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"Origin, resume - all nonsense! We all come from some small town Jüterbog or Königsberg and in some Black Forest we will all end" (Gottfried Benn) Therefore just a stenogram: Thomas Huebner, born in Germany, studied Economics, Political Science, Sociology, German literature, European Law. Consulting firm in Bulgaria. Lived in Germany, Bulgaria, Albania, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Indonesia and Jordan. Now residing in Prishtina/Kosovo. Interested in books and all other aspects of human culture. Traveler. Main feature: intellectual curiosity

Young Light

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Young Light is the title of a coming-of-age novel by German author Ralf Rothmann. I enjoyed this book very much.

Julian Collien, the 12-year old protagonist, is growing up in the Ruhr region in the mid-1960s. It is the time of the Wirtschaftswunder, the period of reconstruction and economic growth in Western Germany after WWII.

Julian is living with his parents and his little sister Sophie in a mining town. Life and work is organized around the work schedule of the coal mine, where almost all the fathers are working, whereas the women follow the traditional role of mother and housewife.

Everyone is very much living in the present – hardly anyone ever speaks of the past. An old photograph of the then 12-year old father of Julian from 1936 is not the starting point for a discussion of old times, and the seemingly jocular survey of Julian’s sister if her father has killed anyone during the war, is answered with a helpless silence by the father and a verbal outburst by the mother who sends the child to its room. The tattooed numbers under the father’s armpits go not unremarked but are not a subject for further questions.

On the surface the reader has the impression that nothing spectacular is happening within the few weeks that are covered by the story. It is the end of the school year, mother and sister are going on a holiday (there is not enough money for the whole family to enjoy holiday together), the father and Julian stay at home and get along quite well. Julian has some trouble at school: he has problems with mathematics and gets beaten by the teacher (at that time still a “normal” experience) because he was unable to do his homework. In order to avoid the next beating by the teacher, Julian has an idea:

“My mother was hanging up laundry in the garden with Sophie, and I went to the bathroom, locked the door and had a pee. Then I opened the mirror cabinet, the side with my father’s things: a plastic cup, a toothbrush with a wooden handle and squashed bristles, a bottle of Irish Moss aftershave. The razor slightly rusted, but there was a new packet of blades. I pulled one out, carefully unwrapped the waxed paper and sat down at the edge of the bathtub.

Downstairs I could hear Sophie, her gleeful laughter – almost a squeaking – then little Schulz’s mouth organ, and with one edge of the blade I made a cut in the ball of my thumb, only very gently, but even that already hurt. Oron, with the tip of an enemy’s arrow in his leg, had also once operated on himself and hardly batted an eyelid. I was taking fast breaths with my mouth wide open, and kept going over the skin until the edge of the razor blade disappeared into the flesh. Now the line turned red. It was a good four centimeters long, but the blood wasn’t even running over the edge; I clenched my teeth and pressed harder, millimeter by millimeter. But I was already trembling all over, started farting and broke out in sweat. Finally, my fingers grew so tense that I had to stop.

I rinsed my hand under the tap and looked at the ball of my thumb. A nasty scratch, but not a wound. I went to the kitchen, took a match from the box and rubbed the sulphur head about inside the cut until my eyes watered. Then I put a plaster on it, wiped the bathroom floor with toilet paper and told my mother I had fallen over. At night, before going to sleep, I could feel a quiet throbbing under the bandage.

But I didn’t have fever the next morning…”

Without fever, Julian has to go to school and is pretending to have not been able to do his homework in math because of the wound. Unfortunately, he didn’t cut his right hand (he is a right-hander), and so his excuse is immediately revealed as silly and not honest; an almost funny situation – all this cunning and bravery: for nothing. But not only Julian’s teacher is violent. Also Julian’s nervous, chain-smoking mother is beating him frequently and ferociously.

Julian is not particularly close with any of his peers. There is the snooty Gorny boy, the son of the landlord, who rubs it frequently into Julian’s face that he – contrary to Julian – will attend gymnasium after the summer break. The boys at the Animal Club, an overgrown plot of land that belongs to Pomrehn, an old widower who is friendly to the children but considered as confused by most adults, accept him only when he brings them alcohol and cigarettes; and there are the boys from the Kleekamp gang, the nemesis of the miner’s housing scheme. They always do their best to bring Julian in trouble for things he hasn’t done. Marusha, the 15-year old daughter of the Gorny’s holds a strong attraction for Julian, although he seems just to begin to understand why. Gorny senior, in the meantime, a person who has a kind of creepiness about him from the very beginning of the book, turns out to be a man with pedophile and child molesting tendencies at the least. And the marriage of the parents seems also not to be without serious issues – the nature of the mother’s frequent bouts of illness are never revealed, but they might be a symptom for a failing marriage:

“Not a sound. No one in the bedroom either; the bedspread lay neatly folded on the bed and the metal alarm clock was ticking. A solitary fly scurried across the fridge of the lampshade, and I called again and knocked on the bathroom door. But it had been left ajar. The narrow window was open, and there were nylon stockings lying unwashed in the bath; every time a drop of water fell onto the lightly-coloured heap, it moved. Next to the soap dish lay a little tube of painkillers, slightly squashed; the screw top lay on the floor.

I heard my father coming up the stairs with slow, heavy steps, went onto the balcony and looked out to the garden. ‘Lollypop? Where’s Mum?’

Sophie was sitting alone on the edge of the sandbox. One of her teddies was buried up to its neck, and she looked up. Although the sun was behind her, she covered her eyes with her hand. ‘I’m not hungry.’

My father, who had heard the question, went to the kitchen and looked around. ‘Why? Where would she be?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe in the cellar. Hanging up the laundry?’ But he didn’t answer. He threw his jacket on the sofa and called her; his voice was strangely muted. The glasses in the cabinet trembled slightly as he walked across the floorboards. In the bathroom he bent down to pick up the lid and screwed it back on the tube of tablets. Then he pushed open the door of the children’s room and placed his hands on his lips. His broad back blocked my view.

‘What’s going on?’ His voice sounded amazed, and I pushed past him. Out room was full of smoke, and my mother, slightly bent forward, was lying in Sophie’s bed. Although she was wearing her quilted dressing gown, she had pulled the cover, the one decorated with toadstools and dwarves, up to her chest, and didn’t look at us. Her head was turned to the wall, her eyes closed, and she was holding an extinguished cigarette between her fingers. There were tears, grey with eyeliner, on Sophie’s pillow.

I bent down over her. ‘What’s the matter? Did you have another colic?’

She sniffed quietly, but didn’t say anything. Her foot, which was poking out of the end of the covers, still had one of the slippers with the plush edging on it. She was wearing her pearl necklace, and I pulled the cigarette butt out from between her fingers and threw it into the bowl on the bedside rug. My father breathed out sharply through his nose and ran his hands through his hair.

‘Shall we call you an ambulance?’ She swallowed hard, again and again, as if she had something stuck in her throat. ‘What’s the point.’ She spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, and hardly moved her mouth. ‘Just let me lie here.’

My father shrugged his shoulders. He turned round and went into the kitchen, and while I took the slippers off her feet and placed them next to the bed I could hear him tinkering with the stove rings and scratching about in the coal scuttle; it was much louder than when she did it. I bent down and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Her skin felt dull from the spray.

‘Shall I make a hot water bottle?’ She nodded almost invisibly. Her eyelids were trembling, and I turned round to go to the bathroom – and found my father standing in the doorway again. Folds going down over the bridge of his nose. His lips so pale that I could hardly make them out from the rest of his skin, he held the half-thawed packet of spinach in his fist like a brick.

‘Now listen here…’ He went up close to the little bed. ‘If you’re not feeling well, please go to the doctor. And if there’s something wrong with your gall bladder, it’s about time you had an operation. What are hospitals for? I’m getting sick and tired of all this back and forth. When I come out of that hole where I work myself half to death for you all every day, I expect to have something to eat, you understand? Then I bloody well expect to see some food on the table!’

He was speaking more loudly than I had ever heard him speak before, and when he screamed ‘Do you understand me!’ after that, I saw his lower row of teeth, the brown gaps between them. With a kick, he sent the ashtray next to the bed flying into the corner.

But it stayed in one piece, even though it was made of glass. But the five cigarette butts inside it jumped onto the carpet. ‘And now get the hell up! If you can smoke one fag after another, you can make your family something to eat!’”

After the return of the mother and sister from Schleswig (Rothmann’s birthplace), the family is informed that they have to move out by the end of the month – Julian’s father had sex with Marusha and now Gorny is blackmailing them to leave the house.

Whereas most of the novel is told from Julian’s perspective, several short parts of the book are told in third person perspective. These paragraphs describe the work of a coal miner during his shift almost a thousand meters below the ground. While he is entering an area with water ingress, he is preparing a blasting to avoid a catastrophe; in the end it seems that the miner has an accident, possibly a fatal one. But it is left unsolved what exactly happened and who the miner was – although he was looking briefly on his Kienzle watch with the broken glass, exactly the same as Julian’s father is wearing.

What strikes me about the novel is first of all the language. Rothmann avoids the trap in which so many writers of autobiographical novels are falling.

Julian, from whose perspective most of the novel is told, is not looking back with an affectionate, transfigured view. He reports the things as he sees them and in a rather unemotional, almost a bit detached way. Before his mother starts to beat him with the wooden cooking spoon, he turns up the music of the radio a bit because he knows from experience that he will cry and he doesn’t want the Gorny’s downstairs to hear it.

Julian’s world is a quite unkindly one: he cannot remember to have ever embraced or kissed his mother; when he wants to hold his father around his waist while riding on the back seat of his bicycle, his father is reprimanding him. Only with his little sister Sophie who is sometimes a pain in the ass but mostly very cheerful and charming, he is embracing and kissing.

Most other children and almost all adults are aggressive, rude, malicious – with very few exceptions: there is Pomrehn, who behind his rather tattered and disheveled appearance is a kind and even wise person; the catholic priest, who is on the one side rather strict with the children but who tries to talk Julian out of his feeling of guilt when he is confessing his alleged sins; Marusha, who is beside her rather aggressive and provocatively displayed sexuality, talking to Julian as a friend and confidante; and there is a man he sees on TV who is talking so differently from all other people in Julian’s surroundings.

The man is using expressions that resonate well in Julian and that make him want to know who this man, a writer, really is; a man who is speaking in a serious voice which betrays his soft Cologne accent. Unfortunately for Julian, he will not know the name of the man with the sad eyes and the bulbous nose – not this time that is. But we readers witness an important formative moment in Julian’s life: for the first time he realizes that words can be a means to express important things, feelings, opinions that matter. And Heinrich Böll, the unnamed writer that is so easy to recognize from Rothmann’s description, is the one who made this happen.

Since we can assume that Rothmann is describing his own childhood and the end of it in Julian’s story, we can understand what an impact this moment possibly had on the author. Rothmann worked as a mason, driver, cook and in various other jobs before he started his career as a writer. Among the many literary awards he received, is ironically also the Heinrich Böll Award of the City of Cologne.

What I also have to praise is that Rothmann is an intelligent and conscious narrator. He is a few years older than me but I also grew up in a coal mining town in Germany that resembles very much the unnamed place of Julian’s childhood. When I read the book, it was sometimes almost as if I have a flashback to my own childhood, so precise to the last detail is Rothmann’s book when he describes the catholic, proletarian and petty bourgeois milieu of the coal miners of the Ruhr (or in my case: Saar) region,

In the end we see Julian preparing to move to a new place with his family. He has lost a few illusions about his parents, his peers, about adults and maybe life in general. But he will keep the picture of the writer in his mind and will try to find out more about him in the library one day. And he will also remember the words of Pomrehn, who once said to him:

“When you have chosen freedom, nothing can ever happen to you. Never. “

Young Light is one of the best coming-of-age novels I ever read. 

Young Light

Ralf Rothmann: Young Light, translated by Wieland Hoban, Seagull Books, Calcutta 2010 

Seagull Books, an Indian publisher, has become one of the best addresses for translated literature in the English-speaking world. They do pioneer work to make important German, Italian, French and African authors available for the anglophone book market. Seagull publisher Naveen Kishore was awarded the Goethe medal in Weimar in 2013 in recognition of his important work.

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Michael Ondaatje and Miroslav Penkov will read in Sofia

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For those readers of the blog who are in Sofia next Friday, I have a quite interesting event to announce.

One of the most famous and best contemporary authors, Michael Ondaatje, comes to town. The author of The English Patient, Running in the Family and other excellent books is accompanied by English-writing Bulgarian-American author Miroslav Penkov – I reviewed the latter’s first brilliant book East of the West here not long ago.

You can meet the two authors, who will read, answer questions and sign books at the Helikon Bookstore, Bul. Tsar Osvoboditel 4 (that’s opposite the Russian Church), on Friday, 26 September, at 18.00. The event is organized by the Publishing House Lachezar Minchev and is supported by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

Don’t miss it in case you are around!

Patient Hardcover 2013 Jacket CDR 15 Final 2

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


Aziyadé

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The Saloniki Incident of 1876 triggered a major diplomatic crisis in Europe: a Bulgarian girl had converted to Islam, was later kidnapped by a Christian mob when she came to Saloniki and this enraged the fury of the local Muslim community. When the French and German consuls tried to calm down the tension by negotiating with the angry Muslims, they were assaulted and bludgeoned to death by the crowd. The countries that had a diplomatic presence in the Ottoman Empire protested and threatened with serious consequences. The Ottoman Government, in a constitutional crisis and amid the clouds of a coming war with Russia and with a bad press regarding the treatment of the Balkan Christians, complied and got the ringleaders arrested and executed – under the watchful eye of a contingent of French and British soldiers that had arrived on board of several warships in the port of Saloniki.

One of the French officers on board was a 26-year old Julien Viaud, who was soon enchanted by the Orient as he experienced it in Saloniki (then a multi-cultural city with only a small Greek population that was outnumbered by its Turkish, Albanian, Bulgarian and Jewish inhabitants) and later in Constantinople. He kept a diary in which he wrote down his experiences, impressions and general remarks. This diary is the basis of the book he later published anonymously under the title Aziyadé. The alleged diarist of the book is a British marine officer called Loti. It was the name under which his author came to great fame – Viaud/Loti became one of the most popular authors of his times and he had a deep impact on Marcel Proust.

Aziyadé consists of many short chapters. Loti is describing how he got acquainted with the Circassian girl Aziyadé who is married with a much older wealthy Turk who is most of the time away on business, while his harem is looking for distractions elsewhere. (Although moral was very strict and affairs of married women were very risky for them, they seem to have been a quite frequent occurrence, according to Loti). The seemingly impossible happens, Aziyadé becomes Loti’s mistress and is living with him part of the time in a house he has rented in the district of Eyoub. Together with his two loyal servants Samuel and Achmet, who become his close friends, and a cat, the lovebirds live for some time a perfectly happy life, which is permanently threatened by the possible departure of Loti, who as an officer has to follow the orders of his superiors.  The diary form of the book is loosened by the letters Loti is exchanging with his sister and a few friends.

What makes the book interesting beside the romantic love story of Loti and Aziyadé is the fact that Loti who “goes local” (he learns Turkish, wears Turkish dress and spends his days like a true Ottoman), has a very attentive eye and a language to express the many interesting details he shares with us.

Observations about politics, for example how his neighbors react to the news that the Ottoman Empire has adopted a modern constitution, or about the brewing crisis with Russia, are followed by interesting insights into the domestic life of the locals or the organization of a Turkish household. We learn why the inhabitants of Constantinople had to go out with a lamp, about life in the harem, about the different religious groups, about cemeteries, and even about Aziyadé’s shoes – nothing is too small for Loti as not to use it for interesting reflections. His language – as far as I can judge from the translation – is refined and elegant and pleasant to read.

If Viaud/Loti describes a really autobiographical experience is not sure. Edmond de Goncourt, known for his malicious tongue, wrote that the mistress of the author was indeed a “mister”, and Gide and Cocteau made later similar remarks. But for the reader it doesn’t really matter.

Loti is not widely read anymore and he got labeled an “Orientalist” by Edward Said. But I found this book a very pleasant surprise. It is remarkably fresh, interesting and easy to read. You might give it a try yourself.

Loti

Pierre Loti: Aziyadé, translated by Marjorie Laurie, Amphora, Istanbul 2006

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

This is a modern world

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Recently I read somewhere that a publisher wants to reissue some classics in a more modern and contemporary form. I guess that means Dante’s Inferno featuring the guy that invented the “Latte to Go”, side by side with the man that first had the idea for the pizza with mayo and ketchup.

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


A ‘manly’ book by a ‘manly’ author

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After a long hiatus, I read these days my first Hemingway book since many years: Fiesta – The Sun Also Rises.

We all know – or we think to know – Ernest Hemingway, even if we had not read any of his books; of all 20th century authors, he was arguably the most successful in creating a worldwide public image of himself, the brand “Hemingway”: a manly man keeping himself busy doing manly things (or things he thought were proof of his manliness). And when he was not busy hunting the biggest game, fishing the biggest fish, fighting the most dangerous bull, reporting from the most dangerous war front lines, downing the biggest amount of booze or courting the most attractive women (all the things you seem to have to do when you want to keep a show of being a manly man), he was hammering in a creative outburst with great energy all these outstanding manly novels and stories written in his trademark manly style into his typewriter, preferably stripped down to the waist and with a hard drink and a photographer at hand to distribute this image of the most manly author on earth and his hairy chest to all his readers and non-readers.

I never quite understood what’s exactly so manly about killing animals just for the fun and show-off, or what’s exactly so manly about being a third-degree alcoholic always on the border of a drunken stupor, or what’s exactly so manly about blowing your own brain out with a shotgun. What I quite understood somehow from the first time I came across Hemingway was that this was an author who had a serious issue with his own manliness (or possibly the lack thereof).

Many authors are a bit weird, or have issues, and some of the most talented writers were outright lunatics. So I am not holding this image and ridiculous and narcissistic show of manliness of the person Hemingway against his writing. A book is very frequently more perfect, even more intelligent than its author. We should never judge a book or any other piece of art based on personal sympathy or antipathy for the creator of this artwork. But in some cases, the defaults and flaws of the author show also in the artwork, and then the personality of the author becomes an issue. Fiesta – The Sun Also Rises is in my opinion such a case.

Some American and British expats, mostly wealthy heirs or people with artistic ambitions, mingle in the Paris of the mid 1920s. Life is pretty cheap after the war and Paris is a permissive city with a famous nightlife that made it so attractive for foreigners with hard currency. Paris was the place to be when you were a young heterosexual writer or journalist or when you were just looking for fun (Babylon Berlin was the obvious choice for the less mainstream-oriented faction).

Jake Barnes, the narrator, is a young journalist. His friend, the writer Robert Cohn, starts a relationship with the attractive and promiscuous heiress Lady Brett (two times divorced and planning another rich marriage) with whom also Barnes is in love.

Barnes, who was a soldier at the Italian front in WWI got seriously wounded and as a result is emasculated. Brett seems to love him nevertheless, but since her appetite cannot be fulfilled by Barnes, she starts a relationship with Cohn, and later in Spain where the group is traveling together with some other friends, Bill Gorton and Brett’s fiance Mike Campell, to watch a bullfight, she is seducing a very young bullfighter, Romero.

During the fiesta, the whole group gets drunk and starts to attack Cohn with anti-Semitic remarks. Cohn, who used to be an amateur boxer in college starts a fistfight and is beating up his opponents. After everyone is sober again, the group is quickly dispersing. Barnes receives a message from Lady Brett to come to Madrid, where she had gone with Romero. He finds her penniless in a cheap hotel. She is informing Jake that she intends to return to her fiance.

A quite interesting scenario I have to admit. The chapters are short. The sentences are very short. The book is a very fast read. In some scenes Hemingway shows that his craftsmanship can be excellent, especially when he describes the fiesta, the bullfight that he loved (and that I detest) so much. The book gives in some good moments a clear idea why Hemingway is such a highly revered author in the opinion of many readers.

And yet, I had more than one moment while I read the book, when I got so angry with Hemingway’s writing that I threw the book in disgust at the wall of my room.

As I mentioned, the book consists mainly of very short, childlike sentences. Subject-predicate-object. Subject-predicate-object. Subject-predicate-object. And so on and on, over pages and pages. I simply don’t like it. It does not have to be always the long and winding sentences of a Thomas Mann novel, but there is a thing called syntax and from time to time it would be just nice if the author would give us some sentences that are not written in this childlike style. “Do you have emotions? Strangle them.” This ironic Saul Bellow word about Hemingway’s style sounds very convincing to me after I read Fiesta.  In short, when I read a book labeled “novel”, I want indeed read a novel and not a text that reads more like a film script most of the time, even when the author is the manly Hemingway.

Jake Barnes is not the most endearing narrator. Already on the first two pages he does everything to depict Cohn – who he claims is his friend – in the most disgusting and unsympathetic way.  And even more, Barnes is using the most primitive anti-Semitic stereotype when it comes to paint Cohn in the most negative color. Describing Cohn’s talent for boxing, Barnes tells us (in one of the early passages before Hemingway falls back to his favorite style):

“He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose.”

Ah yes, Jews have crooked noses, hahaha – maybe in Hemingway’s eyes that was funny, but I find it only revolting. Similarly disgusting, or even worse are the insults that are thrown at Cohn during the fiesta by the others.

The same goes also for the image of women in the book. Lady Brett, although obviously a really attractive woman, is described as a very promiscuous but also cunning and calculating woman. She takes the men she wants, but she is marrying of course only for the money and wealth that it provides. All this talk about love and feelings is just talk, and her attraction to Barnes may be so strong because she knows she can never have him; the curiosity factor, you know. Barnes is a man only in appearance, but contrary to Cohn, Romero, and all the others, he is physically unable to satisfy her. The other women in the book, for example the French girl Georgette, are called poulet (chicken), and they are ready for the men’s consumption – IF you are a real man that is. I think the misogyny of the narrator is beyond question.

This mix of anti-Semitic and misogynistic stereotypes, together with the display of narcissism and self-pity of the narrator got on my nerves. It got on my nerves to an extent that I had to force myself to finish this repelling book.

OK, we should not necessarily identify the views of the narrator with the views of the author. Frequently authors put an unreliable narrator in charge or even one with whose opinions they completely disagree. But considering the autobiographical background of the story, we can dismiss this idea in this case.

Unfortunately this is a book written by a young author in Paris who was wounded in WWI, who drank his time away, got involved in the love triangle he describes in the novel. Hemingway’s affair and the story of the book are (almost) identical – with the important difference that Hemingway was emasculated by his alcohol abuse in later years, and not by a WWI wound.  Hemingway’s main rival was Harold Loeb, a Jewish author and journalist, who was obviously not only the better boxer than Hemingway in real life, but also the better lover. As a reader we can feel, that Hemingway’s and Barnes’ opinions regarding Jews, women, boxing, bullfighting, and a lot of other things are identical. And it is not good when an author writes a book that is “too close to home.”

Spiteful, misogynistic and full of anti-Semitic stereotypes, written in a childlike style. That is Fiesta, by Ernest Hemingway. I know that’s a harsh verdict but I am here to give you my honest opinion for what it’s worth.

I am afraid the next manly Hemingway book has to wait for a long time to be read and reviewed by me.

P.S.: As for stereotypes, I almost forgot it – but it adds to the bleak picture; Hemingway’s characters (much as the author himself, as we know from his letters) have also strong opinions about non-whites. The infamous N word is used exclusively to characterize black people, who in general have no individual name.

Examples: an Afro-American jazz musician is described like this by the narrator:

“The n(…) drummer waved at Brett…. ‘Hahre you?’ ‘Great.’ ‘Thaats good.’ He was all teeth and lips.”

Yes, just like Jews have crooked noses, blacks are “niggers”, cannot speak proper English and have thick lips and shiny teeth in Hemingway’s world. But it gets even worse when the narrator meets a friend who was placing a bet on a black boxer in Vienna:

‘Remember something about a prize-fight. Enormous Vienna prize-fight. Had a n(…) in it. Remember n(…) perfectly.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘Wonderful n(…). Looked like Tiger Flowers, only four times as big. All of a sudden everybody started to throw things. Not me. N(…)’d just knocked local boy down. N(…) put up his glove. Wanted to make a speech. Then the local boy hit him. Then he knocked white boy cold. Then everybody commenced to throw chairs. N(…) went home with us in our car.’

And so on. Fifteen times the N word on less than one page. I don’t want to be politically correct but Hemingway’s characters in this book are without exception extremely racist, shallow and uninteresting people. Why do I have to follow this story of a bunch of drunkards that are described without any depth in a staccato language that makes every dialogue from a soap opera in comparison sound like high literature? Just because his characters share the author’s own unsupportable opinions about race, Jews, drinking, women and bullfighting?

Thanks, but no, thank you.

fiesta

Ernest Hemingway: Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, Arrow Books, London 2004

Other reviews:
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© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“Terror is stronger in us than delight”

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The wooden ship is the talk of the town. When the beautiful large three-master arrives at the unnamed port (maybe Hamburg, the author’s home city), the citizens are more than a bit puzzled. The wooden ship is all teak and oak and it looks much too elegant to be an ordinary freighter. (Hans Henny Jahnn, the author of The Ship, was not only a famous organ-builder but also the son of a ship carpenter, which helped him to make the description of the ship so convincing.)

Unknown cargo is unloaded, the owner is dismissing the crew and leaving just two guards (with whom he drinks almost every night on the ship). After a while a new crew is hired and under the supervision of a person who is referred to as the Supercargo – later we learn that his real name is Georg Lauffer – , the new cargo is being carried to the ship without further investigation by the customs.

And here, at the latest, it dawns on the reader that something must be wrong with the ship: neither the content of the coffin-shaped crates nor the destination of the ship are known to the crew or even the captain, and during the process of carrying the crates it comes to an eruption of violence from the side of the Supercargo. The reasons why he lets part of the crew to be beaten up are not exactly clear, but as a result part of the sailors are dismissed and replaced by seamen who will not ask questions and who will stay away from the mysterious cargo.

These events give the author an opportunity to make the reader familiar with his opinions about life in general:

“A human being who has suffered a disappointment turns to the laws of physics. A child who has just burned himself with a glowing red ember, tries, cautiously, to see if a stick of red sealing wax will injure him in the same way. And if Providence intends to give him a thorough knowledge of life, she lets him make the same test at regular intervals. And perhaps he will gain the knowledge that the red stuff—which is apparently always the same—is sometimes hot, and sometimes cool. And a small corner of the veil of What Happens if lifted. He looks into the abyss of causality and can see the face of time as a reflection of eternity. Certainty becomes questionable, the riddle more powerful than knowledge. He will no longer trust the chance that might burn him.”

“And a wave of primitive remembrance came over them, the beginning of all thought and its magical expiration, which came out of the darkness of the room. Laws, still unclear which must therefore have been repealed. Metals, malleable as wax, melted in fire and not congealed. Wood as pliable as a reed. Bodies that have no weight, no face. Stones that can float. Magnetic mountains. A reversal of the senses. The vast kingdom of the unreliable.”

“The lights were on in the great sky dome, flickering in infinite space. Their cold glow, uplifting the heart or destroying it, conveyed the deceptive marvel of edifying ideas. Millions of human beings—and who knows if the animals don’t do the same thing—look up at the night with uncomprehending eyes and turn inward to a forlorn or frightened breast, their own. They see themselves as chosen or rejected. Or what is far away is as far away for them as it pretends to be. It does not penetrate the miasma of their martyred blood. And then again storms spread their noise across the vapors of the earth. Now it was the gleaming dew of loneliness that trickled down upon it.”

“Just as the pit of a mine was a hollow amid rock, a ship was a hole in the water in which lungs could breath. A human being had to fear mountains and water.”

“The conclusion is inescapable that he must have been jammed into the space or sucked up. The wall has to be there.”

“We have witnessed the horrible again and again, a transformation no one could foresee. A healthy body is run over by a truck, crushed. Blood, once secreted, once feeling its way blindly through the body, pulsating in a meshwork of thin streams, spreading the chemically charged hormones and their mysterious functions like a red tree inside man—this blood now runs out shapelesssly in great puddles. And still no one grasps that, in a network of veins, it has form. But even more horrible—the death struggle itself, in which the innumerable organs, which we believe we feel, take part. Terror is stronger in us than delight.”

“The miracles of life turn out to be preparation for a gigantic disillusionment and at the end stands old age. Extraordinary things are nothing but steps that lead to crime, and the corruption of the senses seems to be the order of the day.”

“When we begin to think… we are more naked than at birth and more helpless. And we are strangled in the noose of the shriveling umbilical cord.”

The captain of the ship, Waldemar Strunk, is bringing his daughter Ellena on board, because he doesn’t want to leave her alone at home. Her fiance Gustav Horn decides to come on board as a stowaway. When the ship is leaving port, the owner is mysteriously missing, and Gustav and Ellena are suspecting that for some unknown reason the owner might also be on board as a stowaway.

The ship is becoming more and more a mystery to the passengers and the crew. While Ellena and Gustav are in Ellena’s cabin, they realize that the lock is not working properly, and thus the secret of Gustav is uncovered by the Supercargo. After it is officially known that Ellena’s fiancee is on board, Gustav is walking around on board and makes the acquaintance of the crew. Some characters, like the cook, the ship’s carpenter Klemens Fitte, and the youngest sailor Alfred Tutein (who whispers on several occasions “Danger!” into Gustav’s ear) are introduced more closely. Between Gustav and Tutein there seems to grow a strange mutual attraction, although we readers can only guess the nature of this obvious attraction.

Gustav, the main figure of the novel, is listening full of fascination to the stories of the primitive, vital and virile sailors. This is a simple world where the men are following their animal instincts, a world that is completely new to the educated Gustav.

“And he discovered that he was inferior to these men. They had had experience in every direction. At fourteen they had already mistaken the joys of Hell for the bliss of Paradise, and, later, stood again and again with empty hands in a completely illuminated world . . . Gustave envied them, not for their miserable experiences, but for the particular smell of reality which would never be his because he didn’t have the courage, wasn’t sufficiently carefree, to let himself be torn to shreds for no good reason.”

At the same time, some process of estrangement seems to take place between Gustav and Ellena, who is meeting the Supercargo several times without Gustav’s knowledge. Gustav becomes jealous when he realizes that his fiancee has secret conversations with Lauffer, because he is suspecting that there is much more to them than Ellena wants to make him believe.

“‘You are suffering,’ she said simply. ‘Why?’

‘I can present my parables in a different connection or in a different order,’ he said. ‘Millions of ears hear the magical sound of universal sadness, true or false, and fall prey to it. There exists only one pain, one passion, on death. But they glitter limitlessly in infinity, in motion everywhere. And every ray, the known and the unknown, hums this consuming rhythm, this melody of downfall. He who lays himself open to it founders, goes up in flames, succumbs. Perhaps the greatest work of art is the masterpiece of omnipotence which is everywhere with a soft voice. And we, its servants, are being summoned to all things at every moment. But often we refuse. We shut ourselves off. But when are we so completely healthy or invulnerable that pain cannot reach us? When could we call ourselves out of the reach of death? Where is there peace and justice, a condition without condemnation, that we could let sadness go from us with impunity?’

‘That is a theory of how suffering spreads on this earth, from the stars or from somewhere or other.’

‘But I don’t want it that way,’ he said. ‘I want to experience everything but I want to remain as virtuous as matter, which is unaware of its own manifestations. I want to stand at my own side when I scream or sink to the ground in convulsions. I am not prepared to let myself be put on trial as to whether I am a useful or an objectionable male animal. I have come into being and intend to make myself at home in the condition as I please. I don’t escape the voice, I swing and twitch with it, but I don’t want to feel it as everybody else feels it.’

‘You are crying.’ The words come from her forced.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mean anything to me.’ “

Things are escalating quickly after the illiterate carpenter Klemens Fitte, the son of a prostitute, is telling one of the strangest stories you will ever read in your life: the story of Kebad Kenya, a man who wants to be buried alive and who makes his neighbors who will inherit his big fortune kill his favorite horse without any apparent reason.

“After all, it was his intention to die without the help of death, and the effort to become motionless and cold took every ounce of his vigilance and strength.”

The story of Kebad Kenya leads the sailors to suspect that the coffin-shaped crates contain dead (or living) human bodies and they rush to break into the cargo room and open the first crate that proves surprisingly to be empty.

Ellena disappears suddenly after a visit at the Supercargo’s cabin. Is she hiding in the ship? Has she jumped over board? Was she killed – and by whom? A search is started during which the ship is so damaged that it is sinking and the crew has to be evacuated. Most of them will be saved by an approaching ship, but Ellena’s fate remains a secret and mystery.

“Then it was over. They climbed across the cargo toward the door by which they had entered. Gustav, in a last effort to come closer to the content of the cargo, threw himself down on one of the coffin-like crates. He made the effort, even if with dwindling will power and filled with a premonition of futility, to establish some sort of relationship with the mysterious thing. It seemed foolish to him, an error of human perception, that anything could remain hidden which could be approached until only a few centimeters lay between. But it was the usual thing to be struck with blindness. Who could recognize the sickness of his neighbor with his eyes even though it lay palpable under the skin? When Gustav arose from the crate a few seconds later, he had assured himself that the icy aura which filled the hold had infected the crates or, perhaps, they were its sources. He felt as if he had thrown himself down on the snows of a wintry field. And a white wraith of cold crept up to him.”

This lengthy synopsis doesn’t answer the question what happened to Ellena because The Ship (the title should be The Wooden Ship – in German it is Das Holzschiff and not Das Schiff) is just the overture to a true monster of a novel. Fluss ohne Ufer (River Without Banks) has about 2500 pages of which only the first part is translated into English.

True, The Ship is a stand-alone novel. But still it is such a pity that this great and in many ways unique novel is not available in English. (It has been translated to French though).

It’s author, Hans Henny Jahnn, was a unique figure, and the book is unlike any other book you will come across during your life. In a way, it is devastating and it might be one of these books that have the potential to change your life.

In Jahnn’s world there is no God, no metaphysics. Traditional concepts of moral, guilt, progress, are rejected. Man is not superior to the rest of the creatures, the animal is his equal and in many ways even superior. (Jahnn was an early advocate of animal rights and also a leading figure in the movement against nuclear arms).

That Jahnn’s novels, plays and stories are full of controversial topics like sado-masochism, homo- and bi-sexuality, incest and others that will repel a part of the readership, did not exactly help his popularity. But this is a pity, because despite all that, Jahnn is such a great author. Other reasons why Jahnn is not popular were given by literary critic Ulrich Greiner in his essay “The seven deadly sins of Hans Henny Jahnn”. He writes:

“There is no consolation. “It is what it is, and it is terrible.” No God is conceivable, enlightenment a fiasco, reason only a flatus vocis, progress a catastrophic joke. No matter in which direction Jahnn thinks, no matter which ways his painful heroes are pursuing, no matter which vision is lighting up in the moment: the aporia is indissoluble, the novel cannot be concluded, the artistic effort a failure. At the end, there is only darkness. That leaves a bitter taste. This is not very digestible.”

Many of the mysteries of The Ship are uncovered in the untranslated part of River Without Banks. Where is the publisher that makes this masterpiece that has no similarity to any other novel, available to anglophone readers?

I intend to return later to the untranslated part of the novel.

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Hans Henny Jahnn: The Ship, translated by Catherine Hutter, Peter Owen 1970

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


The key to the Pasha’s library

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As readers of Andre Aciman’s wonderful memoir Out of Egypt will know, Egypt was until the 1950s home of a Levantine Jewish community that lived for most of its history comparatively well integrated and respected in this part of the world.

Multi-cultural Cairo and Alexandria were at that time home to many religious and ethnic minorities that over the centuries had learned to cope with each other in a – mostly – peaceful way. Many members of the Jewish community like the Cattaui family had risen to great wealth and affluence. With the rise of Egyptian nationalism, the wars in 1948 and 1956 and the erection of an authoritarian regime of officers under the leadership of Nasser, this period came abruptly to an end. The Jews were no longer welcome in Egypt and had to leave, usually with very little except their lives and a few clothes.

This is the historical backdrop of two books of memoirs by Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years. Lagnado, a journalist working for major newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, was born in Egypt, where she spent her first years before emigrating via France to the US with her parents and siblings.

The books are covering roughly a century. Whereas The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit focuses mainly on her father, The Arrogant Years is mainly devoted to the life of the author’s mother. Although the two works cover the same period, Lagnado avoids redundancy as much as possible which makes both books worth reading.

The author’s father, Leon, was obviously a larger-than-life figure: he was very tall, good-looking, with impeccable manners and a talent for languages; a boulevardier that liked to go out every evening until late at night; a business man that was so secretive about his business that even his close family members had no idea if his business was thriving or if he was on the verge of bankruptcy; a womanizer that was rumored to have had many affairs (including the charismatic singer Om Kalthoum); a man that was at home with the British officers in Cairo during WWII who dubbed him “the Captain”; but at the same time a devout Jew who observed all rules of his creed and was praying every day in the synagogue; a patriarch with a very traditional mindset when it came to the role of women in the family; but at the same time a very kind and patient father (especially with his youngest daughter, the author).

Edith, the author’s mother, was considerably younger than her husband. Although her background was very different from Leon’s – her family was very poor -, her charm and good looks, together with her good education and humble manners made Leon approach her. The first chapter of Sharkskin which describes the courting makes quite an entertaining read. There was not much romance, the whole affair was conducted in a quite businesslike way by Leon and Alexandra, Edith’s mother, who set the rules for the further proceedings.

But the marriage proved to be a rather unhappy affair. Leon didn’t change his lifestyle of going out late every evening (except Sabbath) without his wife. Edith, who had worked as a very young teacher and librarian for the Cattaui family, the most influential Jewish family in Egypt, had to give up her job she loved so much and was confined to the home where she was supposed to take care of the children and the household, which was de facto dominated by Leon’s mother, a rather stern woman from Aleppo who insisted to speak only Arabic (usually Levantine families like the Lagnados would speak French as native language).

Both parents felt deeply enrooted in Egypt. While more and more of their friends and relatives were leaving the country, they tried to hold out as long as possible. But after a short arrest of the oldest sister Suzette, it is obvious that they have to leave. In Paris, the family which is now completely depended on the support by some organizations that deal with Jewish refugees, has to wait quite a long time until finally being admitted to be resettled in the US.

Life in New York held many difficulties in stock for the Lagnados: Leon, once a quite wealthy and successful businessman, had to support his family with the small earnings he made as a street seller of fake silk ties; the mother’s dream “to rebuild the hearth” fell apart since the older children were step by step going their own way or even leaving home for good. Life in Cairo was better in so many respects for the older generation and the nostalghia they are feeling in relation to their home country doesn’t exactly help them to embrace the American Way of Life that seems so strange to them.

While the author’s father seems to get tired from life and is withdrawing more and more to his prayer books, Edith surprisingly re-invents herself. She applies for a library job and despite lacking degrees or practical experience (except for her work as a young girl in the Cattaui library), she is surprisingly hired. From the author’s descriptions it becomes clear that this – beside her childhood – was probably the happiest time in the life of her mother, who deeply loved (mainly French) literature and who had read the complete Marcel Proust already as a young girl in Cairo.

Lagnado’s books touch on many interesting issues: the school and university system in the US; the typical problems of immigrant children who “try to fit in”; the change of the role of women in family and society that started in the 1960s with the Women’s Lib movement; the role of tradition and religion in the Jewish community; and also the situation of the health sector in the States. Quite a lot of the books deal with the ailments of her parents and herself (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s in the case of Leon; a series of debilitating strokes in the case of Edith; and Hodgkin’s disease in the case of the author). But that’s not a criticism: this family has had more than their fair share of sufferings.

Lagnado’s books are not only a monument for her parents, but also for a now almost extinct specific Levantine Jewish culture. At the end of both books, she is able to reconnect herself with her own past and the past of this community. After many years, she is visiting Cairo again, standing on the balcony of her former family home in Malaka Nazli (now: Ramses) Street. And somewhere in Switzerland she tracks down the remains of the famous Cattaui library, including the books that were purchased decades ago by her mother who was given the key to the legendary Pasha’s library by the famous Madame Cattaui.

As readers we can feel rewarded that Lagnado shared her family history with us and we can be glad that she was able to make new friends again in her native city. Two truly remarkable and touching memoirs.

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Lucette Lagnado: The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Ecco Press, New York 2007

Lucette Lagnado: The Arrogant Years, Ecco Press, New York 2011

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


Ara Güler’s Istanbul

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Really great artists are frequently very modest, even humble persons, says Orhan Pamuk in the introduction to the photo book Ara Güler’s Istanbul. 

Güler calls himself a photo journalist, but he is much more: a chronicler of his home town Istanbul since the late 1940s, a kind of archaeologist (since Istanbul has changed a lot in the last decades), but definitely also a great artist.

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Ara Güler’s Istanbul presents just a small sample of the more than 800,000 photos he took almost exclusively with his Leica, but they give a wonderful opportunity to catch a glimpse of the artist’s most iconic works.

We see fishermen mending their nets, children playing in front of derelict Ottoman structures, ferry boats passing the Golden Horn, street vendors pushing their carts in the cobblestone streets of Kadıköy, a tram waiting for a man with his horse cart passing the rails. It’s usually not the Istanbul tourists know. We see crumbling buildings and people who look tired from their everyday struggle to survive in this glorious city. Istanbul and its buildings are only the backdrop for a big stage: the drama of life with its difficulties, everyday routines and small pleasures.

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Güler’s photos breathe a deep humanity. The people we see on his photos, no matter how poor they may be, are never devoid of a certain dignity. And frequently there is a touch of magic there too, which is difficult to describe. Just have a look at these breathtaking photos.

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Ara Güler’s Istanbul, Introduction by Orhan Pamuk, Thames & Hudson 2009

Ara Güler’s website: http://www.araguler.com.tr/

© Ara Güler (photos) 
© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A pseudo “service”

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Are customer reviews on amazon.com a real service and useful for readers? 

The answer is: no. Customer reviews on that website are clearly a pseudo “service”. 

A very few of them are interesting. But I usually do not know who is writing them. In some cases it is an author who writes under certain aliases reviews about his own – usually mediocre – book, while writing very unfavorable reviews on the books of competitors (Orlando Figes is not the only case). In other cases it is someone who is paid to write these reviews in the interest of the author or publisher. And even a very high number of favorable reviews don’t say anything about the quality of the book – unless you think “a million flies cannot be wrong”… 

Nevertheless, some of the amazon.com customer reviews make for hilarious reading. Some examples: 

“The most boring read ever! The main character spends all his time doing nothing — and, worse, makes us all listen to his tedious CONTEMPLATIONS on how he does nothing. Much too slow; there should be more action here. Moreover, the author reverts time and time again to tired cliches — e.g., “outrageous fortune,” “murder most foul,” “primrose path,” “the time is out of joint,” “more honored in the breach than the observance.” The list could go on and on: we’ve heard them millions of times before, and we hear them every day. Finally, the story is too grim and sad. Why do so many people have to die? Why can’t the main character just realize that it’s better to forgive and forget than to take revenge and CONSTANTLY PONTIFICATE about EVERYTHING. Stay away from this book. There are lots of better and more entertaining books to buy.” (A. Person, Cambridge, MA – on Hamlet) 

Ok, if you need more action, I recommend Counterstrike…no contemplation required. 

“I don’t see anything philosophical, moral or intelligent about this book. It’s a boring, nonsensical story that has no point and on top of that is an excellent example of extreme ennui. If anyone other than the intellectual, snob critics’ pet “Kafka” had written it it would have been flushed down the toilet where it deserves to be.” (Euterpe – on The Metamorphosis) 

If I had the choice to either flush this review or The Metamorphosis down the toilet, it is an easy guess which one would I choose. 

“Paulo Coelho in my opinion is the best writer I have read in my life. He astonishes me with his natural talent and his insight.” (NN jr. – on The Zahir) 

I feel sorry for each person that thinks that this insufferable windbag P.C. is a writer at all. “The best writer I have read in my life” – Mr. NN jr. has either a wicked sense of irony, or he is a serious contender for the award for the dumbest sentence in a book review ever. 

“Not a great novel by ANY means. VEEEEERY SLOOOOOOW, INCREDIBLY BORING and NEVER really gets going at all (I bet most people will fall asleep after the first chapter or two). Defies logic how this novel gets so highly rated by ANYONE. Quite a bizarre/weird writing style and I really struggled with this one. Don’t waste your time reading this garbage.” (graygray – on Crime and Punishment) 

Defies logic how this masterpiece can be rated by anyone as “incredibly boring”. 

“This book is absolutely BORING!! I can’t believe almost everyone (or is it just everyone?) rated this book as 5 full stars! First, I don’t get it, second, Werther is somewhat pahychotic (Sic!), and third, this book has no plot. Therfore (Sic!), no climax, which is the most important part of a book.” (A Customer – on The Sorrows of Young Werther) 

Ah yes, Goethe, the old bugger. He hadn’t got a clue how to write. No plot, no climax – and I bet also his orthography was not on par with yours… 

These reviews made me think of two sentences of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: 

„Wenn ein Buch und ein Kopf zusammenstoßen und es klingt hohl, ist das allemal im Buch?“ (When a book and a head are colliding and it sounds hollow, is it always in the book?) 

„Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel: wenn ein Affe hineinsieht, so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.“ (A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out) 

So, better you read some good book blogs or other print or electronic media with a more serious approach to reviewing instead of amazon.com’s customer reviews – and better buy your books at your local bookstore. (And if you buy online, there are many good alternatives to Mr. Bezos’ figment of monopoly capitalism.)

 

The Lichtenberg quotes are from his Waste Books (NYRB Classics, transl. R.J. Hollingdale).

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The quotes from customer reviews are from the Amazon.com website.

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


Endings

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The fictitious village of al-Tiba is located somewhere near the desert, probably in Saudi Arabia, although it might be almost anywhere in the Arabian peninsula.

Life in this region depends on the availability of water. And since several years, the usual rainfalls become less and less and this is a real threat for the survival of the village and the people. The drought is not a temporary problem but a permanent danger and has become the trigger for changes, changes that are described in Abd al-Rahman Munif’s novel Endings:

“Drought. Drought again! When drought seasons come, things begin to change. Life and objects change. Humans change too, and no more so than in their moods.”

The novel consists of three parts. The first part gives a general description of the village life, the second part introduces the main character, Assaf the hunter and the other characters, such as the Mukhtar (head of the village) and Abu Zaki, the carpenter. But also animals play a great role in this novel. There is Assaf’s hunting dog, and there are the animals that are hunted by Assaf and the other villagers and occasional guests from the city.

Assaf is a loner, a person that is considered as odd by the villagers and that is the subject of ridicule and jokes. But on the other hand everybody in the village appreciates his skills as a hunter. Assaf tries – without big success – to explain to the other villagers and the people that come sometimes from the city to kill wild animals that it is important to hunt only when there is a need. Assaf understands the concept of sustainability, contrary to the the other villagers and the city folk.

During the drought period, game becomes practically the only food source. Now the villagers get closer to Assaf and want to embark on a big game hunt together with some visitors from town. A terrible sandstorm leads to a catastrophe: Assaf (together with his dog) gets killed. The depressed villagers take his body home and – this is the third part of the book – during a vigil for Assaf they tell each other stories (which are based on classical Arabic stories), that reflect the life of animals and more rarely men in the village.

After Assaf’s funeral, a group of the men, headed by the Mukhtar, drives to the city to lobby for the construction of the dam that was promised to them a long time ago. Without the implementation of this project, al-Tiba seems to be doomed.

The book is for various reasons remarkable. Endings is told by an omniscient narrator in a quite impersonal style. Very few of the characters have really individual traits. The village and the desert seem to be the true main characters of the novel, and the animals have at least the same importance for the story as the people.

Munif describes the deep difference between the city and village culture, and although he seems to sympathize with the villagers, he obviously doesn’t put much hope in them. This becomes clear when he describes how they look at the living Assaf, whom they consider as at least odd, or even half crazy. And that not only because of Assaf’s obvious preference for a solitary life in the desert and on the hunting grounds, but also because they fail to see Assaf’s point about the use of the resources the village has. Over-usage can and will destroy the village in the end, unless the villagers change their minds.

For a moment, under the deep impression of Assaf’s tragic death and the night they spent to honor him, the villagers wake up from their usual lethargy. Whether they will be successful with their intervention in the city in order to lobby for the construction of the dam, Munif doesn’t tell us. But his own experience as an economist in Saudi Arabia, and later in other Arabic countries, made him very pessimistic.

Abd al-Rahman Munif was born 1933 in Amman, Jordan, where he also grew up. Later he studied law in Baghdad, and oil economics in Belgrade. He held high positions in the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, published several books on the nationalization of the Arab oil industry and was chief editor and publisher of the influential journal al-Naft wa-l-Tanmiyah (Oil and Development). But his open criticism of Saudi Arabia resulted in his being stripped of Saudi citizenship and also his return to Iraq was blocked for the same reason, his criticism of those in power.

After that Munif embarked on a career as full time writer, mainly living in Paris. He published fifteen novels, among them the series Cities of Salt, a monumental quintet that can be seen as the arguably most remarkable work of modern Arabic fiction. In 2003, one year before he died, Munif published a book Notes on History and Resistance, in which he recalled the Iraqi uprising against Britain in 1920 and that ended with the infamies of the recently returned collaborators of the world’s only superpower – in Munif’s words

‘the most ignominious and shameless opposition of the world, a collection of kiosks selling lies and illusions’.

Since that time, things have gone even worse. Munif’s books haven’t lost their urgency and literary power and strength.

 

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Abd al-Rahman Munif: Endings, transl. Roger Allen, Interlink Books, Northampton 2007

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.