Moss

“It is a slow fall. Sometimes, though, it is a rising upward” (138).

It took me numerous starts to get into this, but once I did — wow. This was lovely, reminiscent of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses: quiet, rural, memory-laced. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this book in my twenties. It’s almost plotless as the aging narrator meditates on nature generally and moss particularly, the small plant that is barely noticed, yet covers the largest trees, renders the most solid thing invisible. If you like that kind of quiet book, that’s meditative, about one thing — like moss — but really about so much more, then check this out. If you’re looking for a book in which a bunch of stuff happens, though, this may not be for you.

An interesting brief bildungsroman of sorts, where the character, rather than growing up, grows into his death. The text is presented as a "found manuscript" published after the author's death.

The protagonist tries to move away from the language of (botanical) science in which he spent his adult life in order to achieve a different kind of knowledge, more holistic.

While a reader may disagree with the stance of the character - Lukhas Ohlburg (and it is hard not to consider him an alter ego of the author, whose name is an anagram of the character's: Klaus), his approach to the subject matter of how to perceive reality is nevertheless compelling.

This book felt like it was written for me personally. I was surprised to see it was originally published (in German) in 1984, because it has so much to say to our current time. I wish I had had the opportunity to read it sooner, and hope to see many more of Modick's works made accessible in English in the near future.

'Moss' is layered and subtle, with beautifully-written prose. Hidden throughout are many literary treasures ("wrapped up, onionlike, in many layers of blankets" particularly delighted me). I found the narrator really relatable, from the way he described feeling physically assaulted by unwanted noise, to his deepening relationship with the natural world, to his views on death and decay. It was clear to me from the show more introductory framing story that I was going to connect with this man and his experiences with nature and with being regarded as psychologically unsound because of them. When your priorities radically change, people don't really know what to do with you anymore show less

Order, control, separation from nature. That is what his father had taught. Upon arriving at their woodland cabin, as a child his duty had been to scrub the moss from the stone pathway. The child objected, "But the moss is so lovely."

Now, he is old and endeavoring to form a lifetime of insight into his final paper critiquing nomenclature. He questions his father's teaching and the science of his academic career as a biologist.

Why do we divide ourselves from nature? What can we learn from moss? Shouldn't our goal be wonder and joy of beauty, not arcane facts and artificial categories?

Returning to that family cabin, surrounded by the forest, he embraces death as part of life, the natural cycle.

Science gives way to connection.

When his show more manuscript is found after his death, it was not what people expected. He renamed it "Moss."

Oh, I thought, another novel about age and death! I am already too aware of the passing years, how I have outlived so many family members! And with a pandemic, every one of us is faced with our mortality and aware of the uncertainty of life.

I feel the depth of this story eludes me, calling me to reread and grapple with all that lies beneath it's misleading simplicity and the beauty of its poetry.

I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Prepare to be surprised. I know I was. This thin little fictional memoir grabbed me and would not let me go until I finished it in less than one day. “Moss” explores what is left at the end of our life, I.e. what really matters. For the botanist in this story it is not the decades of classifying plants it is how does he let the natural world speak into the essence of his being. Highly recommended for everyone that has ever been enchanted by nature.

A true curiosity! An aging botanist writing a treatise on scientific classification that should be his legacy work finds himself stuck on moss, more and more literally. While writing, he lives in a family vacation cottage that is prone to invasive moisture during seasonal transitions and to moss growing on the roof. He rejects the seasonal scraping of the moss that was one of his father's obsessions. He relates youthful stories of lovemaking in the moss. He begins to revere it, and to envision himself as supporting its growth. He gives up shaving and begins to muse about his own death, the greenery that will survive him and thrive upon him.

David Herman, the translator, had his work cut out for him in making this German language work show more come alive in English, working closely with the author. Philosophical and inward-turning abstractions are reworked as poetry, as in this bit involving the advantage of a wood fire over coal: “. . . it makes me sad that I have not known, not seen, not cut down myself the trees that undergo this transformation from a luscious green to a red-hot vital force, giving life . . . No one piece looks like another—a banality that has been banal for so long that it is no longer recognized as such. Yet the variety, particularly of burl wood, is more than astounding. I attempt to estimate the age of the wood by reconstructing the size of the trees, their double life in earth and air, their simultaneous upward and downward growth. Now and then I chew small pieces of bark, especially ones that already have moss attached to them.”

Moss was originally published over thirty years ago. As with Heroine, another book I reviewed recently, reading Moss I often had the sensation of a string of eternity vibrating between the past and the present. Rather than offering persistent arguments and scenarios on women and society (Heroine), Moss relates concern that political policy is ambivalent when it comes to the environment. “Could it be,” the narrator writes, relating a conversation with a friend, “that people had finally grasped that not politics but, rather, nature constitutes the true concern of mankind? But how, exactly, does one go about doing politics by means of nature?” show less

When it comes to the magnificent old pine tree whose branches beat against my upper windows, I can name it “correctly” and conceptually disassemble it right down to its molecular structure. But I have no way of describing the language with which the tree, in knocking against the window, speaks to me.

With nature themes and a meta-literature premise narrated by an aging botanist who specializes in nomenclature, I was excited to snag this novella through LT’s Early Reviewers. Then I started it, and started it again, and again… I don’t know…the passage above captured me a couple dozen pages in, but I felt I was reading the whole rest of it with glazed eyes.