Fiction – Page 3 – Karl Möller

07/03/2013

Best Reads 2013. IV: Anne Tyler, The Beginner’s Goodbye

You probably wouldn’t read Anne Tyler for the plots of her novels. It’s not that nothing happens at all, though it would be fair to say that nothing much tends to happen. In any case, the plot is not what makes her books special. So why would you read Anne Tyler? Characterisation, I’d say, it’s all about characterisation.

The Beginner’s Goodbye is a novel about love and loss, grief and also, eventually, hope. When Aaron, an intriguing character, who stammers and suffers from the effects of polio, loses his wife (and house) in a freak accident, he finds his life drained of purpose and meaning.

The story is told from his perspective, the perspective of quite an ordinary kind of guy. And this, for me, is what makes the book special. Tyler deftly avoids the trap that all too many writers have fallen into, of using their characters as mouthpieces for their philosophical reflections, reflections that can easily become too sophisticated for the characters that are made to think and share all those amazing insights. Aaron is not cast in that way. Yes, he does offer us his reflections on life, love, grief and lots of other things (how could he not after all that’s happened to him?), but there is an ordinariness about him that makes him utterly real and believable.

Tyler has once again excelled at characterisation and come up with yet another very gentle book, to mention another one of her trademarks. Here are some of the little gems that Aaron dispenses:

… I had first tried to do without her – to ‘get over’ my loss, ‘find closure,’ ‘move on,’ all those ridiculous phrases people use when they’re urging you to endure the unendurable.

‘Reading is the first to go,’ my mother used to say, meaning that it was a luxury the brain dispensed with under duress.

That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with.

As it turns out, Aaron grieves the loss of a marriage that had been far from perfect. It doesn’t get much more real than that, does it?

15/02/2013

Thoughts on life, love, friendship, fear etc. from Connie Palmen’s Die Freundschaft

Connie Palmen, whose work I discovered only recently, is perhaps as much a philosopher as she is an author of fiction. Which should come as no surprise, as she studied both philosophy and Dutch literature.

Here are some quotes from Die Freundschaft:

In Worte zu fassen, was nicht unbedingt auf der Hand liegt, darin liegen für mich Glück und Befreiung.

(To put into words what is not necessarily obvious – in that for me lie happiness and liberation.)

Man wird ein bißchen irre, wenn man Tag für Tag immerzu leben muß …

(You get a little crazy, when you always have to live, day after day …)

Nicht der Haß ist das Gegenteil von Liebe, denn Haß muß man sich immer erst noch verdienen, sondern es ist diese Gleichgültigkeit.

(Not hatred is the opposite of love, for hatred you always still have to earn first – it is rather this indifference.)

Jemand, der maßlos nachdenkt, hat wahrscheinlich größere Angst vor dem Leben als andere.

(Somebody who reflects exorbitantly probably has a greater fear of life than others.)

Alle Süchte sind Versuche, die Sehnsucht nach Freundschaft aus eigener Kraft zu stillen, das heißt ohne dabei von jemand anders abhängig zu sein.

(All addictions are attempts to allay the longing for friendship out of one’s own strength, which is to say, without being dependent upon somebody else.)

11/02/2013

Best Reads 2013. I: Martin Walser, Das dreizehnte Kapitel

Martin Walser’s latest novel talks about a chance meeting that leads to an intimate correspondence between a male author and a female theologian – and a love that, precisely because of its impossibility, is of the utmost intensity.

It is a poignant book about love, loss and pain. Here are some highlights:

Ich möchte nicht der sein, der ich war. Ich möchte der sein, der ich durch Dich bin.

(I do not want to be the one that I was. I want to be the one that I am through you.)

Streich das Warum.
Heiße den Schmerz willkommen.

(Erase the Why.
Welcome the pain.)

Ohne Unmögliches kann ich nicht leben. Umgeben von nichts als Möglichem erlischt das Leben selbst.

(Without the impossible I cannot live. Surrounded by nothing but the possible, life itself is extinguished.)