A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

War and Meta Whimsy from Saša Stanišić

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I picked up How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by when I had just finished reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka because the crazy cover graphic promised this book was part of a trend toward accessible whimsy in Eastern European lit.

Eastern European Humor

I love Eastern European literature, and often it is the gravitas that I gravitate toward. Still I recognize that there is often an undercurrent of humor that I often miss. I loved The Master and Margarita, but I didn’t find it funny, and I’ve felt that same tickling of “this is funny to other people.” I lived in Poland for a year and I can see the love of irony and when something is supposed to be funny, but, well, maybe I’m not very good at laughing at myself or life in general.

Back to Saša. This book contains hilarious and charming views of life from the eyes of a child. It’s playful and fun. And then suddenly the war happens. It’s a weird juxtaposition, but I’m sure it’s true to life, especially for a child who wouldn’t see the same factors leading up to conflict that an adult might. I can see the point of having this jump in subject matter, but from a narrative point of view it is jarring.

Jarring Change in Direction

Speaking of jarring. Mid-way through the book, the point of view changes or the author, kind of. That sentence is as confusing and not confusing as the narrative shift, because, though this is a work of fiction, the general arc is not dissimilar to the author’s life, and as a result, I never felt Saša was that far from Aleksandar to begin with. By switching narrators and re-starting the story, Mr. Stanišić is playing with metafiction—emphasizing his own relation to the story. For me it was unnecessary.

I enjoyed the tangential essay quality of the chapters, they helped me learn more about an unfamiliar culture, but I would have liked them stitched together in a different way. I firmly believe that an author’s work is intentional and purposeful. So the fact that I would have made other choices is maybe instructive to no one but me, but recognizing the choices he did make helps me understand what he might have been trying to say with this book. Here’s what I have come up with:

  1. Life is random. That is not a profound statement, but it is a statement of worldview that not everyone would agree with.
  2. Life contains great joy and great suffering, but we should focus on the joy.
  3. People are resilient.
  4. Everyone is affected by war, even those too innocent to see it coming.

I think sometimes I like Eastern European literature because it is a part of the world that has seen a wider breadth of human experience than I hope to live through and, somehow, retained an optimistic view. Reading How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, I encountered many city names familiar from planning an upcoming trip to Croatia. Because we aren’t going to Bosnia, I may not run into Saša Stanišić’s clever cornball relatives, but I am glad to have a richer view of the Yugoslavian cultures and I hope to experience all whimsy and no war.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Pictures of The Emigrants in W.G. Sebald

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I started reading The Emigrants by with pictures on the brain. I knew the book included photographs and I was interested to see how the pictures interacted with the text. At first the images simply interrupt the text. There are never any captions although they are related to the surrounding text. The Aare glacier is mentioned on page 15 and a photograph of a glacier is on the facing page. The reader is left to make the determination of whether this photo represents the Aare glacier or the general idea of the glacier. Because I was in a critical frame of mind, I questioned the provenance of every photograph wondering whether the children pictured on page 39 were Sebald and his classmates.

I could not, however, stop the pictures from coloring my impressions of the book. When Sebald includes a picture of an agenda book on page 127, I wanted to believe it was Ambros’s agenda book. I wanted to pick it up and feel the cracked leather against my skin. When Sebald begins integrating descriptions of the photos or references to them into the text, the pictures naturally merge more fully with the story. This happens on page 71 when Sebald writes, “The photograph that follows here, for example, was taken in the Bronx in March 1939” and he goes on to name the people in the photograph.

What is most interesting about the photographs is that although I was wary of them throughout the book, on the very last page when Sebald describes a photograph from a Frankfurt exhibition, writing, “Behind the perpendicular frame of a loom sit three young women, perhaps aged twenty….Who the young women are I do not know,”, I wanted desperately to see that picture. I had begun to take for granted the photographic “evidence” peppered throughout the text and when he describes most fully and tantalizingly this one photo, I wanted to see it.

I am still undecided as to whether or not to use images in my own text. I am suspicious that I want to fall back on pictures to make the story feel more true. Until I can find a better reason, I think I may omit them.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Emigrants from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.