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Seiobo Járt Odalent (2000)

by László Krasznahorkai(Favorite Author)

4.49 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Magvető

review 1: Seiobo There Below, a novel by the Hungarian novelist, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, opens with a Japanese still life - a crane in a river. The narration pulls back and we have a crane in a river - an absolutely still crane patiently waiting for a fish to swim within darting distance surrounded by an ever-flowing city where no one sees the absolutely still crane. The review I read said the novel was a series of vignettes by the Hungarian magical realist novelist. The reviewer could not see the connections between the vignettes and that dear reader is missing the point of the novel. Krasznahorkai offers a set of numbered Cornell boxes or the boxes made by the A.I. in William Gibson's Neuromancer. We have an incomplete set of boxes that begin with 1. and end with 2584. These are not... more chapters to jump between as in Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch. The boxes come closer to Calvino's Invisible Cities. These beautifully written, gorgeous and thoughtful chapters of a brilliant novel. The novel argues for what we miss when we have to make connections - when we synthesize the bits and pieces; the discordant pieces and seek to create meaning. At some level, the each of the chapters defies synthesis and analysis. They bring together a painter's sense of death as a flash of blue; the scent of freshly shaved sypress, and the stillness of the crane. It was a slow read, a difficult read, a beautiful read, and a thoughtful read. At different points during a day - the images and sentences would come back to me. I highly recommend this novel.
review 2: This is a good and immaculately tasteful art novel by Krasznahorkai, who exclusively writes good and immaculately tasteful art novels. I have liked all of his books, because they are good and tasteful exemplars of the art-novel tradition, but I have loved none of them, also because they are good and tasteful exemplars of the art-novel tradition. This may seem unfair, and, in a sense it is, because it is very hard to be as good as Krasznahorkai is. But, having now read every work of his that has been translated into English, I cannot imagine ever feeling the need to read another one, if only because I would prefer to read other books that, although probably less tasteful and almost certainly more carelessly written, might dare to risk being inelegant. less

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