It's a prayer (and that swear) for the feeling moved and not knowing why. A movement to want to share it and it all gets lost in translation. I was reminded a lot of when I was a teenager and lived in rural Florida towns. I saw a whole lot what I began to refer to as "evil little kid translators". The brats took awful advantage of the fact that their foreigner parents didn't know English. They had a kind of mixture of anger at having to be the representative and another scornful eye on what they could get out of it. Communication woes. This shit again, Mariel? I really want to describe the prose, those paragraph long sentences, those after the facts and are they really the facts obsessions as like a stop motion animation. (Sometimes the recurring movements seeped into me. I would be reading in my car during my work lunch breaks and I'd find myself going to open my arms wide for some kind of back up emphasis. Or reaching for something. Or hands going through my hair when I was confused. That happened a lot.) What book would I share if I would upload a book onto the internet? This is the new Fahrenheit 451 question. Instead of reciting it you talk and and talk and talk about how it moved you and you hope that the back will turn around. (And hope that you'll notice if it doesn't. That was painful.) I loved this book and yet it made me feel so anxious. It probably wasn't a good idea to read it when too predisposed to feeling threadless. Sometimes a song lyric can feel prophetic and I feel like it could have something to do with anything that has anything to do with me. Other times? Not so much. Would it be too weird to say that War and War felt like a bit of both? I only hope it'll shade in for me as I can take it with me... Right now I feel kind of cursed, too. "What this meant was that the freedom produced by love was the highest condition available in the given order of things, and given that, how strange it was that such love seemed to be characteristic of lonely people who were condemned to live in perpetual isolation, that love was one of the aspects of loneliness most difficult to resolve, and therefore all those millions on millions of individual loves and individual rebellions could never add up to a single love or rebellion, because such was the nature of things."War and war and war and war and war. Keep thinking about it, Mariel. I've been thinking for weeks about Korin feeling like he was on to something and the more he tried to pin it the more he was cursed to not notice anything himself. I don't want to be like that. László Krasznahorkai, I will listen. I will give you that much. (You can try to take over my expressions.)I can't wait to read Satanstango (I've been watching the movie. Watching the movements isn't the same as moving them in your head, I don't think. Because I'm blind!).
I usually don't like books with gimmicks: to me a book is good based on its writing, characters, plot, and what it has to say, and gimmicks usually don't add to those things- or at least don't add enough to justify themselves. War and War is a book with several gimmicks, and it's a testament to Krasznahorkai's skill as an author that the gimmicks have a point and add to the book. At the same time, they caused their own frustrations, and ultimately I didn't find this work as satisfying as The Melancholy of Resistance or Satantango.The gimmick you'll notice first is that War and War is written in the form of extremely long sentences, some of which can go on for pages. I took this as a reflection of the main character's mental state, as he's none too stable, and more than a bit obsessed and confused. The run-on-sentences therefore mimics the breathless manic thoughts of the protagonist. This gimmick got old for me before even a third of the book was done, but because Krasznahorkai can continue each sentence indefinitely by just putting ", and" where a period would be, it doesn't detract much from the book (unlike, say, Perec's avoidance of the letter "e" in A Void, which forced him into writing a mess of a book). Even with these long run-on sentences the book is filled with striking images, though noticeably more in the early chapters of the book than later on.The second gimmick is that the middle section of the book deals with a manuscript that the main character is typing up, but instead of ever reading any of this manuscript, Krasznahorkai gives us only the protagonist's descriptions of it, in the sentence style already discussed. This is the section where the book underwhelms, and unfortunately it's the section that needs to impress. The manuscript is supposed to be so impactful that it makes the main character abandon his entire life, sell all that he owns, and travel to the United States out of a belief that putting this manuscript on the internet will be a single action of value in an otherwise pointless life, and that after having fulfilled his purpose by transcribing the manuscript he will welcome death. Even if the character isn't mentally stable, the manuscript needs to be striking to make this believable. Instead, the main character's descriptions of the manuscript are mediocre. The four manuscript characters never feel distinct, the long sentence style of the book seems out of place when the manuscript is being described, and in general it was never as interesting as it needed to be. The middle segment where the manuscript is described is the weakest section of the book, and unfortunately it's also the longest.The final gimmick reveals itself at the end of the book, when (view spoiler)[a website is given that appears to be the one containing the transcribed manuscript, and a plaque is revealed that indicates that the main character committed suicide. When you check out the website, however, you arrive at a mostly blank page saying that the information on the website has been erased for lack of payment. Again, I know what Krasznahorkai was doing with this, showing the fallacy of the main character's idea that something being on the internet makes it immortal, and rendering the actions of the main character even more tragic, but I didn't think that this gimmick added much either. One of the characters could have checked the website and found it erased, I don't think having the reader do it instead adds much. (hide spoiler)]
Do You like book War & War (2006)?
4,5 / 5 για την ακρίβεια. Μπορεί να μην ανακαλύπτει την Αμερική ο συγγραφέας αλλά δεν μπορείς να μην θαυμάσεις τον τρόπο που γράφει. Ναι μπορεί να θυμίζει λίγο Bernhard, μακροπερίοδη αφήγηση τραβηγμένη στα άκρα, αλλά σπάνια βιβλίο είχε τόση δύναμη που να με παρασύρει και να ζω κανονικά μέσα στο σύμπαν του. Μέχρι που έβλεπα αποσπάσματα φράσεων του στον ύπνο μου. Αυτή η σχεδόν αυτόματη υπνωτιστική γραφή δεν σου αφήνει πολλά περιθώρια να αντιδράσεις. Το τελευταίο κεφάλαιο είναι ένα δυνατό χαστούκι για να σε επαναφέρει ή να σε βυθίσει ακόμα περισσότερο. Από τα σημαντικότερα φετινά βιβλία.
—Panagiotis
A masterpiece, of course. There are wonderful reviews here already so, instead, I shall quote a few things which floated to the surface for me while reading. "‘Let there be light! said God, and there was light!’ ‘Let there be blood!’ says man, and there ‘s a seal The fiat of this spoil’d child of the Night (For Day ne’er saw his merits) could decree More evil in an hour, than thirty bright Summers could renovate, though they should be Lovely as those which ripen’d Eden’s fruit; For war cuts up not only branch, but root." Byron - Don Juan "Oh shame to men! Devil with Devil damn’dFirm concord holds, men only disagreeOf creatures rational, though under hopeOf Heavenly Grace: and God proclaiming peace,Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strifeAmong themselves, and levy cruel wars,Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:As if (which might induce us to accord)Man had not hellish foes enow besides,That day and night for his destruction wait. " Milton - Paradise Lost "The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebretonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast. " Auden - The Fall of Rome (Sidebar - I agree with Brodsky that that final stanza is all that is needed to prove Auden's genius) One last thing to say is that, at times, my attempts to get a clear view of the extraordinary, flowing temporal/geographical/meta-textual shifts (not to mention the incredibly skilful use of narrative voice and point of view to create a highly effective distancing effect) reminded me of physicist's attempts to explain higher dimensions. I felt like the famous square in Flatland watching an unknowable sphere pass through my world. My only query would be how necessary the final section was...
—Jonathan
Δεν έχω να πω πολλά...το μόνο που θα πω ειναι οτι διαβαστηκε αργα...σε διαδρομες μονοτονες και ρουτινιαρικες...σε στιγμες που ξαφνικα ολα χανονταν και η απογοητευση σε νικουσε...σε στιγμες που ο φοβος για το μελλον πλημμύριζε τις αισθησεις....σε στιγμες που οι εικονες της καθημερινοτητας διαπερνουσαν το νευρο του ματιου και βρισκοσουν και μεσα και εξω απο αυτες...σε στιγμες που εμπαινε η ανοιξη μετα απο εναν τοσο παγωμενο και λυπημενο χειμωνα...σε στιγμες που το μονο που αποζητουσες ηταν αυτο το βιβλιο...οχι καποιο αλλο..μονο αυτο για να παρεις ανασες, να ηρεμησεις απο την ασχημια...σε στιγμες που μπηκες στον πειρασμο να δεις αν θυμασαι: τα λατινικα που διδαχτηκες πριν απο 23 χρόνια, την επισκεψη σου στο μουσειο της Βιεννης, τα γερμανικα που εμαθες αλλα σταματησες γιατι κατι αλλο σου πηρε τα μυαλα, τα βραδια που καθόσουν μονη στο σπιτι σου χωρις ελπίδα και εκλαιγες γιατι πιστευες οτι ολα τελειωσαν..τελος το βιβλιο αυτο σε εκανε να δακρυσεις μεσα στο λεωφορειο που ηταν γεματο κοσμο και ηθελες τοσο μα τοσο να βρεις μαζι με ολους τους Γκιοργκι Κοριμ του κοσμου εναν δρομο σωτηριας...ακομα κι αν αυτος ο κοσμος δεν ειναι πλασμενος για ρομαντικους και εχει εναλλαγες "ηττας-νικης-ηττας"...
—Xenia Germeni
