two old dudes walk around and talk about things, one of them keeps talking about this heap of scrap metal and the other thinks about marching or something.
there'smore books in this series and peter jackson has optioned the "old dueds walker tetrology" film rights to begin production in.
Toteninsel is het eerste deel van de 'Amrainer Tetralogie' waarin twee oudere heren, die sinds hun tijd in het leger vrienden zijn, met elkaar over van alles en nog wat praten.
Het is Baur die vooral praat en Bindschädler luistert, beschrijft de omgeving en geeft af en toe kommentaar.
In Toteninsel de titel van een reeks schilderijen van de Zwitserse schilder Arnol Böcklin wandelen de twee protagonisten door het stadje Olten opnovember St.
Maarten. De plekken die ze tijdens hun wandeling tegenkomen geven aanleiding tot herinneringen en mijmeringen over het leven, de kunst en de dood.
In deiger jaren kwam ik regelmatig in Olten en ik ken heel veel van de plekken die Bindschädler beschrijft.
Daardoor krijgt deze roman voor mij een extra dimensie, from Isle of the Dead by Gerhard Meier translated from the German by Burton Pike:
I said to Baur that perhaps the soul resembled that little house on the Ulica Dabrowiecka in Warsaw that contains a collection of some seven thousand artworks, which Ludwig Zimmerer, the owner, declared a paradisical cage.
The constant stream of new pictures compels a constantly new, technically sophisticated spacesaving presentation, so that from behind and below something can still be conjured up.
The intensity of the pictures, to which one cannot do justice by calling them "naive," provides a deep and direct insight into the strange inner worlds of one's fellow humans.
There is for example a work of Jozef Lurka proclaiming the Annunciation in wood, bringing out its theological boldness with simple piety, an Eve with Trout in Paradise, but by which Lurka did not mean to allude to the old Christian fish symbol for Christ his intention was rather to illustrate what was so paradisical about paradise: If a lion lets itself be stroked, that's nothing, but a troutWhere since the fall of man has a trout let itself be stroked I keep trying to read 'walking novels' and I keep glazing over after about ten pages.
Perhaps if I knew more about the Swiss and their cities and, particularly, the outsider artist Meier's characters spend much time pondering, this would have been more interesting as it was, the translation seems a little graceless, the topics discussed not all that gripping, and most of my reading experience can be summed up in the thought "I'd rather be reading x," where x can be, at best, Thomas Bernhard or Josef Winkler or Robert Walser and, at worst, W.
G. Sebald whose work I'm not very interested in, though I know many are,
Unfortunately, this makes Isle of the Dead sound more interesting than I found it, If nothing else, I learned about Jozef Lurka,
We all have that one friend who talks at you rather than to you, and poor Bindschälder who happens to be the more interesting conversationalist of the two cops the earbashing of a lifetime.
Indeed, that he has not pushed the interminably loquacious Bauer into the
Aare river by pageevidences remarkable restraint, and remains the enduring point of fascination in this novel.
Two elderly gentlemen walk through a small Swiss town talking about life, One does almost all the talking and, as you would expect, they mostly talk about the past and not too much about the future, and with a bit of repetition.
Both men grew up in the area so they compare the current landscape to that of the past.
They intersperse their comments with reflections on literature and poetry, music and painting, The title is taken from a famous painting shown above,
The book is translated from the German and it is short,pages, about the length of a long afternoon walk.
I saw the main theme as homage to the ways of life in a small Swiss town, Kind of like taking a walk with an erudite Grandpa,
The Swiss authorwas known for his poetry and for a few novels, such as this one, that were without plots.
Edited pictures added
Painting, Isle of the Dead by Arnold Bochlin from fineartamerica, com
Soglio, a small Swiss town, from theculturetrip, com
The author from faz, net
Baur and Bindsch dler, two old men, friends from their days in the army, share a habitual walk to the edge of a town, Baur speaking incessantly circling between past and present, inconsequential observations and profound insights while Bindsch dler, equally unmoored, listens, observes, and reflects.
A meandering meditation on mortality, and a gentle complement to the work of contemporaries Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard not to mention Gerhard Meier's countryman Robert Walser Isle of the Dead elevates a simple ramble along a riverside to the status of a metaphysical inquest, with Baur and Bindsch dler's words and thoughts looping and colliding until it is nearly impossible to tell one man from the other.
From the afterword by Burton Pike: Constant here are the insistent wind, the drifting clouds, the autumnal leaf whirling and coatbillowing gusts and breezes, and the everrecurring cycle of nature.
The reader should relax into the aura of the characters thoughts and observations, and over the first few pages let himself or herself be drawn into the absorbing world that Meier has so skillfully created.
. . Isle of the Dead is a subtle novel about a meticulously detailed world, What distinguishes it from other modern novels, from the works of Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard for instance, is that it does not convey an alienation from life but a sense of wonder, expressed with wit and humor, and, beneath the wonder, regret.
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