Gert Jonke (1946–2009)

This book wins my prestigious "most ridiculous afterword of the 21st century" badge of honor. SoV is a nice collection of bits and pieces mostly about Vienna. Supposedly some of it is based on Jonke's life, but that seems pretty unlikely, except in the broadest, least informative sense. There is some trickiness to the writing, but it doesn't take a genius to work out. Most importantly, it's funny, smart, and just strange enough to be compelling. It's as if Beckett decided to take it easy for show more once.

The afterword, on the other hand, somehow contrives to need a two page bibliography including, I tish you not, Jonathan Safran Foer; given that this text could easily stand on its own, I'm puzzled by the translator's need to compare it to about 50000000 other books, most of which are less interesting and certainly less enjoyable than this one. Luckily, the translation is clear and very readable.

There's a lot to be said about SoV, but I'll just put in a word for 'Wholesale Fish Dealer by the Danube Canal.' It starts out like a funny pub story about a conspiracy nut, looks like it's about to become a tiresome "but isn't all literature with its plots and forms really just another kind of lunatic conspiracy theory?" tale, then (I would argue) finally develops into a very funny, very cutting re-description of representative democracy. The conspiracy nut suggests that life would be a lot easier and more efficient if he replaced the Chancellor, who is really only a puppet. Indeed. show less

Homage to Czerny is in two sections and is in patches rather reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard, though Jonke's style is much less extreme. And there seem to be references to music in the repetitions, rhythms, and structure; in fact, I've little doubt there are many musical references I missed altogether.

In the first and longer section two siblings are giving a party. Just as the paintings they've hung about their estate precisely duplicate the views that they obscure, the party will, they hope, show more down to each word and gesture be indistinguishable from the party they gave exactly one year before. The premise is all the more intriguing because the painter of the oils and the narrator, an unnamed composer, are the only guests who know of their hosts' intention.

The rest of the book describes the visit a composer (who may or may not be the same narrator) and his brother pay to the music conservatory where they both studied. In the attic from which they cannot escape they find dozens upon dozens of pianos allowed to fall into a state of desuetude.

I was a bit more taken with the first section, perhaps because the second was slightly more conventional: The characters in the latter were better-drawn, the events less unlikely, and the conversations less surreal than in the first.

I don't know whether I'll have remembered the novel as a whole six months from now, but I don't think I'll have forgotten the eeriness of the North city, the smokestacks of impossible heights, the unearthly weather patterns and the wonderfully absurd explanations for them. show less

This novella reminded me a bit of Calvino in its terse style and bizarre images. Like the bulk of his work, this novel is musical, innovative, and difficult, not in a dusty academic way, but as a delightful puzzle, as a well-constructed argument, as a challenging game of chess. Innocence devolves into disillusion and the paranoid appear in unexpected moments.
Beginning with a recounting of the narrator’s birth, and how his skin was tinged blue, the novel proceeds with descriptions of show more events that helped shape his personality, his consciousness, his obsessions: he encounters a man who thinks the French Embassy was built in the wrong place; he meets another who is unsure whether he is or isn’t the Chancellor’s confidant; he bumps into an eccentric stamp collector in the woods he thinks was imitating a tawny owl’s call; he meets another man (perhaps Jonke’s tribute to André Gide’s The Counterfeiters) who hands him a book called The System of Vienna; and he meets a paranoid fish merchant who believes that he masterminds Austrian politics from his stall.
Filled with eclectic sketches of personal interests of the narrator, his friends, and other characters the images seem to fit together in a magical way that defies analysis. It is a book that bears reflection and perhaps ultimately will leave questions unanswered and thoughts unresolved. From stamp collecting to lovemaking to an opera class the book becomes more fantastic as it spans briefly into nonexistence. show less

The notion of a public square as the main character of a novel could not be more appealing. Not only does it have the potential to be a meta-character, shaping and distilling the village's shared characteristics and struggles, but its role lends itself to comparisons with an island or a stage on which appearance is more or less compulsory (the well is in its center). A public square as a character could make visible the creative process of constructing the everyday. When major events occur, show more they occur there as well, shaping in turn and being shaped by that everyday.

Our main character in Geometric Regional Novel is meticulously described, down to its number of tiles (although that number is not amended once the trees are uprooted entirely), but fails to make that everyday visible on anything like a consistent basis. Every other chapter is devoted to a description of some modification made to it, some event there (usually quite dramatic: a troop of acrobats, soldiers recruiting young boys, a flood) and finally, its traversal by the narrator and his 2nd person interlocutor.

But instead of acting on that stage a nuanced portrayal that includes creativity by the people in a bottom-up process, Jonke chooses to portray his village square almost entirely as a site for the exercising of bureaucratic power. Regulations are written out at exhaustive length, making up some of the book's "experimental" content. Nor are the edicts of the state necessarily stiff and formal; worse, they're whimsical. The village square becomes the site of convergence not only for the people of the village, but also the whims of nature and government. When the citizens are described, it's as impotently grumbling or positively cleaving to their leaders. It's not the lack of individuation that I mind, but the lack of will.

Jonke's tone in the narration both mimics and mocks bureaucracy, but the technique of obsessive observation he uses is so close to the real thing that it sees no way out; instead, two mirrors face each other and create an infinite regress, letting only bureaucratic power be seen as far as the atoms of the individual's "soul." And I use that word advisedly, since the faults I see in Geometric Regional Novel parallel the faults that Michel de Certeau criticized in Foucault: that his method of researching history was so bureaucratic -- it imitated so perfectly the power structures he sought to critique -- that it was only natural if all he could see was bureaucratic power.

Let me offer instead a model of observation from the bottom up that I would have hoped to see Jonke at least broach in this novel. You've perhaps heard of the Japanese man whose blog is dedicated to a single vending machine and its changes. He has taken a photo of the same vending machine almost every week day for about 3 years now, and offers comparisons of his daily snapshots with the pictures he took a year ago on the same day. What was invisible to consumers -- the tastes of the people nearby, the way that marketing works -- becomes visible, and allows knowledge to disseminate. This model of observation shows a man not passively being acted upon, but watching the careful calculations and modifications of those who watch him. What arises from this inter-level loop is not the cynical exercise of the same kind of power (we know who will win that battle, who is better practiced at its exercise), but a new consciousness of how our "new nature" (to quote Barthes) works at many levels simultaneously.

The idea of Geometric Regional Novel is so vastly appealing that I wanted it to succeed. I would love to see a novel that explored a single place with nuance and affection, even if that affection were not unmixed. Jonke's idea is fantastic, but the story he made of it wallows in the murk of rote mocking of bureaucracy, banal experimentation, and thoughtless conclusions. show less