Sarah Bakewell - Humanly Possible (Penguin, 2023) *****

When reading the short description of the book's content, I was hesitant. I am already convinced of the value of its contents. Second, I have read already so much on the subject that I wondered whether it would convey anything new. The reality of reading proved me wrong. Even if you consider yourself a 'humanist', and maybe because you are, you should read this book. It is extremely well-documented and extremely well-written. Bakewell starts the book with the 'credo' of humanism, as penned by Robert G. Ingersoll in the 19th Century: 

Happiness is the only good. 

The time to be happy is now. 

The place to be happy is here. 

The way to be happy is to make others so. 

Even if I was well aware or vaguely aware of the content of the thinkers and authors that she describes in this book, the real novelty is how these thoughts were received in society and how they evolved to become part of broader political and philosophical thinking. 

Her journey starts in the early 14th Century with the writings of Petrarch and Boccacio ("When his father contemplated training him for the church as 'a good way to get rich' it turned out he had no liking or aptitude for that either"). Both authors raided libraries to re-discover the ancient Latin authors, revived them, wrote about them. Bakewell mentioned that Bocaccio at one stage considered abandoning his literary endeavours because "a monk, Pietro Petroni of Sienna, warned him in 1632 that he would imminently die if he did not get rid of all the non-Christian books in his library and stop writing books himself. This had been revealed to him in a vision". Luckily, Petrarch used smarter arguments to convince him of the opposite: 'ignorance is not the path to virtue". He advocated for knowledge and learning, of a healthy abundance in words and ideas. 

We take it for granted today that we have immediate access to the works of Cicero, Epicurus, Terentius and Democritus, but that is of course not the case. Very few scholars even spoke Greek, so they had no way of understanding or valuing whatever Greek texts still existed in hidden libraries across Italy or elsewhere. The geneaology goes further: Poggio rediscovered Lucretius' "On The Nature of Things". Printing was invented and became a great power to share old and new ideas about broader groups of people. Lorenzo Valla is the next in line. 

"His name was Lorenzo Valla, and his 1440 treatise On the Donation of Constantine is one of the great humanist achievements. It combines a precise scholarly assault with the high rhetorical techniques learned from the ancients, served up with a sauce of hot chutzpah. All these assets were necessary to Valla, because he was daring to attack one of the church's central modern claims: its justification for having complete power over all of western Europe. It could be a short step from that to questioning its other claims to authority, too, including the authority it held over peo­ple's minds. Valla seems to have been a man who had no fear and could never be persuaded to keep quiet. He traveled all over Italy, working for a series of patrons and supporters-at this point he was living in Naples-but he made enemies everywhere as well. The poet Maffeo Vegio had already warned him to seek advice before writing things that would hurt people's feelings, and generally to restrain his "intellectual violence." (p.87)

It takes courage to have intellectual curiosity, to be open to ideas that challenge beliefs and established authority: "Dispute and contradiction, not veneration and obedience, are the essence of intellectual life. And crucially, Valla did not merely tell people they were wrong, he gave the reasons why they were wrong" (p.93). 

On Vesalius: 

"He blamed both himself and other anatomists for having been too Galen-reliant: "I shall say noth­ing more about these others; instead I shall marvel more at my own stu­pidity and blind faith in the writings of Galen and other anatomists." He ends the section by urging students to rely on their own careful examina­tions, taking no one's word for anything, not even his own. This was a good warning, since Vesalius himself did not get every­thing right. One error was that he failed to identify the clitoris cor­rectly, misdescribing it as part of the labia. It took another Padua anatomist, Realdo Colombo, to correct him. Realdo even knew what it was for, which implies that he had noticed it in contexts other than the dissection table. He named it ''amor Veneris, vel dulcedo" ("love of Venus, or thing of pleasure"), gave details of its role in women's sexual experiences, and remarked, "It cannot be said how astonished I am that so many famous anatomists had not even an inkling of such a lovely thing, perfected with such art for the sake of such utility." (p. 130)

On education and Erasmus schooling in a monastery: 

Instead, the effect on Erasmus was to implant in him a lifelong aver­sion to cruelty or intimidation of any kind. He would have agreed with a remark made centuries later by E. M. Forster in describing the miseries of his own public-school education: "The worst trick it ever played me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible." That was another reason Erasmus took a poor view of his schooling: the unworldliness and irrelevance to real life of the monks' attitudes. It was a common humanist complaint to say that such institutions were old-fashioned, pedantic, and out of touch with reality. For Erasmus, as for Agricola, and later for Forster, a young mind needs to be liberated from meaningless, useless systems of knowledge as taught by unenlight­ened masters of an outmoded stamp who themselves have no idea how to live." (p. 142) 

Other luminaries who are part of the genealogy: Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Andreas Vesalius, Desiderius Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Diderot, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Paine, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, Jeremy Bentham, Frederick Douglas ("There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him"), Oscar Wilde, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm von Humboldt ("The State that enforces a particular belief is denying people the right to be fully human"), Matthew Arnold. Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Ernest Renan, Auguste Comte, Bertrand Russell, ...

Bakewell is also very conscious of the value of humanism to all humans and not only to the male part of it. 

"Pericles (told) Athenian free men in 430 BCE that they are excel­lent because they are harmonious, responsible, and politically active - only to add that this does not apply to women, whose only virtue is never to be mentioned by anyone at all. That continued to be the norm for millennia: instead of the mainstream of human excellence, women were offered a rivulet of negative side virtues: modesty, silence, placidity, innocence, chastity. Each of these is characterized by the absence of some positive quality (confidence, eloquence, active responsibility, experience, and - well, I'll leave it to you to decide what the virtuous opposite of chastity is, but whatever we call it, it is surely more fun)." (p.203) 

There

"Connections, communications, moral and intellectual links of all kinds, as well as the recognition of difference and the questioning of ar­bitrary rules: these all go to form the web of humanity. They enable each of us to live a fulfilling life on Earth, in whichever cultural context we are at home, and also to try to understand each other the best we can. They are more likely to encourage an ethics of worldly flourishing, in contrast with belief systems that picture each frustrated soul waiting hopefully for a correction of fortunes in the afterlife. The modern humanist will always prefer to say, with Robert G. Ingersoll, that the place to be happy is here, in this world, and the way to be happy is to try to make others so.  The old Golden Rule, associated with several religions as well as with secular morality, has much to offer here: "Do as you would be done by." Or, in the more modest, reversed form that is more hospitable to diver­sity: Don't do something to others if you wouldn't like it yourself. It is not perfect, but a good rule of the humanist thumb is to say that, if you don't like being told to stay silent and invisible, or being enslaved and abused, or being unable to get into buildings because no one thought to install a ramp, or being considered less than human, then the chances are that other people are not fond of it, either. Or, as Kongzi said: "The Master's way consists of doing one's best to fulfill one's humanity and treating others with an awareness that they, too, are alive with humanity." (p 218, 219)

This book is a great overview of humanist thought: inquisitive, inclusive, caring, ethical, motivated by a happiness for all, in diversity of thought and the right of each individual to personal freedom and fullfilment and happiness. For me this overview is the absolute hope and despair of humanity. Hope because it offers a clear perspective and a way of thinking, despair because over the centuries of expanded thinking on the subject, we have not moved significantly further at a global level. Our technology has advanced exponentially over the last two centuries, mainstreaming it across the globe, yet humanist thinking has despite its obvious value and benefits barely created strong understanding and use in most of the world. 

Bakewell is an excellent guide, erudite and entertaining and truly committed. 

Not to be missed. 

Douglas R. Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Basic Books, 1979) *****

This fascinating and genial book was published in 1979, when I was at university. It was a kind of a hype among my fellow-students, and even if I did not understand (or read) half of it, it opened a world, or rather a universe of thinking, while at the same time presenting it in an incredibly creative way. Earlier this year, I decided to read it in full and buy a copy. Fourty-five years later, it is still as enthralling as it was then. Hofstadter explores the boundaries of our thinking, where reason and logic meet their limits in paradoxes, contradictions, self-references and loops. The subject is about cognitive science, logic and computer sciences (and Artificial Intelligence), and he learns us how meaning and meaninglessness exist and how they come to life (or not) in abstract systems, including the human mind and the perception or delusion of the self or the "I". 

I do not think the book would have so much resonated with larger audiences or with us at that time, if it were not for the extensive illustrations of Dutch artist M.C. Escher and his impossible drawings, or the long dialogues between Achilles and the Tortoise, occasionally joined by the Crab, and further illustrated by analysing the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, and their inherent structural elements of self-reference and loops, as in the sentence sequence: 

"The following sentence is false

The preceding sentence is true"

The starting point of course are the theorems of German mathematician Kurt Gödel: "The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure(i.e. an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system" (Wikipedia)

On top of this, Hofstadter develops dozens of new ways of looking at familiar or less familiar problems of logic and computation. He creates his own different logical systems in the book to illustrate his points, to take the reader without knowledge of mathematics or the formal language of computer scientists by the hand, and explain whatever elements he wants to demonstrate. 

He describes it as follows: 

"Here one runs up against a seeming paradox. Computers by their very nature are the most inflexible, desireless, rule-following of beasts. Fast though they may be, they are nonetheless the epitome of unconsciousness. How, then, can intelligent behavior be programmed? Isn't this the most blatant of contradictions in terms? One of the major theses of this book is that it is not a contradiction at all. One of the major purposes of this book is to urge each reader to confront the apparent contradiction head on, to savor it, to turn it over, to take it apart, to wallow in it, so that in the end the reader might emerge with new insights into the seemingly unbreachable gulf between the formal and the informal, the animate and the inanimate, the flexible and the inflexible.  This is what Artificial Intelligence (AI) research is all about." (p.26)

or:  

"No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behavior and intelligent behavior lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly:

• to respond to situations very flexibly; 
• to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; 
• to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages; 
• to recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation; 
• to find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them; 
• to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them; 
• to synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways; 
• to come up with ideas which are novel. "

"This little debate shows the difficulty of trying to use logic and reasoning to defend themselves. At some point, you reach rock bottom, and there is no defense except loudly shouting, "I know I'm right!" Once again, we are up against the issue which Lewis Carroll so sharply set forth in his Dialogue: you can't go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over." (p. 192)

On the origin of life:  

"A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: "How did ever get started in the first place?" It is truly a baffling thing. One has to imagine some sort of a bootstrap process occurring, somewhat like that which is used in the development of new computer languages - but bootstrap from simple molecules to entire cells is almost beyond our power to imagine. There are various theories on the origin of life. The run aground on this most central of all central questions: "How did Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation (ribosome_ tRNA molecules), originate?" For the moment, we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer and perhaps experiencing that sense of wonder and awe is more satisfying than having an answer-at least for a while". (p. 548)

 Or using nice examples to make the reading easier to digest: 

"Here is a well-known children's joke which illustrates the open-endedness of real-life situations: 

• A man took a ride in an airplane. 
• Unfortunately, he fell out. 
• Fortunately, he had a parachute on. 
• Unfortunately, it didn't work. 
• Fortunately, there was a haystack below him. 
• Unfortunately, there was a pitchfork sticking out of it. Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork. 
• Unfortunately, he missed the haystack. 

It can be extended indefinitely. To represent this silly story in a frame­based system would be extremely complex, involving jointly activating frames for the concepts of man, airplane, exit, parachute, falling, etc., etc." (p. 675)

His ultimate endeavour is to link the world of abstract logic with the physical reality we live in, and of course especially our brain and its capacity to for abstract thought, to cross the levels set by scientific disciplines and to come to an more holistic understanding of the interactions. 

"My belief is that the explanations of "emergent" phenomena in our brains-for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will-are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing "resonance" between dif­ferent levels-quite like the Henkin sentence which, by merely asserting its own provability, actually becomes provable. The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself. 

 This should not be taken as an antireductionist position. It just implies that a reductionistic explanation of a mind, in order to be comprehensible, must ring in "soft" concepts such as levels, mappings, and meanings. In princi­ple, I have no doubt that a totally reductionistic but incomprehensible explanation of the brain exists; the problem is how to translate it into a language we ourselves can fathom. Surely we don't want a description in terms of positions and momenta of particles; we want a description which relates neural activity to "signals" (intermediate-level phenomena)-and which relates signals, in turn, to "symbols" and "subsystems", including the presumed-to-exist "self-symbol". This act of translation from low-level physical hardware to high-level psychological software is analogous to the translation of number-theoretical statements into metamathematical state­ments. Recall that the level-crossing which takes place at this exact transla­jon point is what creates Gödel's incompleteness and the self-proving character of Henkin's sentence. I postulate that a similar level-crossing is what creates our nearly unanalyzable feelings of self. In order to deal with the full richness of the brain/mind system, we will have to be able to slip between levels comfortably. Moreover, we will have to admit various types of "causality": ways in which an event at one level of description can "cause" events at other levels to happen. Sometimes event A will be said to "cause" event B simply for the reason that the one is a translation, on another level of description, of the other. Sometimes 'cause" will have its usual meaning: physical causality. Both types of causality-and perhaps some more-will have to be admitted in any expla­nation of mind, for we will have to admit causes that propagate both upwards and downwards" (p. 709)

And of course also the existence of free will. Are we the consequence of algorithms (historical/cultural/social/genetic/contextual/...) or not. 

"One way to gain some perspective on the free-will question is to replace it by what I believe is an equivalent question, but one which involves less loaded terms. Instead of asking, "Does system X have free will?" we ask "Does system X make choices?" By carefully groping for what we really mean when we choose to describe a system - mechanical or biological - as being capable of making "choices", I think we can shed much light on free will." (p. 711)

We will come back to this topic when reading Robert Sapolsky's "Determined". 

Even if in some respects the book is a little dated, especially when describing Artificial Intelligence or genetics, it remains one of the milestone books on cognitive science and logic, absolutely unique in terms of content and form, incredibly complex yet fun to read, even if it is impossible to understand everything, as most readers such as myself will have to confess. 

Simon Sebag Montefiore - The World - A Family History (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2022) *****

An insane undertaking, an incredibly ambitious project, a brilliant achievement and an exceptional read. 

Readers - exhausted, crushed, enlightened - will look at the world and history through a different lens after having read this book. Its author - Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of the equally excellent "Jerusalem, a Biography" - introduces you in a very personal way to the individuals and their families that shaped our history, from the very first days up to the corona crisis and the invasion of Ukraine. 

He describes all major civilisations from a same time perspective across the globe, bundled in chapters based on the number of inhabitants in the world. The sources used to write this book are so abundant - another 137 pages - that the actual bibliography of the book is to be found on his website instead of the book itself. 

Sebag Montefiore is a born story-teller, with an excellent feeling for keeping the reader interested in his "characters" and the great plot of history. The book starts with the story of Enheduanna, living 4,000 years ago, princess of the Akkadian empire, daughter of Sargon the Great, who wrote a sad verse of how she was raped by a raiding rebel: "he dared approach me in his lust", a vivid angle of approach to start with the history of humanity, then jumping back a few million years to prehistory to take you along on this fascinating and horrific journey. The story sets the scene for the entire book: a journalistic style of writing: direct, personal, empathic, with a great sense of using the right anecdotes and quotes to bring otherwise boring historical processes to life. 

These distant rulers whom we know - and mostly not - from our history books and history lessons, whose conquests and treaties and wars we may remember, now come to life as if you're part of the events. Sebag Montefiore offers all the personal information that no history teacher would ever (dare) serve you: the power struggles among kings, emperors and presidents, the ruthless extermination of rivals and family members, the power-hungry warlords, whose only interest is their own personal gain, honour and lust. He writes about the dynasties of ancient Egypt, China, Africa and the Americas, about siblings killing each other with cunning, lists or brute force. It seems as if the author enjoys the cruelty and the lust, as if this is a historical gossip colum, but gradually you come to understand that this was - and probably to a large extent still is - the standard practice of how countries are ruled. Human life to many of these leaders is without any value. People are just pawns on their own personal chessboard, and the colour of the pawn does not matter, whether it's the adversary's or your own. 

Here are some random examples, taken for each 100th page in the book: 

• "Berenice solved the problem in family style. Bursting into the maternal boudoir with her posse of killers, she surprised her husband and her mother in bed. Berenice killed her husband, spared her mother and then proceeded triumphantly to Alexandria to marry Euergetes" (p. 100)

• "Shah Khusrau II arrived in Roman territory. The grandson of the Immortal, he was just twenty when a coup against his inept father brought him to the throne, but he had already shown his mettle running Iranian Armenia. His father was blinded then strangled by his voracious uncles, but as generals bid for power, young Kliusrau escaped, accompanied by Shirin, his 'extremely beautiful' Christian queen, and aided by her fellow Christian, the Arab king al-Numan." (p. 200)

• "Blonde and blue-eyed with 'flowing hair and white shoulders', Wal­lada enjoyed a rare life for an Islamic woman in Corboda, now ruled by noble clans. No longer secluded in the Umayya harem, independently wealthy, she appeared in public, wearing silks that showed off her beauty and her figure, recited her poetry in public, competing against men in poetry contests, and set up a school for female poets. She flaunted her lovers. When the religious authorities grumbled, she had lines of poems defiantly written on her dresses: 'I allow my lover to touch my cheek and bestow my kiss on him who craves it.' Around 1031, she fell in love with an aristocratic vizier, Ibn Zaydun.(...) Ibn Zaydun turned nasty, writing to Wallada, 'You were for me nothing but a sweetmeat that I took a bite of and then tossed away the ­crust, leaving it to be gnawed on by a rat.' Wallada got her revenge exposing his affairs with slave boys: 

Because of his love for rods in trousers, Ibn Zaydun,

In spite of his excellence

If he would see a penis in a palm tree

He would turn into a woodpecker" (p. 300)

• (On the slave trade) "'It's not their religion but humanity that makes me weep in pity for their sufferings,' wrote a witness, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, royal archivist and Henry's biographer. 'To increase their sufferings still more they now began to separate one from another in order to make the shares equal. It now became necessary to separate fathers from sons, wives from husbands, brothers from brothers ... ' Much of the slave trade had originally been by demand for domestic slaves who joined family households. Now at the birth of Atlantic slavery, slave traders captured entire families, then tore them apart. Slavery was an anti-familial institution. This small scene, filled with cruelty, hypocrisy and avarice, was the beginning industry that would sweeten European palates and poison socie­ty for centuries. (p.400) 

• "As the Islamic millennium got closer, he (Akbar) called himself the Mahdi or Renewer of the Second Millennium. In 1585, he minted coins that read 'Allahu akbar jalla jalaluhu', which would usually mean 'God is great' but could also mean 'Akbar is God', as he toyed with substituting himself for Muhammad. He pulled back from his own apotheosis, but projected the sanctity of Mughal monarchy, promoting himself as Tamerlanian padishah, Islamic saintly ruler and Hindu chakravartin. (...) As energetic sexually as in all things, he insisted on having the wives of his amirs if he fancied them, and his demands for new girls were 'a great terror ... in the city'. Like all the steppe monarchs, however, he consulted wise women in the family, particularly his senior wife and first cousin, Ruqaiya". (p.500)

• "In 1611, Artemisia Gen­tileschi, seventeen years old and a virgin with curly auburn hair, full lips and a wide face, was painting with the artist Agosti­no Tassi, twenty years older, when he and a male helper raped her, aided by a female tenant. Tassi, who had been tried for incest and would later be tried for trying to kill a pregnant courtesan, promised marriage but then changed his mind, at which her father brought charges. Gentileschi had to relive the agony by giving testimony. Tassi, devious and violent, tried to suborn witnesses and taint her as a whore. Astonishingly, she was then taken to visit Tassi in prison and tortured with a thumbscrew to test her veracity. 'E vero, e vero, e vero,' she repeated. 'It's true!' 'You're lying in your throat,' Tassi shouted. He was found guilty, but his sentence was later overturned." (p.600)

... you get the gist. Juicy stories, lots of quotes, very personal anecdotes as if you're witnessing the action yourself, and deepening the interest in these incredible amounts of characters whose names you risk to forget once the page has been turned. A quick calculation: there's an index of 37 pages with on average 40 names per page, which means that there are about 1,500 characters in the novel of our history. 

The amount of information you get to absorb is enormous, humongous, colossal, gigantic and immense. In one word: monumental. This may seem terrifying at first, but the writing is so good that you just keep reading. Our history is fascinating, gruesome, horrifying, and yes, there are major shifts in history that led to change, such as climate change, trade routes, technological inventions, and religions, but the main drivers from what we understand are the egos and personalities of individuals, most of whom seem to have considered themselves as unique, irreplacable, geniuses and even divine, while from reading the book you can only see them - with today's Western eyes - as pathological, narcissistic power-hungry megalomaniacs. 

The paradox of the book is that while it's all-encompassing, it's also intimate and personal, it's grand and detailed, it's detached with balanced observations from a political and cultural perspective yet with an often understandable and human appreciation or disapproval of the behaviours of the protagonists, making it objective and subjective at the same time. 

Simon Sebag Montefiori has been smart enough to guide us through this shocking narrative with sub-chapters that come with attractive titles that make you want to read further. In this sense, the writing is closer to journalism than to scientific historical writing. It's as entertaining as it is instructive. 

The effort to have collected all this is by itself hard to imagine, but to write it with such enthousiasm, with such sustained controlled and well-paced quality of writing till the 1262nd page is even more astonishing. 

An easy contender for the non-fiction book of the year. 

Olga Tokarczuk - The Books Of Jacob (Fitzcarraldo, 2021) *****

Some novels create an entire universe to dwell in. Books that come to mind are "Lord Of The Rings", "Les Bienveillants", or "2666". Their sheer size and the introduction to a reality about which you knew nothing before - immersing you now in full and in minute detail in an alien universe with which you gradually grow more familiar, page after page, character after character - makes this a unique and memorable reading experience. 

The author's incredible effort to create a universe, 900 pages long, full of detail and coherent, well-paced, rich in style and full of different perspectives, requires the same effort from the reader. Superficial or quick reading will not work. As the reader, you have to submit yourself to the work, become part of it to the extent that it will be high on your mind for the period it takes to read it till the end. 

The story is about the real person called Jacob Frank, who lived in Poland in the 18th Century. He was the leader of a jewish sect, and he proclaimed to be the Messiah, and he converted to the catholic faith to demonstrate that he was the bridge between all abrahamic religions. The fact that a jewish community was willing to convert to christianity obviously served the agenda of the Polish catholic church, some secular leaders, while leading to the ex-communication by the jewish community. 

I have applauded Olga Tokarczuk's writing before, especially the brilliant "Flights", which received a 5-star rating, but this novel is even better. Tokarczuk must have researched this book for many years in order to provide such a complete picture of all that happened during Jacob Frank's life, even if this novel is not a historical novel in the purest sense. It's a literary work of art, and her angle of approach is to create dozens of perspectives in the stories and the lives of the people who girate around Frank. Frank's perspective, even if he is the book's protagonist, is only given succinctly, and rarely. All information we get is indirect, which makes his presence more abstract, mythical, legendary, full of contradictions. 

It's a novel about the human condition, about people struggling with their poverty, their friendships, their beliefs, their hunger for power, their allegiances, their lusts, their love and their fears. The myriad of stories leads to a kaleidoscopic view of what actually happened, sometimes clarifying, often obfuscating. 

What makes this an absolutely brilliant novel: 

- the knowledge: as mentioned, an extremely well-researched book, full of real-life figures, but also about the little facts of life during 18th century Poland: the food, the living conditions, travel, world views, and then especially the jewish literature of Talmud, Kabbalah and Zohar. Tokarczuk does not explain or describe or educate us on all these topics. No, they are just part of the background, unexplained often but present as if a given.

 - the writing: like many good authors, the pleasure of writing is palpable in almost every sentence. Nothing is cheap or fast or hurried. Every character's story has its own style, its own approach, its own language even. Some characters only come to life through the letters they write to each other, others tell their story in the first person, some others in the third, and in some stories you get stories within stories, with diary scraps interspersing the rest of the narrative. 

- the humanity: just like in "Flights" and other novels by her, there are no real bad guys. She has a tremendous empathy for each character, understanding their motivation and behaviour, while at the same time taking a wise distance, slightly humouristic mocking over the absurdity or the all too human actions that take place. It's a book about moral choices, about indoctrination and tolerance, about open-mindedness and self-preservation, about narcissism and altruism. And to the author's credit, she does not judge, she does not take the moral highground, she leaves every character with its own beliefs, doubts and consequences. 

- the creativity: or maybe I should say the smart and intelligent way she presents things, the offering of obvious things through a different lens, including the Garcia Marquez-like magic realism of Yente, the old woman who is not dead but neither alive, who found her last resting place in a cave, and who watches everything that happens knowingly, including the thoughts and feelings of the book's characters. 

- the coherence: despite the book's length, and despite its dozens of perspectives, its geographic spread from Germany to Turkey, its chronological span over several generations, the quality of the writing is maintained till the very end, as is the perfect composition of the book. Tokarczuk does not guide the reader through her universe. You are thrown in, and like in Pynchon "Gravity's Rainbow", you have to work your way through it, trying to find out what's actually happening and how or if it makes even sense. 

I could add some more categories of why this novel exceeds many of the books I've read in my life. 

It's massive, it's brilliant, it's unique. 

It's also right to give kudos for Jennifer Croft for the translation. 

Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People In The World (Allan Lane, 2020) *****

If you did not know, but W.E.I.R.D in the title stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich & Democratic". It's the kind of bias that we find in pscyhological studies. Henrich is the chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He explores how Western culture developed differently than other cultures, with diverging responses and perspectives on things, but he goes a step further too: by evidence from anthropology, economics, history, religion, law and psychology, he gives a sweeping picture of why the West has become what it is today, how it has evolved, and become dominant across the globe. 

One of the more eye-catching analyses are his statistics on the Catholic church's prohibition of first cousin marriages in Europe as of the fourth Century. This resulted in a seismic shift in village growth, and horizontal mobility. Men had to move to other places in order to find a wife. This led to a more individualistic approach instead of a collective one. It meant that other values became dominant, that commercial exchanges and rational arguments became more important than kinship and generational ownership. That hierarchy of clan elders was replaced by more citizen representation. This simple fact, also led over the longer term to the diminished power of the Church itself on society. Even today, countries with the highest kinship values are often the ones with the lowest levels of democracy. This holds even true in countries like Italy, where high cousing marriages in some provinces in the 20th Century still have effects in lower election participation in the 21st Centruy. Participatory and representative forms of government are the result of societal changes that abolished first cousin marriages. It seems far-fetched at first hearing, yet the evidence and the statistics that Henrich presents are solid and compelling. 

This evolution changed society over centuries and led to the intellectual, technological and political progress we have witnessed in the West. Henrich describes and explains this change. He does not judge or pontificate that the West is best. 

Obviously all this has its effects on policy, and how to address the differences in culture for people living within the same country. Migrations and subcultures require different approaches, and in international politics one has to be aware that what works in some countries, will not necessarily work in others. This is obvious, but Henrich offers us the insights and some of the tools needed to be aware of it and to work with it. 

The book is an eye-opener, and entirely original in its broad scope and synthesis of so many disciplines. 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou - God - An Anatomy (Picador, 2021) *****

What a wonderful book! Its author, Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a British biblical scholar and broadcaster. She is currently Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter in the UK. 

The book is wonderful for many reasons. First, its structure is quite exceptional for a book on religion, in that it uses the human anatomy from feet to head as the structure around which to describe the physical body of the biblical god. Second, it expands throughout ancient myths and legends what each anatomical element means and has meant, going back to Sumer, Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and Greece, tracing back why some - often obscure - parts and verses of the bible say what they say. It helps to interpret sometimes post-dated metaphorical interpretations back to their physical origins. Third, Stavrakopoulou writes with passion, fluently, accessibly, narrating her story of the bible in such a way that the readers remains captivated by the often minute details that substantiate her claims. Fourth, because she is herself not a religious person, she has nothing to defend, just to explore, unhindred by religious canons and interpretations. Fifth, it is fun to read, with even funny moments. 

Here is just one example of her passionate writing. 

You could argue that using God's anatomy to describe him, is a very artificial way to describe Yahweh the god of judaism and christianity, and in a way it is, of course, with some aspects coming back in the various chapters, because god is much more than just an assembly of organs and limbs, but still, because the physical nature of the god - in contrast to the more modern abstract interpretations of his being - was absolutely essential to the original writers of the bible. 

The book is grand in its scope, erudite in its knowledge, brilliant in its delivery, and entertaining to read. What more do you need? 

Olga Tokarczuk - Flights (Fitzcarraldo, 2017) *****

Brilliant!

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2018, and fully deserved, I would say. Tokarczuk's writing is exceptional: it is part 'reverie', part history, part travel diary, part short story-telling, part philosophic musings, part poetic prose, and all that that written with a beautiful pen full of lyrical joy and an attitude to life and people that remains positive throughout.

There is almost no page where you don't stop and pause because of a new insight, an interesting perspective to look at things, the beauty of a phrase, the originality of a thought.

The narrator is travelling around the world: in planes, trains, airports and hotels. She meets people, she observes, reflects, interacts, fantasises. At the same time, "Flights" is also a history of the preservation of the human body, literally, with a special attention to plastination. She tells some true and longer stories about the Filip Verheyen, the Flemish 18th century anatomist, who wrote "letters to his amputated leg", about the letters by Josephine Soliman to the Austrian Emperor Francis II to let her bury her father, an African loyal and personal servant of the emperor, whose body was stuffed after his death and put on display in the emperor's curiousity cabinet, a story about the heart of Chopin that was secretly smuggled back into Poland after his death in Paris.

In essence, the book is about life and death, and flights are just the transition moment, when you are traveling from A to B, with body preservation as a futile attempt to avoid arrival, to prolong the flight artificially.

Some of her stories are cut into chapters that form the backbone of the book, but they are sprinkled with little memories and minute stories and thoughts, often not longer than a paragraph.

One example:

"RUTH

After his wife died, he made a list of all the places that had the same name as her: Ruth. He found quite a few of them, not only towns, but also streams, little settlements, hills - even an island. He said he was doing it for her sake, and besides, it gave him strength to see that in some indefinable way she still existed in the world, even if only in name. And that furthermore, whenever he would stand at the foot of a hill called Ruth, he would get the sense that she hadn't died at all, that she was right there, just differently. Her life insurance was able to cover the costs of his travels". 

... and one more:

"IRKUTSK- MOSCOW

Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8 am and lands in Moscow at the same time - at eight o'clock in the morning on that same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself. So there should be time enough for confessions of whole lifetimes. Time elapses inside the plane but doesn't trickle out of it". 

Who wouldn't like to read this again, and again?

Tocarczuk's writing defies all conventions of structure, plot, narrative. Her style is as precious as it is meticulous, carefully crafted, concise, sharp and impactful. And her tone of voice is so full of wonder, optimism and positive thinking, without even a trace of sarcasm. And it is masterly composed, like a symphony of musings.

"Flights" is deep, insightful, gripping, funny, horryfying, philosophical, poetic.

A real treat. A real delight.

Mandatory reading.

Robert Sapolsky - Behave (Bodley Head, 2017) *****

Truly amazing. In "Behave", Robert Sapolsky, professor in biology and neurology at Stanford University, gives a big picture overview of all the processes that make us do what we do. He uses the simple act of pulling the trigger of a gun, but he could have used any other action. He then analyses all the biological (hormonal, genetic, ...), psyschological, cognitive, genetic and cultural elements that drive that specific simple activity, by moving back in time, starting with the first seconds preceding the act, step by step back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In fact, Sapolsky tries to go beyond the traditional academic distinction between the sciences of behaviour.

As is often the case by such sweeping overviews of current scientific insights, academics will criticise the lack of true in-depth and up-to-date knowledge of each of the disciplines presented, and especially in their own field of interest, but that is unavoidable in books with the ambition to popularise and create such a broad canvas. The big advantage is that it brings together the incredibly complex processes behind our everyday actions. It shows were our limits are, allowing to become more conscious of why we do what we do, and therefore also to become smarter, and as Sapolsky advocates, also wiser.

Sapolsky's ways of presenting human behaviour in all its complex processes, should be mandatory for all schools in the world. If everybody understood some of the essential drivers of our current behaviour, the way our hormones work, the way our brain functions, the way adolescents brains differ from adult brains, understanding how us-versus-them thinking drives moral choices, how apperent personal moral decisions may have deep emotional roots that can only be overcome by becoming conscious of them ... the world would definitely be a better place.

And that is the great value of a popular science book such as this one. It's insightful, humane, wise and compassionate.

One of the best books of the year.

Michael Cunningham - A Wild Swan (4th Estate, 2015) *****

What a delight! Michael Cunningham re-writes fairy tales as modern style short stories, and modern times stories, and all that in a mesmerising, poetic and lyrical style, full of rhythm and the fluency of a real narrative, stories as they ought to be, told to you directly, full of wonder and amazement, full of knowledge about how it's going to end, and building up the tension, playing the ignorance of the attentive listeners changing into emotional identification and anticipation about what's coming next. And the takes the reader along on the spells and curses of the mighty and the beautiful, because "who wouldn't want to fuck these people up?"

Cunningham does it beautifully, graciously, and don't be afraid, these are not just blunt 're-tellings' of know stories. He gives them his own twist, he tells us what came before the known tale, or after.

And as the tales themselves, what Cunningham does is magic. And if the only criteria for good literature is that you can't wait to read it again, then these writings reach the top.

The book is short, elevent stories only, beautifully illustrated by the drawings of Yuko Shimizo.

Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of our Nature - A History Of Violence And Humanity (Penguin, 2011) *****

It took me some years before I actually starting reading this book, because its size, close to 1,000 pages in small print, meant that I needed to have time, also to put aside some other books I wanted to read.

Trust me, this is a must-read ... and more than worth to make time for. Its author, Steven Pinker is a well-know psychologist from Harvard University, and he became famous with his books about the workings of the mind: "The Language Instinct" and "How The Mind Works", both highly recommendable books. Pinker is not only a scientist, he is a very gifted writer, able to synthesise gigantic quantities of studies in a very readable format for an educated lay audience. The breadth of his knowledge allows him to give a very big picture of the broad scientific areas of cognitive sciences, neurology, linguistics and psychology.

In this book, "The Better Angles Of Our Nature", Pinker goes even further in the breadth and scope of his vision, giving an amazing overview of the nature and the size of violence in history, with the remarkable conclusion that we currently live in the least violent period ever in humanity. It is remarkable because we are bombarded on a daily basis with scenes of horror in the Middle East, in South Sudan, in the Sahel, with terrorism apparently on the rise and daily stories of homicides and rapes and brutal aggression.

But Pinker breaks through this bias by presenting us figures from anthropologists, paleontologists, historians, economists, sociologists and other specialists that are truly eye-opening. One of the most striking figures is that in pre-historic times, not less than one third of all the people living in small tribes were killed by other humans. Death by disease, accidents and animal attacks have to be added to this figure. Dying of old age was almost unheard of.

Pinker guides us through history, and the horror of incessant fights and brutal killings among the conquered nations. But he also looks at modern times, at warfare and homicide in the 19th century and the 20th. Sure, not all statistics can be trusted, but even then the results speak for themselves. The rise of human rights, the global agreements on codes of warfare, the increased respect for minorities, the acceptance of societal diversity have led to a significant reduction in rape and murder, also in the most "civilised" societies.

But Pinker wouldn't be Pinker if he didn't delve into human nature and what can be done to improve things in the future. He believes - and he gives the evidence for it - that because the scope of our world has increased, through globalisation, international commerce, travel and tourism, the thinking about "the other" has changed. Global views and policies take consequences about the out-group into account. The financial interests of international commerce make politicians think twice before declaring war on other states. He also sees the importance of women in leading functions as an evolution towards more dialogue and less violence. He introduces some elements of game theory - changing the Prisoner's Dilemma into the Pacifist's Dilemma - to explain how an attitude of non-violence is always the better choice, and as a consequence also one of biological survival.

The amazing thing is that view people perceive our world as such, and think about former times, when everything was peaceful and calm. That past is as much an illusion as anything else of course.

Pinker's book gives hope. It is encouraging for all people who fight for more democracy, human rights, peace and tolerance. He demonstrates that we are moving in the right direction, even if the news of the day may show otherwise.

A must-read.

László Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below (Tuskar Rock Press, 2015) *****

Wat heb ik genoten van dit boek! Het brengt ons zeventien verhalen die elk de passie weergeven van een individu voor één of andere kunstvorm. Of dat nu een Japanse kunstenaar is die een oud boeddhabeeld minutieus restaureert of de suppoost die de Venus van Milo in het Louvre al zijn hele leven in het oog houdt, Krasznahorkai benadert zijn onderwerp met een literaire bevlogenheid die zijn gelijke niet kent. In zinnen van bladzijden lang graaft hij dieper en dieper in zijn onderwerp en laat geen gevoel ongeroerd om de uniciteit van de relatie tussen mens en kunstwerk weer te geven, en door deze bijna buitensporige poging brengt hij ook de onmogelijkheid naar voor om deze bijna mystieke relatie in woorden te vatten.

Een ode aan de taal en aan de kunst in het algemeen. Geen gemakkelijke lektuur, maar een absoluut genot voor wie houdt van literaire kunstzinnigheid.

John Steinbeck - Of Mice And Men (Penguin, 1937) *****

Een klassieker uit de vorige eeuw, maar ik had hem nooit gelezen. Nu wel, en het is een sterk verhaal. Kort, prachtig opgebouwd, heerlijk verteld, en met ruige karakters die zowel ongecompliceerd als vol zijn, tegenover elkaar geplaatst als pionnen op een schaakbord, maar zonder te vervallen in stereotypes. 

Het verhaal is dat van twee mannen, George en Lennie, een pezige kleine man en een domme brute kracht, die werk krijgen op een ranch ergens in de Midwest. Daar krijgen ze hun intrek bij de andere ranchwerkers, en de laffe zoon van de eigenaar maakt Lennie al snel tot mikpunt van spot. Lennie heeft de geest van een kind, en houdt van tederheid, zoals het strelen van muisjes, die hij jammer genoeg doodknuffelt, een fout die hij nadien herhaalt bij een klein hondje. Het conflict tussen zijn machteloze onschuld en onbeheerste kracht leidt tot de ontknoping van het verhaal, dat aanzet tot denken over goed en kwaad, macht en onmacht, rijkdom en armoede, dromen en realiteit. En bovendien knap geschreven in een zeer direct proza vol kleurrijke dialogen en ditto taalgebruik. 

Howard Bloom - The God Problem (Prometheus, 2012) *****

Populair wetenschappelijke boeken en populair filosofische en populair religieuze boeken vind je tegenwoordig in alle vormen en talen. Als er één boek bovenuitsteekt, is het wel Howard Blooms "The God Problem", dat een overzicht geeft van de geschiedenis van de wetenschap.

Het onderwerp is niet alleen fascinerend, het is tevens briljant geschreven, vlot leesbaar en met een passie die je verplicht om verder te lezen, die je compleet opzuigt en de nodige uren nachtrust doet verliezen.

Bloom gaat op zoek naar de basis van ons wetenschappelijk denken in de Babylonische en summerische samenleving, en hoe ze begonnen met rekenen en statistiek, met het aanschouwen van de sterren en met economie. Hij toont hoe ze met eenvoudige middelen complexe abstracties maakten, en ook voorspellingen. Maar hij toont ook aan wat ze niet vinden. Het concept van de cirkel bijvoorbeeld. Of het maken van delingen. En hij stelt zich de vraag "waarom". En dan voert hij ons langs de oude Egyptenaren en Grieken en Romeinen naar onze Middeleeuwen verder langs Kepler en Newton en Gauss en Einstein en Bohm en Mandelbrot en minder gekende denkers als Claude Shannon.

Bloom geeft details over die wetenschappers hun leven, over de vragen die ze zich stelden, over welke grote stappen hun antwoorden betekenden voor ons begrip van het universum en telkens weer heeft hij het ook over wat ze niet zagen, hoe hun tijdsbeeld of context hen verhinderden om zaken te zien die we vandaag als vanzelfsprekend zien, als een fictie-auteur verduidelijkt hij die abstracties met begrijpelijke metaforen, maar zijn grote drijfveer blijft het zoeken naar die enkele grondbeginselen, die axioma's die aan de basis van alles liggen, van waaruit alles is ontsproten.

Bloom vergelijkt ons univsersum met een termietenheuvel, die ontstaat uit slechts twee basisregels : elke termiet raapt een gevonden keutel op en brengt die naar buiten tot op het hoogste punt van de heuvel. Er is geen plan, geen architect, geen bouwheer, maar het resultaat is verbluffend, met ventilatie, temperatuurbeheersing in koude en warme tijden, complexe interne structuren. Zo zoekt hij naar die paar kleine beginsels die aan de basis liggen van de big bang, van ons zonnestelsel, van onze aarde, die ook zijn gestoeld op enkele basisbeginsels, die zich eindeloos herhalen, in alle mogelijke vormen en stoffen, om gaandeweg uit te groeien tot de waanzinnige complexiteit die we vandaag kennen, en die nog alsmaar complexer wordt.

Zijn tocht is verbluffend. Zijn schrijfstijl is verbluffend. Zijn aanpak is verbluffend.

Mijn kast staat vol van deze populair wetenschappelijke boeken : Gary Zukav, David Bohm, Carl Sagan, Fritsjof Capra, noem maar op. Al die boeken hebben hun verdienste, maar Bloom steekt daar nog een trapje bovenuit.

Een absolute aanrader.

Javier Marías - The Infatuations (Hamish Hamilton, 2013) *****

Een opmerkelijke roman.

Het verhaal is simpel. De hoofdfiguur, Maria, die bij een uitgeverij werkt, komt dagelijks bij het ontbijt in een café het "perfecte koppel" tegen, tot op een dag de man brutaal wordt neergestoken door een zwerver. Na verloop van tijd neemt ze contact op met de weduwe, en ook met enkele van haar vrienden. Een diepgevoelig verhaal over dood en rouw wordt plots een thriller.

De manier waarop het verhaal verteld wordt is redelijk uniek, want één lange bijna-monoloog van Maria waarin al haar gedachten bij wat ze ziet worden neergepend. En die gedachten zijn vol mogelijkheden en verwachtingen en veronderstellingen. En vooral de onwetendheid, of eerder het gebrek aan zekerheid die hieruit ontstaat, zet haar aan om verder te gaan.

Marías vertelt met een ongelooflijk gevoel voor ritme en tempo, traag maar onderhoudend en slim, een beetje zoals W.G. Sebald, als een verkenning van gevoelens en drijfveren en de werkelijkheid.

Dit geeft Marías de mogelijkheid om aspecten aan bod te brengen die je enkel in literatuur kan brengen. De "mogelijkheden" zijn vaak te anecdotisch voor filosofie of psychologie, maar daarom niet minder relevant en menselijk, over rouw, liefde, passie, vriendschap, de dood.

Maar het stelt ook diepe vragen over de werkelijkheid rond ons, of wat we zien, of vermoeden te zien, ook effectief is wat het is, of er misschien geen ander perspectief is dat even plausibel is, zonder dat de feiten er daarom anders moeten uitzien.

Marías maakt van literatuur iets wat alleen in literatuur kan. En dan ten volle.

Echt, een opmerkelijke roman.

W.G Sebald - Austerlitz (Penguin, 2002) *****

Toegegeven, soms mis je pas uitgekomen romans. Ze worden de hemel ingeprezen, en je weet van niets, alsof je op een andere planeet woont. Dit is er zo een.

Ik had van Sebald al "The Emigrants" gelezen, maar Austerlitz is zoveel fijner. Sebald is de documentalist van het leven. De man die kleine dingen en details belangrijk vindt en die ook vastlegt, in zijn boeken, en in de vele foto's die hij zoals gebruikelijk in zijn romans plaatst om zaken te verduidelijken, om de authenticiteit van het vertelde kracht bij te zetten.

In "Austerlitz" laat de ik-verteller, die amper terzake doet, tenzij als verslaggever, Austerlitz zijn verhaal doen, die van een joodse jongen die in 1939 naar Groot-Brittannië verplaatst wordt om in een pleeggezin terecht te komen dat alles doet om zijn verleden uit te wissen. Nu, in dit verhaal, gaat Austerlitz graven in wat er plaatsvond.

Sebald schrijft dit alles in een ruk door, zonder paragrafen, zonder hoofdstukken, alsof hij het allemaal snel en uit het geheugen rapporteert. En Austerlitz vertelt zijn eigen zoektocht alsof hij een fotografisch geheugen had, waarin opnieuw elk detail wordt weergegeven, inclusief de woordelijke herhaling van herinneringen die anderen hem vertellen. Ondanks het steeds dieper graven in herinneringen en details, blijft Sebalds stijl licht, enthousiast en met een ondertoon van hoogdringendheid. Het moet verteld worden, en nu meteen, anders riskeert alles vergeten te worden. Sommige zinnen zijn gigantisch lang en complex, één zelfs zeven bladzijden lang, omdat er blijkbaar geen tijd is om het neer te pennen en interpuncties zijn dan ook absoluut tijdverlies.

Een voorbeeld, wanneer Jacques Austerlitz in Praag zijn oude buurvrouw en "nanny" Vera terugvindt, inclusief hun vroegere flat die behouden gebleven was, inclusief alle inhoud.

"The furniture she had inherited in May 1933 together with great-aunt's flat, the display cabinet with a masked Meisen china Pulcinello on the left and his beloved Columbine on the right, the glass-fronted bookcase with the fifty-five small volumes of the Comédie Humaine bound in carmine red, the writing desk, the long ottoman, the camel-hair rug lying folded on one end of it, the blue tinged aquatint of the Bohemian mountains - throughout my entire life, which was now unravelling headlong before me, all this had stayed in the same place because as Vera told me, Austerlitz said, once she had lost me and my mother, who was almost a sister to her, she could not bear to alter anything".

De roman is fenomenaal in zijn diepe menselijkheid en authenticiteit, maar tegelijk ook absoluut vernieuwend en aangrijpend.

W. G. Sebald overleed na de publicatie van de roman.

Philip Meyer - The Son (Ecco, 2013) *****

Meyers "American Rust" was een revelatie, en met "The Son" gaat hij op dezelfde weg verder. De verschillende personages vertellen het gebeuren vanuit hun eigen perspectief, en zoals bij "American Rust" zijn die personages echt van vlees en bloed, met hun kwaliteiten en gebreken, overtuigingen en angsten. Ook nu is de roman perfect uitgebalanceerd, zowel op het vlak van de structuur, als in de verhouding tussen handeling en beschouwing.

Het verhaal draait om vijf generaties van een Amerikaans gezin uit Dallas, waarvan het oudste hoofdpersonage, Eli, door de Comanches werd ontvoerd op jonge leeftijd en daar opgroeide. De tweede verteller is Jeanne Anne McCullough, de kleindochter van Eli en erfgename van een olie-imperium van de vroegere veehouders. Het derde vertelperspectief is dat van Peter McCullough, de zoon van Eli, wiens dagboek een afrekening inhoudt met zijn vader en met de barbaarse afslachting van hun Mexicaanse buren.

Ondanks het verschil tussen de drie hoofdpersonages, zijn ze alle drie onderhevig aan dezelfde evoluties van onmacht naar macht en terug naar machteloosheid, van deel uitmaken van een groep en er toch ook een buitenbeentje in zijn, van onmetelijke eenzaamheid en droefheid.

Meyer schrijft als de beste, met een elegante stijl en met een verbluffende authenticiteit en diepgang. Het is onmogelijk om je niet in te leven in de verschillende personages, hoezeer ze elkaar ook haten of misprijzen.

Voor wie mocht twijfelen : dit is geen indianenverhaal, maar wel de geschiedenis van de Verenigde Staten van de voorbije twee eeuwen, in al zijn glorie en schijnheiligheid, zijn wijdse landschappen en diepe oliebronnen, van meedogenloze wreedheid en menselijke affectie. Meyer toont ons alle ethische en menselijke morele dilemma's maar kiest geen kant. Zijn focus is op de mens die keuzes moet maken, willens nillens, en niet altijd uitkomt waar hij of zij verwacht uit te komen.

Uiteindelijk blijft enkel de vraag over waarom elke generatie zo vol egoïsme en destructieve gevoelens blijft.

"We dynamited the tipis and shot the Indians down as they ran. A magnificent brave, his only weapon a patch knife, charged singing his death chant. A blind man fired a musket and his daughter ran forward, knowing the gun was empty; she swung it toward us and we shot her down as well. It was the last of a nation, squaws and cripples and old men, our guns so hot they fired of their own will, our squarecloths wrapped the fore-grips and still every hand was branded. When the people were finished we killed every dog and horse. I took the chief's bladder for a tobacco pouch; it was tanned and embroidered with beads. In his shield, stuffed between the layers, was Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

Een absolute aanrader!

Jonathan Littell - Les Bienveillantes (Folio, 2006) *****

"Les Bienveillantes" is een turf van 1400 bladzijden dicht gedrukte zinnen op dun bijbelpapier, de monumentale debuutroman van de Frans-Amerikaanse schrijver Jonathan Littell die hem meteen op het voorplan bracht van de hedendaagse literatuur.

Zijn onderwerp is de tweede wereldoorlog gezien en beschreven door de ogen van een SS-officier, en dit tot in het kleinste detail van zijn zielenroerselen, relaties en handelingen. Deze officier, Max Aue, vertelt het verhaal vanuit zijn veilige huidige job van vandaag, een kleine industrieel in Noord-Frankrijk, maar die tegelijk achtervolgd wordt - maar voor sommige zaken ook zonder gewetenswroeging - door zijn verleden als massamoordenaar en door zijn familiale context, een persoonlijke Griekse tragedie met alle Freudiaanse seksuele ziekelijke trekken die erbij horen.

Aue maakt als SS-officier deel uit van de tweede linie die na de opmars van de Wehrmacht in het oosten, de veroverde gebieden moet helpen organiseren en zuiveren. Als jurist moet hij toezien op de goede organisatie en documentatie van deze activiteiten. We trekken samen met hem naar Oekraïne, dan naar Stalingrad.

Gewond keert hij terug in Berlijn, van waaruit hij vervolgens mee moet instaan voor het aan de gang houden van de Duitse oorlogsindustrie, en moet tussenkomen in de belangenstrijd tussen de verantwoordelijken van de uitroeiingskampen en de verantwoordelijken voor de productie.

De beschreven gruwel is des te gruwelijker door de bureaucratische afstandelijkheid waarmee Aue en zijn collega's hun taak vervullen. De berekening van het aantal joden in de massagraven en hoe ze best worden neergeschoten om dit snel en efficiënt te kunnen doen, de berekening van de voedingswaarde die de joden in industriële productie-eenheden dagelijks mochten eten, de interne discussies hierover onder de verschillende afdelingen van de Duitse macht, zijn absoluut weerzinwekkend door de koude afstandelijkheid tegenover het onderwerp van gesprek.

Net zoals zijn hoofdpersonage, is Littell ook de grote documenteerder en archivaris van het gebeuren : hij beschrijft alle gebeurtenissen die elkaar vrij snel opvolgen tot in het kleinste relevante detail, met een verbluffende grondigheid en diepgang die paradoxaal genoeg het ritme alleen maar opvoeren. Van de honderden personages wordt telkens de afdeling, de graad en hun activiteit vermeld, en al die verschillende karakters hebben niet alleen tegenstrijdige interne politieke belangen, maar ook persoonlijke sympathieën en verbonden en vijandschappen en dit alles tegen een achtergrond van historische feiten en wetenswaardigheden die het verhaal bijna vierdimensonaal maken.

En geen van deze personages zijn echte stereotypen, een valkuil die Littell schitterend vermeden heeft, niet alleen voor de hoofdpersonages maar zeker ook voor alle nevenkarakters, die allen aannemelijk zijn, menselijk, met hun grote en kleine kanten, met overtuigingen en twijfels. Dat Littell het aangedurfd heeft om het politiek weinig correcte perspectief van de "slechte Duitser" genomen te hebben, en de horror van de holocaust juist door de menselijkheid van Aue, ver voorbij elke stereotypering brengt, strekt hem nog meer tot eer, want het blijft alles bij elkaar een ongelooflijke evenwichtsoefening boven een gapende morele afgrond.

Het resultaat is echter verbluffend.

Net zoals Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" en Roberto Bolaño's "2666" is deze roman excessief en verpletterend en genereus in zijn compromisloos opbouwen van een hele wereld, een heel universum dat alle aandacht opslorpt en dat voor de lezer ook onontkoombaar wordt. Er is als lezer geen ontsnappen aan, eenmaal je eraan begint.

Verplichte lektuur.

Mario Vargas Llosa - Conversation In The Cathedral (Faber & Faber, 1974/1995) *****

Dus waarom lees je altijd romans van schrijvers die je al zoveel hebt gelezen? Wel, omdat ze goed zijn. Neem nu Mario Vargas Llosa. Zijn "Conversations In The Cathedral" dateert van 1974, een turf van 600 dichtbedrukte bladzijden, ongelooflijk moeilijk om lezen, maar tegelijk een niet te missen leeservaring.

De hoofdfiguur, Santiago Zavala, ontmoet Ambrosio, de vroegere chauffeur van zijn vader in café La Catedral. Tijdens een zware en dronken nacht brengen beide mannen elkaar op de hoogte van de ongekende aspecten van hun levenslopen die in elkaar verstrengeld zijn op politiek, financieel en menselijk vlak.

De plot verhaalt de opkomst van een militaire junta, na de aanstelling van Cayo Bermúdez als hoofd van de binnenlandse veiligheid, die door corruptie en afpersing het hele systeem naar zijn hand zet. In die wereld van de macht is iedereen, van de president over de generaals, de bedrijfsleiding en tot en met het huispersoneel en de hoertjes en de politie verweven in het net van financiële en andere verplichtingen. Bermúdez symboliseert dit soort macht en is eigenlijk de figuur rond wie alle anderen cirkelen.

Vargas Llosa's aanklacht tegen het systeem komt tot leven in de gewone mensen, die misbruikt en verpletterd worden, rechtstreeks of onrechtstreeks. Santiago Zavala probeert eerst via de ondergrondse communistische partij weerwerk te bieden aan het systeem, maar kiest al snel voor een positie als journalist, buiten het systeem en hij keert zich ook van zijn familie, geleid door zijn rijke vader, bedrijfsleider en verstrengeld in het spel van de macht.

Het geheel is wel geen zwart-wit tekening, maar een spel van schaduwen en onzekere standpunten, met de angsten van de personages die hun echte gevoelens en principes niet kunnen en durven uiten. Ook de mens als psychologisch wezen is onderdrukt, net zoals hij dat ook op democratisch, sociaal, en economisch vlak is.

Bovendien experimenteert Mario Vargas Llosa met vorm. Het eerste deel van de roman is in het begin praktisch onleesbaar, omdat drie dialogen, die plaatsvinden op verschillende tijdstippen, maar deels met dezelfde personages door elkaar geweven zijn zonder dat enige context wordt geschetst. Dit vraagt van de lezer een ongelooflijke inspanning om te ontrafelen wat er echt gaande is, net zoals beide hoofdfiguren, Santiago Zavala en Ambrosio, hun weg moeten vinden in het labyrint dat de werkelijkheid is geworden, en waarin iedereen verstoppertje speelt met iedereen, als een overlevingsstrategie.

Eenmaal je die leeservaring rijker bent, wordt de rest van het verhaal vlotter leesbaar, hoewel ook daar door kunstig spelen met tijd en perspectief, constante concentratie vereist is.

Dit is een echt grote Zuid-Amerikaanse roman, met tientallen personages die tot in het detail zijn uitgewerkt en elk hun eigen karakterontwikkeling hebben, met en plot en vele zijverhalen vol onverwachte wendingen, meesterlijk door elkaar verweven.

Een donker, zwaar boek, verschrikkelijk goed.

Roberto Bolaño - 2666 (Picador, 2009) *****

Van de vakantieweken geprofiteerd om eindelijk Roberto Bolaño's "2666" te lezen, een mastodont van een roman, ambitieus, verreikend, vernieuwend, verbazingwekkend, ... woorden schieten tekort om deze moloch van bij de duizend bladzijden te omschrijven.

Ik verwijs graag naar Wikipedia voor meer factuele info over de roman.

"2666" bestaat dus uit vijf delen, die Bolaño zelf kort voor zijn dood nog liever als verschillende boeken had willen uitgeven, maar zijn broer en uitgever beslisten er anders over, en waarschijnlijk terecht. De rode draad doorheen de vijf delen is de Duitse schrijver Benno von Archimboldi, maar elk deel kan ook als een op zich staande roman worden gelezen.

Net zoals in "The Savage Detectives", speelt Bolaño met de grenzen van de roman.

Er zijn ten eerste geen echte hoofdfiguren, wel gebeurtenissen of personen waarrond de personages cirkelen, pogend te begrijpen wat er gebeurt, of pogend dichter bij de verdwenen personen te komen, maar vaak tevergeefs.

Ten tweede is er het vertelperspectief. Dat is redelijk beschrijvend, afstandelijk zelfs, geschreven vanuit een half-alwetend verteller, of half-onwetend zo je wil, want Bolaño gebruikt veel de ongebruikelijke techniek van verschillende alternatieven te bieden voor drijfveren of verklaring van feiten. Zinnen die een structuur hebben als "Hij deed het omdat hij kwaad was, of misschien verveeld, of misschien helemaal zonder reden", zijn vaak voorkomend. Die afstandelijkheid, gekoppeld met de halve onwetendheid creëert of versterkt het gevoel van een realiteit die er wel is, maar die tegelijk toch telkens weer ontsnapt aan ons bevattingsvermogen. Wat overblijft is een voorbijglijdende massa van gebeurtenissen en mensen en gevoelens die zich ontwikkelen, opduiken en weer verdwijnen en in essentie niet rationeel vatbaar zijn. In die zin is hij verwant aan Pynchon, met een stijl die wel glashelder is. Of je krijgt een verschuivend perspectief. In het lange "The Part About The Crimes" verschuift het perspectief van het ene personage naar het andere, die soms uit het niets naar het voorplan komen, gedurende enige tijd de gebeurtenissen volgen of beïnvloeden, om dan weer naar het achterplan of helemaal uit de roman te verdwijnen.

Ten derde is er de schrijfstijl. Die doet me denken aan de grote Russen uit het eind van de 19e eeuw, zeer verhalend en de actie beschrijvend, maar zonder specifieke emotionele expressiviteit na te streven. Zijn stijl is wel glashelder en van een zeer hoge densiteit. Op elke bladzijde worden nieuwe verhalen gebracht, elk idee dat bij hem opkomt, elk personage leidt weer tot een nieuw en bijkomend achtergrondverhaal. Het aantal levensgeschiedenissen in de roman moet in de honderden lopen, die soms als Russische matroesjka poppen in elkaar zijn geschoven. Bolaño is ook uitermate geestig en hij aarzelt niet om overdreven of grappig uit de hoek te komen.

Ten vierde is de plot. Alles draait rond de figuur van de Duitse schrijver Benno von Archimboldi, een schuilnaam voor een auteur die slechts weinigen ooit hebben ontmoet en die elke aandacht mijdt. In deel één zijn vier literatuurdeskundigen naar hem op zoek, en komen dan te weten dat hij ergens in Mexico, in Santa Teresa, een grote industriestad op de grens met de Verenigde Staten is opgemerkt. Ze reizen hier naartoe om hem te vinden. In Santa Teresa zijn op dat moment, en in de voorbije jaren, meer dan tweehonderdvijftig jonge vrouwen verkracht en vermoord teruggevonden. De volgende delen van het boek draaien rond deze moorden, en elk van de vermoorde lichamen wordt beschreven in een eindeloos, bijna hypnotisch massale opeenstapeling van menselijke gruwel. Bolano's beschrijving van dit alles blijft klinisch, met veel technische en forensische details. De pers, de politie, de familieleden, de gevangenisdirecteur, boeven en anderen draaien rond deze gebeurtenissen heen, proberen een stap verder te komen, verliezen hun interesse, krijgen andere opdrachten toegewezen, en het moorden gaat maar door, eindeloos lang.

In het laatste deel wordt dan het geheimzinnige leven van Archimboldi dan zelf uit de doeken gedaan, een verhaal dat een roman, misschien zelfs tien romans waard is, en de relatie met de moordeen in Santa Teresa verduidelijkt, of juist helemaal niet.

Net zoals in "The Savage Detectives", is de realiteit de wereld, ook al is Santa Teresa het middelpunt ervan. De actie vindt plaats in heel Europa, inclusief Rusland, Oekraïne, Italië, Spanje, de Verenigde Staten, Duitsland, .... die Bolaño beschrijft alsof hij er zelf overal is geweest.

Ik zou nog bladzijden kunnen doorgaan met  Bolaño's uniciteit en meesterschap te beschrijven.

Je zou het een literair equivalent kunnen noemen van de films van Robert Rodriguez en David Lynch, maar dan met de omvang en de verduistering en verwarring die we ook kennen van Pynchon : onze realiteit is een vreemde, wrede, irrationele bedoening die ons raakt, waar we beperkt op kunnen ingrijpen en in wezen onmogelijk te vatten is. Bolaño lezen is dit echt ervaren, en tegelijk ongelooflijk genieten van zijn eindeloze vertelkunst, intelligente spitsvondigheden en taalkunstzinnigheid.

Niet te missen.

Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives (Picador, 2008) *****

Een sterke aanrader. Roberto Bolaño is een Chileens dichter die in deze lijvige roman zijn eigen leven en ervaringen in een ongelooflijke knappe verhaalstructuur giet.

In de "roman" staan de hoofdpersonages, Arturo Belano en Ulises Lima, voor respectievelijk de auteur en zijn vriend Mario Santiago. Het hele verhaal wordt verteld door tientallen mensen die ze in hun leven zijn tegengekomen : liefjes, literaire contacten, andere bohémiens, andere schrijvers, familieleden.

Het verhaal is uiteraard geen detective in de zuiverste zin : het verhoudt zich tot een echte detectiveroman zoals het "sardine spel" zich tot "verstoppertje" verhoudt.  In het eerste geval verstopt één kind zich en gaan alle andere zoeken tot de laatste hen heeft gevonden. Dat gevoel krijg je bij het lezen van het boek. Niemand weet waar ze zijn of wat ze doen, maar iedereen is op zoek naar hen. Het is een omgekeerde detectiveroman. Het is geen "whodunnit", maar eerder een "whathavetheydone"? In het eerste geval is er iets gebeurd en zoekt idereen naar de dader. Hier is er niets gebeurd, maar iedereen is op zoek naar die twee figuren. Waarom iedereen hen zoekt is niet altijd duidelijk. Wat ze überhaupt hebben gepresteerd, zeker literair om al die aandacht waard te zijn, is nog meer de vraag. Maar de zoektocht zelf, is er één die het leven en de wereld doorkruist.

Belano en Ulises zelf zijn op zoek naar de ultieme poëzie, één die aansluit bij hun moderne leefwereld, en hoewel ze er zelf niet in slagen dit op een leefbare manier te doen, vallen ze zonder enige basis de "oude" dichters aan, met Octavio Paz, de grote Mexicaanse dichter als de gebeten hond, en hij komt zelf ook als personage voor, samen met nog een hele rist andere Latijns-Amerikaanse schrijvers. De echte stroming waar ze bij aansloten was die van het "infrarealismo", hier in het boek "visceral realism" genoemd.

Het verhaal zelf is ondanks de 650 bladzijden puur leesgenot van begin tot eind. Er gebeurt eigenlijk weinig maar toch gigantisch veel, tussen de verschillende personages, tussen hun ongebreidelde leven van drugs en seks en links activisme, ze vluchten voor bandieten, ze vermoorden iemand, ze verhongeren in Parijs, in Spanje, in Israel en zelfs in Liberia. Ze schrapen hun leven bij elkaar, zonder enige redelijkheid, misbruik makend van hun vrienden en kennissen, maar met een ongelooflijke passie voor hun literatuur en met een ongelooflijke aversie voor de bourgeoisie. Maar het leuke is dat Bolaño door de verschillende perspectieven er in slaagt om ook deze passie zwaar op de korrel te nemen, en die te parodiëren.

Terwijl iederen op zoek is naar Belano en Lima, zijn beiden op zoek naar Cesárea Tinajero, de stichtster van hun "visceral realism", van wie niemand ooit iets heeft gelezen en die niemand zich eigenlijk goed herinnert. Ze wordt zo een soort mythische figuur die wanneer ze haar uiteindelijk op het spoor komen, hen confronteert met de echte realiteit.

Elk van de vertellers brengt het verhaal dan nog in zijn eigen stijl en met zijn eigen stem : de geesteszieke architect/schoonvader, de alcoholieke uitgever, de rijke cultuurminnende advocaat die in elke zin Latijnse citaten gebruikt, de eerste verteller Juan Garcia Madero die elke literaire stijlfiguur kent. Hun visie op nieuwe feiten en gekende feiten zijn vaak verrassend en onthult vaak meer over de psyche van de verteller dan over de personages. En het zijn er tientallen en tientallen die hun mening geven, hun visie, al dan niet met gezag of kennis, maar ze hebben wel een mening die het verhaal lichtjes vooruit helpt, dat alsmaar donkerder en ontzagwekkender wordt.

Door die vele vertellers leest het boek vlot, omdat ze de lezer aanspreken in een echte "parlando" stijl, zoals ze het in realiteit ook zouden doen, eerder dan een geschreven stijl.

Een boek over het leven zelf, over de jeugd, over ambitie en verlangen, over mislukking en ontnuchtering.

Niet te missen!