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kyatic's Reviews (974)
"He said, 'Look here, leave it all, you're building on ruins.'"
This is like a well-written postcard to a distant relative, in that I don't think it actually says anywhere near as much as it thinks it does, but it says it very nicely. A staging of this as a play might work a lot better than the novella, because it's about 90% dialogue and 10% stage direction (she moved here, he did this, she moved there) and there's not a lot of visuals. It also does that really, really annoying thing that a lot of Beckett-esque texts do, which is having characters repeat themselves multiple times to make sure that you know that what they're saying is important or foreshadowing.
I have to admit that I have no real idea what this book is about. It's completely and deliberately inaccessible. It's anti-communist (or at least anti-soviet), that much I can tell, but I'm not entirely sure why; something about individuality and labour. It uses Jewishness and Jewish identity in a very odd way for an author who is not Jewish, and uses the iconography of Auschwitz to represent a greater and more universal sense of not-belonging, which I found a bit iffy. Duras is clearly an author who doesn't shy away from things that people might find a bit iffy, but I honestly don't think that Auschwitz imagery like this is particularly successful because it is so far removed from any experiences that the vast majority of us will ever have or be exposed to. Saying that 'we are all from Auschstaadt' doesn't actually mean as much as Duras might think it does, because none of us knows what being from or at Auschwitz would have been like or would have done to a person. Although, perhaps the inaccessibility of that experience is somehow linked to the inaccessibility of this book as a whole. I don't know. I'd have to reread the book to get a better insight into that, and honestly, I have no real intention of doing that. Reading it once was confusing enough.
A further edit would not have gone amiss, as there were several errors in the text. I can look past that ordinarily, but in a text which is already almost impossible to understand and needs very careful reading, the mistakes stand out more, because you do need to focus on absorbing every word and letter, and they are also twice as irksome, because they impede the understanding of an already oblique text. A special mention should probably go to the translator here, as I can imagine that a text as simultaneously dense and delicate as this one would have been a real challenge.
If you like books that are entirely evasive and require multiple readings to penetrate the various layers therein, or if you're a huge fan of Beckett and need your fix of texts in that vein, then go ahead and read this one. If you don't fit into those two niches - which I clearly do not - then do yourself a favour and just don't.
This is like a well-written postcard to a distant relative, in that I don't think it actually says anywhere near as much as it thinks it does, but it says it very nicely. A staging of this as a play might work a lot better than the novella, because it's about 90% dialogue and 10% stage direction (she moved here, he did this, she moved there) and there's not a lot of visuals. It also does that really, really annoying thing that a lot of Beckett-esque texts do, which is having characters repeat themselves multiple times to make sure that you know that what they're saying is important or foreshadowing.
I have to admit that I have no real idea what this book is about. It's completely and deliberately inaccessible. It's anti-communist (or at least anti-soviet), that much I can tell, but I'm not entirely sure why; something about individuality and labour. It uses Jewishness and Jewish identity in a very odd way for an author who is not Jewish, and uses the iconography of Auschwitz to represent a greater and more universal sense of not-belonging, which I found a bit iffy. Duras is clearly an author who doesn't shy away from things that people might find a bit iffy, but I honestly don't think that Auschwitz imagery like this is particularly successful because it is so far removed from any experiences that the vast majority of us will ever have or be exposed to. Saying that 'we are all from Auschstaadt' doesn't actually mean as much as Duras might think it does, because none of us knows what being from or at Auschwitz would have been like or would have done to a person. Although, perhaps the inaccessibility of that experience is somehow linked to the inaccessibility of this book as a whole. I don't know. I'd have to reread the book to get a better insight into that, and honestly, I have no real intention of doing that. Reading it once was confusing enough.
A further edit would not have gone amiss, as there were several errors in the text. I can look past that ordinarily, but in a text which is already almost impossible to understand and needs very careful reading, the mistakes stand out more, because you do need to focus on absorbing every word and letter, and they are also twice as irksome, because they impede the understanding of an already oblique text. A special mention should probably go to the translator here, as I can imagine that a text as simultaneously dense and delicate as this one would have been a real challenge.
If you like books that are entirely evasive and require multiple readings to penetrate the various layers therein, or if you're a huge fan of Beckett and need your fix of texts in that vein, then go ahead and read this one. If you don't fit into those two niches - which I clearly do not - then do yourself a favour and just don't.
So, here’s a thing that too many male authors do. They want to describe a woman, and they want to make it clear that she’s a woman. She's a sexual being, you know? She's a woman! All feminine and full of the good stuff, like ovaries and a uterus and other bodily bits that men just don't have. She's a woman. Not a man. Very different things. He's flesh and blood and bone. She's flesh and blood and… breasts. That’s important to remember. Women have breasts. Big breasts are good, because that way you know that they’re a woman. Otherwise, you might not notice the breasts and you might get them confused with men, and that would be bad, because men and women are different. Men don't have breasts, for one thing. That's probably the biggest difference between men and women.
The other difference is that men and women's narratives aren't the same, because men make narratives and women have narratives happen to them. Men's stories are about men doing man things, like going on journeys and meeting people and overcoming personal obstacles at great peril and awe-inspiring triumph, and women's stories are about them doing woman things, like having sex with men against their will and being chopped up and dying and still looking kind of hot when they're dead, because they have breasts. Until their breasts are chopped off, of course.
So, how do you make it clear that your character is a woman? Do you describe her innermost thoughts? No, you can't really do that when the character is just a passing person and the story is told in the third person. Well, do you rely on that pesky little pronoun, 'she'? Maybe. But 'she' is so subtle, isn't it? Where's the fun in 'she'? What if it's still not clear that your character is a woman? What if your reader skips past the 'she' and makes the terrible assumption that your character might be a man? You could always rely on the whole idea that women's stories are different, and describe your character getting chopped up or sold to a man or forced to have sex with her father, but that takes time. It's not immediate. How do you make it instantly clear that this is a woman, not a man? How do you differentiate?
Luckily, male authors the world over have discovered a foolproof way to get past this, and that is by relying on the other important difference between men and women, and making sure that you mention her breasts. Constantly. Every few pages, if necessary. She's walking downstairs? Great! Make sure that you mention how her breasts are jiggling. She's on a bus? Fantastic! Don't forget to describe how her breasts move up and down! She's lying down? Phenomenal! What effect does gravity have on her breasts? Don't neglect to go into detail! She's standing nearby? Awesome! Make certain that we know how big her breasts are, because that says a lot about who she is as a character. As a woman. With breasts.
This book is 81 pages long, discarding the afterword. This book mentions breasts on 12 separate occasions, and there are not 12 female characters in this book. When the narrator is a man, he notices the breasts of the women around him. When the narrator is a female, she thinks about her own breasts. When the narrator is telling a story that someone else has told to him, that person also conveniently notices other women's breasts. Breasts are mentioned once every 6.75 pages in this book. That's a whole lot of tit.
And the thing is, I get that the women in this book have terrible things happen to them. I get it. What I don't get is why the author feels the need to eroticise it. A dead woman is laid out on a rock, and he thinks about her breasts, and compares them to the breasts of a woman he saw on a bus. A woman is raped by her father and we're told that he does it because he can't resist her breasts. A man thinks about his sister, who has grown up since he saw her last, and notices how large her breasts are and how they 'jerk and move'.
This eroticised violence doesn't come across as critical. We're not invited to say 'boy, this is horrible, isn't it? Isn't it terribly sexist that he's about to chop up a woman's dead body and he's distracted by how great her tits are?' Instead, we're invited to look at these woman alongside the narrator. The author places a friendly arm around our shoulders and pulls us in, and tells us it's OK to look. It's OK to turn these women into objects, or into one body part. It's fine, because they're women, and that's how women function in narratives! They're there to be looked at, aren't they? They're there to be sexual. To have things done to them. We might as well join in. They're not real, after all.
Honestly, the women in this book are all like that dead woman in the first story. None of them is alive, or human, or a woman. They're all just mammaries.
The other difference is that men and women's narratives aren't the same, because men make narratives and women have narratives happen to them. Men's stories are about men doing man things, like going on journeys and meeting people and overcoming personal obstacles at great peril and awe-inspiring triumph, and women's stories are about them doing woman things, like having sex with men against their will and being chopped up and dying and still looking kind of hot when they're dead, because they have breasts. Until their breasts are chopped off, of course.
So, how do you make it clear that your character is a woman? Do you describe her innermost thoughts? No, you can't really do that when the character is just a passing person and the story is told in the third person. Well, do you rely on that pesky little pronoun, 'she'? Maybe. But 'she' is so subtle, isn't it? Where's the fun in 'she'? What if it's still not clear that your character is a woman? What if your reader skips past the 'she' and makes the terrible assumption that your character might be a man? You could always rely on the whole idea that women's stories are different, and describe your character getting chopped up or sold to a man or forced to have sex with her father, but that takes time. It's not immediate. How do you make it instantly clear that this is a woman, not a man? How do you differentiate?
Luckily, male authors the world over have discovered a foolproof way to get past this, and that is by relying on the other important difference between men and women, and making sure that you mention her breasts. Constantly. Every few pages, if necessary. She's walking downstairs? Great! Make sure that you mention how her breasts are jiggling. She's on a bus? Fantastic! Don't forget to describe how her breasts move up and down! She's lying down? Phenomenal! What effect does gravity have on her breasts? Don't neglect to go into detail! She's standing nearby? Awesome! Make certain that we know how big her breasts are, because that says a lot about who she is as a character. As a woman. With breasts.
This book is 81 pages long, discarding the afterword. This book mentions breasts on 12 separate occasions, and there are not 12 female characters in this book. When the narrator is a man, he notices the breasts of the women around him. When the narrator is a female, she thinks about her own breasts. When the narrator is telling a story that someone else has told to him, that person also conveniently notices other women's breasts. Breasts are mentioned once every 6.75 pages in this book. That's a whole lot of tit.
And the thing is, I get that the women in this book have terrible things happen to them. I get it. What I don't get is why the author feels the need to eroticise it. A dead woman is laid out on a rock, and he thinks about her breasts, and compares them to the breasts of a woman he saw on a bus. A woman is raped by her father and we're told that he does it because he can't resist her breasts. A man thinks about his sister, who has grown up since he saw her last, and notices how large her breasts are and how they 'jerk and move'.
This eroticised violence doesn't come across as critical. We're not invited to say 'boy, this is horrible, isn't it? Isn't it terribly sexist that he's about to chop up a woman's dead body and he's distracted by how great her tits are?' Instead, we're invited to look at these woman alongside the narrator. The author places a friendly arm around our shoulders and pulls us in, and tells us it's OK to look. It's OK to turn these women into objects, or into one body part. It's fine, because they're women, and that's how women function in narratives! They're there to be looked at, aren't they? They're there to be sexual. To have things done to them. We might as well join in. They're not real, after all.
Honestly, the women in this book are all like that dead woman in the first story. None of them is alive, or human, or a woman. They're all just mammaries.
