Here we are at the very beginning of a year of reading! I hope the beach scene treats you well. We’ll be reading about the bad news, reflecting on tragedies that beset the century so far, and dealing with a daughter who is growing up in this strange world, so soak in that late summer sun.
I’ve decided to post these on Sunday evenings, even though it will still be a few days before the reading catches up. It just seems like a good time to do it, so for the next year, here we go!
One thing I want to point out is that the book begins with an undated chapter with Gesine watching the waves — such a wonderful way to start a book with so much reflection and movement — but, as pointed out to me by translator Damion Searls, it is clearly August 20, so that’s when I’m starting . . . and I recommend you do too!
Please share your thoughts below as you prepare to read or as you go through this first week of reading. Don’t forget, we have a bit of a bonus day here.
For the main page of this read-along, please go here.
Since this is where I hope some of us start discussing this first week, I want to start by saying I hope folks feel welcome to share as much or as little as works for them. I myself have not set out with the goal of commenting in-depth daily. I think the weight of that would be too much. I’m sure there will be plenty of days through the year where I don’t comment at all. Mainly, this is about reading the book, so share when you can, even if it’s just a short comment that you liked a particular day or some such thing. I look forward to hearing from you!
Is there a specific place to join the group reading the book?
You’ve found it, Linda! At least here on my blog, where I will be posting these weekly. On the Goodreads NYRB Classics group there may be some activity, as well as on The Mookse and the Gripes group.
But if you want to join in here (and I hope you do), I’d recommend you just post your thoughts on this first week of entries right here.
The ball will be rolling a bit tomorrow, when the first entry arrives, and hopefully a few folk will join in then. In the meantime, though, people can also talk here about looking forward to starting the book.
Hi – It’s Ella from the M&G group at Goodreads. I started the couple of front pages tonight and I’m looking forward to doing a book over the course of a year. So long as I don’t allow myself to get behind, I think this should be pretty amazing, and I’m looking forward to doing it with a group.
I’ve read the first (undated) entry – beautiful writing and the shift between segregation in 1960s America and the conditions in 1930s Germany in Jerichow around the time of her birth was fascinating.
Incidentally only in German – but google translate can deal with that – and with page numbers from the German edition (harder) but this is a fascinating ‘address book’ of all the characters
http://literaturlexikon.uni-saarland.de/index.php?id=196#c3897
If the opening section is representative of the whole book, this will be an incredible year of reading. I do have one question. I tried looking up the German places that are named in the section and found that the names of most of them are not real places. But there is a Jerichow in Germany, although it’s not near the Baltic coast. I found one source (a Ph. D dissertation about topographies in the works of various authors. No kidding!) that says that Johnson’s Jerichow is near the Baltic shore and not the same place as the real Jerichow, which is due west of Berlin and on the Elbe river. It seems odd he would choose the name of an actual place for a fictional one.
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There are a lot of places named just in this first section and I was trying to use maps to give me a better visual sense of their locations, but it seems that can’t really be done. For now, I’m going to go with the places are all fictional, but if anyone has more information on them I’d appreciate hearing it.
Well, hopefully my comments will be allowed, but I decided almost immediately that I needed to keep a notebook with the book, and I grabbed a sticky booklet too (and erasable pen/pencils too.) I had considered trying to read this in German, but I’m really glad I held out for the English translation. I already have a list of characters, and that kleine Namensregister und Adreßbuch could be very helpful as well. There are some big books I can read straight through, but this seems like a good one to have a notebook alongside.
That’s intersting, David. It does seem strange to create a fictional town with the name of a real one.
Mecklenburg exists (it is a state) and the New York areas and stations are real places.
That is interesting. I wonder if he’s commenting on what was lost, including knowledge/familiarity. Gesine’s daughter, we’ll see, because she’s growing up in New York, has little to no knowledge of her heritage, so the places would mean nothing to her. It would be subtle, but perhaps something German readers would pick up on. I’m not convinced this is correct, but maybe an explanation!
The village of Klütz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kl%C3%BCtz) is one real place I’ve seen suggested as a model for Jerichow (and has a centre dedicated to the author)
I do love the first section. I love how it evokes that August sun on the Jersey shore. “The light presses her eyelids shut.” I love how it introduces the past, both the pleasant and terrible, on the Baltic and the present just south of New York. I love how Gesine’s thoughts flit between the two.
One of the beautiful things about Anniversaries is that it is always rooted in a specific time and place, as each day comes about. Gesine is on that beach, experiencing the sun, the waves. Yet she is also re-experiencing memories of her childhood on a similar shore on the Baltic. She is also seeing the injustices, because only white people are relaxing on the beach. And this expands to current events, which will come up again and again as Gesine reads the newspaper each day. This continues as she rides the train back to New York and thinks back to some more ominous train rides back in the 1940s when her father was sending her out of Jerichow.
It really is astonishing to me how well Johnson gives us a sense of intimacy and presence while also granting us so much scale . . . and this is just in the first section!
I want to thank Peg for spreading the word on Booktube!
See her video here.
Trevor,
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” I wonder if he’s commenting on what was lost, including knowledge/familiarity.”
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I did only a very little looking, but I think the answer is more mundane than that. I think he wanted to be able to describe things that happened in Germany without locals in the towns he names saying “That never happened here!” I saw one comment Johnson made about how some German readers were able to tell what actual places he based his fictional ones on, but especially when dealing with small communities (unlike New York City) it might be less problematic for him to not use real names.
On August 21st, the narrator says “I imagine: The tiny grooves under her eyes were lighter than the tanned skin of her face.”
Why “I imagine” at this point (again some time later in the entry)?
I am planning to join you. But I am still waiting for my copy to arrive. Very annoyed
Cordelia,
No! But today is the start day! I do have some good news for you. I just checked what Google books has and it allowed me to scroll through the book from the start to at least October 20th without any gaps. I actually stopped checking then and don’t know how many more days it lets you read, but hopefully two months will be enough for your copy to arrive. So you can start today even without your copy of the book. But I do hope it comes soon.
Aug 20th down…I plan on reading each entry in the AM with my cuppa coffee.
The narrator, channeling Gesine’s thoughts, pointedly adds that not only are ‘negroes’ not supposed to buy houses on this segregated beach, but also that ‘Jews, too, are not welcome here’. She goes on to try to remember if Jews ‘were still allowed to rent houses in the fishing village near Jerichow before 1933.’ I’ve read to almost halfway through vol. 1 now, and it’s apparent that 1933 is a fulcrum on which the two parallel narratives balance: pre-war Germany and the USA in 1967. Those twin strands of intolerance and oppression run through both, so that similarities and differences intertwine. Reading it in Brexit Britain, while continental European countries forget their history of emigrations to the US and elsewhere and vote for so-called populist leaders who resemble the dictators of the 1930s with their xenophobia and inflammatory rhetoric, and other leaders of the ‘free world’ adopt ever more extreme positions on ‘invasions’ of undesirable immigrants, the resonance of this powerful novel becomes almost overwhelming. I’m finding it hard work at times, and like others have to keep a notebook at hand to keep track of the huge cast of characters and incidents – but it’s worth the effort. I’ll have to look up that address book mentioned in a comment above: should be useful. Thanks for initiating this discussion, Trevor. I look forward to further comments. Simon. PS: Jerichow is mentioned much later on by Marie, who seems to use the expression ‘go to Jerichow’ as a means of saying ‘go to hell’ – she’s wishing this of her teacher, Sister Magdalena, if I remember rightly, is her name, after another event at school where she’s got into trouble for her political views. It’s interesting to see how Marie adopts but also rejects many of her mother’s liberal attitudes.
fulcherkim, I guess the “I imagine” is to remind us that this is fiction? I glanced ahead to see if it continues in the next diary entry but it does not. I would find it annoying if it continued I think.
My comment doesn’t seem to have posted; hope I’m not duplicating it here – apologies if I do. It’s notable that Gesine’s thoughts, which are channeled by the narrator in this opening section, highlight that not only are ‘Negroes…not supposed to buy houses or rent apartments or lie on the coarse white sand’ of this segregated beach; ‘Jews, too, are not welcome here.’ I’m halfway through vol. 1 now, and this theme (the rise of fascism in the 30s in Europe; unrest in USA and elsewhere in 1967) underlies the whole novel so far. As I read this in Brexit Britain 2019, and Europe collectively forgets is history of emigrations (often under duress or threat) and votes for so-called populist leaders who evoke the inflammatory rhetoric of the dictators of the 30s, spouting xenophobia and intolerance, I find these resonances all too horribly familiar – and still pertinent. Btw, Marie later on in the novel complains about her teacher, Sister Magdalena (I think that ‘s her name), who’s given her a hard time for her political views, by saying she wishes she’d ‘go to Jerichow’, which she seems to think means roughly ‘go to hell’. Like others above, I’ve found it useful to keep a notebook handy to note names and incidents; they have a habit of reappearing hundreds of pages apart. That online Address Book should be handy; must look it up. Thanks, Trevor, for initiating this discussion forum. I look forward to hearing much more from other readers.
I guess that is the case – just seemed odd (every fictional book could have the same thing)
And yes if it continued 19,000 times, like the ‘, the fact that’, in another 1000+ page, Booker-nominated novel that would be somewhat annoying!
Seems he uses it a handful of times in rest of the novel, one in a conversation with our main character (in March 1968)
“- Now comes something I don’t know
– So Imagine it, Gesine!
– I imagine: They….”
That undated first section is like an in-taking of breath before the full magnificence of the novel starts unfolding, day by day. It seems right that it’s set at the shore – thousands of miles of water across from that other shore. A liminal place for a woman who is poised between different forces and countries. It ends with time (the times she is permitted to turn up to work), and so much of this work is about time, including of course the very format.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to start on time because I didn’t want to carry my big print copy on my vacation, but I was excited to find the opening pages on Amazon and I’m glad to hear it is on Google Books as well. I’ll be back to my print copy in a week. I loved the opening on the beach and could so easily visualize the scene from the lovely writing! Having left NYC just yesterday on the train to Philadelphia, I was excited to jump into Day 1 this morning. Not only can I see NYC more realistically through the writing and my direct experience, but I can still feel the heat surrounding me! I look forward to coming back on this evening to discuss more.
I’m doing that too — reading my section first thing in the morning with my coffee. I sit outside on the patio & read. It’s lovely, but I doubt this will continue in winter.
The “I imagine” felt to me a bit like “see her there…” sort of thing. A way for an author to slowly lull us into his viewpoint. It doesn’t stick out much beyond the repetition (3x in that first section) because it’s (almost?) all in third person in that section, so it’s not too far removed. He also notes things she can’t know (like her daughter getting the free comics on the weekend.) There is some gorgeous writing here. The translation seems lovely (though I can only compare the early parts to the German b/c that’s all I can find for free online.)
I wanted to ask how we actually know that those opening 2 pages are on the 21st? I believe you, but I wondered why the date was added after them?
I’m not sure why that first section is not dated, but since she starts the day on the Jersey shore and then is on her way back to New York for work, I think we can assume it’s Sunday, August 21, and I think that is widely accepted. I wonder if he didn’t date it because it feels like an introduction, and putting a date on it might eliminate that? I also wonder if it’s because she is returning to NYC early Monday morning, so the section isn’t all on one day. Is that the impression others got? If she were returning late Sunday, getting to work an hour late wouldn’t be an issue.
Ella, I think Trevor said that the translator assured him those pages were on the 20th. I guess from the 21st entry, where she is still getting used to getting to work after being at the sea, it can’t be much earlier, and the 20th makes sense, but I wonder why it is undated.
We were posting at the same time, Trevor.
In the August 21 section I love the way Johnson goes from the news and the incident with the news magazine seller to “The canyon floor of Lexington Avenue is still in shadow.” And we walk with her down the street, taking in the sights and the smells of a morning that is in an of itself forgettable, but so familiar.
We catch a snippet of her lunch break, and . . . imagine . . . she’s thinking of her own past while reading the newspaper. And then we go to her home, before the section ends with a brief thought of Jerichow.
The book just breathes space in and out, growing and shrinking, but it always feels natural and works to establish the setting.
Like Paul, I’m curious about the “I imagine” lines. It didn’t annoy me, and I’m trying to pin down how it worked for me. It almost feels like the pathway to another space: Johnson’s own head and memory and imagination. I agree if it were repeated throughout it would be a stumbling block, but here I think it fits the seamless transport between mindscapes (with various perspectives) and landscapes. At the same time it acts as a barrier. We can’t actually know all that is going on in Gesine’s head. Maybe for me it keeps that space open but in shadow. I’m babbling.
It could also be much more mundane: that Johnson was prompting himself to keep writing what at this early point must have felt like an experiment.
By the way, Riverside Drive is quite the location. If I remember right, in a bit we’ll learn how she lucked out and got such a good apartment. It’s a long street that runs along the westside of Manhattan, close to the Hudson. Uwe Johnson himself lived at 243 Riverside Drive. That is right off 96th Street, so Gesine must live close by.
I’m sure a lot has changed in 50 years, but I think if you click here you’ll see the Riverside Drive bridge going over 96th Street.
By the way, should you come across any interesting links, photographs, etc., please feel free to link to them here. And if you see something that you think is a vital resource, we can link to it on the readalong home page (like the address book, which I’ve already put on the home page).
On the I imagine, the narration takes an interesting twist in a couple of days time (reading ahead) as Gesine suddenly narrates in the first person.
This is a comment related to the undated first section (which I did finish yesterday but am just today gettting around to commenting) :-)
I’m curious about this use: “In New Haven citizens of African descent are said to be breaking shop windows…” Earlier, Gesine notes that “Negroes are not supposed to own houses.” Reading “citizens of African descent” stopped me up short, in a good way. A refreshingly broad term. I wonder if the two different terms were used by the author or if this is a result of the translator’s decision?
David
Thank you so much. I found it in google books. Now I can start
I just finished reading August 21 and have a couple of comments.
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(1) So far I am fully engaged and am really enjoying the descriptive beauty of the passages and the conceptual complexity of them, but….
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(2) I notice that for neither day are the descriptions really contained to that day. This is more strange for the 21st, where the explicit dating of the section made me think it would be much more a description limited to that day. This just seems a little surprising right now, but I worry that if there is too much of this I might become annoyed if Johnson seems not to live up to his premise of daily dated entries. What point in having such a structure if you don’t use it? (But like I said, for now I’m not troubled by this and only flag it as a worry for the days to come).
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(3) I am more skimming other comments above because I mostly want to just think about the story for myself right now, but….
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(4) I am not sure why there is puzzlement about the use of “I imagine”. I am taking this as a straightforward way of telling the reader that the narrator of the story is not just a detached third-person narrator, but a character in the book who is telling us about Gesine. Who the narrator is we don’t yet know, but the use of “I imagine” tells us s/he is there and that s/he doesn’t know all the details of Gesine’s life, and so needs to actually imagine some bits to fill gaps. I thought this was an interesting and subtle way to reveal a narrating character and not Johnson imposing himself on the story or a metafictional device.
I have started and really enjoyed the first section at the beach. It reminded me very much of Virginia Woolf and “Mrs Dalloway”, in particular the way the narrator uses memory to change the perspective of what is being described. Not only is it switched to different times, but also to different places – all without warning the reader.
Also liked the airplanes. There was also one of those in Mrs Dalloway.
Interesting take on the “I imagine”, David. I hope you’re right, but as Trevor has read this book before, I suspect you are not.
On to August 22nd. I am intrigued with Gesine’s obsession with having to read the New York Times every single day, even when she is elsewhere and it is difficult to obtain. Then to have her neighbour keep them all so she can spend days catching up when she returns. What is she afraid she will miss? At the end of the entry, we have the paper personified.
I like your Virginia Woolf comparison, Cordelia. Perhaps also To the Lighthouse with the memories of childhood?
FYI, the Kindle sample goes to October 21st! That will be handy when away for a few days.
Yes, Cordelia and Colette, I also particularly appreciated the invoking of Virginia Woolf — linking this reading to a familiar forebear.
Trevor – “The canyon floor of Lexington Avenue…” passage was the highlight for me in the August 21 entry. One of the greatest descriptions of simply walking down the street in Manhattan. I could feel the city!
I feel like this section for August 22 is mostly to help us see Gesine’s need (almost or perhaps fully a compulsive need) to read The New York Times every day, which sets the rhythm of Gesine’s day, a strong sense of routine, and helps us establish the structure of the book. The news is important for the themes and how 1967-68 ties back to 1933, and it also keeps our focus on the day-to-day. Time is passing, things are happening: the daily newspaper “as though it alone were proof of the day having existed.” I also love how the paper gives her a sense of another person’s presence, that aunt. In many ways, Gesine is adrift and alone.
Notably, of course, we get our first glance — or impression — of Marie, Gesine’s daughter, who will be central to the narrative soon and is already showing some independence.
Stray thoughts about August 22:
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(1) I was wondering if the complete absence of Gesine’s daughter from the descriptions of the first two days other than mentioning that she exists was supposed to indicate that the daughter does not live with Gesine, but today we learn she does (I think). But where was the daughter when Gesine was on vacation on the Jersey shore? No mention of her being there, and Gesine rushed back from vacation going straight to work. Could the daughter be the girl who sent Gesine postcards? But that girl called Gesine “Miss C”, so can’t be her daughter, right? And where is the girl’s father? No mention of him at all yet (I think). (NB: I do not want anyone to actually answer these questions. I will find out the answers when we get to the days in the story that presumably cover them.)
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(2) Gesine travels a lot. We get the phrase “when she travels to Europe”, which makes it sound frequent. We also are told about a trip to Chicago. Why all the travel? She works for a bank so it seems unlikely it is work related. And why no mention of her daughter when talking about travel? Does her daughter travel with her? If not, where does she stay? We are told how Gesine gets a neighbour to look after her beloved newspaper, but not about her daughter. (See my NB for #1.)
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(3) I love the two short paragraphs filling us in on the news of the day, then the lovely and long description of the newspaper stand and the man who runs it (and how he observes everything), and finally the long description of Gesine’s part obsession, part friendship with The New York Times. Spectacularly done.
August 23:
Yesterday, the newspaper vendor thought:
You won’t say Good morning tomorrow, Lady. All this fuss.
As if he knew something that was going to happen that day and would be reported in the paper, or knew something was going to get worse. She wouldn’t say Good morning because she would be too busy reading the headlines? Or because she would be prejudiced against him by something that happened (was about to happen).
Today we think of the New York Times as a national and international paper. At that time it seems it was less so, and perhaps that is why Gesine is intent on reading it every day to the exclusion of any other paper. I’m struck by the reference to the list of names killed in Viet Nam being limited to those from the New York area, yet the paper is not completely insular as it reports of New Haven riots.
David, the only mention we have of Marie’s father so far, and it’s not a direct mention, is from the newspaper vendor’s observation:
the child, a ten-year-old girl with a round head like her mother’s, but sandy-blond foreign braids
The father is probably blond since we know Gesine has very dark hair.
(although from August 23, we now know that Gesine’s father was blond)
August 23: three places in the first three paragraphs:- North Vietnam, the ‘Negro neighborhoods’ of New Haven, then settling on Travemünde for a while. At the end of the section, Gesine is in an Italian restaurant on Third Avenue (she ‘is invited out for lunch sometimes’ – no hint yet of who invites her), then by the end Peking and the British diplomatic compound in Peking. This unsettling moving between places: the novel is certainly not yet settling down (very early stage of course), and we are not sure where we ‘are’.
Colette, yes, I noticed that hair reference, but we already knew that somebody was the girl’s biological father. We just know nothing about whether he is alive or dead and, if alive, where he lives and what role he might (or might not) have in the life of Gesine and the girl. It’s still a mystery yet to be revealed.
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But since I’m here talking about the girl (and I am not using a name her because so far in the story she does not have a name), on August 21 we are told she is “almost ten” and on August 22 the newspaper stand man describes her as “a ten-year-old girl”. Technically, one of those is wrong. It makes me wonder when exactly is her birthday and what note of it we will get on the date it comes.
For August 23, we get quite a bit more, in such a small amount of space, about Gesine’s father and mother, told mostly from Gesine’s first-person POV. We see him trying to get things in Germany settled so that he never has to return. I feel that it is presented as a series of thoughts that Gesine goes through often, particularly when looking at his passport photograph, culminating in “What did Cresspahl see in my mother?” Gesine is searching her own past and heritage still, even though it must seem so far in the absolutely irretrievable past.
By the way, it is hard for me as well to stop reading at the end of each entry. It seems to easy to just read the next couple of pages. But I’m really enjoying this more methodical process. I think the steady but relatively short reading is going to be a great way to experience the flow of the book itself.
This will be particularly interesting as we learn more about Gesine’s family. We get information about them throughout the entire book and come to know them quite well, but it’s amazing how Johnson lets the information flow out so slowly.
As an aside, thanks everyone so much for your comments so far. It has been so fun, even in just a few days, to experience this with you. Of course, comment as often or not as you can, but do know I love them all and get more and more excited each passing day.
I just read the entry for the 23rd and my main reaction is I am not on board for the abrupt narrative switching from the third person to the first person. The main effect it has is to infuse confusion into the story. It seems we are going to have to do a lot of careful work to decide who is narrating in future passages and it might not be always clear. This also raises the “I image” sections from earlier, which cannot be reasonably thought to be Gesine’s voice, so now we potentially have two different voices claiming to be “I” in addition to the third person narrator. A story with multiple different narrative voices is fine, but when there is no clear indication of who is who it doesn’t make for good storytelling. I don’t know what positive thing might be thought to be being achieved here. I’m very disappointed with this development.
Julian, I’m sorry I didn’t approve your comment earlier. I didn’t see it until now! Folks, if you’re reading these in order, Julian’s slipped in above when I approved it.
David, I don’t mind the switching at all. The time and place shift suddenly, and I think it fits well that the perspective does too. This is not, it turns out, a typical diary and is not always from Gesine’s point of view. I think the broad perspective opens the book up quite a bit. I wonder if it will start working for you, too.
On the shifting POVs, here is something Parul Sehgal says in her review for The New York Times:
Sehgal seems to accept that this is literally a diary (“The novel takes the form of a yearlong diary by the enigmatic, rather brilliant Gesine Cresspahl.”), but I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think she is the narrator. I think that’s Johnson himself, the “I” in that burst of “I imagine” a few days ago. I think Johnson is zooming in and out in an effort to accomplish an impossible goal that, due to his sheer effort, still works beautifully. This book is about one time and one place, and yet it encompasses so many more times and places (see Julian’s comment about about today’s entry). It is also a book about one individual, in one year, and yet it is about so many more people, individually and in groups, that the shifting POV guides us over rough terrain that is, still, important to cross.
On Johnson being the narrator, and the “I” in that earlier section, this same article (I knew it was somewhere!) talks about how Johnson came to his subject:
It’s worth a look. Johnson is imagining (from people on the street as well as from his own family and past) an interconnected but still very individualized experience. Many of these characters become “real” as the book goes on, and I think a lot of that is because Johnson doesn’t lock them into any one perspective.
Trevor, it’s not the fact of the switching voices but the manner of it that is a problem. For example, the first “I” that is clearly Gesine comes at the end of a long paragraph where her father is referred to by his surname. It also involves detailed descriptions of Cressphal’s appearance, voice, and actions in 1931, two years before Gesine was born. On the one hand, she cannot credibly be the author of most of the paragraph, but the “I” at the end suggests she is. Unless the voice just switches there at the “I”. Or maybe it switches one sentence earlier. Or maybe two sentences earlier. The way Johnson switches voices just adds confusion and makes it unclear which voice is talking. I don’t see the value in that.
Trevor, re: Sehgal
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Surely he is wrong. When we are told that Gesine’s daughter comes alone to the newspaper stand on Sundays and Gesine does not know about it, that would be very very strange to attribute to her. But in general, it would be utterly perverse for Gesine to switch from “I” to “she” and serve less purpose than the confusion I have already complained about. But I do think that Sehgal is led to his wrong conclusion as a result of the oddity of the way Johnson switches narrative voices. His making it unclear leads to odd interpretations like Sehgal’s. One more reason to think it is problematic.
We will likely keep talking in circles here if I continue, David, as we’ve done in the past. For me it is not problematic, not a problem, and it adds. As I’ve already tried to explain why, I will defer to others to say how it works or doesn’t work for them.
I think even the title makes it clear that this isn’t a “diary” or someone’s personal journal. It’s a year in the life of Gesine – no promise was made that it would be one person’s POV or Gesine herself or even truly what Gesine did for that year. I mean, I hope she stays in the story, or that would seem like false advertising. It seems pretty clear that it’s NOT Gesine herself, since like you pointed out, the narrator knows more than Gesine, at least about what other people think and do.
Colette mentioned this comment: (sorry, dunno how to make proper italics. I’ll work on it)
“Yesterday, the newspaper vendor thought:
You won’t say Good morning tomorrow, Lady. All this fuss.”
I thought he was basically thinking that they have a very different relationship when Gesine isn’t around – ie, he doesn’t charge her, he’s kind of “in on” and enabling her to get comics on the sly, she’s not dressed as fancy, and it seemed like they just have a much less formal relationship when her mother is not there to supervise.
This change of perspective and narrative voice is something that I came to terms with while studying modernism. A tip we were given was: whenever you notice a change of person or narrative voice or place or time – mark it in the margin and make some notes. Then next time you read the book, you will be prepared. That is, if you dont mind “marking up” your book. Dont do it to borrowed copies or library books – very rude.
That’s a great tip – also probably helpful for more reasons than just not being jarred by the new perspective. I can think of loads of ways that would be helpful, and I am going to start doing it immediately (but not to library books, unless they are ebooks – b/c I can save my ebook notes.) Thanks, Cordelia. I’ve never studied literature beyond the basics in high school, so that’s very helpful.
So far, I’m not too pleased with the varying narrative voice but I’m reserving judgment to see how it serves as the work moves further along. The entries are brief enough for a day’s reading that I’m happy to spend time dealing with the disjuncture, figuring out the geography, looking into the current events cited. Disruption in Hong Kong in the news in 1967 and now in 2019!
Trevor, thanks a bunch for sharing the genesis of the character in Johnson’s observations of a local woman. Love the details he notes and that this woman lives now as Gesine.
Ella, I thought the newspaper vendor was referring to Gesine, but you’re right – it could be Marie. Both had their accents described in the paragraph before, with how they said “Good morning”.
(I think it is fine to refer to the daughter as Marie even if she hasn’t been named in the book yet. It’s all over the blurb.)
In the previous message I tried to explain how to use italics and ended up deleting the paragraph. I’ll try again with a message I can just delete if it doesn’t work.
Put the letter i within these two characters: < and >
To end the italics, put /i between those two characters.
I don't know all the codes, but for bold it's the letter b.
Trevor – no problem! Thanks for the mention.
re the POVs: I’m a teacher, and was thinking the other day about how the boys and girls I teach hate what I as an experienced reader love at the start of a book: uncertainty, being a little discomposed/disconcerted. As long as an author knows where she/he is going of course. So I’m happy with those pronoun shifts, a little grit in the narrative.
Going further back up, love Ella’s comment about reading with her coffee on the patio in the morning.
Bee,
(1) The entries are brief enough for a day’s reading that I’m happy to spend time dealing with the disjuncture, figuring out the geography, looking into the current events cited.
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If you have not already looked it up, you might be interested in some background on the news story about a Mrs. Enzensberger attacking the Vice President in Berlin that Gesine seems fascinated with. It’s a reference to an actual event that was carried out by members of Kommune 1, a political organization Uwe Johnson belonged to and who he let have their meetings in his appartment while he was living in the US. Check this link for more information about the actual attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommune_1#The_%22Pudding_Assassination%22
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(2)Trevor, thanks a bunch for sharing the genesis of the character in Johnson’s observations of a local woman. Love the details he notes and that this woman lives now as Gesine.
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I could be wrong, but I have always thought that this claim of Johnson’s was his artistic way of explaining how he got the idea of writing about this character, and not that there had ever been an actual encounter with a woman that inspired him.
Ella and Colette,
The newspaper man must be referring to Gesine. The 22nd is a Tuesday and we are told he only sees Gesine’s daughter on Saturday (with Gesine) and Sunday (without Gesine). We also have just been told that Gesine greeted him and he did not return the greeting. His comment about greetings only really makes sense if he is thinking about Gesine, although I still don’t know why the greeting was not returned nor why he thinks he won’t get one the next day. We don’t get any information about what happens at the stand on the 23rd, which leaves this little thread hanging for now.
The section for August 24 has one that has stuck with me since I read it last year. It’s those initial days when Gesine is looking for an apartment while her defiant three-year-old daughter looks for anything familiar, and finds nothing. I’ve moved with children before, and I remember those sickening days of disorientation, just hoping for the ability to settle down. And the relief that comes when the child cannot hold on any longer and falls asleep; that relief is tinged with guilt. This sentence, I think, is practically perfect, and it does, again, such a great job helping us feel those familiar moments in a day:
Today’s section answers the question about where Gesine’s daughter has been, and it shows us how much Marie has changed from that little girl who wanted to return to Germany. I love how Johnson introduces this, by telling us she is so many feet tall, not so many centimeters. I think this section really starts to heat up the book because we see a growing conflict between generations and cultures.
But I don’t want to let it go unmentioned how evocative I find the opening of this chapter, with Gesine waking up to the sound of the water on the road, the darker day. Again, this book is so large and has so much breadth, but it doesn’t forget those quieter, smaller moments that feel insignificant other than they do make up life, and this book is about life.
And on August 25th, we zip back to the present and Marie has conquered the city!
At this pace, I’m also prone to over analyzing, so it’s interesting to me that the news from Vietnam and the list of the dead comes after we hear about Marie’s adjustment to America. I guess it’s because Gesine is forcing herself to wait to read as well, but it’s also interesting to consider the perspective that Marie has towards the war.
So far we have the undated introduction, formless because we know she didn’t have a newspaper at the beach, a daily ritual of reading the news first, and now our first indication that there are other priorities.
I’m impressed with the group’s dedication! If anyone is interested (especially once you’ve read a little more), I wrote something last year on the first 200 pages or so. https://wp.me/p4iUoF-wu
I stalled out at that point, but your conversations are making me want to start over again.
Trevor, I just finished today’s entry and had very much the same reactions to those same passages that you did. I also continue to be fascinated with Gesine’s family connections and how people refer to each other. It seems the postcards Gesine was getting on August 20th were from Marie, but then why does she address her mother as “Miss C”? That seems very odd. Also, should we take the “Miss” to indicate she never married Marie’s father? On the 20th we are told others call her “Mrs. Cresphal”, but Cresphal was her birth surname, so if she did marry Marie’s father she would probably have a different surname. Add to this the fact Gesine calls her own father “Cresphal” and we see the same sort of distancing address like how Marie refers to Gesine.
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Today we get the first mention of Marie’s father, although we know very little about why he did not come to New York with Gesine. Is he in Germany? Is he dead? We don’t know yet, but we do know that Marie knows who he is and at least knows something about him. It is also worth noting that when 3-year-old Marie was unhappy about leaving Germany she thinks about only one elder relative – a grandmother. This seems to suggest that perhaps her father and her other three grandparents were not part of her life back in Germany. The 3-year-old Marie has no thoughts about her father. Finally, we get the strange bit of information that the nuns at Marie’s school wanted to call her “Mary” and she has convinces them to call her “M’ri”. I’m not sure why they would not just use her name and why we get the odd spelling “M’ri”. Is this, perhaps, to indicate that the issue was not exactly what name they were using for her but how to correctly pronounce her name? Maybe “Marie” with a German accent sounds a bit more like “Mary” than the American “Marie” and so “M’ri” (accent on the first syllable but with no strongly pronounced “a”) is closer to right.
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Final thought: Marie seemed a bit of a precocious child at age 3 when they first arrived in New York. Her strong political views and disagreements with her mother now, at almost age 10, are in keeping with that idea. She seems to be a very intelligent and strong-minded girl.
I have so many thoughts, but quickly wanted to ask re: David’s comment: quote>Ella and Colette,
The newspaper man must be referring to Gesine. The 22nd is a Tuesday and we are told he only sees Gesine’s daughter on Saturday (with Gesine) and Sunday (without Gesine). We also have just been told that Gesine greeted him and he did not return the greeting. His comment about greetings only really makes sense if he is thinking about Gesine, although I still don’t know why the greeting was not returned nor why he thinks he won’t get one the next day. We don’t get any information about what happens at the stand on the 23rd, which leaves this little thread hanging for now. /quote
That made sense until I read the next couple of sections and learned why Marie wasn’t there when Gesine returned home from the Jersey shore, etc – she was away at camp (being now a truly American child.)
I thought those sections about the newspaper man were not set on that exact day, but like other parts – sort of a flashback or “timeless” entry – to fill us in mostly on how connected G is to her NYTimes and her rituals, and also to introduce us to this less formal relationship the newspaperman has to Marie.
Am I wrong? The time really slides around in these daily entries. I find we learn what’s happening in the world (from tnew newspaper often) and then things get less rigid time-wise and narrator-wise, yes? or no?
Re: later sections – I adored the way the search for the apartment was set up. I also found it incredibly interesting b/c I had a quasi-similar experience when I looked for my first place to live in NYC. I was literally giving up – it was pouring rain, and I sat down in a bus shelter outside of Columbia University to take refuge. Rather than get drenched, I started reading the notices taped to the wall – and one of them was a woman renting a room on Riverside Drive & 110th street – very close to where Gesine finds her “miracle apartment.” I, too, got to live with a (slight – if you stood at the right angel) view of the Hudson, in one of those big old marble doorman buildings. Nothing I should have been able to afford, but the situation was mostly that the woman missed her graduate-school-aged daughter and wanted a college student in the house. So in 1985 I found a wonderful apartment share on Riverside Drive for $500/month flat. That was a serious bargain even in those days. I felt for her while she was looking for apartments. It can be really brutal!
Ella, there is a lot of jumping around to other times and places, but Johnson is actually very careful to give us clear indications of where and when he takes us. He has often indicated the year, month and year, or season and year for some of the stories of Gesine’s history and family history. He also uses “once” or “sometimes” for other more generic stories. But then he also uses fairly day-specific phrases like “that morning” or “later that day” which suggest he is talking about the specific date of the entry. For the newspaper stand he uses “today” for the greeting and “tomorrow” for the thought about someone not greeting him. The most natural reading of that is that he means this to be located on this day. Also, the newspaper seller calls the person he is talking about “lady”. It would makes sense for an older man to address a 9-year-old girl as “young lady” or “little lady” even, but not just as “lady”. That seems a clear indication he is talking (in his mind) to an adult woman.
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It is worth noting that it seems we never do find out if he was right that he would not get a greeting the next day or why his thinking he won’t get a greeting is significant, making it a bit of a mysterious passage.
Paul: “So far we have the undated introduction, formless because we know she didn’t have a newspaper at the beach….”
It didn’t occur to me that this might be the reason the first section is undated, but I like it.
August 24th: a personal connection of interest to no-one but me: I was born (Spring 1961) when Gesine arrived in New York.
August 25th: Trevor – exactly re the start in the rain. ‘The child’ is the phrase used repeatedly: we don’t have any sense of how Gesine has felt about her absence. Surely she was on her mind all the time? And of course no contact would have taken place in those pre-connected days.
“Would she have stayed in this country if not for the apartment by the river? Probably not.”
It’s hard to belief Gesine had this apartment (though similar stories exist in reality, as another commenter has shared), but I can see why she decided it was worth staying for.
For the most part, today’s entry isn’t particularly interesting to me emotionally. I like the story about the older, kind women who rented the place to Gesine and Marie, and I like seeing how they settled in. We also get Marie cutting out the newspaper photograph and commenting on the assassination of the Nazi leader.
Things develop very slowly if at all in this entry. Another building block out of 365. Did anyone else find much more to comment on?
I have loved having the Kindle preview so I could get started on time. I was in NYC just last week, so I’ll share a picture I took right by the East River to set the scene.
It looks like my pictures didn’t post here, but they show up on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19632196-anniversaries-from-a-year-in-the-life-of-gesine-cresspahl-by-uwe-johns?comment=196078217&page=2#comment_196084600
The feeling of being in a canyon was an apt description in the book. Although this is by no means a 1967 type look, it really evoked the feeling of driving into a canyon and we were on the upper level of a bus!
I’m enjoying the setting and the time period. I was in junior high school in 1967 and definitely have memories of big events in the news.
I’m trying to comment on the blog as well and hope to be more involved as we return home tomorrow.
Trevor, I understand why this entry might feel like it does not do much new or advance the story very far, but I found a lot of moments to like in it. Again, we get some very vivid descriptions of New York as Gesine first saw it. We get the completion of the story of how Gesine arrived and became settled in New York as well. Some of the best lines of the day were:
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— “German as it was spoken thirty years ago in East Prussia, Berlin, Franconia, Saxony, Hesse.”
A reminder that immigration can create cultural stasis and preserve a world that otherwise no longer exists.
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— “they said hello to the child first, serious, polite, as though speaking to a real person.”
This, along with Gesine’s repeated reference to Marie as simply “the child” reflects a distance between mother and daughter, where Gesine does not see her child as fully a person in her own right.
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— “the child reads the newspaper out loud, lying on her belly, chin in her hands, swinging her legs back and forth.”
A nice visual image, and an interesting contrast of the childlike posture with the fact she has a scrapbook with clippings that include the picture of a murdered Nazi leader
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— “All day long an even, regular, sonic field of rushing rain surrounds the apartment. Here there will be no flooding.”
Perhaps the implied contrast is with other apartments she might have ended up with, but it feels like there is an implied contrast with places she has lived in before. The suggestion is that here she has found a place of safety where she is protected.
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— “I can hear what the rabbi’s not saying when he says that.”
A very artful way of expressing Marie’s depth of understanding, one that goes beyond what we would expect for someone her age.
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I was also impressed in this entry by the level of research that Johnson had to have put in when preparing to write this book. We get both reports of the arrest of American military men who had been spying for the Russians and the murder of an American Nazi on the same day, both of which are actual events from August 26, 1967. For the former Johnson gets the date right, as this was the date these arrests were first reported even though the actual arrests took place a few days earlier. The coincidental confluence of a cold war story and a Nazi story on the same date is perfect for the story of a woman who first survived Nazi Germany and then later escaped East Germany.
August 25, 1967 Friday
Rain has been falling in the city since last night, the thudding sound of the cars on the Hudson River parkway muffled to a low whoosh. This morning, the slurping sound of the tires on the dripping-wet pavement under her window wakes her up.
Yesterday I only noted what a great word slurping was in this quote. Today the sound of the rain near the end of the entry is a great sensory clue that we’re back in the present and it’s been raining all weekend, nonstop while we’ve been in the past.
Another bit of evidence for my half-baked theory: We start the 26th with the headlines from Vietnam as usual, but only later get the story of the American Nazis as Marie is cutting out the pictures and reads aloud to her mom as the day closes.
I’m fascinated by the differences between Gesine and her Americanized daughter. As anyone who raises children in a different country knows, it can feel like they are becoming ‘mongrels’, which can be heartbreaking for parents but later on for the children as well.
I had to read up on the race riots in New Haven, so this is a good opportunity to familiarise myself with some American civil rights history. I love the way Johnson moves so skillfully from the general to the particular, from present to past, from the outer to the inner world, and back, seamlessly.
I have been away for a few days but keeping up by reading the kindle sample. I loved the list of things Marie says. I think that was the 25th. Johnson is providing a brilliant picture with so few words each day.
Marina Sofia: “I love the way Johnson moves so skillfully from the general to the particular, from present to past, from the outer to the inner world, and back, seamlessly.”
Today’s news about Stalin’s daughter defecting to the US is a lovely example of this. There’s an anxiety about how American Marie is becoming and the news Gesine reads the next day is about a rebel daughter embracing the ways of the US. Including demanding ice in her water.
Should there be a link for the week commencing 28th August or do we continue here?
Edit: I see that there is, at the bottom. I was looking at this list of dates.
Yes, here is the next thread (posted a few days ago). This will be standard where I post it a few days before that reading week starts. Thanks!
So this week is over, but some of you reading this may be just starting. Feel free to continue to comment here about events in these passages.