Sylvain Tesson

Toujours un bon style, Sylvain Tesson. Cela oscille entre fulgurance et paresse. On en retient le fait que l'on croit observer alors que c'est nous qui sommes observés. A lire avant ou après avoir vu le magnifique film de Laurent Munier au titre éponyme.

I'm going to be honest - I did not finish this book, so I am only reviewing the portion that I read (slightly less than half of the book).

Sylvian Tesson is completely insufferable, at least in this memoir. Have you ever met someone who is so full of him-or-herself that it is physically painful to be around that person, someone who talks about how great he/she is and, not so subtly, paints everyone who isn't at his/her level as inferior? Yes? Then don't bother reading this book, because show more Tesson is one of the worst cases of this I have ever read.

Most of the book that I read (like I said, I didn't read all of it - there was no way in hell I could force myself to do so) was pretty much Tesson patting himself on the back for being so worldly and well-read. He comes across as being incredibly proud that he drinks a great quantity of vodka (so the fuck what?) and no other liquor apparently is good enough to touch his lips. And his reading list - good god! He is spending six months in Siberia - I expect a book with self-inflection and treatises on nature and government and politics and communities in the wild (whether plant or animal). I suppose I was expecting another Thoreau (and Tesson actually throws a dig at Thoreau in the beginning of the book - you, sir, are NO Thoreau and you are in NO WAY close to his caliber).

Instead, I got Tesson talking about what he reads "for pleasure" and then the footnotes explain the general gist of said books, because obviously us lowly peons reading this masterpiece are too stupid to have read the books ourselves.

There is extremely little self-inflection to be found in these pages - instead, Tesson has a superior, self-congratulating air throughout. I wonder if he is even capable of self-inflection. Maybe he got over himself in the second half of the book and actually started talking about other things, but I seriously have doubts - and, honestly, I don't care. The first half of the book was so incredibly off-putting that I wouldn't finish this book if it was the last book available after a book apocalypse.

I suppose I could give Tesson a bit of the benefit of the doubt, as I read the English translation. Perhaps something got lost in translation or a tone was inserted into the memoir that wasn't there in the original? I also doubt those things.

The book is titled The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga. It would be better titled something along the lines of I Am Superior to You: Let Me Tell You How Repeatedly as I Sip Vodka in a Cabin in Siberia as I Ignore the Nature Around Me. show less

In the midst of a harried and chaotic life, I can only dream of quiet space alone, away from people, completely sunk in nature, with nothing but time unspooling before me. What bliss this seems to me! Sylvain Tesson found just exactly this, choosing his own hermitage, for six months and recorded his observations and thoughts in the journal that became this book, aptly subtitled Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga.

Tesson had promised himself that before he turned forty, he would live as a show more hermit. Having visited the remote Lake Baikal on the Siberian taiga before, it was the perfect place for him to pursue this goal of living silently, intentionally, and simply, far from other men. In February, armed with provisions to get him through the long cold and the brief blossoming of spring, Tesson arrived at his remote cabin. He took just the basics, books, vodka, and cigars as he embarked on his journey. He records his days in a journal, spending much of his time hiking, doing chores around the cabin, fishing to supplement his supplies, and reading. His spare existence in his simple cabin is actually a luxurious examination into his own soul, an homage to the magnitude and magnificence of nature, and a chance to muse philosophically untarnished by the needs, wants, and demands of others. Tesson writes beautifully, recording exquisitely detailed observations about the world around him. His most frequent and welcomed visitors are the titmice outside his window. But there are other occasional visitors to his self-chosen hermitage as well. On rare occasions, he kayaks and hikes to visit his neighbors or they come crashing loudly into his peaceful solitude to drink vodka and tell tales. As his time on the edge of the forest continues, he adopts two small puppies as companions, changing the tenor of his isolated life.

Some of Tesson's entries in his journal are brief and others longer meditations on a life both tiny and vast. Sitting at his window and watching the lake, he captures the mutability of the weather and of his own moods. He celebrates the peaceful calm of life in seclusion and concludes that hermits are not fighting against the world when they retreat, they are simple walking away from it. He reads philosophy, other accounts of solitary living, and some popular crime novels for an interlude between the heavier books. But mainly he observes the world around him as he goes about his days: the weather, the wildlife, the forest, and even the rocks catch his eye. Current events, personal and political, rarely intrude on his self-contained life on the taiga although the occasional visitor brings days old newspapers and he hears both of his sister's baby's birth and of his girlfriend's final goodbye on his mostly unused satellite phone. This is a very contemplative and slow book, mirroring Tesson's days. But in the reading of it, it asks you to take a brief respite from all the noise swirling around, to sink into its words, and to commune with that tiny piece of your own soul engaged by the loveliness of the writing and the thoughts between these covers show less

French publicist Sylvain Tesson is definitely not one of my favorite authors. In the books I've read by him, I was consistently turned off by his egotism, his cultural pessimism, and especially his misanthropy. Yet, I didn't regret his "Summer with Homer." This is, of course, partly due to the subject matter: I've just begun an in-depth reading of the work attributed to the Greek writer, so my interest was automatically more than piqued. But I was truly impressed by the valuable insights show more Tesson gleaned from his engagement with Homer.
This booklet is the written record and light adaptation of the radio series Tesson created for Radio France in the summer of 2017, spread over a total of nine episodes. This booklet contains 65 pieces, some fairly concise, others somewhat longer. As a result, numerous aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey are explored, and that breadth alone gives this booklet a rich cachet. Tesson naturally touches on many aspects already explored by so many others (the style, the composition, the aesthetics of war, the clash of personalities, the strong emphasis on emotions, the role of women, the role of gods, etc.). But he primarily emphasizes the contemporary relevance of Homer's work by citing the depletion of the earth as the new (well, new?) form of hubris, and by regularly attacking the Big Four and other capitalist behemoths. Tesson occasionally indulges in somewhat bombastic language, overly erudite references (Nietzsche, Arendt, etc.), pseudo-wisdoms, and his usual sourness. But he truly draws out the essential themes from Homer and occasionally plumbs the depths of his work, which still resonates with us after more than 2,700 years. In my History account on Goodreads I delve a little deeper into a statement by Tesson about the essential nature of man: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7917516499 show less