Book Review: The Other Side by Alfred Kubin

2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Not only wars and other disasters that come over us unasked for and unforeseen, can turn our lives into an all too real nightmare if not hell on earth, also unfortunate choices have the potential. Dreamers with a taste for great adventure seem to be running a particularly great risk in this respect because – as we all know – things seldom turn out as splendid as imagined. When the protagonist of The Other Side by Alfred Kubin follows an invitation to take up residence in the secret Dream Kingdom that his school mate of twenty years past built in the mountains of Central Asia, he expects to find a glamorous utopia full of interesting and inspiring people. He counts on a model society that has left behind the annoyances of modernity, notably worries concerning work and money, and he hopes for a healthy climate where his ailing wife will get well. Alas, reality is quite different.

The Nobel Poets

Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry
(1789-1800) by Charles Meynier,
Cleveland Museum of Art
via Wikimedia Commons

At one point or another – usually at the beginning of their career – many writers try their pen at poetry only to find that their true talent lies elsewhere. There are others, however, whose verses are so powerful and original that they make their fame. Of course, the works of a poet are seldom as widely read and as commonly translated into other languages as those of prose writers, notably of such specialised in best-selling mainstream novels. Consequently, reviewers including book bloggers like me tend to neglect poetry. I must admit that I do although my participation in the perpetual Read the Nobels challenge as well as in the annual Read the Nobels 2016 hosted by Aloi aka the Guiltless Reader would be an excellent reason to change this.

Author’s Portrait: Maria Firmina dos Reis

Already earlier this year I remarked that Brazil was a bit of a blank on my literary world map although the country is huge and counts millions of inhabitants. As a matter of fact, her literature receives little attention abroad. Maybe this is due to the fact that Brazil’s official language is the local variety of Portuguese and I noticed that translations from this language aren’t particularly present on the international book market. Despite all there are of course notable Brazilian writers apart from Paulo Coelho, contemporary as well as classic ones. There even was a nineteenth-century woman writer, moreover one with African roots, who enjoyed some renown in her time. Her name was Maria Firmina dos Reis and this portrait is dedicated to her.

Lull Before the Storm

Life Between 1900 and 1914

This coming Saturday, on 28 June, is the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of the Austrian Prince Royal Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo which only a couple of weeks later led to the outbreak of the first Great War of the twentieth century. It’s often said that the greater part of European population welcomed the war believing that it would be short, thus no more than a clearing thunderstorm in the sultry heat produced by ardent nationalism and the fervent desire of the ruling powers to show strength at any cost. Be that as it may, people started into the twentieth century with many hopes and fears based on technological progress and scientific discoveries. The wind of change was in the air and war seemed to many a scourge of the past that in a modern world would never find a place to rage again. As we know now, they were terribly mistaken.

It was a promising and inspiring period which allowed for the first time the quick and global exchange of ideas, and yet, literature shows that on the whole the atmosphere was rather melancholic, if not entirely pessimistic. There was a feeling of loss. The simple and clear rules which life had followed for generations no longer seemed to be valid. People saw signs of decadence and degeneration everywhere. Above all the youth was thought to be too soft or in other words too weak to get on well with life. The fault was given to a heightened sensitivity which was allowed to gain ground in society and in the eyes of many the only means to check the development was a strict education. In his master novel Buddenbrooks (1901) Thomas Mann put to paper the impressions and thoughts of a whole generation. Almost twenty years later, in 1919, his older brother Heinrich Mann painted the blunt picture of boys’ education under the reign of Emperor Wilhelm II in his impressive, but far too neglected novel The Loyal Subject (Der Untertan). The Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, on the other hand, portrayed the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy in The Radetzky March (Radetzkymarsch: 1932) and a family.

As always artists sought new ways of expression. They wanted to capture the uncertainty and discontent with life that were characteristic of the early twentieth century. Inner worlds and impressions gained importance over the mere facts and events of life and in literature the stream of consciousness was introduced which allowed to write from subjective points of view. Arthur Schnitzler shocked the conservative society of his time with innovative novellas like None but the Brave (Leutnant Gustl: 1900) and Berta Garlan (1900), but above all with his many plays (e.g. Anatol: 1893; Flirtation [Liebelei]: 1895); Reigen: 1897; The Lonely Way [Der einsame Weg]: 1903; The Vast Domain [Das weite Land]: 1911; or Professor Bernhardi: 1912). Colette appeared on the scene of Belle-Époque France with her Claudine novels Claudine at School (Claudine à l’école: 1900), Claudine in Paris (Claudine à Paris: 1901), Claudine Married (Claudine en ménage: 1902), and Claudine and Annie (Claudine s’en va: 1903). A little later Marcel Proust (»»» read my author's portrait) wrote the novels of In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, also translated as Remembrance of Things Past: 1913-1927). James Joyce brought out Dubliners (1914; »»» read my review) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). At the same time Henry James and Edith Wharton painted the picture of modern American society.

I dare say that everywhere in the world the beginning twentieth century was an enormously productive time in literature. It brought forth a huge number of important as well as highly creative writers and many of them are widely read up to this day. Their works can teach us a lot about circumstances and thoughts of a society unknowingly headed for disaster… but also about ourselves, our hopes and fears. To learn more about the period I recommend Philipp Blom’s The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West. Europe, 1900-1914, Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2008.

About Shorts

Or How to Squeeze Literature into a Full Agenda

From childhood on most of us lead terribly busy lives and need to keep a close eye on time. Undoubtedly, our modern work ethics as well as lifestyle have a big share in it and almost succeed in barring the centuries old idea of “leisure” from our experience. Far too often our agendas are filled to the brim with whatever we believe indispensable to live our lives to the fullest. At best we manage to schedule a quick pleasure now and then, a short holiday every couple of months, but usually that’s it. Even people like me who love reading can find it difficult to spare a longer period to plunge into the imaginary world of a novel.

Every bibliophile knows how annoying it is to be torn out of an intriguing plot ever again because of phone calls, appointments and other duties that can’t wait. It can even spoil the whole pleasure of reading. Luckily, there aren’t just novels on the market. An equally good alternative for readers who can’t free much time at a stretch are short stories, a discovery of modern literature. At least until the seventeenth century short prose was of little importance because there was no real market for it. Of course there were fairy tales, legends, fables, anecdotes, pamphlets, and essays, but most writers didn’t see them as a means of literary expression yet.

One of the first to give short fiction more attention was Madame de Lafayette in seventeenth-century France, but it wasn’t before Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Prosper Mérimée in the early nineteenth century that it raised more general interest. Authors like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens in the U.K. and Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the USA paved the way for short stories to become a literary genre. In German the classical authors Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Peter Hebel, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Heinrich von Kleist can be considered as pioneers of short fiction.

Thanks to the increasing number of periodical media (magazines, journals, etc) the new genre had by the second half of the nineteenth century conquered its firm place in literature and in the hearts of readers. Authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Guy de Maupassant and Anton Chekhov developed the form to full perfection and are up to this day considered as the great masters of short story who set the standards for those who came after them. And in fact, the task of writing an entire story on just a few pages should not be underestimated. It really is a challenge since it requires particular skill to reduce everything to the essential and to leave the rest to the reader’s imagination. 

There are countless fiction writers who during their careers produced short stories, but there are only few whose fame is based on them rather than on their longer writings. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that short stories have lost much of their original appeal since they gradually disappear from all popular print media. At least that’s the case in the German-speaking world where I live. Somewhere I read that if you wish to bring out a shelf warmer, you should try a collection of short stories. Even the 2013 Nobel laureate in Literature, the Canadian Alice Munro, said in an interview that she hoped “the award would bring readership for the short story in general.”

I must admit that I too prefer novels because they feel more complete and allow me to really get absorbed in events and emotions that aren’t mine, but I also read short stories occasionally and thoroughly enjoy them. However, heavenly times could be lying ahead for short story and flash fiction writers since our world is becoming ever more fast-paced, since even the minority who adores reading has ever less time to indulge in this passion and since the attention span of average people seems to have shrunken to the length of an sms or twitter message. Or do those condensed stories that authors write require too much thinking? Who knows!

For A Short History of the Short Story see William Boyd’s article of 10 July 2006 in the online magazine called Prospect or consult Wikipedia.

Marginal Note: Books by Kilogram

or The Weight of the Printed Word 

The other day the book shop where I pass by every time I need to buy groceries put on sale a large number of shelf warmers. They do that every so often to get room for new stock, thus it wouldn’t be worth writing about it on my blog except that this time they sold the books by kilogram. I was downright shocked when I saw the poster: 1 kg at only 3 €! It’s not unusual that shops give away books at very low price as soon as they are no longer in the system of retail price control for books on the German-language market, but so far I had seen only used books sold by kilogram and that in charity bazaars or second hand shops not specialised in books. The unexpected change of sales method of my most frequented book shop set me thinking. 

What’s the message of a good book shop deciding to sell outdated stock by kilogram? I admit that there are quite some publications which I consider as rubbish not really worth the paper and ink that are needed to print them and just good enough to beat up the author for wasting my time, but this is different. Shelf warmers aren’t necessarily the poorest products of literary creativity. In fact, who can spare a moment to search thoroughly will always find true gems between the trivial works of would-be writing geniuses and imitators of bestselling authors. Sometimes those works are just too highbrow for the average reader or they are ahead of their time as were Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys (»»» read my review) and her earlier novels for instance. 

Certainly the constant rise of popularity of e-books has turned upside down the book market and it has reduced the market value of paper editions while production costs have remained the same or increased. Even I read e-books occasionally although I find it horrible to rely on yet another electronic gadget that could break down any time and in the worst case destroy an entire virtual library unless I’m ready to store it – George Orwell’s Big Brother sends his compliments! – in a cloud which even as a word has the notion of the uncertain and short-lived against it. Mind you, I never lost a paper book yet, while I can’t say the same about computer files! However, for books which are otherwise inaccessible (out of print or not sold in the region) e-books can be a blessing. 

Of course, publishers love e-books because they spare them a lot of money for storage, production and delivery which should make it less risky to place a new book on the market. It isn’t even necessary to fix in advance a number of copies because the file can be downloaded any time by an unlimited number of people. Also book sellers aren’t in danger to run out of stock when sales turn out better than expected which would annoy buyers. To survive publishers and book shops need to run both product lines, though, and the tricky part is to correctly estimate the sales shares of print editions and e-books respectively. As it seems, they are often mistaken and many books remain in shop shelves and stores for much longer than they were thought to. 

The growing flood of dead stock has brought the scales into play. If the printed word still has weight, it should be priced accordingly people say. And what better way to prove the economical reader that s/he gets something for her money than to sell them books by kilogram? After all everybody knows that good quality literature uses to be heavier than cheap novels – in the figurative as well as in the narrow sense. It’s quite convenient, isn’t it? No need to still have a look at the blurb or even into the book. Just grab whatever you can and see if it weighs well in the hand. I wonder how many of the books bought during the sale by kilogram went straight into the rubbish bin as soon as the reader finally became aware of the contents. Miserliness is seldom a good adviser.

The Benefits of Bibliophilia

or: Why It’s an Advantage to Have a Wide Reading 

The complaint that people don’t read anymore is often heard these days. Certainly it’s true that with all the new media books have lost popularity. To many books seem old-fashioned and environmentally questionable, be it their paper or their electronic version, be it fiction or non-fiction. And the sullen odour of school that they have about them for a considerable number of people shouldn’t be underestimated either. More importantly, however, our time has become so fast paced that any text longer than a paragraph or a page at most has become an ordeal to read because it requires more attention and concentration than many of us are willing or able to summon up. 

None of the above has ever been true for me. I always take my time for reading. I’m a born bibliophile or else it wouldn’t make any sense to write a literature blog, would it? And I’m glad that I’m such an avid reader because I get so much out of the books apart from the mere pleasure of getting involved in an intriguing plot. Every book is the key to an inner world of wonders that would otherwise be lost. I’m a rather introverted person and consequently it’s always fascinating for me to be allowed to slip into the head of somebody else and to witness all those strange thoughts as well as emotions that might never ever have come into my own mind. It doesn’t matter that characters and events in the books I read rarely are real – they are authentic enough to broaden my horizon. 

Books help me to better understand the world around me and myself too. In real life I’m often at a loss, especially when I need to deal with extraverted people who sometimes make me feel like an alien cast away all alone on this planet. In earnest. It happens quite regularly that I wonder why people right in their minds act and talk the way they do and not always can I ask for an explanation. Reading novels allows me to get to know from the inside all kinds of types, introverted, extraverted, crazy, clever, average,... Probably, it’s even the better way of studying them because authors use to concentrate on typical traits of a character instead of losing themselves in depicting unimportant or even confusing shades. Without books I could only rely on my own common sense and experience. 

Another advantage of books is that they make it easy to travel to other cultures and to learn about them as well as from them. They raise awareness and understanding for people who have a different cultural background which becomes all the more important as globalisation advances. If we like it or not, society is changing as it always has been. As human beings we tend to close our eyes before such developments because we are afraid of what we don’t know. Books can help us to be less fearful, more open-minded and more sensitive to the needs of other people around us – provided that we make a good choice and don’t just stick to writings that glorify our own traditions and thoughts. Books can help us not just to face reality, but also to deal with it. 

It’s my firm opinion that if we don’t read books anymore, we cage ourselves in. Our minds may still be filled with millions of facts from the internet and yet we may know nothing worthwhile about the world and the people in which we are living because in a way we content ourselves with looking at small details without knowing (or even being interested in) their grand context. 

May authors never cease to write books!

Crime Appeal

Or: Why Murder Mysteries Are So Frightfully Popular 

Those who already had a look at my review list or follow my blog regularly will have noticed that I hardly ever discuss any kind of thriller. It’s true that there was a time in my life when I too enjoyed reading murder mysteries, especially the classic ones by Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon. I was a teenager then and had not yet been compelled to study textbooks of criminal law which later made my taste for thrillers fade completely. However, the older I grow the more I get the impression that I must be a big exception there. Bestselling lists are full of crime and whoever I talk to is or has just been reading a detective story, but why is this?

Thirteen Nobel Women of Letters

and the Relativity of Statistics

Yesterday, like every year on 10 December, the five Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace along with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (endowed by the Sveriges Riksbank, not the Nobel Foundation) of the closing year have been awarded in Stockholm and Oslo respectively. The names of the laureates of 2013 had been made public already two months ago and it goes without saying that I as a book lover had been most curious to know who would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s always interesting to see which writer’s work the Swedish Academy considered as sufficiently outstanding “in an ideal direction” to deserve the prestigious award. Since 1901 probably hundreds of authors have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and 110 of them (108 not counting Boris L. Pasternak and Jean Paul Sartre who declined the award) actually received it: 97 men – and 13 women. 

This year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature is the Canadian writer Alice Munro who for health reasons excused herself from attending in person at the splendid ceremony in Sweden. The “master of the contemporary short story” also declared in October that she would retire from literary work – although by now she is wavering already. Her long career as an author began in 1968 with the much acclaimed and award-winning short story collection titled Dance of the Happy Shades which was followed by a great number of short stories printed in renowned magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Paris Review as well as in several collections. Her latest published work is Dear Life (2012). The latest of her original short story collections are Too Much Happiness (2009), The View from Castle Rock (2006), Runaway (2004), and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001; including the story The Bear Came Over the Mountain on which Sarah Polley’s film Away from Her is based).

When Alice Munro was officially announced as this year’s laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature in October, almost everywhere special attention was called to the fact that in the course of 113 years (minus seven years when the Nobel Prize wasn’t awarded) she is only the thirteenth woman of letters being honoured by the Swedish Academy for her literary work. Of course, the statistics are right, but what does it mean? Time didn’t stand still during all those years and our society of today isn’t the same as it was in 1901. To me it seems unfair to lump together the first half of the twentieth century and the years of the new millennium. We need a more differentiated look at the statistics. 

In fact the past ten years alone have seen four female recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature including this year's winner Alice Munro. The other three were the German-Romanian author Herta Müller in 2009 (see my review of The Passport), the recently deceased British writer Doris Lessing in 2007, and the Austrian novelist, poet and playwright Elfriede Jelinek in 2004. I’d say that four women to six men is quite a good ratio considering the situation in today’s literary business which still seems to be very much in favour of male authors (see also my post Women Writers). The picture is less balanced and at the same time more realistic, if we look at all the 2000s: four women and nine men. Taking the last 25 years as statistical basis, there are three more women writers who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. They are the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska in 1996, the US-American novelist Toni Morrison in 1993 and the South-African author Nadine Gordimer in 1991. Seven women writers (almost half of all 13!) are up against 18 men. 

On the other hand, the 45 years between World War II and 1988 have been a rather bleak period for women of letters. The German-Swedish writer Nelly Sachs in 1966 and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral in 1945 are the only two women among 45 (43 without Pasternak and Sartre) literary men who were thought worth of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. The interwar period definitely has been a better time for female writers. From 1919 through 1939 three of the twenty Nobel Prize laureates were women, i.e. the US-American writer Pearl S. Buck in 1938, the Norwegian author Sigrid Undset in 1928 (see my review of Jenny) and the Italian novelist Grazia Deledda in 1926. The first female recipient ever of the Nobel Prize in Literature was the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf in 1909, the only one among 17 male recipients until 1917. 

My analysis of the statistics of the Nobel Prize in Literature shows that times have changed in favour of women and that at present we don’t have any reason to stand up against discrimination in Stockholm. After 113 years female writers seem at last to have equal opportunities of winning this important award. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case everywhere in the literary business, but women like me are working on it. Many of us write excellent literary fiction and continue the battle against prejudices evoked by the simple fact that we have female given names. Clear-sighted and courageous editors/juries, on the other hand, are still wanted in many places. 

For reviews of works written by Nobel Prize laureates I recommend Read the Nobels where I reblog my suitable reviews every once in a while.

The School of LIfe

In childhood, adolescence and young adulthood we discover the world and develop a view of life. School is supposed to help us on the way by making us sufficiently acquainted with everything that might be useful. We’re pushed into the sea of arts, science and sports, steadily progressing from the flat coasts of reading, writing and arithmetic into the deep waters of more complex matters. Teachers stuff our brains with all kinds of information that will broaden our knowledge if we’re lucky enough to understand and fit the pieces into the constantly growing puzzle of human existence. 

At the same time our character is forged with as much force as it needs to bend a cooling (and hardening) mind into the socially accepted shape. This should be a gentle and smooth process, but it exacts a certain delicacy from the smiths not to hammer our souls with blows that are too hard or too light. Alas, in a rigid and inflexible system there isn’t much room for individual treatment and those who are highly sensitive or in other ways extraordinary will easily come to grief. In that case school can be a painful experience that will remain engraved in the memory forever. 

Even under favourable conditions education leaves a deep impact on a person because youth is impressive by nature. So much is happening! So much is changing! It’s no wonder that the years of learning and coming of age are a recurring topic in literature, even a genre of its own. Youth flows over with possibilities in reality as well as in fiction. Besides, many writers are digesting their – often unpleasant – experiences with the school system in books. Roald Dahl did it humorously in Matilda (1988) and Friedrich Torberg with grim detail in Young Gerber (Der Schüler Gerber: 1930).

Still Waters...

Yesterday I reviewed Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë whose work has always been compared to and overshadowed by that of her older sisters Charlotte and Emily. After all, who doesn’t know Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? Without any doubt those novels are important classics of early Victorian literature, but how about Anne Brontë’s writings? Do her two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, have less literary value than those of her sisters? Was she too young and too inexperienced to achieve something great? As a writer maybe.

In fact, Anne Brontë wasn’t so much younger than her sisters. Charlotte was born in April 1816, Emily in August 1818 and Anne in January 1820. Certainly, Anne was the baby of the family and as such indulged, probably patronized by all others, and yet, she was the only one of the three who could bear to hold a position as a governess for several years. By her contemporaries she is described as quiet, gentle and subdued which are all qualities that befitted a woman, especially a young one, of her time and social standing. 

In her novels Anne Brontë depicted the world as she saw it through the eyes of a very intelligent, highly sensitive and uncommonly attentive observer. Her mistake in literature may have been that she always remained faithful to the truth and didn’t gloss over the dark sides of life to please her readers. As a matter of fact, she was very critical of Victorian society and aimed high with her novels, writing them to induce changes of mind and attitude. For her as a woman and moreover an introvert it was the only way to make herself heard at all. 

With Agnes Grey she wished to show how difficult and lonely the life of most governesses was in well-to-do families with low morals. As for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall I must admit that I haven’t read it, yet, but according to what I know about it, it’s a rousing story that brands the complete dependence of women of men. With her straight-forward description of reality she may have been too much ahead of time to leave a lasting impact. At its release in 1848 the novel was a big success, but it was also very controversial and caused quite some polemic. 

It seems that even her sister Charlotte Brontë didn’t approve of her sister’s only two novels. The first she called a complete mistake from the start because it had no plot. I think she really made her point writing Jane Eyre! The other she considered as too inconsistent with the character of her dear adapted and harmless little sister. Consequently, after her sister’s death Charlotte actively prevented The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from going into print again during her lifetime. Before long Anne Brontë became a side character in the family’s literary history. 

What a pity that Anne Brontë died so young in May 1849. We’ll never find out what she could have achieved, had she been alive longer. Who knows if she might not have found the courage to fully disclose her rebellious side? Maybe she would have become a pioneer of women’s rights in the end? Still waters run deep, it is said, but the bold and extravert may never catch the shortest glimpse of the varying worlds on the ground because they are too impatient. They won’t bother to read Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, either – and will never know what they actually miss.

Contemporary Literature

The fact that I found it so difficult to pick the right novel for this week’s review made me think about the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary literature. There are few living writers whose work I really appreciate, like for instance Ian McEwan. In the bookshop I always have second thoughts when it comes to widening my horizon and giving someone new a chance. It’s very likely that I’ll forget my good resolutions and buy yet another classic from before World War II in the hope that its being still in print is a sign of good quality. More often than not it is. 

Experience taught me that emerging authors who receive much critical acclaim can easily turn out to be a big disappointment. Indeed, it isn’t rare that I finish a novel written by such a newcomer with the feeling that I could do better. Weak reads aren’t a complete waste of time, though. Finding so many flaws in the books of others gives me the courage to continue writing myself and it helps me to further develop my own ideas about the ingredients of strong fiction. But why is it that contemporary literature tends to bore and annoy me so terribly? 

In the course of this week I read different articles (I posted the links of two on my facebook wall) raising the question if contemporary literature was always terrible and why. The commentators came to the conclusion that many novels were more self-portrayal than anything else. In fact, creative writing teachers and tutors use to encourage everyone aspiring at a career in literature to concentrate on themselves, their thoughts, their sensations, their feelings. This is a good way to learn to develop an original style and voice, but it’s seldom more. 

Ian McEwan brought it excellently to the point in a letter that the protagonist of Atonement, Briony Tallis, receives from the editors of a literary journal several months after having submitted the typescript of a story: 

‘… The crystalline present moment is of course a worthy subject in itself, especially for poetry; it allows a writer to show his gifts, delve into mysteries of perception, present a stylised version of thought processes, permit the vagaries and unpredictability of the private self to be explored and so on. Who can doubt the value of this experimentation? However, such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement. Put the other way round, our attention would have been held even more effectively had there been an underlying pull of simple narrative. Development is required. …’ 

Towards the end of his novel The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafón has Julián Carax say through Nuria Monfort 

 ‘… that a narrative was a letter that the author wrote to himself to tell things that otherwise he wouldn’t be able to understand. …’ (My amateur translation from the original Spanish text). 

This hints at the ultimate goal of every writer to explain the world and life to himself and hopefully to the reader, too. Perceptions and sensations can help to understand, but they don’t just pop up out of the blue. They are produced by a certain course of events, they are tinged by the peculiarities of the characters experiencing them and they always follow a personal logic. 

I’m sure that a novel like Fay Weldon’s Puffball published in 1980 would long be forgotten today if it weren’t for Liffey and Mabs who are depicted in all shades of colours. They are very different characters and they are changing as the story advances. Emotions, perceptions and sensations get much room, but they always serve the purpose of the plot making clear why people do what they do. That way Mabs’ efforts to get rid of Liffey’s unborn baby become natural without losing their sometimes surprising effect. Fay Weldon tells their story. 

In my humble opinion many literary fiction writers forget today that they are supposed to tell a story, at best a captivating one. Other genres like chick’ lit, romance, fantasy, science fiction and thriller are so much more popular because their focus is on entertaining their readers. Personally I find most of the latter too predictable and thus boring, but I have no doubt that there are exceptions to the cliché. After all, if a novel is strong or weak has nothing to do with how it’s labelled by publishers. And of course it goes without saying that tastes differ – also in literature.

The Power of Guilt

Guilt is a very powerful feeling that everybody experiences some time or another. The strategies to deal with it vary widely. Many people set out to clear their guilty conscience undoing their wrong or apologizing at least. Others try to push all disturbing thoughts aside in the hope of being able to live their lives as if nothing had happened. The latter rarely works out as imagined. The feeling of guilt uses to be extremely persistent and it can weigh so heavily on the mind that it overshadows every aspect of life even without the person being aware of it. 

When grown-up Briony Tallis, the protagonist of Atonement, fully realizes the consequences of her false accusation against Robbie Turner, she does her best to put things right. However, she can’t turn back time and start afresh from the moment before the child that she was ruined the young man’s and her sister’s life. The harm is irrevocably done. As a writer she has the edge on other people despite all since she can give events a completely different twist in her imagination. Thus in her last novel she crafts the life that Robbie and her sister could have had. 

Unfortunately, a guilty conscience cannot only urge a person to create in order to make amends, but it also has great destructive power as Daniel Sempere discovers little by little in The Shadow of the Wind. Growing up from a motherless boy into a married man, he explores the mystery around the life of second-rate author Julián Carax which makes him the target of several assaults. In due course Daniel is drawn into the writer’s misfortune and scheme of penitence that revolves around effacing from the world every trace of his existence, especially his books.

Novels often show us unconventional ways of dealing with things. Many of us may be prone to dwelling in if-then-scenarios, when something went terribly wrong (with or without our fault), but very few will sit down to give the person they harmed a different life through their writings. Many of us may wish to never have been born after they made a grave mistake, and yet I dare say that nobody ever thinks of atoning for the past erasing it. Instead we go on living with the new burden that is at the same time a new experience adding to our character.

Lamenting doesn’t help, either, nor can guilt be drowned in alcohol. Joseph Roth might have tried that in the first place although to my knowledge he didn’t have any reason for a bad conscience. He was only a disappointed and very troubled man living in exile. His soul was restless and the political situation in Germany as well as in his home country Austria must have worried him like many, if not all members of the European Jewish community at the time. As an intelligent man, moreover a journalist, he might have sensed that millions would make themselves guilty in one way or another.

We can’t change what we have done in the past, but we decide about what we do in the present and what we will do in the future. Every mistake can help us to take better decisions, if we are ready and willing to face things as they really are.

Times of Decadence or About Being Different

Heinrich Mann wrote his novel Small Town Tyrant, on which the film The Blue Angel is based, in the early 1900s. The years or actually decades preceding the outbreak of World War I in 1914 were often considered as a time of growing decadence and degeneration. Every new generation appeared to be softer, thus weaker than the one before and the increased sensitivity seemed to make it more susceptible to all kinds of temptation, be it political, social or sexual. The general tone was ranging from melancholic to downright pessimistic. 

Corruption of morals and decay of culture were often lamented, especially in the arts. In their works writers, too, depicted the uncertainty and discontent with life that were characteristic of the period. They also strived for new ways to capture what was going on. The feigned objectivity of naturalism limited them too much and it was only a matter of time until they broke free of it. They began to spread out before their readers the inner world of their protagonists (and themselves), in other words, their subjective points of view and their individuality. 

The years around the turn of the twentieth century were times of big change, but just like today not everybody was willing or able to keep up pace. Social conventions have always served as the backbone of society, as a stabilizing and conservative force in an environment that is perceived as unpredictable or even dangerous. However, they can keep going the old world only for a while. Sooner or later it breaks down and often in a big crash. In 1914 World War I made an end to everything that was outdated and no longer of use to society. 

In our modern world we may be startled at what was considered as unacceptable behaviour at the time when Heinrich Mann wrote Small Town Tyrant and when Josef von Sternberg made the novel into The Blue Angel a quarter of a century later. Today we are allowed to live our individuality to a much wider degree than our ancestors, and yet everyone who dares stepping out of the normal ruts has to face consequences. We may not be openly treated like Professor Raat/Rath because this isn’t socially accepted in our days. Still we need a thick skin, if we are different.

Diversity of Expression

Literature necessarily lives on diversity because it would be boring to read the same old stories ever again. Mind you, I wouldn’t take much pleasure in writing them down, either! Of course, there are themes and plots that are so characteristic of our human existence that we writers like using them as well-tried patterns or rough guidelines for our own work, but the stories that we produce are ours. Not one is the same as the other. Our approaches as well as our highlights are different. So are our tones and our styles. And it goes without saying that cultural background and language have their share in creating a unique story. 

Africa is a good example for the diversity of expression in literature. It’s a vast continent. It suffices to see the impressing vistas in Out of Africa to know that this is true. The film also proves that, even at a time when many believed in the supremacy of European civilization, there were people like Karen Blixen and Deny Finch Hatton who loved Africa as well as the people living there. However, they couldn’t strip off their culture and so it’s no surprise that Karen Blixen founded a European-kind school for the tribal children on her farm. Since then much of the original culture of the area must have got lost, but education was the key to independence, too. 

Even today Africa still is The Undervalued Continent as regards culture. Lamentably, the wealth of contemporary African literature isn’t very present in my corner of the planet. It’s simply overlooked and very few books of African authors are translated into German (at least to my knowledge). The situation may be better for those whose works are published in English or French, but it’s my impression that Europeans and (North as well as South) Americans keep dominating the best-selling lists. Of course, The Value of Best-Selling Lists is questionable because they give account only of high sales, but not of the literary quality of the books on them. 

J. M. Coetzee rose to fame as a novelist in the 1980s, but I never really perceived him as an African writer. Of course, he never made a secret of being South African, moreover one of Afrikaner decent. Quite on the contrary, he made his country the setting of his books. He wrote about South Africa and the living conditions there which made his work controversial in his own country. The marginalization of minorities in South Africa - Afrikaner and indigenous - takes up an important place in his work. And yet, J. M. Coetzee’s way of writing fits into the European, especially English tradition. The colonial past of South Africa keeps dominating the country’s culture. 

Albert Camus, too, is a writer whose name isn’t automatically linked with Africa in people’s minds. Much more often he’s referred to as an exponent of French existentialism and, in fact, he may have seen himself as belonging to France rather than to Algeria. After all, Albert Camus wasn’t a member of the native Arabian population of Algeria, but he was the son of French-Spanish settlers. Despite all, there can be no doubt about the Algerian youth of Albert Camus having influenced his writings as can be seen most strikingly in The Plague. All his life he felt affection for Algeria and he was critical of French politics regarding the country, and yet his culture was European, above all French. 

But indigenous Africans no longer stand in second line. There is a lot going on in the African literary scene. Authors are active at home as well as abroad as shows the big number of contributors to literary journals like African Writing Magazine, not to mention the host of entries on literary websites like African Writer. Through the internet African Words Around the Globe can spread across frontiers. Emerging as well as locally established authors can promote and possibly sell their books worldwide. In addition, important literature prizes like The Caine Prize help making the diversity of African literature visible. 

We readers and writers should be grateful for all the new ideas and points of view that African literature is going to give us.

The Undervalued Continent

I’ve never been to Africa, nor do I have African friends, so my point of view on this old and vast continent is necessarily European, Central European to be more precise. Not that this specification makes much of a difference. When I think of Africa, pictures of dreamlike landscapes vibrating with wildlife, of gruesome wars and of starving children emerge in my mind. There isn’t much else that I connect with it quickly although common sense tells me that there must be more – much more. Above all there must be literature from and about Africa, but somehow I don’t have it present. 

Africa has been home to many thriving, often misunderstood and depreciated civilizations in the past. Today there are many countries and many different cultures enriching the world with their diversity. They all have their stories and I’m sure that they are being told. Despite all I can only think of few writers related to Africa one way or another among them Karen Blixen, André Brink, Albert Camus, J. M. Coetzee, Doris Lessing, António Lobo Antunes, and Alexander McCall Smith. They all have one thing in common: they or their backgrounds are more or less European.

For the rest, African literature is widely unknown in my corner… provided that it’s justified to talk of African literature. I doubt it. The continent is so vast and diverse that it seems impossible to me to merge the wealth of its literature in a single name. There’s the North with its longstanding relations to Europe and the Middle East, not to talk of the Islamic literary heritage that influenced the literature of the region. Then there are all the countries South of the Sahara that inevitably are under the influence of their colonial history along with religious as well as local traditions. 

Certainly all African peoples know the art of telling stories. Most likely it is something that is passed on orally from one generation to the next, but times have changed and keep changing. Africans are no longer illiterate savages (using a stereotype that can never have been correct – African culture simply happened to be incomprehensible to us Europeans because it was so different). They can read and they can write. Let’s hope that many of their works will find their way also into the hands of readers outside the African continent. I’m sure that we can expect some true gems!

Beyond the Average

It’s generally said that the line between genius and madness is narrow. Often it’s blurred as well like in the case of John Forbes Nash, Jr. who is a brilliant mathematician with a record of mental illness having suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He would never have received the Nobel Prize in economy, if he didn’t have such A Beautiful Mind. Firstly, he began his life as a not very sociable prodigy tipping over into so-called madness only later for reasons unknown. And secondly, he managed to fight back the voices of non-existent people in his mind and returned to what we call a normal life. If his paranoid schizophrenia has disappeared completely or if it just isn’t showing anymore, I can’t tell. I’m no expert on the human brain. 

However, genius and madness are both deviations from what we call normality. And everything that doesn’t fit into our view of how the world, people and life are or should be disturbs us. At best we are amazed, at worst we are scared. In former times it could happen that genius was mistaken for madness, especially with the common people and women. Less than two hundred years ago a highly gifted Sofia Kovalevskaya had to fight to be allowed first to study and then to lecture mathematics at a European university. Today we are in awe of people like her who are highly intelligent and many of us would love to see their children belong to this elite, but extraordinary talent still has a touch of the mysterious, the unearthly, the paranormal. 

Average people don’t care about equations describing the mathematical patterns of the universe and human behaviour. Average people don’t care about making out a new prime number in the infinite row. Some might not even remember what a prime number is because it doesn’t help them to master their lives. Literature is less of a mystery to the public which easily leads us to believe that everybody can write. The truth is that everybody can pen or type a text, but only few can tell a story that is worthwhile reading. True literary genius is often difficult to discover among the crowds of writers because it has a habit of thriving in dark corners that can easily be overlooked. Magazines like Prime Number try to bring them out into the light. 

There are uncountable realms of imagination unknown even to avid readers, each one of them a white spot on the literary world map. To disclose the well hidden gems of contemporary literature it needs dedicated explorers of the calibre of Alexander von Humboldt, who sacrificed his entire fortune to his discoveries, or devoted surveyors like Carl Friedrich Gauß, whose mind was able to reveal the so far unnoticed. As Daniel Kehlmann expressed it, those two giants of the Age of Enlightenment were, each one in his way, Measuring the World. Numbers were their key to life and to the future. The literary quest must be for distinctive stories, words and style that don’t follow strict rules and that cannot be measured. What a task!

Numbers and Words

John Forbes Nash, Jr. is a mathematical genius. He dedicated his life to numbers and even though I can’t produce any evidence for it, I’m quite sure that they helped him to fight back the paranoid schizophrenia from which he suffered and that, unlike in the film A Beautiful Mind, he refused to treat with medication. There’s hardly anything more logic and reliable in life than numbers. Mathematicians use them to express and explain the world. The ‘Nash Equilibrium’ is nothing but the expert try to put a certain aspect of the world into numbers… and to understand how things work. 

Words are different from numbers. They always imply some uncertainty because their meaning uses to vary according to interpretation, but essentially they serve the same purpose as numbers. They help us to understand what is going on and to communicate it to others. The advantage of words is that they aren’t limited to reality. Numbers can only represent what really is even if we haven’t been aware of it yet. Words, on the other hand, can also depict lots of alternatives: worlds of the present or the future that could or could not be, worlds of the past that could or could not have been. 

The flexibility of words is what attracts writers like me. They allow us to create something completely new that doesn’t follow established rules, maybe not even the laws of nature. Authors of fantasy and science fiction novels revel in the infinite possibilities of imagination. My stories are invented, too, but my approach is more realistic despite all. There is no witchcraft in my stories. No fabulous creatures, no exotic worlds. Human nature gives me enough room to experiment with characters and moods, to explore behaviour and emotions. Numbers are of little importance in this universe. 

Words are my key to understanding the world and the people surrounding me. With every story that I put to paper I learn more about the great mysteries of life and social intercourse, about society and its intricate mechanisms that so often astonish, disturb or confuse me. Like a mathematician I’m searching for hidden connections and patterns, but I can only express them in words that add up to complex stories. However, numbers anchor me in reality just like they brought back to reality John Forbes Nash, Jr. They give my world a definite and unchangeable frame. 

We need both – numbers as well as words. We need both – mathematicians as well as writers.

The Importance of Being... Perseverant

While working on this week’s posts, I was ever again reminded of how important it is for an artist to persevere. Success rarely falls into our laps at once. On the contrary, it uses to be the fruit of much thought paired with hard work. The Commitments needed to find their niche – soul music. George Bernard Shaw needed to find his medium – stage plays. James Joyce needed to find his style – stream of consciousness. The editors and contributors of The Bohemyth are defining their writing selves on the internet. And I? I’m forging this blog into shape with every post that I share.

Every musician, writer, designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, director, actor, comedian can tell you one or two things about the struggles that their choice of career implies. Life is no bed of roses, even less for an artist! Rejection and polemics pave our ways every day. As long as the public ignores us, we’re nothing but would-be or hobby artists for the rest of the world. We’re expected to earn our livings with something useful like everybody else and to squeeze our vocation into our scarce free time. Some can deal with the situation, while others go to pieces under the pressure.

Our materialistic society appreciates creativity only in so far as it observes the rules of economy and supports the system. Market indicators decide about the future of young artists. Sex and crime sell? Writers take care to include sex and crime into your novels! This is not the way how you are writing? Sex and crime are not your themes? Too bad. Maybe you have a fantasy novel about witches or vampires on store? No? And how about some chick lit? This isn’t your genre either. Then you’re hopeless. It’s your own fault, if you remain an unpublished author.

Unfortunately, most publishers really shrink back from writers who dare swimming against the current. Their priority definitely is to sell books, not to discover literary genius. They are seldom willing to take more risk than is inevitable in the business and prefer to concentrate on mainstream. George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce were lucky. They met the right people who believed in their creative work. Who knows if either of them would ever have become so famous, if he hadn’t found a person farsighted enough to give him a chance and to support him?

Let’s hope that there are still some people of the kind of Jack Grein and Harriet Shaw Weaver on this planet to discover us.

The Bohemyth - Literary Journal

Doing research for this week's posts, I stumbled across an interesting Irish website dedicated to literature: 'The Bohemyth', a new literary journal. More precisely it's a wordpress blog made into an e-weekly that publishes short stories, flash fiction, personal essay, and photography. The Dublin based online literary journal was launched only in October 2012 by Alice Walsh, herself an emerging writer (born in 1984) with a growing list of publications. She is joined by another young Irish writer from Dublin, Michael Naghten Shanks (born in 1987), for the editing.

The idea behind 'The Bohemyth' is to give writers space to publish their work online, but not together with heaps of other texts, so readers will find it difficult to give them the attention that they deserve. Instead, each one of the weekly issues features only a small and selected number of contemporary texts "with a literary bent" and photography. The editors keep a sharp eye on the quality of their literary journal and expect much from contributors. In the submission guidelines they ask for "stories that seduce and savage souls" and for "images that linger in minds".

Of course, I haven't read the entire e-journal, but only a few bits and pieces of it here and there to get an impression. Quite obviously I liked what I found since otherwise I wouldn't bother to write about it on my blog, would I? Contents are a good mix of contemporary writing in short prose with some pats of experimental poetry in between and photos. As far as I could see, most contributors so far have been Irish or with close relations to Ireland although the editors are open for submissions from anywhere on this planet, provided that they are in English and previously unpublished.

The literary journal's homepage shows the latest issues with their date of publication that can be liked, shared, and commented as usual. It takes, however, quite some scrolling to read the whole issue  – something that I find a bit annoying, but maybe this is because I and my peers have still grown up with books and papers instead of tablet computers and e-readers. The archives and lists of recent posts as well as categories (issues) are only at the foot of the page and hamper browsing. If I'm not mistaken, a list of contributors is completely missing at the moment.

Overall 'The Bohemyth' is an interesting new journal for literature lovers as well as aspiring writers that will surely find its readers although I think that the editors should consider a few changes of design in order to make the different contents easier accessible for people like me who aren't passionate about having their finger on the mouse wheel, touch pad or screen all the time to scroll down for what feels like ages. At any rate, I wish Alice Walsh and Michael Naghten Shanks good luck for their enterprise in the constantly changing universe of the internet.