UNREADABLE INPAGES
I perfectly understand, from a philological point of view, and openly support literature going against the current.
But this one was unreadable! I really struggled to finish it: I wanted to, because I believed something would change till the end that the stories initiated will be jointed somehow and there will be a key of some sort, an ending reflecting back on what has been written that something anything.
And there was nothing,pages of questionable material the protagonist and implicitly the author must have considered worthwhile: not only were the halfminded opinions about life, the fragments of/about travel, the fictionexercises not extraordinary, but, if you ask me, mediocre and uninteresting!
If you decide to collect a series of things, be them some random “chapters”, well, they have to arouse some general interest, otherwise you end up collecting them for your own curiosity/joy/idontknowwhat therefore you might as well keep them for yourself.
Im not against writing without a narrative plot and in fact I admire Virginia Woolfs works for that matter or writing in ways different from the most common originality is the first parameter according to which I express any opinion about books BUT here the author loses sight of the public, of the characters, of the narrative, of the structure and length of her work, and finally of herself.
Every writer in this world could put together a book like this, All you have to do is to take notes about a specific topic, Just like they come into your head, no filter at all, better if you have strong opinions take, for instance, about electronic music and the dancing derived from it, “These are ecstatic leaps, twirling in place its the dance stamped out by teenagers all over the world at concerts”, be sure you express them in categoric, matteroffactly ways but then, why should they even be taken into consideration
The general feeling that one is left with after reading this book is that the author did not want to not that she couldnt, because she can write something serious: that she threw all her jumbled notes in.
And that she has seasoned it all with some narrative exercises, some stories that begin and are left suspended, again, not because the writer was unable to finish them, but simply because she did not want to.
Of course, you need a good explanation to justify this huge waste and, considering the level of ambiguity of the book, something as unclear as "some unity above heterogeneity" that should be "spontaneously revealed" p.
would do.
Unfortunately, the only thing spontaneously revealed to me was my wasted time in trying to understand something that probably did not make sense even to the author herself.
Im really sorry: for me it didnt work, Ill try again with a different book by Tokarczuk,
In the profusion of images and metaphors that make up this book, one image stands out.
That I'm now using it as an opening for the review is apt, because the image I'm thinking of is a line, as in the first stroke a pen makes on a blank sheet of paper.
Or the line made by a jet stream, dividing the sky in two,
Or the stroke made by an anatomist's scalpel on virgin skin,
Or indeed the line made by the shadow that splits the earth into daytime and nightime, bright time and dark time.
It's no surprise then that Olga Tokarczuk's wunderkammer of a book is full of contrasts, that it's a treasure chest with
a bright side and a dark side.
No surprise at all,
Because for every episode that celebrates life, there's another that celebrates death,
Tokarczuk invites us to travel across the azure of the heavens on one page, while on the next, she drags us through Stygian underworlds.
Her pen needles our emotions and memories, and strikes right into our hearts,
But her subject is bigger than you or me,
As she moves across the globe, she examines the places she visits with an anatomist's eye,
She shows us that places too can have circulation systems, lungs, and a beating heart,
Because this book is a giant anatomy lesson,
And the body on the table is the Earth itself, Jestem. Now the winner of the Man Booker International prize, which was well deserved,
This is my third book from the Man Booker International prize shortlist and might just be my new favourite book of the year so far.
Whether or not this is a novel is debatable, It is more of an uncategorisable mixture ofshort pieces varying in length from a single sentence to overpages.
On the whole the longer pieces are short stories and the shorter ones thoughts, observations and quirky pieces of science or history.
Tokarczuk has a questing curiosity which is equally at home discussing travel, exploration, the history of anatomy and the science and ethics of preservation techniques such as plastination.
The thematic logic is sometimes opaque but becomes clearer as the book proceeds,
Like short stories, the component chapters are best read in a single sitting, I would have liked a table of contents to make it easier to find suitable break points, and I decided to create my own, which I have included as an appendix below.
There are alsorather intriguing historical maps scattered among the text and once again their relevance is a little unclear.
One of the most striking pieces appears near the end, It treats the uncontrollable spread of plastics in the modern world as a study in evolution the bag becomes an ultra successful organism which spreads by anemophily wind pollination.
This is a unique, fascinating and thoughtprovoking book, Highly recommended. If you want a more professional review, I recommend this one from the Guardian:
sitelink theguardian. com/books/
Appendix: Table of Contents
Page Title
Here I am
The World in your Head
Your Head in the World
Syndrome
Cabinet of Curiosities
Seeing is Knowing
Seven years of Trips
Guidance from Cioran
Kunicki: Water i
Benedictus, Qui Venit
Panopticon
Kunicki: Water ii
Everywhere and Nowhere
Airports
Returning to one's Roots
Travel Sizes
Mano di Giovanni Battista
The Original and the Copy
Trains for Cowards
Abandoned Apartment
The Book of Infamy
Guidebooks
New Athens
Wikipedia
Citizens of the World Pick up Your Pens!
Travel Psychology: Lectio Brevis I
The Right Time and Place
Instructions
Ash Wednesday Feast
North Pole Expeditions
The Psychology of an Island
Purging the Map
In Pursuit of Night
Sanitary Pads
Relics: Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta
Belly Dance
Meridians
Unus Mundus
Harem Menchu's Tale
Another of Menchu's Tales
Cleopatras
A Very Long Quarter of an Hour
Apuleius the Donkey
Media Presenters
Atatürk's Reforms
Kali Yuga
Wax Model Collections
Dr Blau's Travels i
Josefina Soliman's First Letter to Franz I, Emperor of Austria
Among the Maori
Dr Blau's Travels ii
Plane of Profligates
Pilgrim's Makeup
Josefina Soliman's Second Letter to Franz I, Emperor of Austria
Sarira
The Bodhi Tree
Home is my Hotel
Travel Psychology: Lectio Brevis II
Compatriots
Travel Psychology: Conclusion
The Tongue is the Smallest Muscle
Speak! Speak!
Frog and Bird
Lines, Planes and Bodies
The Achilles Tendon
The History of Filip Verheyen Written by his Student and Confidant William van Horssen
Letters to the Amputated Leg
Travel Tales
Three Hundred Kilometres
,Guilders
The Tsar's Collection
Irkutsk Moscow
Dark Matter
Morality is Reality
Flights
What the Shrouded Runaway was Saying
Josefina Soliman's Third Letter to Franz I
Things not Made by Human Hands
Purity of Blood
Kunstkammer
Mano di Constantino
Mapping the Void
Another Cook
Whales, or Drowning in Air
Godzone
Fear Not
Day of the Dead
Ruth
Reception at Large Fancy Hotels
Point
Cross Section as Learning Method
Chopin's Heart
My Specimens
Network State
Swastikas
Vendors of Names
Death and Action
Evidence
Nine
Attempts at Travel Stereometry
Even
Świebodzin
Kunicki: Earth
Island Symmetries
AirSickness Bags
The Earth's Nipples
Pogo
Wall
Amphitheatre in Sleep
Map of Greece
Kairos
I'm Here
On the Origin of Species
Final Timetable
The Polymer Preservation Process, Step by Step
Boarding.
Collect Flights Formulated By Olga Tokarczuk Issued As Textbook
Olga Tokarczuk