Here we are on the fifth week!
Thanks for commenting even though I’ve fallen behind in my contributions. I’m going to be able to catch up soon, once things at work calm down . . . Does that really happen? I hope so.
As I said last wee, if you’re falling behind, I want to encourage you to keep going and not let the timeline end your progress. If you’ve given up because you don’t like it, I’d like to hear. If you’re still going strong but are lurking, that’s fine too! Here’s to another fine week!
Here is the post for any and all discussions about passages from September 18 – 24, 1967.
For the main page of this read-along, please go here.
September 18 – the plight of the immigrant who does not have money – mainly loneliness it seems.
Yes that is a powerful entry.
Although when I read a line like “Our Broadway starts at Seventy-Second Street where it intersects Amsterdam Ave. and clips off the Verdi Square park” I do wonder if I’m missing out on a key part of the experience of the novel.
In a couple of days time, in a section set in the UK, we get two establishments I know well, The Star and Garter in Richmond and The White Horse in Dorking. That made those pages come even more alive for me.
Which is why I suspect I’m missing the full power of the (much more frequent) sections in New York. It is not a city I know at all well, so the descriptions of areas and streets may as well be of a place purely of the author’s imagination for me much of the time.
It’s always neat to try and suss out what seems the same and what seems different in 1967 vs. today. Brooklyn as being crime-ridden is now outdated, but the private vs public school and healthcare discussion is evergreen.
Some thoughts about the entry for the 19th:
Gesine’s inner monologue refers to bleak concrete schoolyards behind thick chicken wire, the same chicken wire she used on the 11th to describe the East German military camp.
I continue to be fascinated by the links between the news and the narrative. Marie is being taught that it pays to believe in kindness and obedience at her middle class school, and the next paragraph the British and Soviets are accusing each other of “acting improperly” by poisoning/torturing a physicist.
The East Germans say give up your militarism, your neofascism, and Gesine is conscious and anxious about the militarism on display in Vietnam and the pseudo-fascist education that she may be giving her daughter by sending her to a private school while the regular people are schooled in prison conditions.
Personally, Sept 19 and 20 are two of my favorite days in the book, or at least, they’re one of the places where I feel Johnson kicks up the brilliance yet another notch.
The conversation on the 19th is one of the stunningly contemporary parts of the book, where the issues and choices of 1967 are EXACTLY what friends and family and me go through now. This liberal guilt could be Brooklyn 2019 (Clinton Hill vs Park Slope) almost word for word. I also love the echoings Paul Dixon mentions, and also the loving kindness shown by the italic voice to Gesine at the end — “Incidentally, you’ve got some mail, Gesine.” The double narrator who is and isn’t Gesine isn’t just postmodern cleverness, it gives us Gesine being taken care of, even loved, and I find that very moving, especially since she has so few other people left except her child.
On the 20th it’s the glancing narrative style. You’re like hmm, who’s this friend, why does she keep being called so accommodating, and why is Lisbeth writing all those postcards her first day, she must have seen a lot of stuff… and you eventually realize she’s pre-writing and post-dating them for her friend to mail to dad while she’s off in England. It all fits together so cleverly and it keeps you on your toes as a reader, not to mention as a translator — I had to seed in the same amount of clues and same amount of mystery so readers in English would be neither too confused nor clued in too early.
Yes agreed two fabulous days.
Now I am finding one issue with reading a book a day at a time, while typically reading 100-200 pages of various other novels between each daily entry, means I lose the thread at times. So … probably an obvious question – but who is the mail from on 19th?
I suspect I will end up doing a ReverseTrevor (as it is known) at some point in the future, and having done the day-by-day thing, read it again, in one go and with no other books on the go.
I agree. Two lovely days. On the 19th we learn so much about Gesine (and Marie). We learn about the choices that Gesine makes to make Marie’s life as easy as possible. Isn’t that what we all do for our children if we can.
The 20th was lovely. A real love story. It made me feel happy.
The letter was a bit of a mystery. Who was it from? my thoughts: obviously impersonal, but is it business to do with the bank. Or is personal, someone she knows that she pays money to. Perhaps a landlord or a doctor?
22 Sept entry, the telephone conversation (or should that be monologue?) between Gesine and the doctor’s wife, Mrs. Brewster, is quite moving, a virtuoso performance of self-soothing or maybe self-deception. And once again we get to remark what a mature, sensirive child Marie seems to be, as she is perceived by an outsider.
I wonder whether Gesine actually knew that Marie went to see Dr Brewster, and what she was going for.
I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks, so haven’t joined in lately. Yesterday I finished vol. 1. I find when I read through this week’s comments that I’ve forgotten much of what happened so many pages back: it’s hard to keep on top of the mass of detail, the huge cast of characters. On the other hand, key moments do linger, like the ferry trip days, the chilling references to murders of Jews, the way that Semig is treated in Jericho – even on Cresspahl’s wedding day. I’m still processing what my general response is; there are passages of breathtaking originality and power, but I also found parts that dragged, lists that seemed to add little, newspaper stories that reiterated earlier ones…I’m finding it helpful to at least skim through again these September entries to remind myself of the slow, meticulous accumulation and accretion of details, and how they start to cohere (but still I’m baffled by some parts).
I had a hectic schedule late August and early September and was unable to participate during that period. If possible I would like to join now for the remainder of the reading.
I agree with Fulcherkim about the trickiness of pacing this reading. It feels unnatural reading it one day at a time (and I’m a little behind) but am unsure about shooting ahead.
September 18: a great paragraph about old people in Brooklyn.
Any thoughts about the entry on the 24th? I think I get the sarcasm of the © The New York Times, but feel like there’s a larger point about the messiness of identity compared to the rigidly defined national border as it exists in 1967?
By saying Max Hahn was a native of Poland, there’s a lot missing. He’s ethnically Jewish, has a German sounding name, and Poland didn’t exist when he was born. Same with the commentary on Transylvanian and Silesian culture in the parade. Hence the hyper-precise Fall begins at 1:38 pm.
I’m still getting the impression that Gesine is against a lot, not sure what she is for. Obviously she’s not marching today.
I wonder if the copyright symbol is used to indicate that the words were copied verbatim from the New York Times rather than paraphrased. Is this required in fiction? Or perhaps it was in the 1960s?