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rbcp82 's review for:
Fatelessness
by Imre Kertész
Probably the best "holocaust literature" I read. Both in the story itself and the form that contains the story, the tropes used by the narrator to make the incomprehensible story comprehensible. All done very well. For many reasons, it is not an easy reading.
Cynicism, irony... the sheer fact of survival violate the novel's clear and logical composition.
... unable to interpret what happened as reality, only as fiction.
"I must admit, there are certain things I would never be able to explain, not precisely, not if I were to consider them from the angle of my own expectations, of rule, or reason--from the angle of life, in sum, the order of things, at least insofar as I am acquainted with it."
The most admirable aspect of this novel is the unbroken neutral tone that persists. Self-denial/self-deception the only survival mode one can adapt.
The type of (in)human experience that one could never understand through vicarious experience.
Obliterate in whole all human dignity, human decency
---------------
He did not bother returning my greeting as it is well known in the neighborhood that he could not abide Jews.
...the shared Jewish fate. ...this fate was one of "unbroken persecution that has lasted for millennia."
... over the immutable order of things.
Everything was in motion, everything functioning, everyone in their place and doing what they had to do, precisely, cheerfully, in a well-oiled fashion.
It turned out that the soap did not, sad to say, lather much but contained a lot of sharp, gritty specks that grazed the skin.
...handed out red enameled bowls and battered spoons--one each between two of us, since the stock was limited, they told us, which was also why, they added, we should return the bowls as soon as they had been emptied.
...fewer details have stayed with me--more just their tone, a sense, what I might call a general impression.
At all events, in any place, even a concentration camp, one gets stuck into a new thing with good intentions, at least that was my experience; for the time being, it was sufficient to become a good prisoner, the rest was in the hands of the future--that, by and large, was how I grasped it...
...that even when soup was being dished out one would do better to aim, not for the front, but for the back of the queue, where you could predict they would be serving from the bottom of the vat, and therefore from the thicker sediment.
For what malice do we in fact have to bear against one another at the individual level, if one thinks about it?
His convict's cap slipping down onto his ears, his face all sunken, pinched, and peaky, a jaundiced dewdrop on the tip of his nose.
But neither stubbornness nor prayers nor any form of escape could have freed me from one thing: hunger. I had, naturally, felt--or at least supposed I felt--hunger before, back at home; I had felt hungry at the brickyard, on the train, at Auschwitz, even at Buchenwald, but I had never before had the sensation like this, protractedly, over a long haul, if I may put it that way. I was transformed into a hole, a void of some kind, and my every endeavor, every effort, was bent to stopping, filling, and silencing this bottomless, evermore clamorous void. I had eyes for that alone, my entire intellect could serve that alone, my every act was directed toward that; and if I did not gnaw on wood or iron or pebbles, it was only because those things could not be chewed and digested. But I did try with sand, for instance, and anytime I saw grass I would never hesitate...
...every morning I believed that would be the last morning I would get up.
Cynicism, irony... the sheer fact of survival violate the novel's clear and logical composition.
... unable to interpret what happened as reality, only as fiction.
"I must admit, there are certain things I would never be able to explain, not precisely, not if I were to consider them from the angle of my own expectations, of rule, or reason--from the angle of life, in sum, the order of things, at least insofar as I am acquainted with it."
The most admirable aspect of this novel is the unbroken neutral tone that persists. Self-denial/self-deception the only survival mode one can adapt.
The type of (in)human experience that one could never understand through vicarious experience.
Obliterate in whole all human dignity, human decency
---------------
He did not bother returning my greeting as it is well known in the neighborhood that he could not abide Jews.
...the shared Jewish fate. ...this fate was one of "unbroken persecution that has lasted for millennia."
... over the immutable order of things.
Everything was in motion, everything functioning, everyone in their place and doing what they had to do, precisely, cheerfully, in a well-oiled fashion.
It turned out that the soap did not, sad to say, lather much but contained a lot of sharp, gritty specks that grazed the skin.
...handed out red enameled bowls and battered spoons--one each between two of us, since the stock was limited, they told us, which was also why, they added, we should return the bowls as soon as they had been emptied.
...fewer details have stayed with me--more just their tone, a sense, what I might call a general impression.
At all events, in any place, even a concentration camp, one gets stuck into a new thing with good intentions, at least that was my experience; for the time being, it was sufficient to become a good prisoner, the rest was in the hands of the future--that, by and large, was how I grasped it...
...that even when soup was being dished out one would do better to aim, not for the front, but for the back of the queue, where you could predict they would be serving from the bottom of the vat, and therefore from the thicker sediment.
For what malice do we in fact have to bear against one another at the individual level, if one thinks about it?
His convict's cap slipping down onto his ears, his face all sunken, pinched, and peaky, a jaundiced dewdrop on the tip of his nose.
But neither stubbornness nor prayers nor any form of escape could have freed me from one thing: hunger. I had, naturally, felt--or at least supposed I felt--hunger before, back at home; I had felt hungry at the brickyard, on the train, at Auschwitz, even at Buchenwald, but I had never before had the sensation like this, protractedly, over a long haul, if I may put it that way. I was transformed into a hole, a void of some kind, and my every endeavor, every effort, was bent to stopping, filling, and silencing this bottomless, evermore clamorous void. I had eyes for that alone, my entire intellect could serve that alone, my every act was directed toward that; and if I did not gnaw on wood or iron or pebbles, it was only because those things could not be chewed and digested. But I did try with sand, for instance, and anytime I saw grass I would never hesitate...
...every morning I believed that would be the last morning I would get up.