Straight, old-fashioned collection. Some good ones.
In their tradition, the trickster character is the lazy villager. The fools are the prosperous townspeople.
Tuesday 29 November 2016
Vertigo - W.G Sebald
Another odd book by Sebald. Four sections - hard to pin down what each is really about. Atmospherics, poetics, evocation of memories. Most of the book seems to follow the narrator's travels from one city to another while working on some kind of project related to specific Italian Renaissance paintings.
A very interiorized narration. Almost to the point where the exterior world disappears from the story...
A very interiorized narration. Almost to the point where the exterior world disappears from the story...
Saturday 26 November 2016
5 is the perfect number - Igort
Graphic novel. Set in Naples. A mafia story. Reminds me of the film noir detective stories from France I used to read so many years ago.
Not as interesting as his collection about Russia and the Ukraine.
Not as interesting as his collection about Russia and the Ukraine.
The Ukranian and Russian Notebooks - Igort
- subtitled Love and Death under Soviet Rule
A collection of mostly short comics based on things he has seen and people he has talked with when travelling in both Russia and the Ukraine. Some devastating stories about the Holmodor in the Ukraine during the 30s and well as some vignettes highlighting the poverty and desperation in current Ukraine. The Russian section focuses on a variety of moments in recent Russian history - Chechnya and the Chechen war, the brutality and corruption of the Russian armed forces, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the deportations of kulaks during Stalin's time. I think it works very well precisely because of the shortness of each aperçu.
The Chechen/Politkovskaya section in particular, gives you a sense of the difference in social and political culture in Russia. It is portrayed as a system of relations based entirely on power and the ability to oppress, to use that power on those weaker. And it runs right from the top down to the bottom, where you find the Chechens and other immigrants from former Soviet Central Asian countries. A form of racism that mirrors the structure in the the U.S. with blacks. Perhaps not so pervasive socially but certainly with the endless police shootings, a mirror image in some ways of the modus operandi of the Russian Special Forces. I was thinking Igort should do a similar travel book of a trip around Black U.SA. and portray some of the stories he could gather there...
A collection of mostly short comics based on things he has seen and people he has talked with when travelling in both Russia and the Ukraine. Some devastating stories about the Holmodor in the Ukraine during the 30s and well as some vignettes highlighting the poverty and desperation in current Ukraine. The Russian section focuses on a variety of moments in recent Russian history - Chechnya and the Chechen war, the brutality and corruption of the Russian armed forces, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the deportations of kulaks during Stalin's time. I think it works very well precisely because of the shortness of each aperçu.
The Chechen/Politkovskaya section in particular, gives you a sense of the difference in social and political culture in Russia. It is portrayed as a system of relations based entirely on power and the ability to oppress, to use that power on those weaker. And it runs right from the top down to the bottom, where you find the Chechens and other immigrants from former Soviet Central Asian countries. A form of racism that mirrors the structure in the the U.S. with blacks. Perhaps not so pervasive socially but certainly with the endless police shootings, a mirror image in some ways of the modus operandi of the Russian Special Forces. I was thinking Igort should do a similar travel book of a trip around Black U.SA. and portray some of the stories he could gather there...
Sunday 20 November 2016
The Box Social and Other Stories - James Reaney
Unusual collection of stories when compared to both his plays and his poetry - equally infused with the tropes of genres of classic English literature. Surprisingly, though, many of the stories are quite strongly within the gothic tradition of late 19thc early 20th c short stories.
I still quite like his marrying of classic literary references (tragic king, evil witch, etc.) to the rural southern Ontario world of his childhood. Reminds me a bit of David Adams Richards, though in a much sleeker style. It is the same charm that affects his plays like Kildeer - nostalgia for a lost world of innocence (which is a major literary trope in itself.)
I still quite like his marrying of classic literary references (tragic king, evil witch, etc.) to the rural southern Ontario world of his childhood. Reminds me a bit of David Adams Richards, though in a much sleeker style. It is the same charm that affects his plays like Kildeer - nostalgia for a lost world of innocence (which is a major literary trope in itself.)
Monday 14 November 2016
On the Natural History of Destruction - W. G. Sebald
Great title, but a bit misleading. The book is actually a look at the failure of post-war German literature to come to terms with the massive physical, social and cultural destruction that Germany experienced during WW 2. Each essay looks at a particular aspect of this failure to grasp and reflect upon these experiences, preferring to make as if to walk a way and pick up a new beginning, preferring to leave them forgotten or at least ignored.
The first essay outlines the immense physical destruction of many German cities, and the innumerable deaths during the bombing raids. He then discusses how there is very little in German post-war literature that actually reflects this physical destruction just in terms of accurate description.
The second essay discusses an author who was at one time popular, and the false or doubtful assertions about his place in the Nazi debacle that are found in his work. The attempt to shift blame and responsibility, the rewriting of personal history to hide things from the past or cover them over.
The third essay looks at an author, Jean Amery, who survived torture at the hands of the S.S and also Auschwitz, and who is unable or unwilling to forgive, to forget, to pardon, to move beyond resentment against history, against Germany, against the Reich. Sebald looks at the tenability, the justifiability of this stance in spite of the general publics preference for acceptance and moving on.
The fourth essay looks at the war experience as reflected in the work of a painter, Peter Weiss.
Interesting thought and reflections and certainly within the big concerns of Sebald with remembering and the inevitable loss of memory, of the past.
To find:
Peter Weiss works
Jean Amery books
The first essay outlines the immense physical destruction of many German cities, and the innumerable deaths during the bombing raids. He then discusses how there is very little in German post-war literature that actually reflects this physical destruction just in terms of accurate description.
The second essay discusses an author who was at one time popular, and the false or doubtful assertions about his place in the Nazi debacle that are found in his work. The attempt to shift blame and responsibility, the rewriting of personal history to hide things from the past or cover them over.
The third essay looks at an author, Jean Amery, who survived torture at the hands of the S.S and also Auschwitz, and who is unable or unwilling to forgive, to forget, to pardon, to move beyond resentment against history, against Germany, against the Reich. Sebald looks at the tenability, the justifiability of this stance in spite of the general publics preference for acceptance and moving on.
The fourth essay looks at the war experience as reflected in the work of a painter, Peter Weiss.
Interesting thought and reflections and certainly within the big concerns of Sebald with remembering and the inevitable loss of memory, of the past.
To find:
Peter Weiss works
Jean Amery books
Nowhere Man - Aleksandar Hemon
A novel by the author of The Question of Bruno - a Bosnian from Sarajevo.
This is a novel-length exploration of some of the themes from his short stories - in particular, the life of an involuntary immigrant to the U.S. during the war in Bosnia. There are some wonderful American characters and moments as seen from the eyes of a newly arrived immigrant from a very different culture, and as an involuntary immigrant, who does not worship American culture. He ends up with a bizarre and colourful (though not in a particularly positive way) set of social misfits in Chicago doing canvassing for Greenpeace... Equally bizarre is the account of his visit to the Ukraine through a cultural group whose goal is to learn more about their Ukrainian background - the visit happens to fall just during the time of the coup against Gorbachev.
Worth the read - insightful and humourous at times.
This is a novel-length exploration of some of the themes from his short stories - in particular, the life of an involuntary immigrant to the U.S. during the war in Bosnia. There are some wonderful American characters and moments as seen from the eyes of a newly arrived immigrant from a very different culture, and as an involuntary immigrant, who does not worship American culture. He ends up with a bizarre and colourful (though not in a particularly positive way) set of social misfits in Chicago doing canvassing for Greenpeace... Equally bizarre is the account of his visit to the Ukraine through a cultural group whose goal is to learn more about their Ukrainian background - the visit happens to fall just during the time of the coup against Gorbachev.
Worth the read - insightful and humourous at times.
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