All the Names

I tried and tried to read this book but just couldn't get into it. I think I'd rather give Blindness a shot first anyway. I'll come back to this when I have more downtime.

I was a fan of José Saramago before his passing but his death has actually reminded me to read some of his novels that I hadn't previously read and the man has certainly left a legacy.

At it's surface, All the Names is the story of the way bureaucracy deals with the dead and the living (at least in the 90s in Portugal) and how even the most antiquated systems are capable of some change.

To me, however, it was the story of what happens when you get so wrapped up in uncovering what you've created as your life's sole mystery that you lose the whole point and meaning of it to disastrous ends. I'm not sure if José was trying to really make that statement and I can't say any more without giving away any spoilers but that is what the book was really about to me.

The novel's major downfall is the tediousness of the details of the Central Registry in Portugal which is in charge of filing all the life and death cards year after year. Some of these details needed to be in there to make the story more plausible. However, it felt intensely boring in some chapters, especially the first ones, to read about it. It seems unfathomable that the entire system wouldn't be entirely computerized by now so, in some senses, this book can serve as a testament to the old relics if anyone doubts they once existed.

By far, for anyone, what this book is saying is that you have to go beyond a name and be curious about the person as a whole to justify a sense of existence, for him/her and yourself.

The internal dialogue of the main protagonist is also quite interesting, not to mention the conversations he has with his ceiling. Yes, you read that right.


p.29 "Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us."

p. 153 "...old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the allusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognize him or herself in us."

p.206 "It was precisely because I didn't know her that I came looking for her, You see I was right when I said that one can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger, Goodbye."

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A lingering delight of a book. Senhor José is living out his life as a humdrum clerk, a cog in the vast bureaucratic machine that is the Central Registry, when a simple accident puts in his hand the records of an unknown young lady. José, becoming obsessed with learning about the unknown woman, breaks rule after rule in his quest to discover her story. Saramago's prose is lovely, and is expertly translated here by Margaret Jull Costa. While the dense paragraphs and narrative style take a bit of getting used to, it's well worth the effort. ( )

I am falling in love with Saramago's prose more and more. His titanic blocks of page-long paragraphs seem very intimidating, but each individual sentence is beautifully interlacing and flowing.

I won't reveal too many of the details, but Saramago discusses not only the broad themes of isolation and identity, through the search of an anonymous woman by low-level clerk in a vast Central Registry, where the lives of all are reduced to an orderly system of index cards, but also loneliness and what it means to truly be a person. ( )

قرأت لساراماغو العمى أولاً ، وكنت قد اقتنيت كتابه ​كلّ الأسماء في ذات الوقت. لا أعلم لما بدأت بالعمى ​لكنّها بالفعل وضعت تصوراً واضحاً للأسلوب الذي يكتب​ به. البساطة الاستثنائية واللغة المباشرة ، والترقي​م علامات الترقيم المدهشة التي لم أجدها في كتاب آخر​
وينبغي هنا أن أشير إلى ترجمة صالح علماني الرائعة ا​لتي لم تترك لي مجالاً في التساؤل عن الفرق بين الرو​اية بالترجمة الإنجليزية والعربية لأنّ العربية ستكو​
الحكاية حكاية دون جوزيه الكاتب البسيط في المحفوظات​ العامّة ، يحبّ جمع المعلومات عن المشاهير ، قصاصات​ حياتهم وصورهم من الصحف والمجلات ، يتتبع أخبارهم ،​
لكنّ هوسه هذا ينقله في أحد الأيام من تتبع المشاهير​ إلى تتبع امرأة مجهولة ، ويتبع خيطاً وهمياً رقيقاً​ يمتد ليربطها مع عدة أشخاص ، وفضوله هو المحرّك الر​ئيسي لكلّ أحداث الحكاية ، وكلما قلت حسناً الآن ينت​هي كلّ شيء ، تأخذ الأحداث منحىً جديداً.​
في الرواية عدّة جوانب لكّنها في المجمل تركز على ال​انسان، ما يجول في داخله ، أفكاره ، مخاوفه ، حديث ب​
دون جوزيه شخص يشبهنا كثيراً ، واعتقد اعتقاداً يقار​ب التأكيد أن ساراماغو نجح في ايجاد شخصية بوتقة سيج​
وكما حصل في رواية العمى ، ساراماغو يسقط المدينة عل​ى كل المدن ، كل السجلات ، كل المقابر ، وكل البشر ،​ وهذا ما ينشده أن تقرأ عن الانسان بمعزل عن وطنه وم​كانه وتشعر به كما تشعر بنفسك.​

أتمنى لكم قراءة ممتعة معها.
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