No matter how hectic my schedule, there is always time to read in it - either while commuting on the Tube, or in bed before falling asleep. I usually read very quickly as well, and I can go through several books in one weekend, or on a long flight.
It therefore always surprises me when I find books that force me to slow down and really spend time turning the pages. So it was rather a bizarre coincidence to find not one, but two books, both borrowed from a friend, that managed to do just that. In fact, I probably took over four weeks to really go through them - a completely surprising thing, given that cumulatively they're only about six hundred pages.
I think what really forced me to slow down and take the time to go through these at leisure is that they both wrote so eloquently about something that is usually so complex and multidimenstional that it is difficult to capture completely in work - the act of remembering.
The Memory Artists and The Museum of Unconditional Surrender are written by Canadian Jeffrey Moore & Croatian Dubrovka Ugresic (I am unfortunately missing some critical diacritical marks from the second name) Both write about very different circumstances & realities, with very different structures and plot elements, but are essentially connected with the power and helplessness of memory, and how in so many ways it forms an integral part of our worlds.
The Memory Artists is set in the narrative of an immensely talented character who is diagnosed at a young age as being a hypermnesiac synaesthete - his memory is startlingly accurate, but he sees words as colours in his own head. Moore spends many paragraphs spinning out how simple words and sentences can trigger chains of association in the protagonist's head, a myriad of colours, shapes, images, all carefully and tumultously documented as we're taken on a tour of the mind of a synaesthete. Noel's "normalcy" is severely hampered by his synaesthesia, but his ability to remember the most minute of details is unerring, allowing him to remember detailed conversations had many years ago. Once Noel experiences something, it is as good as graven in stone, for him to be able to recall at a later date.
The counterpoint to his own unfailing ability to remember is his mother, who's descent into Alzheimer's disease is probably the single most disturbing part of the novel. The complete inability of Noel, who has more than enough memory for the both of them, to be able to "save" his mother, is completely heartbreaking. Unwilling to let his mother slide into oblivion, Noel starts frantically to search for a cure in the basement of his house, aided in his pursuits by a friend who is unable to feel disappointment, and the occasional interludes from Noel's doppelganger, Norval.
Moore's writing is crisp, and even though the prose flows quite easily, he provides enough weight in a few sentences to keep you preoccupied. Using a multiple of narratives, diary entries and conventional dialogue, the story progesses, pieced together towards an ending that is muted in its joy, but is also equally poignant. The acknowledgements at the end describe how both of Moore's parents were victims of Alzheimer's, and I was forced to go back to the passages that discussed Noel's mother's condition, and which suddenly became even more tragic.
Contrasted to Moore's idea of what it means to remember, and to forget, Ugresic's writing is in some sense much more personal - it almost feels like sitting in someone's head, reading their thoughts, as she flits from one idea to the next. The story is abrupt, and in real terms, there is no plot. That would have been the most damning thing for me to say about any novel, but in Ugresic's case, the lack of plot provides the perfect platform to exercise in the act of remembering.
Told from the perspective of a Croat exile who flees to Germany to avoid the ethnic conflict in erstwhile Yugoslavia, The Museum... is one long lament. It is the keening of a woman mourning the loss of a life, a heritage, and a country. Compiled from a set of vignettes, the story starts and end in Germany, cutting back to the Balkans and in time to coalesce into a mosaic describing the lives led by some very ordinary people in ordinary times, only to have that mosaic shattered by events. In many ways painful reading, Ugresic's work is very, very quietly written. She is not one for bombastic or "powerful" writing. But the strength of the work lies in the quiet turmoil that conveys the anguish in the writer.
I know that most authors hate to be asked whether their writing is somewhat autobiographical - it is the most cliched of questions you can possibly ask, but somehow, in both these cases, there are clear glimpses of painful memories that both writers have chosen to deal with, not because they cannot find any way to obliterate them, but because the writing process becomes a cathartic experience - by writing it down, you can purge it from your system. And both The Memory Artists and The Museum of Unconditional Surrender are just that - incredibly poignant, powerfully written stories that leave you disturbed out of your shell, and usually traumatised by the author's act of catharsis. But unlike Greek theatre, there is no dramatic denouement that can help the reader perform his own purge - the internalisation that takes place during the novel cannot be that easily removed.
That takes its own time - enough time for the memory to fade just a little bit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
