06 May 2010

New Books - Additions to my library, April 2010

Two Books by Herta Müller

"Lord God, heavenly host, deliver us from this exile"

"The flowers in the vases are such big bouquets that they are thickets, beautiful and in disarray, as if they were lives."

I purchased this book, Nadirs (Niederungen), by Herta Müller because our book club was reading her The Land of Green Plums, and a copy was not available.  I bought this volume of short stories, hoping that it would get me into her style as preparation for reading the novel.  As it was the novel arrived the next day, and I read it in one sitting (Wednesday) and this the next day (Thursday).  I was thoroughly taken with both of these volumes. 

The quotes above are from two stories in Nadirs.  The first is a quote from the short story, "Oppressive Tango" which provides a obsessively detailed description of a funeral (although that is not an unusual topic for Müller).  The second quote is from another short story in the same volume, "Black Park."  Each of them gives you some kind of idea as to the atmosphere of these stories.  The are almost "Lamentations" in their effect, and the quote about the bouquets gives a measure of their texture.

In these stories, Müller recounts her childhood as an ethnic German (Swabian) living in the Banat region of Romania during the period of Ceau șescu. The perspective is always that of a child, probing, detailed, literal, and dream-like.  Likewise all is seen in the microcosm of the village, the xenophobic village in which outsiders literally do not exist.  Characters are identified more by their foibles than by their given names, and all is seen through a scrim of spit, grease, fat, mud, piss and shit.  In one interesting section, children are asked to take on roles in a game, being either Russian or German.  They object, wanting only to be German - and when being given permission to do so divide along Saxon-Swabian lines.

There is a heavy dose of fate in these pages.  The mothers, fathers, aunts, and children seem not to be able to wrest any kind of freedom around their actions, and function as players assigned a role.  Although she does not expressly comment on the Romanian dictator in this volume (there is only one mention that I could find) the influence is certainly there.  Then again, this is the village, removed from the city.  This is the land of fields, orchards, house gardens, and geese.  This is a child's world.  It is also a world that seems to be lost in time.  In one passage I was startled to read the name "Adenauer".  In my mind, these people were living in some other century, certainly not the 20th.  And yet they were doing both.  One of the characters escapes into the twentieth century, only to discover that it was not survivable.

This book was of especial interest to me since my cousin's wife, who lives in the Schwartzwald in Baden-Wurttemberg Germany, came from a German colony in Romania.  I am anxious to talk with her about this volume and author.  I read these stories in one sitting.  This is something that I do not recommend that you do.  The horror and darkness is blunted by a quick read.  These need to be savored.


The Land of Green Plums is the book being read by the Trinity Book Club.  As I read this novel, I wondered how much of it was autobiographical in nature.  I found it helpful to read her collection of short-stories, Nadirs (which is autobiographical, if you can sort through the thicket of images) to give me some clues as to the material in Green Plums.  Perhaps the narrator in Plums is Herta Müller.  The story she tells in this novel is compelling.

Unlike Nadirs, this takes place not in the village but the city.  While I read the book, I went and looked at pictures of Bucharest, once called the "Paris of the East".  It is indeed a beautiful city.  Very little of that is evident either in the dialogue or scenes painted by Müller.  There is a harsh reality that forms the background for the lives of four friends that are depicted in the novel.  Educated, all from out-lying villages, idealistic (although limited by circumstance) and cheerful, these young people are quickly beaten down by the system that limits their future and minutely examines their present.  

Although there is a plot, life and death, victory and defeat, it is not really the point.  The devil or the delight, depending on your point of view, is in the details.  Village and city life share a grimy and filthy frame.  The violence of life is close at hand - and I am not speaking of street violence, but the violence of the slaughterhouse, or of mothers to daughters, and elites to peasants.  This is what life is made up in the Romania of Müller.  

Time exists in a malleable way in this book.  The reader shoots forward and backward, without warning.  Dialogue is jammed together, with little indication from punctuation as to how a phrase might be handled.  And behind all of this are the songs that the narrator remembers - songs from childhood, and really from another culture.  Some songs are quoted multiple times - the context constantly providing a new understanding of the words.  

Dark though it may be, there is life in these pages, and hope as well.  There are relationships that are treasured and lost, and there is a future that is not caught in the grip of the Party.  Surrounding all of this are the characters that are lost, that live in their own dashed hopes and unrealized futures.  This heightens the contrast of the characters we meet - as we hope with them, and are disappointed with them.

I wonder if I should get this in German?


I'm also reading...


I went out to have coffee one afternoon and made the mistake of not taking a book with me.  This volume soon leapt into my hands, and I have been enjoying it immensely.  It amazes me as I read through this book, that in my education, the history of Persia (and the lands and peoples that surrounded it) was simply not there.  And yet here is the place and here are the ideas that so greatly influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  I am also currently reading The Inheritance of Rome, and this is a wonderful companion volume to it.  I am learning that the threats of peoples from the north not only affected the Romans, but the Persians as well.  I am also wanting to review Gore Vidal's Creation, as I read these pages.  I shall review this volume when I complete it.  I can recommend it, however, if you love the history of this region.


When I took my daughter, Anna, to Rome in 2000, we made a day trip to Ostia antica, the ancient port city of Rome.  You take the subway out to some point at the end and then train down to an archaeological treasure house that is called "Pompeii in a Park".  I love ruins, especially Roman ruins, and had fun this Fall visiting the House of the Griffins on the Palatine Hill after it had been opened after a couple of decades.  This book - I've only read the table of contents thus far - holds the promise of filling out the ruins with lives and social custom.  I look forward to actually cracking the cover.








I interrupted my reading of 2666 to quickly read Herta Müller's Land of the Green Plums, and now I am anxious to return to the not all that dissimilar world of Robert Bolaño.  I read one prior work by him, Amulet, but found it difficult to get into.  I must admit my reasons for buying this volume are totally suspect.  I love the work of Gustav Moreau, whose work forms the cover for 2666.  That is what lured me to the sales counter.  It is a large volume, 886 pages.  Originally he intended to publish it in five volumes, but after his death, his heirs determined to publish it all at once, as he himself originally intended. I am glad to read it in such a format - with such a wide and all encompassing scene.  Despite that, there is infinite detail in his work (much like Moreau) and much strangeness (again, Moreau).  I am about a third complete, but anxious to dive in again.  The quote from Herta Müller works here as well: "The flowers in the vases are such big bouquets that they are thickets, beautiful and in disarray, as if they were lives."

More later...









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