Proposals - by Cecilia Woloch (NPR - The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor)
rw: Do I look like the angel of home and hearth with this strange green / fire in my hands?
reminds of? green fire in hands .. a comic book superhero? green lantern ..
ah: Jenna no Jemma in The Children's Hospital, the healing green fire from her hands.
Proposals: And in Prague, on a bridge called the Karlův Most, a stranger, a refugee, who mistook the way I stared at the river for thinking of suicide. Who mistook my American passport for his ticket out of there.
down by the river! ('I lost my baby!') bridges, strangers, rivers, thinking; sure. I like a stranger who asks you to marry him instead of jumping to death in the river. but the cadence and the 'mistook' - 'mistook' - 'ticket out of there' = obvious, cliche, vanity I do not like.
but stranger with a proposal, let's have it:
Thinking of dying? think you might do a little dying today?
Patty Griffin: Tony: 'Hey Tony, what's so good about dying? think you might do a little dying today?'
How about you marry me instead? you don't feel you could love me but I feel you could.
Didion, who was given the number for a specialist & d n call:Instead I got married. Which turned out to be a good thing to do, but badly timed, sinceI still cried in elevators, restaurants, chinese laundries.
Post-Birthday World: You marry me. Got that? You marry me, and toot-sweet. on Page 121: "... ducky. When you leave Lawrence, if you leave Lawrence, you don't tuck in upstairs as me in-house personal slag."
Paul Simon: Gumboots: 'I was having this discussion In a taxi heading downtown Rearranging my position On this friend of mine who had A little bit of a breakdown I said breakdowns come And breakdowns go So what are you going to do about it That’s what I’d like to know You don’t feel you could love me But I feel you could'
all the time, just this morning, singing this in mind
Since: here we are on the same street on the very same day
I was walking down the street When I thought I heard this voice say Say, ain’t we walking down the same street together On the very same day I said hey Senorita that’s astute I said why don’t we get together And call ourselves an institute?
why don't we!
_proposals_
If I ask you this on the street,
Please let me be an acceptable stranger.
Pages are browning in the sunlight,
A collar is wrinkling, not organized
Properly on the hanger. The world
Is touching itself and I cannot stand it.
Preservation it’s all the same
I held a voice to my lips
I pressed a hand on my word
By heart had all the arrangements
When the body left out
into it
Yet speaking against
the losing
Losing – what is the moment worth to you,
And what is the time?
______________
things I've said to you things I've said
on and away as from and to
a friend without, please not, with you
______________
REPOSE
That's what I wanted to tell you.
All the things you could say, you're saying this."With all the fish in the sea?" "Not like her."
These are what I am thinking when I am at the window. when I wake up. when I brush my teeth. My mind returning home, says I'm so sorry. -I want to know things. -Why didn't you tell me sooner? -I just wanted to hear you say it. -So you're not angry? -I'm not done yet. –Shhh... -Just let me get my mind around this. –What is that—that metaphor? -Don't do this. -I'm sorry.
______________
SOURCE
you're reading a book and you make some notes in the margin -- you say
things similar, more or less of your own. this goes on for days. one day, you open the book to a new page and there
in the book's text are sentences that you have written.
before, already. or not? maybe, it must be,
you had already read this page and then
you wrote it down. no. the footnote in the book's text credits you. these are sentences you wrote in the margins. flip back and see.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
az- The Book of Dahlia: A Novel: Elisa Albert | Free Press; 1 edition (March 11, 2008)
so EW names it as #2 best book of the year, and last year I thought their top two choices were interesting and impressive, The Post Birthday World and Shakespeare's Kitchen. and the cancer diagnosis & dying of a an untethered, unhappy, ~'scathingly negative', 'whip smart', unambitious 29 year old who has been spending her days watching movies stoned sounds up my alley. but: she did not seem whip smart to me, she did not seem interestingly negative, so what I am saying is I wanted unconventional and did not find her to be. 'not like me' eh? she has GRE books and McSweeneys in the corner. glibness. McSweeneys style, maybe, am I surprised that Free Press published it?
NewYorker blurbed at az compares to Lorrie Moore, but for me not as recognizable, or lovely as Moore at lst stimes is. I prefer Moore, or Hamann's Anthropology.
did find some true in the last pages:
p248 penult chp 'Forgive & forget'
..at this late date it wasn't that she hated or loved him her older brother
as that she simply wanted that little girl back: the one who trusted & loved.
She wanted the intactness back, and the family, and the womb, and the womb before the womb, and her mother, but not her actual mother.
She wanted to be young again, very young, small, smaller still.
and beyond that she wanted those things encased & encased & encased... safely somewhere warm.
But forgive whom & for what?
Bruce her father had brought her back to LA and bought her a house.
And it was a new beginning. She adored her house. How nice it was to orchestrate the sort of regestating she knew she needed. She would have been okay, truly. She would have! She really would have. After she was done being the opposite of okay, she would have been okay.
She was going to go to sleep at night, content to be alone in her dreams, glad to experience, for herself, whatever comprised those dreams.
...
p.252 final chp 'Be well'
Her life could be seen as a series of things she had failed to get over. And now it was over. And who's left here to rail & rage & scream & fight & cry at the loss of Dahlia? Who will be irrational & destroyed? Who'll think of her, late at night and early in the morning, in their happiest & worst moments? Who will think of her? and think of her? and think of her more? Who will send her silent, connective love from deep within the recess~ of a single solitary existence? She didn't want sorrow, she wanted grief, the real deal. Whose life destroyed, whose sense of security in life itself gone? whose chance of any complete happiness ruined forever?
Bruce was there with her, holding her hand. "La La," he said, holding her hand, his whispers & sobs like branches held out to save her from drowing. "I love you, La." good dad. 'ineffectual', okay, but he hangs out with her while she's sick, what do you want to do today? whatever you want? and he is sitting with her when she dies.
would there be a light? let there not be anything as predictable as that, after all this, something everyone could predict? no, do not picture death as in & of delimited abovewater life. worst of all, what if it were nothing? This awareness, this voice, these memories, what is this mood that fills the room? (Copenhagen - On H's Ground) the being she herself understood 'completely' she *understands* *herself* completely? and --honestly, really, at base-- loved anyway: where would it all go? All those memories, things she couldn't get over, and didn't, and wouldn't, now. ..There was no one else who knew what these things felt like, these emotional fingerprints.
La. La. an echo. La. So this was it then. Okay. Where was her mother --or a mother, any mother, someone else's mother-- to sing her to bed? She felt a panic rise & subside, like the nodding of resisted sleep. She wasn't ready. There was a hesitation, like at the end of a phone call. Still, the panic rose & subsided, rose again before subsiding again. It rose again, then subsided, then rose again, then paused: she wasn't ready. She wasn't ready. She wasn't ready.
shantih shantih shantih three three three times
attachment. inconsolable.
you want the womb with all that is not there. the river, the rocks, the words, No. there are no words and none of the words are theirs. No tears, or all tears, fluid. but no grief. No train, no platform, no one being left, no one leaving. no Dog Monday, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, longer than you think. you are not thinking of the things of this world, the soldier finally come home, the old dog --old? not so old! seven years on, his Jem stepping off the train-- a flash across the platform. Chesterton's things of this world: mothers, fighting peoples. So: nations, navies, wars. but also: a cat purring, back to your face, feet against your palm, Not here. Snow, sleds, the wooded hills: "It's a wonderful world, Hobbes old buddy! Let's go exploring!" A boy and his tiger. A boy and his penguin. Goodnight Opus. Goodnight Moon. A boy and his bear in an enchanted forest, not here, playing.
*Orthodoxy - by G K Chesteron (Ggle Bk Srch) p13 As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. ... seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. ...
so EW names it as #2 best book of the year, and last year I thought their top two choices were interesting and impressive, The Post Birthday World and Shakespeare's Kitchen. and the cancer diagnosis & dying of a an untethered, unhappy, ~'scathingly negative', 'whip smart', unambitious 29 year old who has been spending her days watching movies stoned sounds up my alley. but: she did not seem whip smart to me, she did not seem interestingly negative, so what I am saying is I wanted unconventional and did not find her to be. 'not like me' eh? she has GRE books and McSweeneys in the corner. glibness. McSweeneys style, maybe, am I surprised that Free Press published it?
NewYorker blurbed at az compares to Lorrie Moore, but for me not as recognizable, or lovely as Moore at lst stimes is. I prefer Moore, or Hamann's Anthropology.
did find some true in the last pages:
p248 penult chp 'Forgive & forget'
..at this late date it wasn't that she hated or loved him her older brother
as that she simply wanted that little girl back: the one who trusted & loved.
She wanted the intactness back, and the family, and the womb, and the womb before the womb, and her mother, but not her actual mother.
She wanted to be young again, very young, small, smaller still.
and beyond that she wanted those things encased & encased & encased... safely somewhere warm.
But forgive whom & for what?
Bruce her father had brought her back to LA and bought her a house.
And it was a new beginning. She adored her house. How nice it was to orchestrate the sort of regestating she knew she needed. She would have been okay, truly. She would have! She really would have. After she was done being the opposite of okay, she would have been okay.
She was going to go to sleep at night, content to be alone in her dreams, glad to experience, for herself, whatever comprised those dreams.
...
p.252 final chp 'Be well'
Her life could be seen as a series of things she had failed to get over. And now it was over. And who's left here to rail & rage & scream & fight & cry at the loss of Dahlia? Who will be irrational & destroyed? Who'll think of her, late at night and early in the morning, in their happiest & worst moments? Who will think of her? and think of her? and think of her more? Who will send her silent, connective love from deep within the recess~ of a single solitary existence? She didn't want sorrow, she wanted grief, the real deal. Whose life destroyed, whose sense of security in life itself gone? whose chance of any complete happiness ruined forever?
Bruce was there with her, holding her hand. "La La," he said, holding her hand, his whispers & sobs like branches held out to save her from drowing. "I love you, La." good dad. 'ineffectual', okay, but he hangs out with her while she's sick, what do you want to do today? whatever you want? and he is sitting with her when she dies.
would there be a light? let there not be anything as predictable as that, after all this, something everyone could predict? no, do not picture death as in & of delimited abovewater life. worst of all, what if it were nothing? This awareness, this voice, these memories, what is this mood that fills the room? (Copenhagen - On H's Ground) the being she herself understood 'completely' she *understands* *herself* completely? and --honestly, really, at base-- loved anyway: where would it all go? All those memories, things she couldn't get over, and didn't, and wouldn't, now. ..There was no one else who knew what these things felt like, these emotional fingerprints.
La. La. an echo. La. So this was it then. Okay. Where was her mother --or a mother, any mother, someone else's mother-- to sing her to bed? She felt a panic rise & subside, like the nodding of resisted sleep. She wasn't ready. There was a hesitation, like at the end of a phone call. Still, the panic rose & subsided, rose again before subsiding again. It rose again, then subsided, then rose again, then paused: she wasn't ready. She wasn't ready. She wasn't ready.
shantih shantih shantih three three three times
attachment. inconsolable.
you want the womb with all that is not there. the river, the rocks, the words, No. there are no words and none of the words are theirs. No tears, or all tears, fluid. but no grief. No train, no platform, no one being left, no one leaving. no Dog Monday, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, longer than you think. you are not thinking of the things of this world, the soldier finally come home, the old dog --old? not so old! seven years on, his Jem stepping off the train-- a flash across the platform. Chesterton's things of this world: mothers, fighting peoples. So: nations, navies, wars. but also: a cat purring, back to your face, feet against your palm, Not here. Snow, sleds, the wooded hills: "It's a wonderful world, Hobbes old buddy! Let's go exploring!" A boy and his tiger. A boy and his penguin. Goodnight Opus. Goodnight Moon. A boy and his bear in an enchanted forest, not here, playing.
*Orthodoxy - by G K Chesteron (Ggle Bk Srch) p13 As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. ... seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. ...
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Death Takes a Holiday: Books: The New Yorker:
For Saramago, the problem is not just that humans are natural-born utopia-killers; it is that eternity itself —life forever uninterrupted—seems unbearable. And Saramago does more than tease Dostoyevsky in this novel. For if the disappearance of God means that “everything is permitted,” and the disappearance of death means that everything is permitted, then, by the novelist’s tacit catechism, God must be death, and death must be God. No wonder religion needs death: death is the one God we can believe in.
Saramago is drawn to these Gnostic inversions. In perhaps his greatest book, “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” (1991) yes my fvr, the novelist, characteristically, tells the story of Jesus’ life and death without changing any of the famous facts, while at the same time turning the theology of the Gospels upside down.
...“God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit” is how the narrator puts it. On the Cross, hearing his heavenly Father declaim from the clouds, “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” Jesus bursts out, “Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.” It is the novel’s final, and most wicked, inversion. “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” was enormously controversial in Catholic Portugal (Jesus sleeps, and lives, with Mary Magdalene), but it is the most pious yes of blasphemous books. Behind its savage ironies, Saramago seems to do no more than take the Incarnation as seriously as possible. yes.
..He is in some ways the least fantastical of novelists yes, because he so relentlessly persists with his fictional hypotheses, following them through to large, humane conclusions.
He pictures Death for us as an embodied female absence, a skeleton in a sheet who lives in a frigid, subterranean room, accompanied only by her much used scythe. (He also denies her a capital “D.”) After her seven months of self-interruption, this gloomy goddess sends a letter to a TV station, announcing that she is ending her experiment, because humans have acted so “deplorably.” People will die again at the old rate, which is about three hundred a day. Under the new rules, those citizens whose time is up will be given one week’s notice: each will receive a violet-colored letter, a notice of termination from Death herself. This apparently humane concession—the nominee now has time to take his leave, get his estate in order, and so on—is of course unbearably cruel, since most people would rather be surprised by death than condemned to it.
...
When Death’s letter is published in the newspapers, a grammarian is consulted, and notes its “chaotic syntax, the absence of full stops, the complete lack of very necessary parentheses, the obsessive elimination of paragraphs, the random use of commas. . . .” Death writes like José Saramago.
As Death watches the cellist drink, Saramago writes that she looked at the water “and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed.” The reader wonders: if Death cannot imagine thirst, can she possibly imagine death? And can the novelist? One answer that Saramago offers—it is the wide, universal, antique truth toward which his complex fiction has been travelling—is that if we neither recoil from death nor religiously long to vanquish it, but, rather, accept the old actuality that in the midst of life we are in death, then death surrounds us like life, and to imagine death is really to imagine life.
For Saramago, the problem is not just that humans are natural-born utopia-killers; it is that eternity itself —life forever uninterrupted—seems unbearable. And Saramago does more than tease Dostoyevsky in this novel. For if the disappearance of God means that “everything is permitted,” and the disappearance of death means that everything is permitted, then, by the novelist’s tacit catechism, God must be death, and death must be God. No wonder religion needs death: death is the one God we can believe in.
Saramago is drawn to these Gnostic inversions. In perhaps his greatest book, “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” (1991) yes my fvr, the novelist, characteristically, tells the story of Jesus’ life and death without changing any of the famous facts, while at the same time turning the theology of the Gospels upside down.
...“God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit” is how the narrator puts it. On the Cross, hearing his heavenly Father declaim from the clouds, “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” Jesus bursts out, “Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.” It is the novel’s final, and most wicked, inversion. “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” was enormously controversial in Catholic Portugal (Jesus sleeps, and lives, with Mary Magdalene), but it is the most pious yes of blasphemous books. Behind its savage ironies, Saramago seems to do no more than take the Incarnation as seriously as possible. yes.
..He is in some ways the least fantastical of novelists yes, because he so relentlessly persists with his fictional hypotheses, following them through to large, humane conclusions.
He pictures Death for us as an embodied female absence, a skeleton in a sheet who lives in a frigid, subterranean room, accompanied only by her much used scythe. (He also denies her a capital “D.”) After her seven months of self-interruption, this gloomy goddess sends a letter to a TV station, announcing that she is ending her experiment, because humans have acted so “deplorably.” People will die again at the old rate, which is about three hundred a day. Under the new rules, those citizens whose time is up will be given one week’s notice: each will receive a violet-colored letter, a notice of termination from Death herself. This apparently humane concession—the nominee now has time to take his leave, get his estate in order, and so on—is of course unbearably cruel, since most people would rather be surprised by death than condemned to it.
...
When Death’s letter is published in the newspapers, a grammarian is consulted, and notes its “chaotic syntax, the absence of full stops, the complete lack of very necessary parentheses, the obsessive elimination of paragraphs, the random use of commas. . . .” Death writes like José Saramago.
As Death watches the cellist drink, Saramago writes that she looked at the water “and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed.” The reader wonders: if Death cannot imagine thirst, can she possibly imagine death? And can the novelist? One answer that Saramago offers—it is the wide, universal, antique truth toward which his complex fiction has been travelling—is that if we neither recoil from death nor religiously long to vanquish it, but, rather, accept the old actuality that in the midst of life we are in death, then death surrounds us like life, and to imagine death is really to imagine life.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
az: Idiots: Five Fairy Tales and Other Stories: Jakob Arjouni: Books
pubweekly: Fairies promise one wish—but not "immortality, health, money and love"—to each of the wretched, narcissistic protagonists in the first five stories of Arjouni's sardonic new collection. In the title story, a fairy comes to the aid of a miserable ad exec desperate to save his company from financial ruin.
no this first protag not obvsly miserable or desperate or wretched. seemed reasonable, well-intentioned, somewhat selfaware re moral hypocrisy:
p15: While Max was thinking, his sense of shame grew stronger and stronger. As if he knew that in the end, if he did make a more personal wish after all, as was clearly expectd, his thoughts were only to help him not seem to selfish to himself. Because thinking about hunger in the world was almost like doing something about it. And how many people simply ignored the plight of the starving? So that left him occupying the moral high ground. All the same, he couldn't entirely fool himself that way.
Max. same name as protag in Eagles & Angels, also German.
Max, Berlin, cafe, a fairy. agency, clients, business.
also reminisc Troll, wh is in Finland, & protag is Martes.
'urban fairy tales'. my: eros-magic. but so far, not much eros here.
pubweekly: ...tales about desperate folk at the edges of contemporary German society.
p1: When the fairy visited Max he was sitting outside Rico's Sports Bar in Berlin on a warm spring evening, drinking beer and thinking. He was meeting Ronnie for a meal an hour from now, and if he didn't finally have it out with Ronnie then who would? Because opinion in the office was unanimous: not only was Ronnie acting like the ultimate bastard, if he carried on running the agency the way he'd been doing these last few months he'd lose them all their jobs.
p13 "What do other people wish for?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. Lots of them want a couple weeks' vacation. Others want a dishwasher."
"You can't be serious!"
"Yes, I am. Dishwashers come close to the top of the list. Third or fourth place."
"What's in first place?"
"Being famous."
"But doesn't being famous really come under the heading of immortality? And a dishwasher under the heading of money?"
"Oh, think about it long enough and I guess every wish comes under one of those headings. "
"It doesn't take much thinking to work out that a dishwasher costs money."
The fairy sighed. "Listen, I didn't make the rules. A dishwasher is okay, a thousand marks isn't."
"Don't make such heavy weather of it," said the fairy, seeing Max's hand tremble slightly as he struck a match. "There's no such thing as one great, perfect wish."
...Soon Max raised his head and asked, with a small, almost challenging light in his eyes, "Suppose I wish for an idiot to stop being too idiotic to see his own idiocy?"
Once again the fairy looked surprised, but quite pleasantly surprised this time. She had been fairly sure that a man like Max would end up choosing the most expensive material thing available, as usual. There were clients who asked straight out, "What's the most expensive?" It was the dishwasher.
so, liked this first story bcs Max, who seemed rather reasonable, likeable, wishes for his bullish boss Ronnie to see own idiocy, work with him to return to earlier ideals for the company, for team work.
but then Max learns fr coworker Sophie that he himself is seen as worse than Ronnie, bcs he smooths evth over, makes himslf indispens as peacekeeper. & I suppose that Max then dismissing this as Sophie just wanting to bellyache at someone means that he himslf is unable to see his idiocy? but it's not obvs, it's unclear, subtle.
vs third story re domineering mother, just awful, evth she says fr beginning suspect: self-centered imagining self as martyr. tedious ~ to me like an obvious 'internal monologue' unreliable narrator exercise. but wait, in opening of story, son says mother is dead? then we go to narrative in mother's perspective, earlier in time I assumed. so what is the deal with the opening? maybe sth int unobvs in that...
only 1 cust rvw, wish cld find commentary on the stories.
Jakob Arjouni idiots max sophie ronnie - Google Search nichts!
Idioten. Fünf Märchen. by Jakob Arjouni | LibraryThing
one rvw, auf Deutsch:
...Dadurch enthalten die Geschichten jedoch oft ein gewisses Maß an Vorhersehbarkeit - besonders, wenn schon der Klappentext suggeriert, dass keine von ihnen die Protagonisten glücklich zurücklässt. So können nur die Märchen »Im Tal des Todes« und »Happy-End« mit glänzenden Pointen überzeugen. Die drei anderen haben dagegen bloß traurige Konsequenzen zu bieten.
ggl transl: The wish fulfillment is always a turning point, the current situation but only logically continue. This includes the stories but often a degree of predictability - especially when even the blurb suggests that none of them happy behind the protagonists. Thus, only the fairy tale "In the Valley of Death" and "Happy End" with brilliant punchlines convincing. The other three, however, have merely sad consequences to offer.
pubweekly: Fairies promise one wish—but not "immortality, health, money and love"—to each of the wretched, narcissistic protagonists in the first five stories of Arjouni's sardonic new collection. In the title story, a fairy comes to the aid of a miserable ad exec desperate to save his company from financial ruin.
no this first protag not obvsly miserable or desperate or wretched. seemed reasonable, well-intentioned, somewhat selfaware re moral hypocrisy:
p15: While Max was thinking, his sense of shame grew stronger and stronger. As if he knew that in the end, if he did make a more personal wish after all, as was clearly expectd, his thoughts were only to help him not seem to selfish to himself. Because thinking about hunger in the world was almost like doing something about it. And how many people simply ignored the plight of the starving? So that left him occupying the moral high ground. All the same, he couldn't entirely fool himself that way.
Max. same name as protag in Eagles & Angels, also German.
Max, Berlin, cafe, a fairy. agency, clients, business.
also reminisc Troll, wh is in Finland, & protag is Martes.
'urban fairy tales'. my: eros-magic. but so far, not much eros here.
pubweekly: ...tales about desperate folk at the edges of contemporary German society.
p1: When the fairy visited Max he was sitting outside Rico's Sports Bar in Berlin on a warm spring evening, drinking beer and thinking. He was meeting Ronnie for a meal an hour from now, and if he didn't finally have it out with Ronnie then who would? Because opinion in the office was unanimous: not only was Ronnie acting like the ultimate bastard, if he carried on running the agency the way he'd been doing these last few months he'd lose them all their jobs.
p13 "What do other people wish for?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. Lots of them want a couple weeks' vacation. Others want a dishwasher."
"You can't be serious!"
"Yes, I am. Dishwashers come close to the top of the list. Third or fourth place."
"What's in first place?"
"Being famous."
"But doesn't being famous really come under the heading of immortality? And a dishwasher under the heading of money?"
"Oh, think about it long enough and I guess every wish comes under one of those headings. "
"It doesn't take much thinking to work out that a dishwasher costs money."
The fairy sighed. "Listen, I didn't make the rules. A dishwasher is okay, a thousand marks isn't."
"Don't make such heavy weather of it," said the fairy, seeing Max's hand tremble slightly as he struck a match. "There's no such thing as one great, perfect wish."
...Soon Max raised his head and asked, with a small, almost challenging light in his eyes, "Suppose I wish for an idiot to stop being too idiotic to see his own idiocy?"
Once again the fairy looked surprised, but quite pleasantly surprised this time. She had been fairly sure that a man like Max would end up choosing the most expensive material thing available, as usual. There were clients who asked straight out, "What's the most expensive?" It was the dishwasher.
so, liked this first story bcs Max, who seemed rather reasonable, likeable, wishes for his bullish boss Ronnie to see own idiocy, work with him to return to earlier ideals for the company, for team work.
but then Max learns fr coworker Sophie that he himself is seen as worse than Ronnie, bcs he smooths evth over, makes himslf indispens as peacekeeper. & I suppose that Max then dismissing this as Sophie just wanting to bellyache at someone means that he himslf is unable to see his idiocy? but it's not obvs, it's unclear, subtle.
vs third story re domineering mother, just awful, evth she says fr beginning suspect: self-centered imagining self as martyr. tedious ~ to me like an obvious 'internal monologue' unreliable narrator exercise. but wait, in opening of story, son says mother is dead? then we go to narrative in mother's perspective, earlier in time I assumed. so what is the deal with the opening? maybe sth int unobvs in that...
only 1 cust rvw, wish cld find commentary on the stories.
Jakob Arjouni idiots max sophie ronnie - Google Search nichts!
Idioten. Fünf Märchen. by Jakob Arjouni | LibraryThingone rvw, auf Deutsch:
...Dadurch enthalten die Geschichten jedoch oft ein gewisses Maß an Vorhersehbarkeit - besonders, wenn schon der Klappentext suggeriert, dass keine von ihnen die Protagonisten glücklich zurücklässt. So können nur die Märchen »Im Tal des Todes« und »Happy-End« mit glänzenden Pointen überzeugen. Die drei anderen haben dagegen bloß traurige Konsequenzen zu bieten.
ggl transl: The wish fulfillment is always a turning point, the current situation but only logically continue. This includes the stories but often a degree of predictability - especially when even the blurb suggests that none of them happy behind the protagonists. Thus, only the fairy tale "In the Valley of Death" and "Happy End" with brilliant punchlines convincing. The other three, however, have merely sad consequences to offer.
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