Hanns-Josef Ortheil

This book is on the surface the account of how the author’s parents worked with him to overcome the silence of his early years. On a deeper level, it is a testament to the power of language in which we humans all share.
As a child, Ortheil didn’t speak; he rarely heard others speak. He grew up as an only child, yet was his parents’ fifth son. His older brothers had all died during or shortly after World War II, a fate that silenced his mother for many years. When she shopped, she handed show more a slip of paper with her needs to the clerk behind the counter. With her husband and child, she communicated with her hands or with written words. This habit was accepted by all three in the household but became problematic when Ortheil entered school. Faced with transfer to a school for the handicapped, the child’s father took the matter in hand during an extended vacation back in the family’s home village, away from the city of Cologne, where they lived. In a small hunting lodge, the father developed an ingenious method, beginning with the first rudiments of matching sounds and pictures, only then writing the letters of the alphabet.
The method bore fruit, and Ortheil soon developed into a prolific writer. Overcompensation? His loving depiction of his father’s patient pedagogy inspires one by showing how much can be accomplished by love and attention to both the needs and gifts of a child.
It’s notoriously difficult to evoke childhood, so it was reassuring to me that this book was labeled a novel, rather than a memoir. This genre-designation helped me as I began reading to suspend my disbelief that the author could recall so many details, even dialogue, from sixty years earlier. After reading that he soon formed the habit of writing a daily chronicle, though, I’m willing to believe that he could.
Not only in this aspect does this book depart from conventional fiction: There are no scenes created for dramatic effect. Once the initial difficulties had been overcome, I felt the book was in danger of falling into a sunny idyll, but new challenges crop up, such as when a newspaper publishes some of Ortheil's texts, and he becomes known as “the child who writes.” The way he and his parents deal with these and other developments remains entirely in character with the personae they have already displayed.
I suspect this book will stay with me for a long time. In its quiet way, it made a deep impression. show less

This German novel ("The yearning for love") demonstrates that inspired storytelling is still a viable alternative to contrived postmodern fiction, and the theme of romantic love can still fascinate modern readers. Besides the lovers' story, the love music, art and places, particularly the city of Zürich are prominent motives on the sidelines of the main narrative.

Un gioiellino, davvero una bella sorpresa!
Piccola premessa, non ho velleità di scrittura, questo titolo era semplicemente uno dei pochi decenti offerti da un programma di formazione della mia azienda, il titolo mi attirava perché non parlava di romanzi racconti scrittura creativa, ma di quello che tutti facciamo spesso se non tutti i giorni, prendere un'annotazione, un appunto. In questo senso il titolo può essere fuorviante, non troverete nei capitoli di questo libro grandi tecniche o show more consigli per prendere appunti, ma troverete note ed appunti di noti scrittori ma un racconto di come loro li hanno usati per generare o sviluppare le loro opere. E me li sono gustati tutti! Alcuni nomi? Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Leonardo da Vinci, Julio Cortázar, Walter Benjamin, giusto per dirne alcuni che ho gustato di più.
Davvero davvero una piacevole sorpresa, lo consiglio a chi ama poter immaginare come uno scrittore possa essere arrivato a scrivere il capolavoro che tanto amiamo. show less

Engaging feel-good novel about an ethnologist who, under the influence of a small town in Sicily (loosely based on Modica), finally gets over his hang-ups about an unhappy childhood. Very nicely done: Ortheil puts in enough comedy to make sure we don't take his narrator entirely seriously, but all the same he manages to engage our sympathy with him. The plot is a bit predictable, and there's more than a hint of Kennst-du-das-Land about it all, but there's nothing wrong with that.