I have wanted to read Francis Nenik’s ‘The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping’ for a while now. I won it as a giveaway during one of the earlier German Literature Months, and I can’t believe that I waited so long to pick it up. But I finally read it in one sitting and I am glad I did. It is also my second Katy Derbyshire translation – Yay!
‘The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping’ has two parts. The first part follows the lives of two poets – Nicholas Moore who is English and Ivan Blatny who is Czech. The story happens during the Cold War era. Moore and Blatny lead very similar lives though they are from very different countries – they are born at around the same time, get their poetry published around the same time, are ignored by the literary establishment after a while and are forgotten as the years pass. There is one difference though. Blatny, during his famous years as a poet, comes to England with a Czech delegation of literary artists, absconds from his delegation and seeks asylum and settles down in England. He is not happy being in exile though and ends up being in a psychiatric hospital most of the time. The parallel stories of these two poets are told in an interesting way – when a particular event of one poet’s life is described the narrative moves to describing the life of the other poet. This is a bit disconcerting in the beginning, but because the two poets have had similar lives, the narrative flows smoothly after a while, and we no longer bother to check who is who or what happens next in the earlier story.
The second part of the book – the bigger part – is a collection of letters between Moore and Blatny. When we reach this part, we are surprised that the two corresponded. We want to find out what they wrote to each other and what they discussed about. Did they discuss about their similar lives? Did they discuss poetry? Did they meet? Well, you have to read the book to find out.
When I reached the last pages of Francis Nenik’s book, I didn’t want it to end – which is always a great sign. I wished that instead of being such a short book – it is around sixty pages long (it is part of a short story collection in the original German) – I wish it had been a longer novel. There could have been more events in the two poets’ lives – backstories, poetry discussions, friends, love interests, their relationship with their benefactors – and there could have been more letters between them. I wish it had been like A.S.Byatt’s ‘Possession’. But Nenik decides to keep it short and sweet and leaves us yearning for more. I felt sad when I finished reading the book.
Here are some of my favourite passages from the book.
Money, the lack of which grants writing full authenticity in the mind of many a critic but leaves nothing more than a hole in the writer’s stomach…
And finally the apocalypse returns to his life, butting in like an unwanted guest who had simply gone for a quick pee between revelations. But God, who’s nothing but a dog backwards, taught him to carry on.
He sits there and enjoys what he sees; thirty-one translations of a single poem, the proof of the untranslatability of poetry turned sheer on its head, thirty-one versions that are neither originals nor forgeries and not even both, which does not trouble their creator to any great extent…
Have you read Nenik’s book? What do you think?
Love your posts, Vishy. I haven’t the time at the moment to fit in German literature but will keep a mental note of these.
Thanks Valorie 🙂 Hope you get to read German literature sometime. It is really wonderful and I have fallen in love with it.
great second book , I need try some of the readux books
Readux books are really wonderful, Stu. I have read two of them and I liked them. Hope you get to read them sometime.
Great review Vishy. It doesn’t sound like the kind of book I would previously have been interested in but you make it sound good, so now I might be 😀
Thanks Violet 🙂 Hope you get to read this book and like it. It is a very interesting read.
Great review, Vishy. I haven’t read it but any book with letters in it temptes me. It sounds so good.
Hope you get to read it and like it, Caroline. I wish it was longer – I would have loved it even more.
This sounds really wonderful, Vishy, I need to look up the German version. Epistolary books are magical! The title is also really great 🙂 I had the same experience with Binti, wishing it was much longer 🙂
Hope you are able to find the German version, Bina. I heard that the German version is a collection of short stories and this is one of the stories in them.
Thanks, Vishy! I’ll look out for a different book title.