Book Review: The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

Oddly enough, I don't remember where I got this book. It was a file on my computer, that I had downloaded from someplace (legally or no, I'm not sure, either). I suppose I had come across it while looking up Post-Modern literature after reading Robert Bolaño's 2666 which a co-worker had recommended to me. Or it could have been a related title that popped up on Goodreads or Librarything or Amazon or any of the online book servers. It also could have been talked about by Kay's blog Georgia Girl with An English Heart, for which this book would be a perfect read. Anyway, so I put this book on my Kobo and took it to Emory hospital for my mom's cardiologist appointments that would take hours. Honestly, there is something very soothing in reading books in hospital waiting rooms, like a touch of the outside world in a microcosm of sterilized air and beeping machines. It so very possible to be immersed in the hospital world, where, if done properly, becomes a home all in itself. There are no worries there outside the health of the loved one, the world takes a back seat. The walks from the parking garage at Emory, over Clifton Street and into the waiting rooms, which, at Christmas time, were decorate with gigantic trees and presents and all types of greenery. The pictures of bridges on the bridge were amazing (although they left out the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy, and probably for good reason), and the images of the seasons next to the gift shop, immutable in frames as the world went on around them, fitting for the hospital I was about to enter. What of Spring or Summer to the people who spend their time in beds, suffering from any type of disease, and cared for by nurses of the highest caliber. There is no better place to be than Emory Hospital, and whenever I have my heart attack, I want to go there for whatever surgery might have to be done.

I've found myself reading German authors, much like W.G. Sebald, who have spent much of their careers using words to free themselves from the atrocities of the 20th century. Most of Modern (WWI) and Post-Modern (WWII) literature, I think, comes from the need to move away from the thinking that got them all into those messes. And while Modernism tried to break completely away (Pound: "Make it New."), Postmodern thought seems to gravitate towards contemplating each road that we have traveled, examining each artifact along the way, until some solution can be found, some escape, away from that time, that reality. This is precisely what Sebald has done in The Rings of Saturn, which is the perfect book to start anyone in the genre of Postmodern Literature. It is short, only 167 pages, by Kobo measuring, and filled with images, photographs, paintings. It reminded me quite a bit of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. However, if I knew then what I know now, I would have started with Sebald before reading Eco or Bolaño.

The book surrounds the author, whom we can assume is Sebald himself, walking through his home county of Suffolk, Great Britain (Sebald left Germany in the 1960's for a professor-ship in the UK), from Suffolk to Ditchingham. Along the way, he visits friends, stops at decaying mansions, and recalls subjects and locations far and wide. There is no plot (other than, at the time of the telling of the story, he has finished his walk and placed himself in some sort of rehab or mental institution), however, like some of the best books I've read, no plot is needed. In fact, the walk is a frame for the people that you meet within the narrator's mind. Joseph Conrad, the "aunt" of the Last Emperor of China, Edward Fitzgerald (the translator for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám), and others. Of course, the main characters are the nations themselves. The barren lands of Great Britain, stripped of all its trees; The Congo, stripped of human beings, made slaves in the dark jungles; China, invaded by the West for profit at whatever cost. Flowing from one person, time, event, to another, much like the waves of the ocean that the narrator stares out upon, there is no feeling of being lost, of waiting for anyone named Godot. It is pure lyricism blended in with history, biography, and memoir.

In the end, I was reminded of the ending of Voltaire's Candide, where we find the meaning of true happiness is, after all the depressing and tragic things in life that happen, one must return home (whatever home that may be) and cultivate the garden (metaphoric, of course, but in some cases, it actually is a garden). In the end, after the mark is made on the world, after the power and the glory, we languish, and we find solace in the daily lives of silkworms, in the motion of the waves, in the growing of our gardens.

I highly recommend reading this novel, and then do what I did. Hop on Google Earth and find the places he talks about in Suffolk. Use Street View and walk down the same streets as he did. Then go here and download the public domain documents that make up the writings of the characters in the book. The book would be great to base an entire college (high school?) course around, complete with the Intertextuality that most Post-Modern works use. There's nothing better than taking all the thoughts of mankind and weaving them together into a giant web, where art, music, literature, history, science....etc... merge and coexist. I only hope, that, as I walk the paths of my own county, that I can pull together the threads I have collected into some tapestry, which, if I am fortunate, will appear here in words, just as Sebald did in his books. It's all I can hope for.

Reviews: Bolaño's 2666 and Hanson's Anthem

Book Review: 2666 by Robert Bolaño 

So my Borders co-worker, Andrew, raved about a work of literature that he had just finished, insisting that it was a magnificent piece, and that I had to read it. Having just closed the page on the last book I had read, I said, "Sure, why not." So I picked up (online, as an e-book on my Kobo), the 795 page tome that is Robert Bolaño's 2666. And it is huge, a book you stand on to reach the cookie jar. (Well, since it was an e-book, standing on my Kobo would result in a cracked screen, but anyway...) First off, this book was supposed to be divided into 5 separate ones, published thus to cover the expenses of Bolaño's children after he died (of liver failure in 2003). His publishers decided, after conferring with his notes, to publish it as one novel. The novel opens with a description of three European literary critics and their love of the writings of one Benno von Archimboldi, a German writer hailed as the next Goethe or Kant. This interested me, as Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was a major influence in my early reading. So I continued reading.

2666 has all the feel of a Post-Modern masterpiece. Imagine an author, having immersed himself into a world with a given set of circumstances, and thus decides to tell the story of each character, each painting, each event in that world. It would look like tributaries running into a stream, each twisting and turning, but invariably ending into a major river, and into a spot on the ocean. For this novel, the ocean is the Mexican town of Santa Teresa near the US border. Imagine the description of each dream the characters have, the other-worldly hallucinations at sunset on a deserted Mexican highway, the ramblings of madmen in asylums, the horror of Nazi officers and the decisions they make. And you, as the reader, must float down each tributary, knowing that you may (or may not) reach the conclusion. This is Post-Modernism.

I felt the same way about this book as I did with Neal Stephenson's Anathem, that I could keep reading forever, and a whole world would unfold before me, and it would swallow me up. It's not a book I would normally read, what with the graphic detail (I think people could easily call it a 21st century Joyce's Ulysses), but that shouldn't make you not read it, as their are parts of lyrical beauty, of fantastic writing, of arresting adventures in the outskirts of World War II. I would also compare it to David Benioff's City of Thieves, in the absurdist episodes surrounding the second World War. Also, Michael Nesmith's The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora with the mystic realms of literature and art being contrasted with the base world of pornography and worldly pleasures. So, all in all, it was a good book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes a more experimental form of literature, and an open mind.


Music Review: Anthem by Hanson

 Merge the darker undertones of This Time Around with the pop stylings in Underneath, you have Hanson's latest musical offering, Anthem. Hanson's last few albums have had spots of genius as well as mediocre filler. Shout It Out was a 6 song EP with filler in between (the EP is amazing, and well worth getting). This one is a solid record, and Taylor Hanson has learned how to fix some things. In the past albums, his vocals have lacked any enunciation, so that I have to look at the lyrics to understand it. This is a major roadblock to a good song. In this album, AutoTune and other technology have made their voices clear, concise, and understandable. Also, they have worked with their harmony, intertwining voices (with Auto-Tune, I expect) for new sounds. Some critics will say it's overproduced, much like they panned Matchbox Twenty's second album Mad Season. Course, I loved that album, too. In fact, on most tracks, I could easily hear Brandon Flowers of The Killers singing the lyrics, as it reminded me of the band's second album Sam's Town. I've always said that Zac Hanson needs to have more lead vocal songs on each album, because his tunes are so introspective, so different from Isaac's romantic ballads and Taylor's rock and pop tunes. A great album, from a great band, well worth supporting.



Not a part of the album, but I'd never seen the video before, and liked it.