A review by monkeelino
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, Ottilie Mulzet

4.0

"...there’s no other way to express it, this wording is, of course, arbitrary, but every wording is always arbitrary in the fullest measure; if anything exists at all...
... the world is nothing more than an event-lunacy..."

I spent a good deal of time trying to get "ahead" of this book (i.e., predict where it was going, literally project overlapping narrative or physical encounters between characters that would never actually happen, etc.). It was almost like I was fighting the very lack of control it foisted upon me as a reader. And it's been long enough since I read any Krasznahorkai that I forgot how easily he disorients and disarms me as a reader. Frequently, I'm left feeling like something has actually happened to me (a trace of a mysterious brush with evil)---it's like the characters themselves are left outside while I'm sheltered during a night when the Angel of Death passes through.

My immediate reaction upon finishing was that of having just read an allegory in which every level of society fails (science abandons the people, the government is corrupt, the police are in bed with outlaws, the press is dedicated to sensationalism, and the infrastructure is crumbling; culture is in the past, the economy is a joke, and the streets are overwhelmed by the homeless and strangers). It is the end of days complete with a plague of toads and death by fire.

All this gloom and doom is made more than palatable by absurdity and darkly comedic characters and circumstances (con men, eccentrics, incompetents, idiots, sycophants, gloryhounds, etc.). The entire book is built upon the return of a simpleton whose own expectations of the love and place he left are as equally removed from reality as the expectations of the hometown as they anticipate a kind of salvation-through-massive-financial-gift upon his return. One gets the sense that in Krasznahorkai's world, the end times would likely be postponed by the current war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, and the optimal media moment, but those petrol trucks will inevitably roll into town...
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Great review here: https://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2019/9/23/lszl-krasznahorkais-baron-wenckheims-homecoming
(link courtesy of Paul Fulcher’s insightful review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2655083271 )
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DID I MENTION THERE'S A BIKER GANG?!! THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THESE WORDS I WANT TO LOOK UP
János Kádár | opprobrium | bocet | hora mortului | Attila József | Georg Cantor | ushanka | Tanakh
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If forced to liken this to a musical experience, I would choose Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYpBHc8px_U&t=2844s
(Do you ever get forced to liken something to a musical experience? If not, you're hanging out with the wrong type of terrorists/torturers.)