The Amphibium, pt. 11
This is Vol. 11 of the Amphibium.
The aunt holds court
A few numbers ago, I mentioned that I'd been reading Anniversaries, a 1,600-page novel by the German writer Uwe Johnson, which was published in four parts throughout the seventies and early eighties. Soon after it was completed, the book appeared in a radically abridged English version, but only last year was a complete translation--by Damion Searls--published by New York Review Books. Since this is the season of end-of-year list making, I think I can say that it was the best thing I read all year. (Although it was published in 2018, at least one critic--Parul Sehgal from the New York Times--put it on her Best of 2019 list.)
The book takes place in New York City over the course of a single year, from August 1967 to August 1968, with a chapter devoted to each day. It primarily concerns Gesine Cresspahl, a German woman living on Riverside Drive with her eleven-year-old daughter. Over the course of the year, Cresspahl tells her daughter the history of their family in what was then East Germany, from the rise of Hitler through the war and the Soviet occupation. At the same time, we are given a first person account of one of the most significant years in modern American history, which included the expansion of the war in Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
Given these descriptions, you might not anticipate that the book is extremely funny and generally a pleasure to read. Cresspahl shares two hobbies with almost everyone I know: reading the New York Times and complaining about what she reads in the New York Times. Most chapters begin with a rundown of that day's paper (in one way, this obviously sets the book firmly in time, but it also feels very contemporary; the gesture has the air of autofiction). This is followed by Cresspahl's gloss on what she's read. She apostrophizes the paper as "Aunty Times," and at one point offers this description of her:
The New York Times strikes Gesine as like an aunt from a good family that has acquired a certain fortune on the backs of others but not in any brutal way, simply as the age dictates. It has rendered services to every government, and every government is in the history books. This surviving aunt carries on the family tradition. Gesine pictures age, a gaunt figure, a deeply lined face, a bitter twist to the mouth, but elegant dark clothes, an insistence on hairpins, a scratchy voice, smiles only in the corners of the eyes. Never, never losing her temper. In her bearing, in the way she holds her legs, she flirts with her age--a sign of her experience. She has been around, looked life straight in its tight-lipped face; no chance of anyone pulling the wool over her eyes. She has had her affairs but was certainly no adventuress; they were in the best hotels in Europe, as befit her station; that's all in the past now. She so obviously expects respect that she almost invites on to refuse it. She is a little stubborn, almost pushy when she feels excluded by younger people. She likes the young people to have their fun as long as she is the one doling it out. Gesine pictures a living room, a salon, furnished in Empire style, where the aunt holds court.
When I arrived at this passage on page 31, I knew I'd be sticking with this book to the end. The description goes on for another page--obviously rhetorical efficiency is not the novel's priority--and each bit of it is pitch-perfect. Obviously Aunty Times has changed in the past fifty years, but there are certain notes ("Never, never losing her temper." "She likes the young people to have their fun as long as she is the one doling it out.") that still fit very well. I find myself now, when engaging in the national pastimes of reading the Times and complaining about the Times, imagining this figure.
As the age dictates
Since we've come this far, I might as well offer my own top ten list for inspection. It consists of books I read for the first time in the past year, regardless of when they were published. They are:
- Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson
- The Sleepwalkers by Herman Broch
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
- Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
- The Plains by Gerald Murnane
- Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
- Oreo by Fran Ross
- Redeployment by Phil Klay
- The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
A few notes on this list:
I'd read Brothers Karamazov years ago in the classic Constance Garnett translation, but this year I read the newer translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and it completely blew my head off.
I read a bunch of books this year by Broch, Vargas Llosa, and Murnane; I've just listed my favorite from each but I might have named several others.
Lastly, the best best book I read this year was my wife's novel, which will be published in 2021 and will obviously be on everyone's end-of-year list come then. You'll probably be hearing more about this from me in the future.
While we're at it
Speaking of best books list from the future, my new novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, will be out in May. You can pre-order it from your local independent bookstore here. You can get it from Barnes and Noble by clicking here. It can also be found at another prominent online retailer.
I should also mention that in anticipation of the book's appearance, I have returned to twitter, despite my reservations about the form.
If you’re new around here, a bit more about me.