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| 0141036141
| 9780141036144
| B006QNC5VC
| 4.19
| 4,699,233
| Jun 08, 1949
| Jul 03, 2008
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really liked it
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‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’ ‘History stopped in 1936,’ George Orwell once said to fellow a ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’ ‘History stopped in 1936,’ George Orwell once said to fellow author Arthur Koestler. During his time in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell observed the pervasiveness of propaganda as a pillar upholding authoritarianism, from censored newspapers to lies perpetuated for political convenience and began to fear that ‘the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.’ This fear presented itself across the whole of his works during his short life, culminating in his famous 1984 where he warns ‘who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’ Published in 1949 and written as Orwell was dying from tuberculosis, he didn’t live long to see how 1984 and his dire warnings against authoritarianism would have a lasting effect even to this day, often being used by all sides of the political spectrum as a cultural touchstone. And while this is mostly owing to the broad criticisms showing how any ideology can become oppressive when hungry for power, it also exemplifies his own dread that words will be twisted and quoted as cudgels to fit a desired purpose as truth is washed away. A harrowing story of dystopia, surveillance, manipulation and resistance being crushed underfoot, 1984 still chills today with its themes on collective vs individual identity under totalitarianism and controlling all aspects of reality to eliminate all those who step outside the boundaries of orthodoxy. ‘We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.’ When we read sci-fi, words like “prophetic” and “warning” often get applied. 1984 continues to remain relevant due to its warnings against irresponsible use of rhetoric, which almost makes the references to it amusing or ironic. Such as the Apple computer commercial in 1984 that uses the novel for the sake of marketing (and what is “marketing” but a euphemism for propaganda) a product that would lead to all sorts of concerns over government surveillance for which people would quote 1984 in addressing them. I think the term prophetic often frames a book in a way that causes us to consider how close it came true, which seems beside the point because when we look at the ways it didn’t, that often becomes an excuse for delegitimization or ignoring the warning. Born Eric Arthur Blair in Bengal in 1903 and passing in 1950, Orwell’s short life left a lasting legacy from his works like Animal Farm being classroom staples in the US and terms like “Orwellian” being blithely applied to anything that brushes against government use of technology and surveillance. Hardly a political cycle goes by in the US without 1984 coming up. In the US alone in the past decade we saw it returning to the paperback bestseller list under the Trump administration when the term “alternative facts” was being tossed around, and a few years later it was being referenced by the GOP to claim the government was denying an election victory and inventing the January 6th terrorist attack to arrest people. Though with a president making statements like “What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening,” naturally one is reminded of Orwell writing ‘the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,’ and we are reminded of the power of literature and how we often turn to great works for guidance during uncertain times, though often, as Orwell warned, using it as propaganda shorn of context. Orwell did live long enough to see the novel used improperly, having to put out a statement almost immediately for those who wished to use the novel as an example against the British Labor Party. ‘My recent novel is NOT an on Socialism or on the British Labor Party (of which I am a supporter),’ he wrote, and an introduction to the book states: ‘every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.’ Which becomes a pretty important distinction, as Orwell believed in better form of governing yet also was suspicious of anyone who would seek out power in order to change it as he writes in the novel ‘we know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.’ I feel 1984 is best read with an openness to nuance and in good faith, which is often glossed over for the sake of political identifying which is, ironically or not, the exact thing he was warning against. Which is to say, call out problems even if it’s your own “side” and don’t create further divide by abusing rhetoric for the sake of scoring quick political points. I think there is a tendency when trying to score quick political points that things need to have some sort of unassailable pure aim to them. 1984 is critical of any regime that seeks to keep power, but narrowing it to a pointed attack against an opponent without seeing how it might apply to your own political "team" (US politics is so much cheering for your "home team" than actually hashing out politics, especially lately, though I also find the whole "both sides" angle to often be used less for establishing nuance than trying to delegitamize any efforts for progress too, but hell who am I to say I'm just as bad as anyone) is more convenient. But even Orwell himself isn’t a “pure” figure, having been an informant for the British government delivering a list of names of people suspected of communism (the list includes John Steinbeck and many have observed that there is a strong presence of gay people on the list which makes many of Orwell’s rather homophobic comments seem all the more menacing). He also, as A. E. Dyson observed in his book on Orwell, that he ‘had a very English dislike of intellectuals, supposing that anyone willing to wear such a label would be diminished or depraved.’ Which is all neither here nor there, but goes to show how one can create a narrative out of anything, and that is what 1984 taps into. So let’s move on to the novel and head on down to Room 101. As I said earlier, 1984 can be read as a culmination of a lot of his themes and ideas across his short career. Warning of totalitarianism arrives everywhere with Orwell, such as Burmese Days when he describes the town as ‘a stifling, stultifying world…which every word and every thought is censored,’ not unlike 1984 because ‘free speech is unthinkable.’ And one can read in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, with Comstock (a name derived from Common and Stock similarly to how the terms in 1984 are often truncated phrases) bemoaning ‘I’m dead, You’re dead. We’re all dead people in a dead world,’ as a precursor to the pivotal moment when Winston and Jane declare ‘we’re dead’ right before being exposed as having been set up. For Orwell, speech and language is very key. Language itself is fallible and can be morphed to meet many purposes—it’s the medium of poets for a reason—and in 1984 Orwell examines how this can be used to negate truth and establish entirely fictional histories that become generally accepted as a means to upholding power. ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ Winston’s job is to rewrite history to fit the purpose of the party. Within his department we find all sorts of nefarious linguistic play designed to control the masses because it is thought that ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ We can argue that we see this notion reflected in our modern day, where books exposing history that can be seen as a blemish on the US are banned or dismissed as unpatriotic or trying to rewrite history (the irony in the latter is thick) and many have spoken on the suppression of queer books as an effort to erase the language people need to assess their own identities. What Orwell is looking at is the way language and propaganda is used to control. I enjoy the way he makes creative use of language to compile entire terminologies used by Ingsoc (the party in control that is pretty blatantly a nod to Soviet Russia) to create a propagated history that fits whatever they need, even erasing the history of entire wars to portray other countries as allies and erase the recent memory of them as enemies. ‘Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.’ To step outside the orthodoxy of the Party’s version of history is to become an enemy of the Party and society and find yourself “vaporized” and erased from history. ‘Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think,’ Orwell writes, ‘Orthodoxy is unconsciousness,’ and when the truth we know conflicts with the truth of the Party, it must be edited. ‘Lies,’ writes Rebecca Solnit in her book Orwell's Roses, ‘the assault on language -- were the necessary foundation for all the other assaults.’ Afterall, ‘the first victim of war is truth, goes the old saying, and a perpetual war against truth undergirds all authoritarianisms.’ “Doublespeak” comes into play here, where one can hold conflicting opinions in their mind and just accept them, and the Party finds that fear is a great tool for ensuring willing erasure of truth. ‘Truth is not a statistic,’ Winston argues, claiming that just because the masses agree doesn’t make it true, though over the novel we see how the power to rewrite “truth” can potentially eviscerate anyone who says otherwise until it becomes the only known “truth.” Returning to Rebecca Solnit, she observes: ‘To be forced to live with the lies of the powerful is to be forced to live with your own lack of power over the narrative, which in the end can mean lack of power over anything at all. Authoritarians see truth and fact and history as a rival system they must defeat.’ It is in this way the Party keeps people subservient. ‘A hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance,’ and Winston, upon reading Goldstein’s book (the book serves as an insert into the narrative that provides a LOT of exposition about the world and its structures as well as being a sort of Marxist-esque handbook, though it only offers the how things came to be and never the why, much to Winston’s interest), Winston realizes that the proles (the working class) are the possible solution. However he realized the proles can only revolt if they become conscious of their conditions and only can become conscious of their conditions if they revolt (not a far cry from Orwell’s own statement ‘we cannot win the war without introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war.’), and worries this may never happen. There is also the issue that a revolution will only put a new Party in power that will inevitably oppress again, just in different ways. ‘The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.’ So without giving anything away because this book is full of surprises (though one may guess if they have read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which Orwell “borrows” heavily from—as does Huxley’s Brave New World—and still remains my favorite of the three), across this novel we see a spirit of resistance rise and the forces of power come to meet it with a heavy boot and the power of erasure. While much of the novel focuses on the individual versus the collective, the biggest act of betrayal comes at the end in choosing to protect oneself, the individual, and asking for the harm of others in order to enter the “protection” of the collective Party by erasing any part of oneself outside their orthodoxy. Where once was the belief ‘to die hating them, that was freedom,’ we see ‘in the face of pain there are no heroes’ and fear keeps people in line. Reminding the people of the frailty of being an individual drives them towards compliance. Yet, in another way, we see the collective existing because of the desire of individuals to protect themselves at the expense of everyone else: nobody will revolt out of fear for themselves and in doing so allows the oppression of all to continue. I think this is what Ursula K. Le Guin is getting at when her books look at the need to integrate both the individual and collective by refusing easy binaries and hierarchies. She also, especially in The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia argues that history can never become stagnant and that, like Orwell argues, an revolution will try to uphold power and oppress leading to the necessity of another revolution. While Le Guin sees this as the natural course of history (the double meaning of revolution as a revolt and a constant turning cycling through) Orwell sees this as a constant erosion of truth due to the weaponization of language as propaganda that will inevitably erase reality in place of a false, collective reality where truth is sent to the grave. ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’ One might find 1984 to be a rather bleak book, but it is also intended as a warning. There are many minor warnings building up to the larger, main point—such as the paperweight symbolizing a past now inaccessible where art could be beautiful for the sake of beauty, as well as symbolizing the frailty of the individual—and that we must take care to use language responsibly lest we hold the door for open propaganda. We can even do this on an individual level, such as not perpetuating misinformation (funny political memes are easy to share but dilute the severity of problems when we poke fun at, say, the looks or mannerisms of a politician instead of focusing on their policies) and not giving in to easy attacks instead of respecting the nuances. And so that's my rough rant on 1984, a book that lives on for both its relevance and its political convenience and maybe we should all remember that truth is more important than winning an argument or scoring political edgy points. I fail at it too, we all do, but Orwell reminds us to do better. ⅘ 'A nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.' ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Jul 03, 2023
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Paperback
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| 006289000X
| 9780062890009
| 006289000X
| 4.26
| 47,446
| Feb 06, 2020
| Apr 28, 2020
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it was amazing
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‘Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They’re like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and after.’
‘Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They’re like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and after.’ Every so often a book comes along that just hits all the right notes for you, charming you while also compelling you to grip the covers as each frenetic flip of the page pulls you further into a story you want to see how it plays out yet never want to reach the ending. Polish author Tomasz Jędrowski’s glorious debut, Swimming in the Dark, did just that for me and I was enraptured by this tragic love story where politics and history threaten to pull these two men apart at every turn. Set in a 1980s Poland but told retrospectively in letters addressed to “you” from the ‘dreadful safety of America’ as unrest boils over back home, Jędrowski examines the painful uncertainties and fears faced by LGBTQ+ communities under the Party but also the joys of first love. The style and themes here will likely draw comparisons to Call Me By Your Name. The novel vibrates with the arts and joys of social lives—with Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin playing a central role and the nightclub and social scenes of dreary Warsaw sharing thematic importance with vibrant rural Poland—to draw you into the character’s livelihoods as if you were a participant, which also forces you to feel the shadow of an obdurat ruling structure creeping over their lives all the more. Swimming in the Dark is a gorgeously written novel rife with symbolism that reads like an instant classic, telling a singular yet universal tale of life and love being tossed about the waves of political turmoil as a powerful microcosm of history. [image] (Demonstration in Warsaw, 1982. Previously banned photograph, Karta Centre Collection) Like any love story bibliophiles crave, Swimming in the Dark begins with a book: an ‘unauthorized, underground’ printing of Giovanni's Room our narrator, Ludwik, obtains after an overheard conversation in a gay bar. Jędrowski really goes for the heartstrings, having Janusz come upon Ludwik lying in the grass reading Baldwin while the two are attending the mandatory summer work camp to graduate university. There is an instant connection, and Ludwik risks being exposed--both for his sexuality and possessing banned literature--by lending Janusz the book. ‘You listened, really listened, gentle eyes taking me in without judgment,’ Ludwik writes of their early meetings, ‘making me feel more heard than I knew I could be.’ To commit to Janusz is to give himself into the freedoms and raptures of love, but also to risk everything. He is, as he writes so eloquently, ‘paralyzed by possibility, caught between the vertigo of fulfillment and the abyss of uncertainty.’ So much of this novel delves into the socially taboo. ‘There was a certain pleasure in doing what I had not allowed myself before,’ Ludwick writes, ‘a satisfaction in the forbidden, a challenge.’ With so much lurking in the forbidden, to trust or not in another bears the risk of ruin and often in matters of life or death. Trust is central to this narrative and the difficulties of navigating a relationship where being exposed can have terrible consequences. Each characters presents unique avenues to explore the theme, from trusting a stranger to hide Ludwik when he acts as an antagonizer to the crowd during a workers uprising, to trust that is taken advantage of or otherwise abused. The philosophical dualites between Ludwik and Janusz that tests their relationship over time extends beyond their opposing political viewpoints to how they handle issues of trust. Duality itself is a major theme in this novel that constantly juxtaposing various pairs to create an emotional analysis and imagery in high contrast. While both of them exploit issues of trust for personal gain, it is the way Janusz does so by taking advantage of another and disrespecting them as a person that truly creates a cataclysmic chasm between them. ‘we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose the when not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be.’ The political landscape of the novel worms its way into everything and makes trust all the more precarious of enterprises. What is most charming, and will likely be an empathetic aspect to readers, is the way the two young men’s duality is best examined in their trajectory from literature. Both studied literature at the University and Ludwick sets out to do a PhD, writing his proposal on James Baldwin. While he connected to Baldwin over his openness over the traumas of being a young gay man in a society that violently frowns upon such thing, he writes his paper on the racism in America that Baldwin wrote about. For one, he cannot admit he has read Giovanni’s Room—which officially doesn’t exist as far as the Party is concerned—and writing on this topic would surely be dismissed. Writing about racism in America allows him to bypass the censorsorial nature of the University and please them for criticizing the West and thereby upholding the Soviets, but secretly he is still making a statement on the mistreatment of LGBT citizens. Additionally, Ludwick has seen racism first hand in Poland, when the first boy he ever kissed as a child is disliked and pressured to leave for being Jewish. There is a lot of textures and layers to the inclusion of Baldwin in this book On the other hand, Janusz joins the Office of Press Control where he decides what to ban and what to publish. This sort of ideological difference is root in all their arguments and political discourse always threatens to tear them apart. Disagreements over the Party frequently occur, becoming more ethically murky when proximity to the Party is a gatekeeper for their futures with Ludwick beholden to Janusz’s connections after he obtains medicine to save the life of Ludwick’s impoverished landlady. ‘One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.’ The youth culture of 1980s Poland really comes alive through club and party scenes on the tab of wealth Party-connected friends contrasting with the workers fighting police in the streets and the drab poverty of struggling citizens. We have the official narratives of the Party versus the secret nightly listening to Radio Free Europe. Meat prices are skyrocketing and food is hard to come by as citizens are merely ‘queing for a possibility, queuing for something, maybe queuing for nothing.’ The meager housing of Ludwick looks rough compared to Janusz’s Party Official pay level apartment but completely dwarfed by the wealthy possessions of Hania, Janusz’s high-level Party connection. She lives in ‘a place of pleasure and peace, indifferent to governments, faithful to whoever happens to be in power,’ which offends Ludwick to his core as he thinks ‘how undeserving you all were of it.’ Those with power hold it so strongly as to push around and push out lives on a flight of fancy while others live entirely on the brink of destruction. While holy devoted to the party, Janusz see’s the wealth of others as something to exploit, claiming innocence as its just something he must do to survive and if he fools them it is their own fault. He even uses Hania’s affection for him to keep her favors coming, leading her on much to the heartache and ethical frustrations of Ludwick. Later in life Ludwick will wonder ‘what kind of pact you’ve made with yourself. Because we all make one, even the best of us. And it’s rarely immaculate. No matter how hard we try.’ What is most astonishing in this book, though, is how dynamic the characters can be. They are flawed people who behave in shocking yet authentic ways, with the surprising mercy and kindness shown from one character near the end delivering such a powerful wave of emotion that it shook me deeply. While the scene figures as a sort of "coming out" moment, but the author didn't want this to be the 'major message' because 'really what I care about is trying to discover those grey znes and, really, the truth...I've always been more comfortable with what I do, with verbs rather than nouns.' The way this moment is blended with other themes and Hania's reaction is worth the entire ride. Jedrowski opens these characters up to the reader, feeling the raw nerves of their anxieties, frustrations and devastation. This book is an emotional symphony, sometimes caustic, sometimes bittersweet, but always beautiful. This book reads like a classic in all the best ways. The prose is arresting and serene and though there are a few overwritten flourishes, the language truly astonishes on the page. The novel was written in English despite not having grown up in an english-speaking society. ‘It’s my literary language,’ Jedrowski explains in the interview after the novel. ’Because it’s in English that I really started reading books properly. It’s this part of my mind that feels really intimate and private, but not the same as intimacy between me and my family or intimacy between me and my husband. It’s a sort of self-intimacy. This gives a very intimate tone to the work itself, with each page truly embodying a tenderly written reminiscence of love. The imagery is very romantic at times, with sexual intimacy with Janusz described in cosmic metaphor of infinity and freedom, starkly contrasted with a scene of sexual betrayal that is very beastial, and earthly with pagan connotations. This is a novel that can be heavily analyzed, with Jedrowski offering plenty of carefully packed messages encoded all over the book. This book truly grabs your heart and doesn’t let go. The political is personal and the person is political in Swimming in the Dark, and Jedrowski has crafted a spectacular novel that is an instant favorite. 5/5 ‘we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose the when not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 20, 2021
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May 13, 2021
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Apr 20, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 1940450527
| 9781940450520
| 1940450527
| 4.00
| 3,938
| Dec 2013
| Apr 14, 2015
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it was amazing
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‘I was a blank page, and now I am a book.’ We live in the age of computers, where our thoughts and feelings are transcribed into text and, like this re ‘I was a blank page, and now I am a book.’ We live in the age of computers, where our thoughts and feelings are transcribed into text and, like this review, become another source of data, another heartfelt addition to our My Documents folder. My own folder is filled with reviews, college essays, photographs of my daughter, my resume and other such documents and becomes a catalogue of a human life, a digital replication of the heart and soul. Alejandro Zambra, best known for his breathless and breathtaking award winning Bonsaï, delivers nothing short of pure perfection in his collection My Documents, an aptly titled work that sifts the documents folder of the human soul across eleven exquisite stories. Zambra has a gift for creating a large impact with the lightest of touches and here we see him manage to embody the Chilean middle-class in all it’s mundane glory through stories soaked that, while soaked in melancholy, avoid any gratuitousness that would dip them into melodrama. These are stories of childhood memories—blurring the lines of fiction and memoir so that any thought towards factuality becomes beside the point—failed relationships, failed undertakings and basic primary living always under the lurking shadow of the Pinochet regime. Often humorous and always subtle, Zambra is at his best in this collection that permeates with Chilean history and assesses the lives of the common man. ‘...I started to believe, naively, intensely, absolutely, in literature.’ It has been fascinating to watch Zambra grow as a writer, to fulfill the early promises found in Bonsaï, the reaching out qualities of the heart-wrenching The Private Lives of Trees, and the meditations of growing up under Pinochet’s rule found in Ways of Going Home. My Documents reads like a culmination of all the high notes from his previous work, harmonizing together for a magical medley like an anthem for the modern era of Latin American Literature. Like any new direction of literature, it must acknowledge the predecessors that bravely forged the path thus far and Zambra pays homage to his influences and peers—from Enrique Lihn and Nicanor Parra to his contemporary Valeria Luiselli (author of the extraordinary Faces in the Crowd)—most eloquently in I Smoked Very Well. My personal favorite of the collection, this story brings to life a love of literature and respect to predecessors through a fascinating and very modern storytelling style. Maybe that’s what the literary theorists mean when they talk about the active reader: a reader who suffers when the characters suffer, who is happy when they are happy, who smokes when they smoke.The story brings the reader into what seems like notes jotted by the narrator (the staccato style feels akin to Luiselli’s own novel, and to whom the story is dedicated and also has her make a minor character cameo), but also immerses the story into the wider world of Latin American Literature (and world literature to the frequent allusions and blatant indebtedness to Italo Svevo) through the Bolañoesque name droppings and quotes. These sort of name droppings occur throughout the collection, but not restricted to authors. Allusions to many bands such as the Pixies, Radiohead and the Talking Heads or soccer stars from the 90’s tie the stories into a sense of realism, space and place along the necessary time periods. In The Most Chilean Man in the World, titled after a language barrier mistake that aids in the atmosphere of being a stranger in a strange land despite the warm welcome of strangers found in the story, the focal character finds himself stranded and nearly broke after traveling to Belgium to see his ex-girlfriend who refuses his company. Zambra has the character reach out to friends via Facebook for assistance in navigating the foreign cityscape. References to social media as well as older computer technology help ground the stories into their time a place and function as a reminder of time passing and play into characters fears of obsoleting. This is best represented in the outdated desktop carried by bus in Memories of a Personal Computer to be given to the character’s estranged son who already owns a better model. Many stories feature middle-aged men feeling obsolete and irrelevant in a world now passed down to a generation in full bloom like the memories to which these men cling. Family Life, in particular, follows a 40 year old man who is still haunted by his past but out of touch with his modern era. It is this estrangement that brings people together in My Documents, such as the night phone operator and the elderly man connecting across the globe in Long Distance spurred on by their loneliness, or how the rather scummy narrator of Family Life finds himself in bed with a much younger woman by filling her with lies that play on her need for a family lifestyle and acknowledgement of her motherly abilities. Zambra has a genuine gift for mining empathy for unlikable characters. True or False finds the reader empathetic for the dead-beat dad who buys a cat for his child to spite his ex-wife and the reader feels the rage that is always bubbling at the surface of his character. Perhaps it is having a divorce of my own already under my belt that draws me to stories such as these, but there is a real human element burning brightly in characters he creates and then has disappoint you with their actions. Relationships aren’t given much weight or value in anything Zambra has written, with people coming together and breaking apart without it seeming as if a great empire has formed and fallen as most authors would. Romantic love is regarded as transitory, and hearts never shatter but instead blur the pages with their vague melancholy. There is a real immediacy to these stories as well, in part from the narrational style that breaks the fourth wall and addresses the reader with asides such as ‘Well, there’ll be time later to describe him. For Now he’s just gotten off the bus…’ that give the feeling that the story is being created just words ahead of your reading upon the page and probe at the oral tradition of storytelling. I think that the story can’t end like that, with Camillo St. crying for his son, his son who was practically a stranger to him. But that’s how it ends.This passage, from the ending of the charming story Camillo about the narrator’s childhood friendship with his father’s godson, makes it feel as if the story had to be this way, out of the writers hands. It is as if the stories have written themselves and Zambra a mere conduit for their fruition, and begs for the reader to question if these stories are true or not before recognizing that such thought is beside the point in fiction. While these stories, often of broken men and estranged relationships, are fiction or maybe partly memoir, they do not belong in the My Documents folder of one person, but of all people in order to speak their universal truths. And that’s when, at the same time, democracy and adolescence arrived. The adolescence was real. The democracy wasn’t. Lurking in each story are traces of Pinochet and his regime. Zambra often has his narrators place memories in time by their relation to political events to demonstrate how critical the political climate was in Chile at the time, such as this passage from Long Distance: My first class was in March of 2000, a few days after Pinochet returned to Chile like he owned the place (I’m sorry for these reference points, but they’re the ones that come to mind.)Each and every story in permeated with references to the political news of the time, and characters are often defined by their association to the party, like the mentally handicapped boy of My Documents that walks the street asking people if they are right or left, or the girlfriend in Family Lives that asserts ‘I was born under democracy’ as an excuse for any of her actions. One of the finest stories is the allegorical tale National Institute about a school where students are only known by their student numbers and the teachers are characterized by their cruel fascist nature. ‘I felt indestructible,’ Zambra writes in this gleefully rebellious tale of teenage anti-establishment anger, ‘rage made me indestructible.’ Zambra illustrates how every aspect of life was tainted by Pinochet coming to power, how families were destroyed (such as Camillo’s father being imprisoned and having to live life in exile over in Paris) and opinions silenced. ‘I have my books / and my poetry to protect me.’ Zambra’s My Documents is likely the finest work he has produced in his still-early career. He manages to explore melancholy and estrangement, disappointment and breakups without seeming overly emotional while still capturing the appropriate sadness and examines Chilean middle-class life under the shadow of Pinochet without being blatantly political. Zambra is a master of light touches and capturing time and space. ‘It took so long to build that by the time it was finished, I no longer believed in God.’ What a perfect sentence. There is the right blend of humor and empathy, rage and regret flowing within each story that feels alive in their immediacy and universal relevance while also superbly capturing a place in time and history. From the opening story concerning childhood to the final story, the metafictional marvel Artistic Rendition, each word reads like a blessing. Like his first novel, My Documents is a bold promise of a brilliant career with so much more yet to come. 5/5 Cigarettes are the punctuation marks of life. Now I live without punctuation, without rhythm. My life is a stupid avant-garde poem. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 20, 2015
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not set
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Mar 19, 2015
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Paperback
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| 0525948929
| 9780525948926
| 0525948929
| 3.69
| 392,467
| Oct 10, 1957
| Apr 21, 2005
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did not like it
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Honestly this book isn’t even worth talking about. It’s a genre of its own called Dumb Dystopia. Here’s my old review I guess: Recently someone told m Honestly this book isn’t even worth talking about. It’s a genre of its own called Dumb Dystopia. Here’s my old review I guess: Recently someone told me this was their favorite novel. I believe they referred to it as 'the greatest book ever written.' I find a lot wrong with that statement. Because who cares about Ulysses, right? No, that won't do, I'm going to have to drink and rant for a moment. I refrained from commenting to the customer, because I'm sure it is typically for political reasons that people like this book and, whatever, some people swing left, some people swing right, some people suckle the golden calf of capitalism and some love thy socialist ways and who am I to judge. I'm not a politician and you should all thank me for that. I'd like to push politics aside but, frankly, I think it is solely for political reasons and edgelord posturing that this book managed to stay relevant and in print. However, I suppose you are all here to hear about the politics of this book and I would be boring you with talks of wooden character and language and overall juvenile writing abilities, so I'll save those for after. I don't want to argue politics, especially not while drinking, so lets take a moment to look at the plot (and oh what a plot it is) and see how the politics hold up within. Besides, there isn't much to analyze in this one as the writing barely goes beneath the surface. It’s basically people got sad they couldn’t profit in the specific way they decided they should so they turned the world into a dumb dystopia because their vocation only mattered to them if they could lord it over people. The people the novel praises are those who simply sit back and let the workers make money for them and then call themselves the doers. It’s weird and kind of gross. Once upon a time there were some factory owners. These factory owners loved to preach about the pride in working for their company, and hey, maybe conditions are piss-poor and maybe you are barely scraping by to feed your growing family, but at least you can take pride in working for a great company and that should satisfy you and give you meaning (some cool existentialist thought could have been added into the book for that, but Rand misunderstood Kant so I doubt she'd be able to add anything beyond surface detail and pop-philosophy). Then one day the great evil government (the government is such a caricature and it's almost a surprise she didn't have them all wearing black hooded cloaks. And really, who voted for those guys?) passed some outlandish laws that people couldn't have a monopoly and maybe we should pay our workers. Suddenly, having pride in what they did seemed terrible. Instead of taking pride in their company and working hard to sustain the nation they so loved, like they preached to their employees, they bitched about it a bunch and then stopped working. Nice guys, right? They set up a utopia (Ayn Rand of all people should know utopia is a word for 'fake') society where competing is so cool and they say stuff like 'man, I hope someone competes with me and nearly puts me out of business', which isn't all that different from what was going on in the society they fucked off into the woods from in the most comically shameful manner possible. Meanwhile Rand says cheating on your wife is way cool and general chaos ensues. So it goes for awhile, but then, THEN, after a overlong speech that takes all the points any reader with half a mind already put together for themselves and regurgitates it out without the metaphors and into a boring speech that repeats itself many times about the points already mentioned in the novel and then makes sure you know the stuff already mentioned in the novel through a long speech, all hell breaks loose and the main characters bust into town like the goddamn A-Team. Guns blaze, Dagny murders a few dudes and the one character who was actually worth reading about blows up the super-weapon (because that guy was awesome. Screw the rest of the characters, I want to read more about that guy. He was 'about it', like people who are apparently 'about it' say while slugging their Mountain Dews and playing video games.) All integrity of the novel was lost with the hysterically overblown rescue scene. I mean, they even got out on 'choppers' at the end. It was the worst action movie I've ever seen, and I'm not even going to go into the scene where apparently it is okay to shoot your employees in the head for going on strike. And that, my friends, is Atlas Shrugged. People seem to really like the politics, which are “if things aren't going your way just fuck off into the woods shouting ‘and fuck america too.'” Also she’s really into talking about shooting soldiers in the face. Finally. What I really want to talk about is the book as a piece of literature, so don't get all steamed up about politics on me here, pal! Granted, there are a few pretty lines here, particularly the line about cigarettes and how all great thinkers should have that glowing ember at their fingertips while the lightbulb of thought is burning, but other than that Rand is a forgettable sci-fi novelist that has poorly aged with time. Not a line of dialogue rings true to actual speech, not a cough or a scoff can go without her graciously informing the reader that the scoff or cough shows their disapproval or discomfort and whatnot. Furthermore, she certainly can't let a metaphor slip out without explaining it; reading Ayn Rand feels like being a grown adult and sitting in a elementary reading class and having the teacher explain how books work. It's as if she has no faith in her reader as a literate, thinking human being. Worse, the characters are the sort that can only exist on the page and have such narrow-minded two-dimensional aspects that one can't possibly imagine them walking around in the real world. Of course the government is terrible in this novel, its such a caricature that nobody in their right mind would bother being submissive to it. Granted, this book is satire, but come on Rand, put some effort into your creativity. ' James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.' This idea pops up constantly in Atlas Shrugged, that words have a specific and definite meaning, and the character always wields this like a weapon straight to the heart (James does suck as a person and character so I don't feel bad for him for his inability to easily retort. However, Rand seems fully unable to build three-dimensional characters so is it that James is garbage or Rand’s novel itself?). This idea is possibly my least favorite aspect of the book because it is comically incorrect. Though maybe my English degree is as useless as it is as finding me a job (totally useless), but from what I've gathered reading books (and Derrida) is that language is anything but exact. Language is pliable, words are an attempt at harnessing the abstract into sound, caging thought into something more tangible. If words have an exact meaning then all the poets have been doing is creating gibberish. And how can Rand go on writing her weak metaphors if she actually believes that statement. Briefly, Ayn Rand separates people into two catagories: those that make, and the 'looters'. Interestingly “those who make” spend the whole book only making things hard for the working class who actually make the things they make money off of. Somehow, people still rave about this book. I will say, however, that the chapter where they kill everyone by putting a steam engine through a tunnel was incredibly well done. She could have cut the rest of the novel and simply published that chapter because all the major points are present and for a brief moment the book felt worth reading. I also loved the bits about the pirate and the scene where the government takes over the mines to find them desolated. There are some great 'fight the man' moments but they are buried under a god-awful plot that puts the plot and politics before the writing and told through characters that are so two-dimensional that I can't even believe the scenes that have them walking down a street. There's some politics here I guess some people could get down with if your goal is to be a freshman year edgelord in a poly sci class, and I do understand that this is a response to the horrors of Communist Russia, but she did this so much better in Anthem (though even in that she contradicts herself often. Right after a large discussion on freedom and not letting others think for you, the man names the woman character. He just tells her, this is now your name. Which seems suspiciously not like the freedom the man was fighting for) and others have tackled the issue in a much more agreeable and artistic manner. All sarcasm and jokes aside, I simply do not think this book is well written. I could honestly not care less about the political aspects, its the literary aspects that cause the low rating. I came, I read, I shrugged. 1/5 Disclaimer: I read this while working in a factory that had no heat or AC and paid minimum wage as the salary cap. However, the office had AC, heat and tons of paid vacation. Perhaps I'm just bitter about the time I was sent home for listening to a DFW interview on Bookworm because it was 'spreading liberal propaganda in the workplace.' Disclaimer #2: 1 star is probably too harsh, but I really wanted to try writing an angry rant review for once. Sorry, I'm most likely the asshole in this situation. There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. - John Rogers ...more |
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Apr 10, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 0571224385
| 9780571224388
| 0571224385
| 4.11
| 479,333
| 1984
| Oct 27, 2009
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it was amazing
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Kundera is bringing sexy back in a bowler cap. [image] |
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Oct 16, 2011
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Paperback
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