Hocus Bogus Review at the Literary Saloon

Franz Kafka – The Zürau Aphorisms

In 1917 Franz Kafka went to Zürau in Czech Republic because of health problems. It was a small village placed between mountains, meadows and groves. The life there had been concentrated on growing hop-plant and the inhabitants there were mostly animals rather than humans. On the spot Kafka realized that he was caught in small zoo lead under different and new rules.

Kafka took up residence under his sister`s roof near the market place by the church. He had been living there on his own and how he wanted for eight months. Can man find better place to write aphorisms? Doubtfully.

One of his pearls sounds like this: “Crows claim that already one of them is enough to conquer the sky. Couldn`t disagree more even though it doesn`t turn towards the sky because the sky means also impossibility of crows.”

Or one more: “In the battle between you and the world – second the world”.

Summarized by Fushinha

Eduardo Mendoza – Mauricio, Choices

We already know Mendoza as the author of funny crime stories, like “The Adventures of Ladies Hairdresser”, so it`s the right time to get to know him better as a brilliant observer of Spanish society.

Mauricio, the main hero, is already known from “Adventures of Ladies Hairdresser” but this time he`s quite ordinary, a brilliant and intelligent dentist, who is induced to take part in the local government election. Mendoza forced him to do so in order to have enough reasons to show a rather merciless section of the Spanish society, of his beloved city Barcelona.

Mendoza wouldn`t be himself if if he wouldn`t mix Mauricio up in complicated romances and would force him to choose between two very attractive women. The local government selection is all in all a boring stuff, but to choose a woman and moral choices is something that rivets the reader`s attention.

Summarized by Fusinha

Pierre Mérot – Mammals

A novel of contemporary ennui, centered on uncle’s life, Mammals refers to the deformities of modern society and how people relate to them.

The mammals are the uncle’s family members, but the circle is as large as the entire society.

A dominating female that psychologically castrates her husband and uncle’s brother, fails to exercise the same powers on our main character. Not because this one is a strong individual in terms of social achievement, but because he chose to be the contrary.

A laid back individual that watches the human race doing all the tricks they were trained for. Like landing in a proper job, finding a long-term mate and paying for some small space they call apartment.

Solitaire, often unemployed, the uncle is drawn to alcohol, but he is harmless to the others. Not very often, though, he has brief episodes of envy for the normal life: a house in the suburbs, a pretty wife, kids, a dog and “some low key cancer”.

A sad novel with a funny twist, Mammals was awarded Prix de Flore 2003.

Most certainly, Mérot is not a flawless author, but is for sure refreshing after so many unsatisfying lectures picked up after reading upraising reviews.

Simone De Beauvoir – All Men Are Mortal

She’s more famous for her personal life than for her literary activity and when her works are mentioned, it’s always the feminism impregnated ones. But apparently she wrote other kinds of things as well. All Men Are Mortal is sort of a classic novel in my opinion. A book to be read when you’re a restless teenager of even later on, like for instance when you’re preparing for an exam and you are craving for an entertaining novel rather than a bunch of boring school books. It is a dissertation about life and death, or more precisely about the meaning of life and the dimension of eternity.

It can be seen with the naked eye that Simone has something from her beloved Jean Paul (Sartre). After all, she is believed to have been reading his volumes before they were sent further for publishing. Plus, she’s got verve.

The high interest and cultivated background in philosophy provided her the fertile ground for tackling a subject of this nature. And there’s plenty of fictional history inside, epic narrative sequences and colorful dialogues. As a mere plot spoiler, the main characters are a young actress and an immortal man whose voyage through time left him with countless memories to tell and plenty of reflective thoughts to share. So we are faced with an existentialist array of ideas, not novel ones at all, but none the less the book wraps up into a nicely told story.

Death at Intervals, Jose Saramago

It was when I realized that it gets more and more difficult to choose a book from the bookstores when the idea of Literary Agenda was born. Too much emphasis on the cover, on all those “A brilliant masterpiece, says Famous Newspaper” bling-bling paragraphs on the front cover, back cover, first pages, everywhere.

After I felt in several ‘compelling’ traps and paid some good money on disco-books (I’m not saying that books are expensive, just that I paid too much for some products that did not satisfy my expectations), I decided it must be me. I am not in touch with the latest literary news.

Literary Agenda is still in its early days, but it did help me slalom through the new releases and chose better.

It makes me happy to find out that Jose Saramago gives us a new novel, Death at Intervals besides all the news about fake memoirs, Rowling being on trial for the Potter Lexicon, or that an unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, a bestseller in US has problems hitting the British market. Such a pity.

It doesn’t come as a complete novelty that  Saramago deprives his characters of a vital function. After an pandemic of blindness that spreads all over the society and brings chaos [Blindness], Saramago goes further in his new novel and takes from humans the right to die. Nobody, in the unnamed country dies anymore.

The discovery that death is still a possibility in a neighbouring country gives rise to nocturnal border-crossings. Language ceases to fulfill its descriptive function: “New Year, New Life” is hardly appropriate on 1 January, when death itself has died. [The Independent]

Having concluded that simply snatching mortals away without warning is not only cruel but also leaves a lot of loose ends, she begins to send little violet warning letters. The population’s reaction is predictably hysterical and the handwriting analyst contracted to examine the letters concludes, brilliantly, that death has the handwriting of a serial killer. [The Guardian]

Marc Chagall Jewish Encounters, Jonathan Wilson

His style is not so simple and sentimental like it might look at the first sight. Reading “Marc Chagall Biography”, Jonathan Willson lets us notice that his painting is something more than just characteristic creatures, dreamy, soaring hills under the Jewish Witebsk sky – it’s the vast history of 20^th Century.

Being merely 13, with self-confidence he announced:”Mum, I’d like to become the greatest painter.” And so he became the greatest Jewish painter of 20^th Century, who captured the colorful world of the small towns buried by Nazis for good. But except houses` roofs, domed synagogues and the streets of native Witebsk, appears Jesus. Thanks to the painting “Dedicated to Christ”, exposed and making a huge impression during the Saloon of Independent in Berlin in 1913, Marc Chagall had started his international carrier.

Chagall knew form the very beginning how he wants to paint. Subsequent Petersburg schools, in which he was learning could not change or effect his visions or style. Copying classic masterpieces Chagall had found them tiring, full of boring decorativeness. That is why in 1910, thanks to Maxim Winawer`s scholarship, he turned up in the international capital of arts – Paris. France had became the artist’s motherland; here he had spent the most fruitful years of his lifetime.

There came out the paintings recognized by the critics as the most excellent works: “Self-portrait with seven fingers”, “Rain”, “Woman and donkey” or “Me and village” from 1911, where melancholic features mix with the spirit of surrealism. The creatures from his paintings do not respect and agree with gravity and their world is filled up with intensive, bright colors.

Not only as an artist but also as a man, Chagall wasn’t easily influenced by environment. He wasn’t part of the Parisian bohemia, hasn’t been drinking and sitting in coffee shops on Montparnasse, even though very often friends were trying to take him out of the studio. Most of the time he has been spending with poets or being on his own.

Showing suffering Jews by using Jesus as a simple Jewish boy (“Golgota” 1912) and Christian motives, rose controverersy in the Jewish community. Like decorating Christian churches, what often Chagall was doing in his late years.

It is out of discussion that he had been seduced by France. There he had been treated and respected as a great painter. It doesn’t surprise anybody that in 1948, after almost 10 years, he had left New York and settled down in Orgeval near Paris. He visited after 50 years his motherland, resurrected so many times in his paintings. After coming back he said that “Life goes on in France.” In the distance between the remembered world of province and the cultural center of the world lies the power of his paintings.

Hugo Claus has died. He was 78.

Belgium is mourning the death of Hugo Claus, the author of The Sorrow of Belgium, livre fondamental, indispensable says La Libre Belgique. Ayant vécu un temps à Paris, où il a été influencé par le mouvement surréaliste et Antonin Artaud, mais a choisi d’écrire en néerlandais, il s’était présenté avec son sens bien connu de la provocation comme “un flamingant francophone”. You can read both articles [in French] here and here.

La Vanguardia is stressing the fact that Hugo Claus, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease requested euthanasia, legal in his country, but is not mentioned if it was applied.

«J’aimerais assez qu’on dise, quand je ne serai plus là, que j’étais un grand peintre et que j’écrivais aussi des choses», says Hugo Claus. Taken from Le Temps.

The Death of a Giant, headlines Le Vif Belgique.

Read the news in other news editions: El Caraibe

Rats of Manhatan, Lech Majewski

„Nothing is constant” according to Socrates, who realized this fact a long time ago, so everything is in motion, if we believe in logic. Most probably he meant that everything is changing all the time, so it is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our nose is what we see last. But not least?

“For he led us, he said, to a joyous land…” promises Robert Browning in old story “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”. Young hero Chaim flees he’s town when a plague of rats attacked suddenly and unexpectedly. Seems like he’s exertion and strength is needed once again.

As long as you appear in the doorway of Waldorf Astoria hotel, you find out, that Neil Stainton, one of night doormen, has been fired. Customers were complaining about him: he dropped precious vase, came to work drunk… He will be gone while you are busy sorting things out while checking in, won’t even notice a man in expensive suit standing behind your front desk and holding a rat.

“Do you like pets”? he’ll ask you. Pretending you’re busy you will ignore him. “Have you been to Venice?.. You must see this place. Especially with somebody you love. What a wonderful city!” Being about to leave, the man will lean back and mystically grin: “I see you’re suffering. Why won’t you get a rat? You’ll learn how to take care of it, love it. Nothing will bother you anymore. Rats are very intelligent.”

You fell like you’re dreaming one of your the worst nightmares – here, in the middle of Waldorf Astoria Hotel in the center of Manhattan in the heart of universe – in this state of mind there is only one step from going to Staten Island, to try to get closer to her. Desperately closer to Gaia…

Rats of Manhattan by Lech Majewski has remains, in a mysterious, surreal aura, the history of doorman’s loneliness, where states of emotions are getting materialized as animal anger: ache after braking up with beloved causes rat’s plague in Manhattan.

It looks like the only hope lays in Chaim. Like in old story from Hamelin… And standing on the top of the sky-scraper on New Year’s Eve you can feel that with tears, the sweat of fear and the dirt of gone days are falling down.

You will notice a love much stronger that the one which destroyed you. And you know, it won’t be a dream anymore…

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