OptionalBooks

Congratulations to the Women who don't have to deal with these Men anymore

This collection comprises seven short stories centred around men that have in some way or other lost their wives or partners. Now these men without women are struggling to move on. Sometimes they are lost in grief, sometimes they are looking for a form of closure. Regrettably, only a couple of stories can transcend being simple sob stories of men wallowing in self-pity.

Yesterday and An Independent Organ are very straight-forward in their approach to the topic. In the former two 20-year-old men are navigating their first relationships and breakups, while the latter is about a doctor in his fifties falling into depression about an affair not working out. All three of these men, not just the two 20-year-olds, are portrayed as emotionally immature and naïve to the point of making the reader cringe.

The story Kino tries to construct a metaphor where a man that's just up and left after finding out that his wife had an affair is haunted by some mysterious force. Could it be… his unprocessed grief and hurt? (Yes.)

The two stories Men Without Women and Samsa In Love¹ leave more questions unanswered than these previous examples. Through this they succeed in letting the reader explore loss and grief on a more personal level and bringing in their own feelings about the topic.

Lastly, the stories Drive My Car and Sheherazade have both been reworked into the excellent film Drive My Car (2021). The first story provides the protagonist, who suddenly loses his wife to cancer and—rather than having to deal with sadness—is left looking for closure. The second story—through a framing device—provides the story of a 17-year-old girl repeatedly breaking into the house of her crush.

Both of these stories are more nuanced and interesting than most of the rest found in this collection, but the film greatly succeeds in adding even more nuance and interesting layers.

In conclusion, this collection is only able to provide the reader with a very narrow peek at grief and loss as it pertains to relationships. It often does not even leave enough room for the reader to project their own feelings and ideas into the space between the lines.

Footnotes

[1] Also found in the collection Desire. ↑

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Not just the “good parts”

This abridged edition of Morgenstern's classic¹ claims to leave only the “good parts”. And sure, much of it is the “good parts” that we used to reference on the school yard: “Inconceivable!”, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die.” and the Dread Pirate Roberts generally. But, there's also a lot of bad parts.

For example, this book has a weird voyeuristic obsession with bodies that don't fit the norm, mainly fat people and disfigurements. And it's not in a good way like raising awareness that we all have our “flaws.” No, characters are outright shamed for their bodies by the narration and it seems to take delight in ridiculing characters for their appearance.

Except for the main characters Buttercup and Westley. Those two, destined for True Love are the only good looking humans. And for Buttercup that comes at the cost of everything else as she's exceptionally stupid and helpless leading to her having close to no agency in the narrative.

Weirdly, this body shaming and misogyny has also rubbed off on William Goldman, who in his notes is hateful to his wife as well as his fat son just like his hero S. Morgenstern². His writing style is also suspiciously similar, as he also enjoys (1) these weirdly formatted lists and (2) parentheticals.

In conclusion, I'd recommend the film over this book as it contains most dialogue word for word. It contains all the “good parts,” but overall also less of the bad.

Footnotes

[1] I know, but let's pretend. ↑ [2] Shush. ↑

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Monumental Work, Good Translation

How does one review such a titanic work? Maybe by mirroring its structure and transitioning between topics with more or less elegance. Ovid mostly is successful in weaving elegant transitions between the stories he tells. The reader is pulled along and—were it not for the chapter headings that the translation adds—would sometimes even miss the point where one tale ends and another begins.

Similar to the segues the translation itself flows quite nicely. Written in blank verse (i.e. 10 syllables per verse, no rhymes) the rhythm can pull the reader along even through the occasional uninteresting tale. Because, as should be expected, not every little tale in this work can be as gripping as the best of them.

Which are “the best” then? Obviously it's going to depend on the reader and their tastes, but there are many famous tales, like those of Icarus or Hercules. There's some other ancient celebrities like Cerberus, Julius Caesar, Pythagoras, Achilles, Apollo and Orpheus. Some stories explain the creation of the world, cities, sunflowers, and more audacious origins.

These tales most always contain transformations of some kind (hence the name), but apart from that they touch on themes of love, identity, honour, shame, ambition, duty, and desire. These themes are so timeless that the modern reader will find a great deal of value and not much of an issue in relating to the action. The only issue one might encounter is with the amount of physical violence and rape, which these myths are infamous for.

Another hiccup might be this translation's very occasional strange choice of words. Only a couple of times was I startled by a word that seemed too modern or otherwise too out of place. I have not read other translations nor the original Latin to verify how true to the original text it is, but had to mention it here.

Let me close with answering this question: Should we still read Ovid today? The answer is simple: Yes! Beautiful and thought provoking in its form and content, this truly is a timeless classic. I would not advocate strongly for this translation in particular, but it's also not a wrong choice.

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Interessante Texte zu Mode, Fitness und Überwachung

(Herausgegeben vom bpb)

Dieser Band versammelt fünf Texte über Digitale Bildkulturen. Die ersten zwei, “Gifs” und “Meme” sind realitätsfern, was heutige Internetkulturen angeht.

Weiter geht es mit “Modebilder”, einem spannenden Text, der Instagram-Infulencerinnen in einen geschichtlichen Kontext der letzten 50 Jahre setzt. Wenn es um die immer gleich erscheinenden Bildmotive geht, wie sie Bo Burnham in “White Woman's Instagram” kritisiert, wird hier auch ein interessantes Argument konstruiert, welches diesen Bildern sehr wohl schöpferische Selbstbestimmung zuspricht. Und auch zur Kritik an repitiven Designs in High-Fashion wird ein Gegenpol eröffnet.

“Bodybilder” handelt von der Gestaltung von Gyms und den Social Media Kanälen von Fitness-Infulencer*innen. Hierbei wird ausgelotet, ob nun die Spiegel oder die Selfie-Kameras die “Wahrheit” über abgebildete Körper offenbaren und wie Corona das Denken über Fitnesstraining beeinflusst hat.

“Gesichtserkennung” schließlich befasst sich mit biases der Gesichtserkennung und geht über das Argument “Garbage In, Garbage Out” hinaus und stellt auch die Architektur von Gesichtserkennungssoftware in Frage. Maskierung und Bildgeneration sind auch noch kurz Thema.

Obwohl die ersten zwei Texte wenig wert haben, setzen die anderen drei Texte spannende Schwerpunkte, die sie genügend breit—aber auch tief—ausleuchten.

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Where does Anarchism succeed and where does it fall short?

The two planets Anarres and Urras are each other's moons, yet the people living on them hardly know what it's like on the other planet. All they know is that Urras is an archist society, while the people of Anarres are anarchists.

In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, who travels to Urras in a mission to facilitate interplanetary understanding. Every other chapter switches between past and present (or future and further future) and we thus get introduced to Shevek on Anarres and what led him to go to Urras while we also learn about him on Urras and how his mission is going.

But the book is not actually that interested in Shevek's story. Much time is spent showing us the workings (and failings) of Anarres' anarchist society: The education system, job distribution, living arrangements, romantic partnership, etc. Similarly, the chapters on capitalist and archist Urras further explores anarchism through Urras' people arguing with Shevek. Of course, we also learn about Urras' society, but any politically literate person should already know about such topics as wasteful production, poverty, police brutality, greed, etc.

Urras is obviously not presented as “the good ones”, but Anarres isn't shown through rose-colored glasses either. It too is corrupted by power and is by no means a paradise. It's still a society made up of humans that can be shitty to each other.

In the end world building takes a bit of a backseat as Shevek's story becomes more important, but he is a stand-in for anyone. This story is not about a physicist—or an anarchist diplomat. It's about what justice, shame and greed are. What role art and science plays in politics. It's about what freedom means in a society.

But the otherwise compelling narrative is soured by a sexual assault that occurs somewhere in the middle. I don't have a problem with that topic popping up in general, but the way it enters into this story is just baffling: The people of Anarres are always painted as very conscious of power imbalances, going so far as describing sex as “copulating” as that is supposedly the only word that does not carry heavy undertones of something being done by one party to the other, but rather something done together. And still one of these folks does not understand the concept of consent! And it's not portrayed as that one person being “one of the bad ones”. It would have needed more set up or explanation to be valuable.

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Coping with Brexit through humour

This novel takes a satirical look at Brexit and the populism surrounding it. It is quite humorous in its descriptions of politicians' day-to-day and a quick read. Its ties to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis are loose and only extend to mirroring the opening lines describing a human-insect-transformation. Neither the writing style nor the explored topics are very Kafkaesque.

The focus is disappointingly shallow, namely the politicians and the absurdity of their politics and behaviour. How exactly this fits with (the will of) the people is not explored to a satisfying conclusion. After reading—as before—we are wondering how such a thing as Brexit could happen and why the politicians went through with it and why the people voted for it.

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Nettes Stück über Erinnerung und Loslassen

Da ich Theaterstücke quasi nie lese, sehe ich mich nicht in der Lage all zu sehr darüber urteilen zu können. Ich fande den Mix aus Medien spannend (einige Szenen sind instagram Reels oder Youtube Videos). Inhaltlich waren auch schöne Themen drin.

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Can't stand on its own

This is the second book in the “Tiffany Achings” series, following the excellent The Wee Free Men—which I read thrice when I first encountered it!

Why am I talking about the first book? Well, because much of this book is dedicated to recap or summarize parts of it. Characters are reintroduced in detail and relevant plot points are retold in great detail. BUT, these recaps focus very much on the content and “facts” without repeating the witty prose, jokes and puns that accompanied these events in the first book. Overall, these parts just make you want to reread the first book to (re-)experience these events properly.

Next to retellings of the first book we thankfully do get a new plot and some new quirky characters. But overall I'd say that these new characters aren't as interesting and the plot is also not as exciting. Our protagonist Tiffany is very passive and mostly gets pushed around while we are dragged along. This changes only at the very end—on the last 50 pages—when Tiffany finally acts with intelligence and agency and themes of identity and self are discussed in interesting ways.

That ending on its own does definitely reach the genius of the first book, but 300 pages of mostly mediocre fluff really drag down this book as a whole. I'm very curious to see where the next book falls.

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Zu welcher Idylle hast du keinen Zugang? Und willst du das ändern?

Eine Frau stürzt sich von einem Häuserdach. Doch sofort, macht das Buch einen Zeitsprung zurück und wir lernen eine handvoll Charaktere kennen, deren Lebenslauf durch diesen Sprung einen Schock erfahren wird.

Dieser Roman handelt von Leben, die sich verfahren haben—ganz heimlich auf eine Spur gekommen sind, auf die sie nie wollten. Sie finden sich in unglücklichen Ehen oder sinnlosen Affären, im zwecklosen Festhalten an der Vergangenheit oder der Flucht vor ihr, in aufgegebenen Träumen. Und nun werden sie wachgerüttelt durch den Sprung, bekommen die Chance, etwas zu verändern.

Die Autorin präsentiert uns mit einer wunderbaren Vielfalt an Schicksalen, und ebenso vielen Umgängen mit dem disruptiven Event. Jedes Einzelschicksal ist voll von Wahrhaftigkeit und wird dann kunstvoll in ein gemeinsames Narrativ verwoben, welches noch einmal größer als die Summe seiner Teile ist.

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I'd rather be lonely than with this book

Terrible. I got this because it was a footnote in the excellent Arcadia. I was hoping for some insights into loneliness as a concept, what it means for us today, and how we (can) deal with it.

All these topics do appear in chapter headings, but the chapter content does not really provide answers. The author seems scared to say anything in his own words and instead cites philosophers, poets, films and TV shows. Working with citations obviously is not the problem, and working with fiction as examples or to define terms is actually a thing I enjoy immensely, but the author should do more to guide us between these different voices and provide should some own commentary. In the end it reads more like one of those conspiracy cork boards with red string than a book: “What's loneliness? The protagonist of Taxi Driver describes his loneliness like this, Nietzsche says that and Kant says that. Let's talk about Social Media. Here's a poem and here's a quote by some philosopher. Next topic.”

When the author does provide some of his own words it's to over-explain every little concept with two examples each. Some basic ideas are even explained multiple times in different chapters bloating this book to probably double the size it could be—and it's still just 140 pages excluding references and end-notes!

My last gripe with this book was that it gendered in every way possible: It uses a generic “he”, sometimes a “he or she”, once a “s/he” and a couple times “they”. Any one of these would have been better than to mix them all throughout!

Overall, no fun at all to get through, while also not providing any great insights. You'd be better off reading the opening four paragraphs of the Loneliness Wikipedia page. I wrote that as somewhat of a joke, but I just checked It's actually got 95% of the facts that I took from the book.

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