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Anniversaries #1-4
Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl
An NYRB Classics Original
As a novel, Uwe Johnson’s masterpiece, Anniversaries, is at once daringly simple in conception and wonderfully complex and engaging in effect. Late in 1967, Johnson, already one of the most celebrated German novelists of his generation, set out to write a book that would take the form of an entry for every day of the year that lay ahead. The first section was dated August 20, and Johnson had of course no idea what the year would bring - that was part of the challenge - but he did have his main character: Gesine Cresspahl, a German emigre living on the Upper West Side of New York City and working as a translator for a bank who is the single mother of a ten-year-old daughter, Marie. The book would tell the story of a year in the life of this little family in relation to the unfolding story of the year, as winnowed from the pages of the New York Times, of which Gesine is a devoted if wary reader. These stories would in turn be overlayed by another: Gesine is 34, born just as Hitler was coming to power, and she has decided to tell Marie the story of her grandparents’ lives and of her own rural childhood in Nazi Germany. It is important that Marie know where and what she comes from. The days of the year are also anniversaries of years past. The world that was and the world of the 1960s - with the struggle for civil rights leading to riots in American cities and, abroad, the escalating destruction of the Vietnam War - are, in the end, one world.
Anniversaries was published in four volumes over the more than ten years that it took Johnson to write it, and as the volumes came out it became clear that this was one the great twentieth-century novels. The book courts comparison to Joyce’s Ulysses, the book of a day, and to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the book of a lifetime, but it stands apart in its dense polyphonic interplay of voices and stories. Anniversaries is many books: the book of a mother and daughter, of a family and its generations, of the country and the city, and of two times and two countries that seem farther apart perhaps than they are. It is a novel of private life, a political novel, and a new kind of historical novel, reckoning not only with past history but with history in the making.
Monumental and intimate, sweeping in vision and full of incident, richly detailed and endlessly absorbing, Anniversaries, now for the first time available in English in a brilliant new translation by Damion Searls, is nothing short of a revelation.
As a novel, Uwe Johnson’s masterpiece, Anniversaries, is at once daringly simple in conception and wonderfully complex and engaging in effect. Late in 1967, Johnson, already one of the most celebrated German novelists of his generation, set out to write a book that would take the form of an entry for every day of the year that lay ahead. The first section was dated August 20, and Johnson had of course no idea what the year would bring - that was part of the challenge - but he did have his main character: Gesine Cresspahl, a German emigre living on the Upper West Side of New York City and working as a translator for a bank who is the single mother of a ten-year-old daughter, Marie. The book would tell the story of a year in the life of this little family in relation to the unfolding story of the year, as winnowed from the pages of the New York Times, of which Gesine is a devoted if wary reader. These stories would in turn be overlayed by another: Gesine is 34, born just as Hitler was coming to power, and she has decided to tell Marie the story of her grandparents’ lives and of her own rural childhood in Nazi Germany. It is important that Marie know where and what she comes from. The days of the year are also anniversaries of years past. The world that was and the world of the 1960s - with the struggle for civil rights leading to riots in American cities and, abroad, the escalating destruction of the Vietnam War - are, in the end, one world.
Anniversaries was published in four volumes over the more than ten years that it took Johnson to write it, and as the volumes came out it became clear that this was one the great twentieth-century novels. The book courts comparison to Joyce’s Ulysses, the book of a day, and to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the book of a lifetime, but it stands apart in its dense polyphonic interplay of voices and stories. Anniversaries is many books: the book of a mother and daughter, of a family and its generations, of the country and the city, and of two times and two countries that seem farther apart perhaps than they are. It is a novel of private life, a political novel, and a new kind of historical novel, reckoning not only with past history but with history in the making.
Monumental and intimate, sweeping in vision and full of incident, richly detailed and endlessly absorbing, Anniversaries, now for the first time available in English in a brilliant new translation by Damion Searls, is nothing short of a revelation.
1668 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Uwe Johnson
100 books51 followersUwe Johnson was a German writer, editor, and scholar.
Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamień Pomorski, Poland). His father was a Swedish-descent peasant from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pommern. At the end of World War II in 1945, he fled with his family to Anklam (West Pomerania); his father died in a Soviet internment camp (Fünfeichen). The family eventually settled in Güstrow, where he attended John-Brinckman-Oberschule 1948–1952. He went on to study German philology, first in Rostock (1952–54), then in Leipzig (1954–56). His Diplomarbeit (final thesis) was on Ernst Barlach. Due to his lack of political support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the University on 17 June 1953 but was later reinstated.
Beginning in 1953, Johnson worked on the novel Ingrid Babendererde, rejected by various publishing houses and unpublished during his lifetime.
In 1956, Johnson's mother left for West Berlin. As a result, he was not allowed to work a normal job in the East. Unemployed for political reasons, he translated Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (the translation was published in 1961) and began to write the novel Mutmassungen über Jakob, published in 1959 by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main. Johnson himself moved to West Berlin at this time. He promptly became associated with Gruppe 47, which Hans Magnus Enzensberger once described as "the Central Café of a literature without a capital." [1]
During the early 1960s, Johnson continued to write and publish fiction, and also supported himself as a translator, mainly from English-language works, and as an editor. He travelled to America in 1961; the following year he was married, had a daughter, received a scholarship to Villa Massimo, Rome, and won the Prix International.
1964 - for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, Reviews of GDR television programmes boycotted by the West German press (published under the title "Der 5. Kanal", "The Fifth Channel", 1987).
In 1965, Johnson travelled again to America. He then edited Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti. Buch der Wendungen. Fragmente 1933-1956 (Me-ti: the Book of Changes. Fragments, 1933-1956). From 1966 through 1968 he worked in New York City as a textbook editor at Harcourt, Brace & World and lived with his family in an apartment at 243 Riverside Drive (Manhattan). During this time (in 1967) he began work on his magnum opus, the Jahrestage and edited Das neue Fenster (The new window), a textbook of German-language readings for English-speaking students learning German.
On 1 January 1967 protesters from Johnson's own West Berlin apartment building founded Kommune 1. He first learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. Returning to West Berlin in 1969, he became a member of the West German PEN Center and of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). In 1970, he published the first volume of his Jahrestage (Anniversaries). Two more volumes were to follow in the next three years, but the fourth volume would not appear until 1983.
Meanwhile, in 1972 Johnson became Vice President of the Academy of the Arts and was the editor of Max Frisch's Tagebuch 1966-1971. In 1974, he moved to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey; shortly after, he broke off work on Jahrestage due partly to health problems and partly to writer's block.
This was not a completely unproductive period. Johnson published some shorter works and continued to do some work as an editor. In 1977, he was admitted to the Darmstädter Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Darmstadt Academy for Speech and Writing); two years later he informally withdrew. In 1979 he gave a series of Lectures on poetics at the University of Frankfurt (published posthumously as Begleitumstände. Frankfurter Vorlesungen).
In 1983, the fourth volume of Jahrestage was published, but Johnson broke off a reading tour for health reasons. He died on 22 February 1984 in Sheerness in England. His body was not found until
Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamień Pomorski, Poland). His father was a Swedish-descent peasant from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pommern. At the end of World War II in 1945, he fled with his family to Anklam (West Pomerania); his father died in a Soviet internment camp (Fünfeichen). The family eventually settled in Güstrow, where he attended John-Brinckman-Oberschule 1948–1952. He went on to study German philology, first in Rostock (1952–54), then in Leipzig (1954–56). His Diplomarbeit (final thesis) was on Ernst Barlach. Due to his lack of political support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the University on 17 June 1953 but was later reinstated.
Beginning in 1953, Johnson worked on the novel Ingrid Babendererde, rejected by various publishing houses and unpublished during his lifetime.
In 1956, Johnson's mother left for West Berlin. As a result, he was not allowed to work a normal job in the East. Unemployed for political reasons, he translated Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (the translation was published in 1961) and began to write the novel Mutmassungen über Jakob, published in 1959 by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main. Johnson himself moved to West Berlin at this time. He promptly became associated with Gruppe 47, which Hans Magnus Enzensberger once described as "the Central Café of a literature without a capital." [1]
During the early 1960s, Johnson continued to write and publish fiction, and also supported himself as a translator, mainly from English-language works, and as an editor. He travelled to America in 1961; the following year he was married, had a daughter, received a scholarship to Villa Massimo, Rome, and won the Prix International.
1964 - for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, Reviews of GDR television programmes boycotted by the West German press (published under the title "Der 5. Kanal", "The Fifth Channel", 1987).
In 1965, Johnson travelled again to America. He then edited Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti. Buch der Wendungen. Fragmente 1933-1956 (Me-ti: the Book of Changes. Fragments, 1933-1956). From 1966 through 1968 he worked in New York City as a textbook editor at Harcourt, Brace & World and lived with his family in an apartment at 243 Riverside Drive (Manhattan). During this time (in 1967) he began work on his magnum opus, the Jahrestage and edited Das neue Fenster (The new window), a textbook of German-language readings for English-speaking students learning German.
On 1 January 1967 protesters from Johnson's own West Berlin apartment building founded Kommune 1. He first learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. Returning to West Berlin in 1969, he became a member of the West German PEN Center and of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). In 1970, he published the first volume of his Jahrestage (Anniversaries). Two more volumes were to follow in the next three years, but the fourth volume would not appear until 1983.
Meanwhile, in 1972 Johnson became Vice President of the Academy of the Arts and was the editor of Max Frisch's Tagebuch 1966-1971. In 1974, he moved to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey; shortly after, he broke off work on Jahrestage due partly to health problems and partly to writer's block.
This was not a completely unproductive period. Johnson published some shorter works and continued to do some work as an editor. In 1977, he was admitted to the Darmstädter Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Darmstadt Academy for Speech and Writing); two years later he informally withdrew. In 1979 he gave a series of Lectures on poetics at the University of Frankfurt (published posthumously as Begleitumstände. Frankfurter Vorlesungen).
In 1983, the fourth volume of Jahrestage was published, but Johnson broke off a reading tour for health reasons. He died on 22 February 1984 in Sheerness in England. His body was not found until
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November 17, 2018A masterpiece of course. A year in the life of, day by day. But let me assure you, not in the form of a diary. There is a delightful variety of shifting voices and points of views and styles that supersede any kind of first person problems of a diary. And we get a convincing juxtaposition of WWII Germany and Vietnam era Usofa. This is a big novel with all the traits and tricks of big novels.
But, for me I found myself losing its grip in the second volume. There the chapters got longer and the focus tended to be on post-WWII German (small town) politics, in extreme and near tedious detail (not tedious if you go for that kind of thing) and Gesine's school days of that era. I had found myself more engaged with the material of '67-'68 Usofa, but that is my own orientation of interest. The stuff of the novel will of course attract you varyingly according to where and how you find yourself.
Remember of course that Musil's great novel is a great novel and remains a masterpiece ; despite the total disintegration (and unreadability) of its unfinished Part III. So too Anniversaries (for me) remains an entirely impressive work no matter how the material of the second volume didn't quite drag me as deeply.
Oh, and the NYT material is simply lovely. Approaching a Cooverian level of satire. Read this if only for that.
__________
Let's be Frank. This is a long big book and it'll take me at least a few weeks to read it once I get started on it. And it's probably the BIG'st thing since Bottom's Dream what's shown up in English. And so for this and many more reasons, the prospect of me reviewing this is slim.
Also, like BD/ZT, there's good reason to believe that Our Literary Establishment will be (has been) ignoring its existence, despite the NYRB imprint etc etc. So I'm just going to ClearingHouse the shit out of this ReviewBox. Below will be listed from present into the past for your ease in quickly finding whatever new shit I might post (per usuall).
____________
From The Translator --
Part I :: "On Uwe Johnson: Poet of Both Germanys"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"...and considering devoting the rest of his life to translating Faulkner’s complete works."
"Because to him they were more than fictional: no writer has ever been more invested, more ethically committed, to the reality of his fictions." [Vollmann?]
Part II :: "On Uwe Johnson: The Hardest Book I’ve Ever Translated"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"It’s a whole short story in a set-up paragraph, complete with a quiet little piece of virtuosity in the camera-eye second sentence that contains nine consecutive prepositional phrases, all using different prepositions (have to keep that, even though the nine different prepositions in German don’t map directly onto nine different prepositions in English)."
"There’s a library’s worth of historical references in the book—luckily for this translator, German scholars have tracked down most of them [annotations bitte!!!]—but the real hurdle is this detailed texture."
"An elevator operator turns around, away from Gesine, to face the … not the metal outer doors but the wooden gate that accordions into rhombuses, which you shut from inside the elevator. What is that called?" [today I suspect 'elevator operator' will have to be annotated. Why can't they just push the button themselves? I remember riding the elevator at Loeman's in Boston operated by a union man.]
"....in novels by Saul Bellow. Maybe this is the writer in English who has a prose energy comparable to Johnson’s, all cylinders always firing on every level. One word down, 599,999 to go."
"The insurmountable challenge was capturing Johnson’s games with English."
"To what extent does fifty-year-old English need “translation”?"
"There are the “mobile kiosks” in Central Park selling heisse Hunde, which in German doesn’t mean the iconic thin sausages, it means actual dogs that are literally hot."
Part III :: "Uwe Johnson: Not This But That"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"In German you say “but rather” in one elegant little word instead of two, sondern..." [No good English for "Doch" either. (heh. I read the next sentence and lo, "There are other German words like doch...")]
"But Johnson wasn’t just using a German tic, he was doing what any great writer does: push the resources of his or her language to express a personal vision."
"Saying “not six but five thirty” is truer to the way his mind works than “five thirty, not six.”" [yes! Leave the german syntax in place please don't over=English it.]
"....all writers operate under the influence of others, within certain generic conventions, and with words and a language that were invented before they came along." [I call this the fact that writing (and reading) are social activities. But I know this because I'm a good Hegelian.]
"...but unless you have another language to compare and contrast against, a language’s built-in assumptions are likely to remain invisible to you." [Let's just say, I agree. In my experience, I didn't even understand nothing about how English worked (really) until I'd learned me some Greek and some German. You don't know Self til you've known Other really.]
"As a further twist, Johnson’s biggest influence was William Faulkner, and Faulkner’s later novels, with their long, clawing, grasping, searching sentences, prominently use this same “not this but that” move of correction and negation." [Of course the Joyce=comparison always makes me salivate (and head to the Market with Wallet open) ; but so too should the Faulkner=comp.]
"So is Johnson’s usage deliberately drawing on Faulkner? And does that mean the translator should try to make Johnson’s sentences in English sound like Faulkner (not to mention Bellow)? How would a line written in the seventies, in German and consciously after Faulkner, be best expressed in today’s English?" [Language layers!]
"... so maybe Conrad’s English bears traces of Polish conventions?" [The rabbit=hole goes deeper!]
"No language is truly monolingual." [aha! Enter Bakhtin.]
"...but now there’s a new version of New York that English-speaking New Yorkers have access to." [Think I'm falling in love with this trans'r.]
_______
blogging it up with Mookse ::
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/20...
"Let’s start with this: Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries is the best book I’ve read this year, and I haven’t even finished the book yet" [that's how I feel about Bottom's Dream ; should've won that btbaward even though no one would've finished reading it ; don't matter]
[nice centerfold]
___________
"The Decades-Old Novel That Presages Today’s Fight for Facts"
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
Occur'd to me earlier today that Today, yes it's about facts ; but more it's about losing fiction. It's fiction that puts facts together into something meaningful. And so it's not so much about 'fake facts/news' but about fake fiction. Will UJ help restore us to the truth of/in/with/by/of/etc fiction?
"European modernists used the novel as a means of mapping metropolitan experience." [somewhere Moore's got a great list of the Stadtsroman. Uwe's another entry for NYC.]
"Its unlikely hero, and sometime stand-in narrator, is The New York Times, which Gesine, an admiring if astringent reader, calls “our tried and true supplier of reality.”" [but ofcourse we know that the NYT confesses to print only that which is FIT to print.]
"This faith in the notion of a shared, objectively verifiable reality may seem quaint, or enviable, to the reader of 2018." [?]
"Thanks in part to persistent abuse from President Trump, public trust in the press has never been lower, and the basic definitions of truth and falsehood are now a matter of daily contention." [sigh. Ain't read the Chomsky/Herman? What goes missing in this Trump v. The Medea thing is the long history of the left=wing critique of the Corporate/State Media like the NYT and CNN etc. The thing is that this Media has always advanced the interests of people like Trump. But that story is not getting told is it? I mean, there is definitely a thing where 'Rumpism is breaking up the neoliberal death grip ; that should be acknowledged too. As Zizek says, Right step, wrong direction.]
[where were we...?]
"having grown up with “the Nazi People’s Observer, the Soviet Union’s Daily Review.”" [and the non-biased writer would add "the Corporation's NYT". It's this Nazi-Commie-Liberal equivalency drawing that got Heidegger in trouble once.]
"“We do not live by bread alone,” Gesine advises her daughter, “we need hard facts too, child.”" [sigh. We need fiction. But I guess that's what's meant by 'bread'.]
But, for me I found myself losing its grip in the second volume. There the chapters got longer and the focus tended to be on post-WWII German (small town) politics, in extreme and near tedious detail (not tedious if you go for that kind of thing) and Gesine's school days of that era. I had found myself more engaged with the material of '67-'68 Usofa, but that is my own orientation of interest. The stuff of the novel will of course attract you varyingly according to where and how you find yourself.
Remember of course that Musil's great novel is a great novel and remains a masterpiece ; despite the total disintegration (and unreadability) of its unfinished Part III. So too Anniversaries (for me) remains an entirely impressive work no matter how the material of the second volume didn't quite drag me as deeply.
Oh, and the NYT material is simply lovely. Approaching a Cooverian level of satire. Read this if only for that.
__________
Let's be Frank. This is a long big book and it'll take me at least a few weeks to read it once I get started on it. And it's probably the BIG'st thing since Bottom's Dream what's shown up in English. And so for this and many more reasons, the prospect of me reviewing this is slim.
Also, like BD/ZT, there's good reason to believe that Our Literary Establishment will be (has been) ignoring its existence, despite the NYRB imprint etc etc. So I'm just going to ClearingHouse the shit out of this ReviewBox. Below will be listed from present into the past for your ease in quickly finding whatever new shit I might post (per usuall).
____________
From The Translator --
Part I :: "On Uwe Johnson: Poet of Both Germanys"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"...and considering devoting the rest of his life to translating Faulkner’s complete works."
"Because to him they were more than fictional: no writer has ever been more invested, more ethically committed, to the reality of his fictions." [Vollmann?]
Part II :: "On Uwe Johnson: The Hardest Book I’ve Ever Translated"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"It’s a whole short story in a set-up paragraph, complete with a quiet little piece of virtuosity in the camera-eye second sentence that contains nine consecutive prepositional phrases, all using different prepositions (have to keep that, even though the nine different prepositions in German don’t map directly onto nine different prepositions in English)."
"There’s a library’s worth of historical references in the book—luckily for this translator, German scholars have tracked down most of them [annotations bitte!!!]—but the real hurdle is this detailed texture."
"An elevator operator turns around, away from Gesine, to face the … not the metal outer doors but the wooden gate that accordions into rhombuses, which you shut from inside the elevator. What is that called?" [today I suspect 'elevator operator' will have to be annotated. Why can't they just push the button themselves? I remember riding the elevator at Loeman's in Boston operated by a union man.]
"....in novels by Saul Bellow. Maybe this is the writer in English who has a prose energy comparable to Johnson’s, all cylinders always firing on every level. One word down, 599,999 to go."
"The insurmountable challenge was capturing Johnson’s games with English."
"To what extent does fifty-year-old English need “translation”?"
"There are the “mobile kiosks” in Central Park selling heisse Hunde, which in German doesn’t mean the iconic thin sausages, it means actual dogs that are literally hot."
Part III :: "Uwe Johnson: Not This But That"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"In German you say “but rather” in one elegant little word instead of two, sondern..." [No good English for "Doch" either. (heh. I read the next sentence and lo, "There are other German words like doch...")]
"But Johnson wasn’t just using a German tic, he was doing what any great writer does: push the resources of his or her language to express a personal vision."
"Saying “not six but five thirty” is truer to the way his mind works than “five thirty, not six.”" [yes! Leave the german syntax in place please don't over=English it.]
"....all writers operate under the influence of others, within certain generic conventions, and with words and a language that were invented before they came along." [I call this the fact that writing (and reading) are social activities. But I know this because I'm a good Hegelian.]
"...but unless you have another language to compare and contrast against, a language’s built-in assumptions are likely to remain invisible to you." [Let's just say, I agree. In my experience, I didn't even understand nothing about how English worked (really) until I'd learned me some Greek and some German. You don't know Self til you've known Other really.]
"As a further twist, Johnson’s biggest influence was William Faulkner, and Faulkner’s later novels, with their long, clawing, grasping, searching sentences, prominently use this same “not this but that” move of correction and negation." [Of course the Joyce=comparison always makes me salivate (and head to the Market with Wallet open) ; but so too should the Faulkner=comp.]
"So is Johnson’s usage deliberately drawing on Faulkner? And does that mean the translator should try to make Johnson’s sentences in English sound like Faulkner (not to mention Bellow)? How would a line written in the seventies, in German and consciously after Faulkner, be best expressed in today’s English?" [Language layers!]
"... so maybe Conrad’s English bears traces of Polish conventions?" [The rabbit=hole goes deeper!]
"No language is truly monolingual." [aha! Enter Bakhtin.]
"...but now there’s a new version of New York that English-speaking New Yorkers have access to." [Think I'm falling in love with this trans'r.]
_______
blogging it up with Mookse ::
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/20...
"Let’s start with this: Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries is the best book I’ve read this year, and I haven’t even finished the book yet" [that's how I feel about Bottom's Dream ; should've won that btbaward even though no one would've finished reading it ; don't matter]
[nice centerfold]
___________
"The Decades-Old Novel That Presages Today’s Fight for Facts"
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
Occur'd to me earlier today that Today, yes it's about facts ; but more it's about losing fiction. It's fiction that puts facts together into something meaningful. And so it's not so much about 'fake facts/news' but about fake fiction. Will UJ help restore us to the truth of/in/with/by/of/etc fiction?
"European modernists used the novel as a means of mapping metropolitan experience." [somewhere Moore's got a great list of the Stadtsroman. Uwe's another entry for NYC.]
"Its unlikely hero, and sometime stand-in narrator, is The New York Times, which Gesine, an admiring if astringent reader, calls “our tried and true supplier of reality.”" [but ofcourse we know that the NYT confesses to print only that which is FIT to print.]
"This faith in the notion of a shared, objectively verifiable reality may seem quaint, or enviable, to the reader of 2018." [?]
"Thanks in part to persistent abuse from President Trump, public trust in the press has never been lower, and the basic definitions of truth and falsehood are now a matter of daily contention." [sigh. Ain't read the Chomsky/Herman? What goes missing in this Trump v. The Medea thing is the long history of the left=wing critique of the Corporate/State Media like the NYT and CNN etc. The thing is that this Media has always advanced the interests of people like Trump. But that story is not getting told is it? I mean, there is definitely a thing where 'Rumpism is breaking up the neoliberal death grip ; that should be acknowledged too. As Zizek says, Right step, wrong direction.]
[where were we...?]
"having grown up with “the Nazi People’s Observer, the Soviet Union’s Daily Review.”" [and the non-biased writer would add "the Corporation's NYT". It's this Nazi-Commie-Liberal equivalency drawing that got Heidegger in trouble once.]
"“We do not live by bread alone,” Gesine advises her daughter, “we need hard facts too, child.”" [sigh. We need fiction. But I guess that's what's meant by 'bread'.]
August 7, 2020
The first 900 or so pages of this are simply extraordinary, but (and I recognise the problem may be mine and not the text's, but it does seem like others felt the same) as we get into book 3 it feels like the great mass of detail starts to overwhelm, that the authorial control starts to fail, that less than interesting events start to take up more and more unnecessary space.
I wholeheartedly recommend reading this, and the translation is a breathtaking achievement, but it may be best to take a bit of a break halfway through....Looking at the dates of publication, it seems like such a gap would be entirely legitimate, and that may have been a way to prevent the kind of exhaustion that overtook me.
I wholeheartedly recommend reading this, and the translation is a breathtaking achievement, but it may be best to take a bit of a break halfway through....Looking at the dates of publication, it seems like such a gap would be entirely legitimate, and that may have been a way to prevent the kind of exhaustion that overtook me.
Read
March 8, 2018Gde početi s ličnim utiskom kad je u rasponu od preko dve hiljade strana (bar ako sam ispravno sabrala ove četiri knjige) bilo poprilično utisaka?
1. Uve Jonson je pisac - kralj, car i reli vozač! Takođe strašan namćor. Kome nisu valjali ni DDR (jer Sovjeti i prinudni komunizam i naravno Štazi) ni Zapadna Nemačka (jer pedesete i valjanje u blatu malograđanštine i privrednog čuda i loše prikriveni repovi nacizma) ni SAD (jer rasizam i rat u Vijetnamu) ni zapravo ljudski rod kao takav (realno). Pa je završio u nekoj engleskoj primorskoj selendri gde se samotnjački opijao do smrti.
2. Sve što ste ikada hteli da saznate o Meklenburgu, Meklenburžanima i njihovom sočnom i krasnom dijalektu. Ne pamtim kad sam ovako često posezala za rečnikom a svakako se nikad toliko često nije dešavalo da nepoznata reč ima u zagradi „norddeutsch“ kao bližu odrednicu.
3. Ovako se uzorno, činjenično potkovano, jezivo upečatljivo (ali bez onakvih scena nasilja koje su same sebi svrha) i često s kao barut suvim i kao ponoć crnim humorom piše o:
- Usponu fašizma
- Drugom svetskom ratu
- Britansko-sovjetskoj otimačini oko Nemačke
- Njujorku 1967/8
- Porodičnim, ličnim i životnim traumama po izboru (nikad više bure za kišnicu nećemo gledati istim očima)
4. Matora sam da se zaljubljujem u književne likove, pa još sredovečne i ćutljive majstore stolarije, ali Hajnrih Krespal T_T
5. I na metatekstualnom nivou, strašno je čitati četvrtu knjigu koja se na mahove prosto raspada od svega što je u nju nagurano, od Berlinskog zida do Praškog proleća, dok se ima na umu kako je pisana duže nego prve tri zajedno i kako je svome piscu, zapravo, došla glave.
Da, zapravo, ovo je knjiga o tome kako u Njujorku samohrana majka desetogodišnjoj ćerkici prepričava život svoga oca i potom svoj - u Nemačkoj, od ranih tridesetih do pedesetih godina dvadesetog veka, dok oko njih dve penuša 1968. i sve što se te godine ispodešavalo. I taman je toliko ambiciozno i uspešno koliko i zvuči. I crno i žalosno.
1. Uve Jonson je pisac - kralj, car i reli vozač! Takođe strašan namćor. Kome nisu valjali ni DDR (jer Sovjeti i prinudni komunizam i naravno Štazi) ni Zapadna Nemačka (jer pedesete i valjanje u blatu malograđanštine i privrednog čuda i loše prikriveni repovi nacizma) ni SAD (jer rasizam i rat u Vijetnamu) ni zapravo ljudski rod kao takav (realno). Pa je završio u nekoj engleskoj primorskoj selendri gde se samotnjački opijao do smrti.
2. Sve što ste ikada hteli da saznate o Meklenburgu, Meklenburžanima i njihovom sočnom i krasnom dijalektu. Ne pamtim kad sam ovako često posezala za rečnikom a svakako se nikad toliko često nije dešavalo da nepoznata reč ima u zagradi „norddeutsch“ kao bližu odrednicu.
3. Ovako se uzorno, činjenično potkovano, jezivo upečatljivo (ali bez onakvih scena nasilja koje su same sebi svrha) i često s kao barut suvim i kao ponoć crnim humorom piše o:
- Usponu fašizma
- Drugom svetskom ratu
- Britansko-sovjetskoj otimačini oko Nemačke
- Njujorku 1967/8
- Porodičnim, ličnim i životnim traumama po izboru (nikad više bure za kišnicu nećemo gledati istim očima)
4. Matora sam da se zaljubljujem u književne likove, pa još sredovečne i ćutljive majstore stolarije, ali Hajnrih Krespal T_T
5. I na metatekstualnom nivou, strašno je čitati četvrtu knjigu koja se na mahove prosto raspada od svega što je u nju nagurano, od Berlinskog zida do Praškog proleća, dok se ima na umu kako je pisana duže nego prve tri zajedno i kako je svome piscu, zapravo, došla glave.
Da, zapravo, ovo je knjiga o tome kako u Njujorku samohrana majka desetogodišnjoj ćerkici prepričava život svoga oca i potom svoj - u Nemačkoj, od ranih tridesetih do pedesetih godina dvadesetog veka, dok oko njih dve penuša 1968. i sve što se te godine ispodešavalo. I taman je toliko ambiciozno i uspešno koliko i zvuči. I crno i žalosno.
February 15, 2021
Vanaf 16 november tot en met 28 december was ik volkomen ondergedompeld in "Jahrestage", de vierdelige en ruim 1600 pagina's en 668.727 woorden tellende klassieker van Uwe Johnson die onlangs als één geheel werd vertaald en uitgegeven. Puur liefdewerk van Marc Hoogma, die geen professioneel vertaler is maar wel zeer houdt van dit boek. Met hulp van Theo Veenhof heeft hij bovendien voor een soepel lezende vertaling gezorgd, die nog verrijkt wordt met drie informatieve en heel enthousiasmerende nawoorden. Ik jubel! Want zonder Hoogma en Veenhof, en zonder uitgeverij Van Oorschot, zou ik nooit kennis hebben kunnen maken met dit meesterlijke boek.
"Jahrestage" zijn "jaardagen" of "gedenkdagen": dagen waarop een belangrijke historische gebeurtenis wordt herdacht die in een eerder jaar op die dag heeft plaatsgevonden. We volgen een jaar lang het leven van Gesine Cresspahl in New York, van 20 augustus 1967 t/m 20 augustus 1968. Elk hoofdstuk geeft intense impressionistische beelden van één dag, en elk hoofdstuk heeft de datum van die dag als titel. Het boek als geheel oogt daardoor als een oceanisch uitgestrekt dagboek, of als een onafzienbare opsomming van gedenkdagen. Met als impliciete boodschap dat elke dag een gedenkdag is, omdat elke alledaagsheid het waard is om jaren na dato nog steeds in de gedachten te worden bewaard. Die gedenkdagen staan steeds in het teken van het turbulente dagelijkse leven: de bonte en grillige dynamiek van het New York waar Gesine woont en werkt, maar ook de minstens zo bonte en grillige dynamiek van de nationale en internationale wereldpolitiek die Gesine aandachtig volgt via de New York Times, de krant die voor haar geldt als gesprekspartner die de wereld duidt en als dagboek van het dagelijks leven. En via de New York Times komt er veel op Gesine af: wisselende berichten over het vaak ongelofelijke geweld in Vietnam of over de toenemende aantallen moorden en rassenrellen in New York of andere Amerikaanse steden; de moorden op Martin Luther King en Robert Kennedy; de Parijse studentenrellen van mei '68; de opkomst en helaas ook ondergang van de "Praagse lente", en van het even oplevende en vervolgens gesmoorde socialisme met een menselijk gezicht in Tsjecho- Slowakije...... .
Tegelijk gaat elk hoofdstuk - elke jaardag of gedenkdag- ook over herinneringsflarden van Gesine: over haar even intense als vergeefse pogingen om zich haar verre verleden weer tot in detail voor de geest te halen, en om haar persoonlijke geschiedenis te reconstrueren. Haar jeugd in het (verzonnen) Duitse dorpje Jerichow, een Mecklenburgs dorpje dat voor haar nog steeds de wereld is maar wel een voorgoed verloren wereld. Haar studiejaren in Gneez, een stad die volgens haar "lijkt op de poging van een mathematicus uit vroeger tijden om met veelkantige plankjes een veelhoek te construeren die een cirkel benadert". Een stad dus die in Gesines herinnering of verbeelding lijkt op de kwadratuur van de cirkel, een bekende metafoor voor het onmogelijke of van het onoplosbare raadsel. En dat past naar mijn idee naadloos bij de ondoorgrondelijkheid van Gesines verleden en dat van haar dierbaren: ze poogt zich uit alle macht voor te stellen hoe haar beide ouders de jaren op weg naar en tijdens WO II hebben beleefd, en ze heeft zelf ook levendige maar onduidbare herinneringen aan de oorlogsjaren en de heel verwarrende naoorlogse jaren in de nog piepjonge maar wel steeds repressiever wordende DDR. Duistere jaren waarin het politieke voortdurend het alledaagse binnensloop, op toen onbegrijpelijke en ook achteraf niet meer te begrijpen wijze. Alle herinneringen van Gesine staan dus bol van niet- weten, van niet kunnen duiden wat er in haar verleden precies gebeurde en waarom, en ook niet van wat zij en haar dierbaren voelden of meemaakten en waarom. Tegelijk echter staan al die herinneringen ook bol van het verlangen om dit toch te proberen, en om het verleden toch weer voor de geest te halen en te duiden. Tot in de meest irrelevant lijkende en mogelijk zelfs nooit opgemerkte details aan toe. Bovendien associeert Gesine voortdurend tussen heden en verleden: in alle hoofdstukken - alle gedenkdagen- wordt de onbegrijpelijke dynamiek van het Duitsland van toen op onnavolgbare wijze vermengd met de grillige dynamiek die opstijgt uit New York en de New York Times.
Deze vermenging van ondoorgrondelijk verleden en ongrijpbaar heden vraagt wel voortdurende concentratie en inspanning van de lezer. Maar daarvoor krijg je een heel intense leeservaring terug. Ik tenminste wel. En die intensiteit wordt nog vergroot door de enorme hoeveelheid van verhaallijnen en anekdotes, en door de vele verschillende stijlen waarin we die verhaallijnen krijgen opgediend. Vaak lezen we dialogen tussen Gesine en haar tienjarige dochter Marie: dialogen waarin je soms helemaal kwijtraakt wie wat zegt vanuit welk referentiekader, maar die toch ontroeren en boeien omdat Gesine en Marie zo gepassioneerd onderzoeken wat er gebeurt en alle raadsels van voor naar achter bekijken. Nog vaker zien we lange innerlijke monologen, waarin de 15-jarige Gesine van toen en de 35- jarige Gesine van nu voortdurend van rol wisselen, en waarin Gesine vele malen switcht tussen het ik- perspectief en het veel afstandelijkere zij- perspectief. Alsof de werkelijkheid die zij probeert te bevatten (te herinneren, te verbeelden) te complex is om te passen in één perspectief. Een indruk die nog sterker wordt in passages waarin bijvoorbeeld de complexe innerlijke roerselen aan bod komen van Gesines beide ouders: ongrijpbare roerselen, meerduidige flarden, allemaal gepresenteerd via innerlijke monologen van Gesine die daarin dus meerdere keren kan veranderen van perspectief. Of, beter gezegd: vanuit het veranderlijke en niet-wetende perspectief van de ouders, maar dan zoals Gesine zich dat perspectief tracht voor te stellen. Soms is het zelfs onduidelijk of het voortdurend veranderende perspectief van Gesine wel haar eigen perspectief is: er is immers ook een verteller, door Gesine "kameraad schrijver" genoemd en luisterend naar de naam Uwe Johnson, een verteller die we verder niet leren kennen maar die vanuit zijn ons onbekende perspectief kennelijk soms ook tastend duidt wat er is gebeurd en waarom. De tastende stem van die verteller raakt vaak vermengd met de al even tastende stem van Gesine, en vaak weten we niet wie van beiden aan het woord is. Waardoor het tastende karakter van de vertelling nog verder wordt versterkt.
De raadsels worden kortom niet opgelost, maar getoond en uitvergroot. En dat wordt nog versterkt door de veelheid van stijlen die dit boek kent. Er is zoals gezegd veel dialoog en daarnaast veel innerlijke monoloog; voorts zijn er soms lange, bijna abstract filosofische passages die dan ineens afgewisseld worden met gesprekken in sfeervol Mecklenburgs dialect; impressionistische passages vol poëtisch proza worden zomaar afgewisseld met lange opsommingen vol ogenschijnlijke trivialiteiten; politiek gekleurd krantenproza wordt afgewisseld met flarden van gesprekken zoals je die hoort op een metrostation; prachtige natuurimpressies vol verlangen naar een wereld die niet meer is gaan zomaar ineens over in parafrases of citaten van de New York Times.... Vaak is de keuze van vorm en stijl heel verrassend: alle rouw om de dood van Robert Kennedy krijgen we bijvoorbeeld opgediend in de vorm van aantekeningen voor een werkstuk van Marie. Maar juist die vele aantekeningen, en juist de wijze waarop die niet zijn samengevoegd in een sluitend verhaal, geven een heel wonderlijk en daardoor helemaal raak beeld van Kennedy's zo onbegrijpelijke dood.
De roman is door dit alles zonder meer gefragmenteerd te noemen. Of misschien een verzameling van gefragmenteerde romans: alsof je de brokstukken ziet van een psychologische roman, een historische roman, een sociologische roman, en een bundel prozagedichten. En mede daardoor is de roman ook oceanisch: zo boordevol fragmenten, personages, raadselen en sfeerbeelden dat je totaal het overzicht verliest. Te meer omdat elk fragment weer vele raadselen omvat. Geen enkel natuurtafereel wordt samengevat met een simpel label: we krijgen alleen verrassende en onconventioneel beschreven details, die door hun poëtische ongewoonheid frapperen of ontroeren. Geen van de tientallen personages wordt met een simpel label verklaard: we zien niet wat of wie iemand is, maar zien allerlei tegenstrijdige gedachten, vermoedens, verknopingen van slechtheid en goedheid, of van idealisme en lafheid, of van stemmingen die dat personage zelf niet eens kan benoemen. En Jakob, Gesines gestorven echtgenoot, blijft de hele roman lang een intrigerend enigma: wat hij dacht en voelde weten we niet, hoe hij aan zijn einde kwam evenmin, want we hebben alleen flarden van vermoedens. Elke gebeurtenis, scene en personage in dit boek is kortom een zee van raadselen, en duizelingwekkend veelkantig en genuanceerd. En ook dat maakt "Jahrestage" tot een oceaan. Niet voor niets opent dit boek als volgt: "Lange golven rollen schuin het strand op, welven fors gespierde ruggen, heffen trillende kammen, die omvallen als ze op hun groenst zijn. In die krachtige, al wit gestriemde kanteling wordt een ronde luchtholte omsloten die de heldere massa vervolgens verplettert alsof er iets geheims wordt gecreëerd en weer vernietigd." En "Jahrestage" eindigt met: "Al wandelend langs de zee liepen we een stukje het water in. Ratelende kiezelstenen rond onze enkels. We hielden elkaars hand vast: een kind; een man onderweg naar de plaats waar de doden zijn; en zij, het kind dat ik was.". Een kolkend oceanisch begin, waarin een raadsel zich opent te midden van de golven. En een stemmig slot, waarin Gesine afscheid neemt van het kind dat zij was en de illusies die zij had, ook weer bij de alles overspoelende zee......
Dit boek is overvol van motieven en thema's, dus is het onmogelijk om het vast te pinnen op één boodschap of betekenis. Maar precies dat is voor mij de boodschap en betekenis. De ideologen in het Nazistische Duitsland en in het Marxistische Oost- Duitsland waren uiteraard overtuigd van "het grote verhaal" waarin alles sluit: Johnson toont ons daarentegen een wereld vol van flarden en onbegrijpelijke details, rijk door zijn raadselachtigheid. Burgerlullen als ik lezen elke dag oppervlakkig de krant, op zoek naar orde in de chaos: Johnson daarentegen spelt de krant letter voor letter en dompelt ons onder in de oceanische chaos. Luilakken als ik plakken op elke gebeurtenis en persoon een label, en leggen dat vast in ons hoofd: Johnson dwingt zijn lezers echter om zich een voorstelling te maken van alle grillige details die niet passen in een label. Oppervlakkige angsthazen als ik willen de verschijnselen begrijpen en liefst zo transparant mogelijk verklaren; Johnson daarentegen leeft zich met maniakale intensiteit en precisie helemaal over aan alles wat niet transparant is maar wel wezenlijk. En mij sleepte hij ruim een maand helemaal mee in deze fascinerende zoektocht.
"Jahrestage" zijn "jaardagen" of "gedenkdagen": dagen waarop een belangrijke historische gebeurtenis wordt herdacht die in een eerder jaar op die dag heeft plaatsgevonden. We volgen een jaar lang het leven van Gesine Cresspahl in New York, van 20 augustus 1967 t/m 20 augustus 1968. Elk hoofdstuk geeft intense impressionistische beelden van één dag, en elk hoofdstuk heeft de datum van die dag als titel. Het boek als geheel oogt daardoor als een oceanisch uitgestrekt dagboek, of als een onafzienbare opsomming van gedenkdagen. Met als impliciete boodschap dat elke dag een gedenkdag is, omdat elke alledaagsheid het waard is om jaren na dato nog steeds in de gedachten te worden bewaard. Die gedenkdagen staan steeds in het teken van het turbulente dagelijkse leven: de bonte en grillige dynamiek van het New York waar Gesine woont en werkt, maar ook de minstens zo bonte en grillige dynamiek van de nationale en internationale wereldpolitiek die Gesine aandachtig volgt via de New York Times, de krant die voor haar geldt als gesprekspartner die de wereld duidt en als dagboek van het dagelijks leven. En via de New York Times komt er veel op Gesine af: wisselende berichten over het vaak ongelofelijke geweld in Vietnam of over de toenemende aantallen moorden en rassenrellen in New York of andere Amerikaanse steden; de moorden op Martin Luther King en Robert Kennedy; de Parijse studentenrellen van mei '68; de opkomst en helaas ook ondergang van de "Praagse lente", en van het even oplevende en vervolgens gesmoorde socialisme met een menselijk gezicht in Tsjecho- Slowakije...... .
Tegelijk gaat elk hoofdstuk - elke jaardag of gedenkdag- ook over herinneringsflarden van Gesine: over haar even intense als vergeefse pogingen om zich haar verre verleden weer tot in detail voor de geest te halen, en om haar persoonlijke geschiedenis te reconstrueren. Haar jeugd in het (verzonnen) Duitse dorpje Jerichow, een Mecklenburgs dorpje dat voor haar nog steeds de wereld is maar wel een voorgoed verloren wereld. Haar studiejaren in Gneez, een stad die volgens haar "lijkt op de poging van een mathematicus uit vroeger tijden om met veelkantige plankjes een veelhoek te construeren die een cirkel benadert". Een stad dus die in Gesines herinnering of verbeelding lijkt op de kwadratuur van de cirkel, een bekende metafoor voor het onmogelijke of van het onoplosbare raadsel. En dat past naar mijn idee naadloos bij de ondoorgrondelijkheid van Gesines verleden en dat van haar dierbaren: ze poogt zich uit alle macht voor te stellen hoe haar beide ouders de jaren op weg naar en tijdens WO II hebben beleefd, en ze heeft zelf ook levendige maar onduidbare herinneringen aan de oorlogsjaren en de heel verwarrende naoorlogse jaren in de nog piepjonge maar wel steeds repressiever wordende DDR. Duistere jaren waarin het politieke voortdurend het alledaagse binnensloop, op toen onbegrijpelijke en ook achteraf niet meer te begrijpen wijze. Alle herinneringen van Gesine staan dus bol van niet- weten, van niet kunnen duiden wat er in haar verleden precies gebeurde en waarom, en ook niet van wat zij en haar dierbaren voelden of meemaakten en waarom. Tegelijk echter staan al die herinneringen ook bol van het verlangen om dit toch te proberen, en om het verleden toch weer voor de geest te halen en te duiden. Tot in de meest irrelevant lijkende en mogelijk zelfs nooit opgemerkte details aan toe. Bovendien associeert Gesine voortdurend tussen heden en verleden: in alle hoofdstukken - alle gedenkdagen- wordt de onbegrijpelijke dynamiek van het Duitsland van toen op onnavolgbare wijze vermengd met de grillige dynamiek die opstijgt uit New York en de New York Times.
Deze vermenging van ondoorgrondelijk verleden en ongrijpbaar heden vraagt wel voortdurende concentratie en inspanning van de lezer. Maar daarvoor krijg je een heel intense leeservaring terug. Ik tenminste wel. En die intensiteit wordt nog vergroot door de enorme hoeveelheid van verhaallijnen en anekdotes, en door de vele verschillende stijlen waarin we die verhaallijnen krijgen opgediend. Vaak lezen we dialogen tussen Gesine en haar tienjarige dochter Marie: dialogen waarin je soms helemaal kwijtraakt wie wat zegt vanuit welk referentiekader, maar die toch ontroeren en boeien omdat Gesine en Marie zo gepassioneerd onderzoeken wat er gebeurt en alle raadsels van voor naar achter bekijken. Nog vaker zien we lange innerlijke monologen, waarin de 15-jarige Gesine van toen en de 35- jarige Gesine van nu voortdurend van rol wisselen, en waarin Gesine vele malen switcht tussen het ik- perspectief en het veel afstandelijkere zij- perspectief. Alsof de werkelijkheid die zij probeert te bevatten (te herinneren, te verbeelden) te complex is om te passen in één perspectief. Een indruk die nog sterker wordt in passages waarin bijvoorbeeld de complexe innerlijke roerselen aan bod komen van Gesines beide ouders: ongrijpbare roerselen, meerduidige flarden, allemaal gepresenteerd via innerlijke monologen van Gesine die daarin dus meerdere keren kan veranderen van perspectief. Of, beter gezegd: vanuit het veranderlijke en niet-wetende perspectief van de ouders, maar dan zoals Gesine zich dat perspectief tracht voor te stellen. Soms is het zelfs onduidelijk of het voortdurend veranderende perspectief van Gesine wel haar eigen perspectief is: er is immers ook een verteller, door Gesine "kameraad schrijver" genoemd en luisterend naar de naam Uwe Johnson, een verteller die we verder niet leren kennen maar die vanuit zijn ons onbekende perspectief kennelijk soms ook tastend duidt wat er is gebeurd en waarom. De tastende stem van die verteller raakt vaak vermengd met de al even tastende stem van Gesine, en vaak weten we niet wie van beiden aan het woord is. Waardoor het tastende karakter van de vertelling nog verder wordt versterkt.
De raadsels worden kortom niet opgelost, maar getoond en uitvergroot. En dat wordt nog versterkt door de veelheid van stijlen die dit boek kent. Er is zoals gezegd veel dialoog en daarnaast veel innerlijke monoloog; voorts zijn er soms lange, bijna abstract filosofische passages die dan ineens afgewisseld worden met gesprekken in sfeervol Mecklenburgs dialect; impressionistische passages vol poëtisch proza worden zomaar afgewisseld met lange opsommingen vol ogenschijnlijke trivialiteiten; politiek gekleurd krantenproza wordt afgewisseld met flarden van gesprekken zoals je die hoort op een metrostation; prachtige natuurimpressies vol verlangen naar een wereld die niet meer is gaan zomaar ineens over in parafrases of citaten van de New York Times.... Vaak is de keuze van vorm en stijl heel verrassend: alle rouw om de dood van Robert Kennedy krijgen we bijvoorbeeld opgediend in de vorm van aantekeningen voor een werkstuk van Marie. Maar juist die vele aantekeningen, en juist de wijze waarop die niet zijn samengevoegd in een sluitend verhaal, geven een heel wonderlijk en daardoor helemaal raak beeld van Kennedy's zo onbegrijpelijke dood.
De roman is door dit alles zonder meer gefragmenteerd te noemen. Of misschien een verzameling van gefragmenteerde romans: alsof je de brokstukken ziet van een psychologische roman, een historische roman, een sociologische roman, en een bundel prozagedichten. En mede daardoor is de roman ook oceanisch: zo boordevol fragmenten, personages, raadselen en sfeerbeelden dat je totaal het overzicht verliest. Te meer omdat elk fragment weer vele raadselen omvat. Geen enkel natuurtafereel wordt samengevat met een simpel label: we krijgen alleen verrassende en onconventioneel beschreven details, die door hun poëtische ongewoonheid frapperen of ontroeren. Geen van de tientallen personages wordt met een simpel label verklaard: we zien niet wat of wie iemand is, maar zien allerlei tegenstrijdige gedachten, vermoedens, verknopingen van slechtheid en goedheid, of van idealisme en lafheid, of van stemmingen die dat personage zelf niet eens kan benoemen. En Jakob, Gesines gestorven echtgenoot, blijft de hele roman lang een intrigerend enigma: wat hij dacht en voelde weten we niet, hoe hij aan zijn einde kwam evenmin, want we hebben alleen flarden van vermoedens. Elke gebeurtenis, scene en personage in dit boek is kortom een zee van raadselen, en duizelingwekkend veelkantig en genuanceerd. En ook dat maakt "Jahrestage" tot een oceaan. Niet voor niets opent dit boek als volgt: "Lange golven rollen schuin het strand op, welven fors gespierde ruggen, heffen trillende kammen, die omvallen als ze op hun groenst zijn. In die krachtige, al wit gestriemde kanteling wordt een ronde luchtholte omsloten die de heldere massa vervolgens verplettert alsof er iets geheims wordt gecreëerd en weer vernietigd." En "Jahrestage" eindigt met: "Al wandelend langs de zee liepen we een stukje het water in. Ratelende kiezelstenen rond onze enkels. We hielden elkaars hand vast: een kind; een man onderweg naar de plaats waar de doden zijn; en zij, het kind dat ik was.". Een kolkend oceanisch begin, waarin een raadsel zich opent te midden van de golven. En een stemmig slot, waarin Gesine afscheid neemt van het kind dat zij was en de illusies die zij had, ook weer bij de alles overspoelende zee......
Dit boek is overvol van motieven en thema's, dus is het onmogelijk om het vast te pinnen op één boodschap of betekenis. Maar precies dat is voor mij de boodschap en betekenis. De ideologen in het Nazistische Duitsland en in het Marxistische Oost- Duitsland waren uiteraard overtuigd van "het grote verhaal" waarin alles sluit: Johnson toont ons daarentegen een wereld vol van flarden en onbegrijpelijke details, rijk door zijn raadselachtigheid. Burgerlullen als ik lezen elke dag oppervlakkig de krant, op zoek naar orde in de chaos: Johnson daarentegen spelt de krant letter voor letter en dompelt ons onder in de oceanische chaos. Luilakken als ik plakken op elke gebeurtenis en persoon een label, en leggen dat vast in ons hoofd: Johnson dwingt zijn lezers echter om zich een voorstelling te maken van alle grillige details die niet passen in een label. Oppervlakkige angsthazen als ik willen de verschijnselen begrijpen en liefst zo transparant mogelijk verklaren; Johnson daarentegen leeft zich met maniakale intensiteit en precisie helemaal over aan alles wat niet transparant is maar wel wezenlijk. En mij sleepte hij ruim een maand helemaal mee in deze fascinerende zoektocht.
June 19, 2019
At 1700 pages one must be pretty committed to this but for me well worth the simultaneous stories of pre and post wwii in northern Germany small towns and rural area and the life of a single mother who grew up in that northern Germany but now living in NYC with her young daughter. Besides all the fascinating details of Nazi then Soviet rule at the level of author's sentences it was absorbing read to see how he crafted thought and description in an economical ( no really, despite 1000s of pgs) and crystalline way.
January 23, 2024
In the half-year since its publication, only 3400 copies of Anniversaries have been sold to consumers in the US. Maybe a few hundred additional copies found their way into libraries. That’s really a shame because this book may be more deeply imagined than any novel I think I’ve ever read, and reading it has been very rewarding.
The author invents a rural Baltic farming community with no fewer than 500 residents, all with their own backstories. The physical spaces they occupy are imagined in equal depth. No street, house, fence, garden or stick of furniture seems to be overlooked. The detail could easily be overwhelming, but mostly it’s hypnotic. The author also creates a second neighborhood, this one on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where the novel’s central character, Gesine Cresspahl, lives with her precocious young daughter, Marie.
Like an endless dream or nightmare, the book moves back and forth between three periods of upheaval in the 20th century - the Hitler period, the postwar communist takeover of East Germany, and the short period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The action also oscillates between Gesine’s hometown of Jerichow in Mecklenburg and her small apartment on Riverside Drive. It’s been a long time since I read Slaughterhouse Five, but it occurred to me that the protagonists in both novels experience some sort of PTSD that moves them across time and space.
The book ends on 8/20/68, the day before the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and ended the Prague Spring. This is very significant for the future of Gesine and Marie, but the novel doesn’t take us past that fateful day.
I was drawn to Anniversaries for very particular reasons. I’m fascinated by modern European history. In the 1970’s, I traveled a few times through East Germany to visit East Berlin and have memories of the oppressive dreariness of those places. I grew up in the NYC suburbs and can remember Gesine’s and Marie’s Manhattan. I loved dipping into the 1967-68 NYC time capsule the author created using Vietnam War and crime updates copied straight from the New York Times. But even a reader who shares none of my interests can still appreciate the author’s astounding ambition and vision.
The book is long. It took me 4 months to read. Sections of it are tedious. In volume 2, I sometimes felt that the author was losing his grip. But all in all, it was a great experience and I’m thankful that it found such a talented translator.
The author invents a rural Baltic farming community with no fewer than 500 residents, all with their own backstories. The physical spaces they occupy are imagined in equal depth. No street, house, fence, garden or stick of furniture seems to be overlooked. The detail could easily be overwhelming, but mostly it’s hypnotic. The author also creates a second neighborhood, this one on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where the novel’s central character, Gesine Cresspahl, lives with her precocious young daughter, Marie.
Like an endless dream or nightmare, the book moves back and forth between three periods of upheaval in the 20th century - the Hitler period, the postwar communist takeover of East Germany, and the short period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The action also oscillates between Gesine’s hometown of Jerichow in Mecklenburg and her small apartment on Riverside Drive. It’s been a long time since I read Slaughterhouse Five, but it occurred to me that the protagonists in both novels experience some sort of PTSD that moves them across time and space.
The book ends on 8/20/68, the day before the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and ended the Prague Spring. This is very significant for the future of Gesine and Marie, but the novel doesn’t take us past that fateful day.
I was drawn to Anniversaries for very particular reasons. I’m fascinated by modern European history. In the 1970’s, I traveled a few times through East Germany to visit East Berlin and have memories of the oppressive dreariness of those places. I grew up in the NYC suburbs and can remember Gesine’s and Marie’s Manhattan. I loved dipping into the 1967-68 NYC time capsule the author created using Vietnam War and crime updates copied straight from the New York Times. But even a reader who shares none of my interests can still appreciate the author’s astounding ambition and vision.
The book is long. It took me 4 months to read. Sections of it are tedious. In volume 2, I sometimes felt that the author was losing his grip. But all in all, it was a great experience and I’m thankful that it found such a talented translator.
April 10, 2019
A monumental achievement at 1668 pages. I can't really add anything to what other people have written. I did find parts of the 2nd volume harder going but still a darned fine read
April 25, 2021
Ik was van plan het lezen van dit vuistdikke boek te verspreiden over een jaar, elk kwartaal een deel. Maar bij het begin van deel twee stop ik ermee, ik heb een kast vol boeken die ik nog moet lezen. Waarom zou ik dan een boek van 1600 pagina’s lezen dat me echt niet ligt. Deel 1 vond ik verschrikkelijk. Het verhaal springt onaangekondigd van hot naar her, van het moderne New York waar Gesine met haar dochter woont, naar het Duitsland van voor de oorlog waar je het verhaal van haar voorouders leest. Interessante opzet natuurlijk ware het niet dat ik het onleesbaar vind. Alles wordt te gedetailleerd beschreven – één voorbeeld: een ritje in de metro duurt vijf pagina’s lang en je komt te weten hoe vrijwel elke individuele muurtegel eruitziet. Herkenbaar voor inwoners van New York, maar ik heb daar geen boodschap aan. Ik houd die overladen stijl geen 1600 bladzijden lang vol. Gisteren ben ik begonnen aan deel 2 en meteen was er dat stemmetje in mijn hoofd dat zei: “Neen, neen, neen, niet weer meer van hetzelfde”. Ik stop er dus mee. Misschien heeft het te maken met het feit dat ik het boek op e-reader lees. Ik heb al gemerkt dat je dan moeilijker in het verhaal komt. Maar toch, op naar ander en beter. Aanbod genoeg. Ik vrees dat ik nu wellicht weer op literaire tenen zal trappen…
March 10, 2019
Done! Done! And done! I know that #ANNIVERSARIES can be read in 4 days. It took me almost 4 months! That said, this is an easy read. We read this as a group, and we had great company along the way! It felt really good knowing that there were also readers who read #ANNIVERSARIES in the original German who were enjoying our reading progress. It was also wonderful to have the translator's wife checking up on us as well. I have to say that I was very conscious of Uwe Johnson as the author and of Damion Searls as the translator as I was reading. Thanks to NYRB Classics for providing us with a great read!!
We would not have read #ANNIVERSARIES, had we not been inspired by Robert and Roman! Check out:
Listen to Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson - Episode 9 by Feeling Bookish Podcast #np on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/user-63759823/...
We would not have read #ANNIVERSARIES, had we not been inspired by Robert and Roman! Check out:
Listen to Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson - Episode 9 by Feeling Bookish Podcast #np on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/user-63759823/...
January 6, 2019
If you love The Man Without Qualities but hate yourself, this is the book for you.
June 11, 2021
Technically this is a DNF, but, when one has read 752 pages of a novel, that gives a rather misleading impression.
I largely stopped as I can't see anything in the remaining 55% of the book (by pages, 45% by remaining days) is likely to change my appreciation (or otherwise) of the book.
And it seemed fitting to finish Gesine Cresspehl's daily entries, after more than 6 months from their start on August 20th, 1967, on March 14th, 1968, the day I was born.
Rather presciently the entry for that day notes: You won’t see uniqueness as anything worthy of praise which as an identical twin is entirely fitting.
Jahrestage, Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, and its translation by Damion Searls as Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, is clearly a monumental effort and one I can appreciate theoretically, but practically I didn't find the experience terribly fulfilling.
In part this was due to my choosing to read its 1668 pages over a year, following exactly 52 years behind the vents described, with an entry (c.5 pages) a day. This made it difficult to remember much of the convoluted cast of characters and to follow plot threads - typically between reads I would have absorbed 100 pages of another novel - but this effect was exacerbated by the arch narrative tone that alludes to things obliquely, as if the reader already knows what is being discussed, rather than stating them outright. The author appears to have a JK Rowling-like control of his material - one imagines notebooks full of background detail - but he cares far more about his characters than this reader does, particularly as one is not directly privy to much of this.
Should I tell you the story out of chronological order?
– No. Although I don’t keep track of this Jerichow of yours chronologically.
– How do you?
– By your people. What I know about them. What I’m supposed to think of them.
And some of the novel's idiosyncrasies and tics become grating when repeated daily over such a long read, e.g. the knowing back and forth between Gesine and her precocious daughter Maria and, my biggest recurring bugbear, the continual personification of the New York Times.
The New York Times accompanies her and stays home with her like a person, and when she studies the large gray bundle she gets the feeling of someone’s presence, of a conversation with someone, whom she listens to and politely answers, with the concealed skepticism, the repressed grimace, the forgiving smile, and all the other gestures she would nowadays make to an aunt, not a relative but a universal, imagined Auntie: her idea of an aunt.
And from a personal interest perspective, while it was the year of my birth the contemporary section is too New-York centric, and I was far more interested in the, at times rather underplayed, history of 1930s-1940s Germany.
An impressive achievement but as a personal reading experience, a major disappointment.
I largely stopped as I can't see anything in the remaining 55% of the book (by pages, 45% by remaining days) is likely to change my appreciation (or otherwise) of the book.
And it seemed fitting to finish Gesine Cresspehl's daily entries, after more than 6 months from their start on August 20th, 1967, on March 14th, 1968, the day I was born.
Rather presciently the entry for that day notes: You won’t see uniqueness as anything worthy of praise which as an identical twin is entirely fitting.
Jahrestage, Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, and its translation by Damion Searls as Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, is clearly a monumental effort and one I can appreciate theoretically, but practically I didn't find the experience terribly fulfilling.
In part this was due to my choosing to read its 1668 pages over a year, following exactly 52 years behind the vents described, with an entry (c.5 pages) a day. This made it difficult to remember much of the convoluted cast of characters and to follow plot threads - typically between reads I would have absorbed 100 pages of another novel - but this effect was exacerbated by the arch narrative tone that alludes to things obliquely, as if the reader already knows what is being discussed, rather than stating them outright. The author appears to have a JK Rowling-like control of his material - one imagines notebooks full of background detail - but he cares far more about his characters than this reader does, particularly as one is not directly privy to much of this.
Should I tell you the story out of chronological order?
– No. Although I don’t keep track of this Jerichow of yours chronologically.
– How do you?
– By your people. What I know about them. What I’m supposed to think of them.
And some of the novel's idiosyncrasies and tics become grating when repeated daily over such a long read, e.g. the knowing back and forth between Gesine and her precocious daughter Maria and, my biggest recurring bugbear, the continual personification of the New York Times.
The New York Times accompanies her and stays home with her like a person, and when she studies the large gray bundle she gets the feeling of someone’s presence, of a conversation with someone, whom she listens to and politely answers, with the concealed skepticism, the repressed grimace, the forgiving smile, and all the other gestures she would nowadays make to an aunt, not a relative but a universal, imagined Auntie: her idea of an aunt.
And from a personal interest perspective, while it was the year of my birth the contemporary section is too New-York centric, and I was far more interested in the, at times rather underplayed, history of 1930s-1940s Germany.
An impressive achievement but as a personal reading experience, a major disappointment.
June 25, 2019
Where were you in 1967 and 1968? What were you doing? This is a novel that'll perhaps bring those days back to you. The novel's diary form and the ticking off of events causing an upsurge of memory makes this our story, but it's more specifically that of Gesine Cresspahl and her 10-year old daughter Marie who, it seems to me, often acts as her mother's conscience, and that of the novel as well.
On its surface this is a simple story. However, its many parts and many prose styles make it a difficult novel. Also its length, 1668 pages. I've seen Anniversaries described as an "everything novel." Perhaps it is, but I don't think of it as really encyclopedic except in regard to items reported in The New York Times and reflected in the novel's day-to-day format from August 20, 1967 to August 20, 1968. That's one narrative track, Gesine and Marie in New York City during that year. Gesine faithfully reads The Times each day. This may be the only novel in which The Times might be considered a character, or almost a character. Sometimes referred to as "she" or Auntie, The Times has a lot to say and has an enormous influence on the thinking of Gesine and her daughter. Consider some of the big, even iconic events of those 12 months: the Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the student takeover at Columbia University, the Prague Spring. Gesine follows these in The Times as well as many much smaller and local stories relating only to the city. The novel's broken into these 366 daily segments (1968 was a leap year) like the editions of the paper.
Gesine is German. She works as a translator in a midtown Manhattan bank. How she came to be in New York City in 1967 is the novel's other narrative track. It's almost a family saga telling the story of her father and mother in the state of Mecklenburg, Germany and the small towns of Jerichow and Gneez near the Baltic coast. Gesine is born there March 3, 1933. Following the stories of her parents, told in considerable detail, Gesine's story of growing up in Germany includes the years of Nazi power and the war, the Soviet occupation, and the years of repression in East Germany. The German parts of the novel are much more a linear narrative and provide a fairly comprehensive portrait of the small town in which Gesine grows up as well as the lives of the townspeople around her. How the inhabitants of Jerichow endured the Nazi and war years followed by the Soviet occupation is a story embracing everyday life including the larger effects on society of Nazi ideology and the restrictions of Soviet administration. This may be Gesine's story, but in the progress of this huge novel most of the lives of Jerichow and Gneez, large or small, are told. I once read a description of the Richard Howard translation of The Charterhouse of Parma as a novel containing a story on every page. Anniversaries is like that. This is rich, engaging story-telling.
It's not an easy read, though. Using many styles, though most of the variety is in the parts relating Gesine and Marie in New York City, it's complex in its huge number of characters and in the way the novel's slowly revealed as you wait for the 2 tracks of Gesine's story--Germany and New York City--to swing around and align to form the unbroken narrative you know is there. There are digressions, too, and, again, usually in New York City, like what one sees on a bus ride home during rush hour traffic. March 5, 1968, for instance, is devoted to the ubiquity and toughness of the cockroach. March 9, 1968 is a meditation on slums and race. Johnson doesn't make the reading easy, but I think the novel's magnificence and ambition make it worthwhile. It's grand reading.
The size of Anniversaries is part of its essence, of course. It's 1668 pages in 2 volumes in the wonderful New York Review of Books edition I'm proud to own. But such size does create problems, make such a big novel hard to manage. I have to admit I grew a little weary near the end. This was mostly my fault. There are many, many characters, particularly in Germany, and the reader strains to keep up with and remember them. I listed 132 characters as I read, but I took a trip in May and didn't take my list with me. Plus I stopped listing altogether. Continuing to read, though, while on the road, I lost track of some characters. Others got lost in the crowd due to my own sloppiness. This contributed to my mild burnout. I do intend to read this again one day. In fact, I look forward to it and think it would be fun to read a day at a time as lived by Gesine and Marie, read over the course of a year beginning, naturally, on August 20. When I reread, I'll know to keep my eye on every sparrow.
Another problem is maps. I don't remember now how I came by it, but I used the link https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/b... It pinpoints many locations in New York City referenced in the novel, even providing photos. However, the world of the city, its sights, smells, and sounds, are so familiar and known that I soon stopped using it. Maps do help a reader visualize and experience a text to create reality. I needed a map of Mecklenburg and the towns of Jerichow and Gneez. I was unable to locate the towns on any map and suspect they're fictitious. But even so, a map helping me to complete the novel's landscape would've been invaluable.
But these are small blemishes in a novel otherwise magnificent in its realization, encompassing, as I think it does, the aggregate of the human condition and its revisiting modern German history.
On its surface this is a simple story. However, its many parts and many prose styles make it a difficult novel. Also its length, 1668 pages. I've seen Anniversaries described as an "everything novel." Perhaps it is, but I don't think of it as really encyclopedic except in regard to items reported in The New York Times and reflected in the novel's day-to-day format from August 20, 1967 to August 20, 1968. That's one narrative track, Gesine and Marie in New York City during that year. Gesine faithfully reads The Times each day. This may be the only novel in which The Times might be considered a character, or almost a character. Sometimes referred to as "she" or Auntie, The Times has a lot to say and has an enormous influence on the thinking of Gesine and her daughter. Consider some of the big, even iconic events of those 12 months: the Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the student takeover at Columbia University, the Prague Spring. Gesine follows these in The Times as well as many much smaller and local stories relating only to the city. The novel's broken into these 366 daily segments (1968 was a leap year) like the editions of the paper.
Gesine is German. She works as a translator in a midtown Manhattan bank. How she came to be in New York City in 1967 is the novel's other narrative track. It's almost a family saga telling the story of her father and mother in the state of Mecklenburg, Germany and the small towns of Jerichow and Gneez near the Baltic coast. Gesine is born there March 3, 1933. Following the stories of her parents, told in considerable detail, Gesine's story of growing up in Germany includes the years of Nazi power and the war, the Soviet occupation, and the years of repression in East Germany. The German parts of the novel are much more a linear narrative and provide a fairly comprehensive portrait of the small town in which Gesine grows up as well as the lives of the townspeople around her. How the inhabitants of Jerichow endured the Nazi and war years followed by the Soviet occupation is a story embracing everyday life including the larger effects on society of Nazi ideology and the restrictions of Soviet administration. This may be Gesine's story, but in the progress of this huge novel most of the lives of Jerichow and Gneez, large or small, are told. I once read a description of the Richard Howard translation of The Charterhouse of Parma as a novel containing a story on every page. Anniversaries is like that. This is rich, engaging story-telling.
It's not an easy read, though. Using many styles, though most of the variety is in the parts relating Gesine and Marie in New York City, it's complex in its huge number of characters and in the way the novel's slowly revealed as you wait for the 2 tracks of Gesine's story--Germany and New York City--to swing around and align to form the unbroken narrative you know is there. There are digressions, too, and, again, usually in New York City, like what one sees on a bus ride home during rush hour traffic. March 5, 1968, for instance, is devoted to the ubiquity and toughness of the cockroach. March 9, 1968 is a meditation on slums and race. Johnson doesn't make the reading easy, but I think the novel's magnificence and ambition make it worthwhile. It's grand reading.
The size of Anniversaries is part of its essence, of course. It's 1668 pages in 2 volumes in the wonderful New York Review of Books edition I'm proud to own. But such size does create problems, make such a big novel hard to manage. I have to admit I grew a little weary near the end. This was mostly my fault. There are many, many characters, particularly in Germany, and the reader strains to keep up with and remember them. I listed 132 characters as I read, but I took a trip in May and didn't take my list with me. Plus I stopped listing altogether. Continuing to read, though, while on the road, I lost track of some characters. Others got lost in the crowd due to my own sloppiness. This contributed to my mild burnout. I do intend to read this again one day. In fact, I look forward to it and think it would be fun to read a day at a time as lived by Gesine and Marie, read over the course of a year beginning, naturally, on August 20. When I reread, I'll know to keep my eye on every sparrow.
Another problem is maps. I don't remember now how I came by it, but I used the link https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/b... It pinpoints many locations in New York City referenced in the novel, even providing photos. However, the world of the city, its sights, smells, and sounds, are so familiar and known that I soon stopped using it. Maps do help a reader visualize and experience a text to create reality. I needed a map of Mecklenburg and the towns of Jerichow and Gneez. I was unable to locate the towns on any map and suspect they're fictitious. But even so, a map helping me to complete the novel's landscape would've been invaluable.
But these are small blemishes in a novel otherwise magnificent in its realization, encompassing, as I think it does, the aggregate of the human condition and its revisiting modern German history.
June 21, 2020
This is a book about the city as seen by a poet but it is much more as it demonstrates the mind of an admirably uncompromising and impressively earnest writer with a wayward eye and prose to match. Johnson's prose defies translation: that he survives at all is a minor miracle but reading Uwe Johnson in English is better than not reading him at all, because even in this less than perfect version he comes across as an uncommonly original and provocative voice. The book can seem an inchoate jumble at times, but as with all great novels it is worth persevering to enjoy the richness of the story. The book inhabits a world all its own as demonstrated by the vitality, design, versatility and inventiveness that abound throughout. An exhilarating read whose allusiveness may deter those who do not relish such journeys.
November 12, 2023
After a whole year I've finally finished Anniversaries. This 1600+ page novel is by far the longest book I've ever read. Add it in the fact that I read this each day for the entire last year and it really feels like the longest book I've read, I barely know what I'm going to do now that I've finished it.
Anniversaries is the day to day entries of Gensine Cresspahl, a German woman living in New York in the 1960's, raising her 11 year old daughter Marie and recounting to her the stories of her life growing up in German before, during, and after the war as well as the surrounding family lineage.
I decided to pick up this book for many reasons. First, I like interesting and unique novels that experiment with form and storytelling. This is an NYRB release that really fits the standard obscure classic status that many of their books hold. I am fan of German literature and currently working my way through DW Books list of 100 Must Read German Novels in which Anniversaries is an entry.
All of these are factors in why I read this book but more so is my personal connection with the subject matter. As someone of German ancestry, this book's subject matter hit quite close for me. My grandmother immigrated to the United States in 1952 at the age of 22. She would arrive in Chicago, meet my grandfather (another German immigrant), and go on to raise six children one of which was my mother. As far as the narrative of Anniversaries compares to my personal lineage, Gesine is two years younger than my grandmother and Marie is one year older than my mother. Trade New York for Chicago and Anniversaries starts to look a little like my family history; or at least on a surface level.
This amusing coincidence led me to prioritizing Anniversaries. I acquired a copy and once August rolled around I began this year long journey.
I read each daily entry as they coincided with the current date. I never fell off this habit until the last week, when I was out of the country for 8 days and could not bring a book as large as this in my luggage. This was a interesting process of reading that I've tried with a few other journal structured novels, such as this.
I am a morning reader and typically started my day with this book. This wasn't always the best. Some sections were so short or demanding that I really didn't have the focus needed first thing in the morning to truly appreciate them in the few minutes I had between waking up and going to work. I'd read a page or two and barely start getting into the story before putting it down until the next day. This is a flaw in my reading of this book but one that kept me on pace.
I've seen many people take one of two approaches with this book. Reading it day by day, like me or reading it in chunks like any other book, usually finishing in a few months. If I were to reread this book (which I want to do) I would try the latter method. That being said I did enjoy the day by day method even with its flaws. In the time it took me to read Anniversaries I finished 33 other books, many of which were not as good as this. While Anniversaries may have been slow or confusing at times it was a joy to read a few pages from it each day, taking a break from much weaker books.
So what can you expect from Anniversaries? It's a slow start. I mean it's a slow read overall but if you're reading it day by day it will take you two months to reach the 200 page mark. During this time it will only be a page or two a day and the biggest takeaway I had was how well author Uwe Johnson compares the life of 1960s New York to 1930s Germany. He showcases how violent and destructive New York in the modern era can be but also how it can be exciting.
You really don't know what you're going to get from a daily entry. Will it be 1967 New York or 1938 small town Germany? Maybe a mix? Will it be mundane anecdote or a major plot point? And which perspective will it be told from? Letters, newspapers, and memos are used to tell the story in a way that is very reminiscent of favorite works of mine like The USA Trilogy or Berlin Alexanderplatz. While I'm not sure I enjoyed Anniversaries as much as these two books I did really enjoy it.
Like I said earlier, The story of Anniversaries has some similarities with my own family story. While I noticed parallels that ran similar, it wasn't like it was my family story put to page. And should I have expected such? No, but that didn't stop me. Aside from NYC and Chicago being very different places, the lives of Gensine and my Grandmother ran very differently.
My Grandmother grew up in Pommern (present day Poland) at the age of 14 she was made a refugee, most of her family had been killed or separated from her as she made her way West in into East Germany. You get a few descriptions of these kinds of refugees in the latter half of the book and it was a very different existence from that of Gesine's. Many of these refugees were not treated well as they were relocated to other parts of Germany. Even though they were Germans they were not seen as deserving of the kind of things Germans of East and West Germans had. My grandmother really had no further education after the war for many years. When she immigrated to America she received her GED and became a nurse, a career she would hold until her retirement in the 1990s.
In the story Gesine works for a bank in a highly important office job, dealing with international finance. This is the kind of career that no one on my mothers side of the family would have until my mother's generation would graduate from college. I don't want to focus too much into the classism aspect of analyzing this text but it was an interesting realization comparing my own life where none of the many first generation immigrants I've know held jobs like this, especially only a few years after immigrating to the US.
Another comparison I found interesting was comparing my mother with Marie. While my grandmother passed away in 2020 and so I wasn't able to discuss with her the parallels of this book with their lives, I would talk about this book with my mom. She would recount how she remembered many of the events of the time mentioned in this book but it wasn't like she had a good grasp on global politics at that age. This is not the case with Marie who is the most politically and worldly 11 year old you'll meet. She makes Lisa Simpson seem immature the way she cries for the loss of Robert Kennedy or the eloquence in which she discusses racism or the war in Vietnam. All of this is just a reminder you are reading a work of fiction.
While I found these situations to seem unlikely in an actual experience of a German immigrant and her daughter in 1960s New York, I did find it to make an interest story. You wouldn't have the lead up to the Prague Revolution and it's stakes on Gensine's personal life without her bank job and many of the descriptions of actual events such as the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy are some of the highlights of the book.
With a book this long you're bound to hit slow points, especially taking it day by day as I did. It was an experience reading a book that is over 1600 pages. One that I found valuable but one that I didn't always enjoy. There's a lot of day to day descriptions that feel like filler. While I think a lot of this could've been paired down, the point of this book is to detail a year in the life and a year in the life isn't always high energy events.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I'm sad to have finished as it has become such a part of my day to day routine at this point but I'm also happy to finally get a chance to read some other German books, as I took a break from reading any others over the last year.
Anniversaries is the day to day entries of Gensine Cresspahl, a German woman living in New York in the 1960's, raising her 11 year old daughter Marie and recounting to her the stories of her life growing up in German before, during, and after the war as well as the surrounding family lineage.
I decided to pick up this book for many reasons. First, I like interesting and unique novels that experiment with form and storytelling. This is an NYRB release that really fits the standard obscure classic status that many of their books hold. I am fan of German literature and currently working my way through DW Books list of 100 Must Read German Novels in which Anniversaries is an entry.
All of these are factors in why I read this book but more so is my personal connection with the subject matter. As someone of German ancestry, this book's subject matter hit quite close for me. My grandmother immigrated to the United States in 1952 at the age of 22. She would arrive in Chicago, meet my grandfather (another German immigrant), and go on to raise six children one of which was my mother. As far as the narrative of Anniversaries compares to my personal lineage, Gesine is two years younger than my grandmother and Marie is one year older than my mother. Trade New York for Chicago and Anniversaries starts to look a little like my family history; or at least on a surface level.
This amusing coincidence led me to prioritizing Anniversaries. I acquired a copy and once August rolled around I began this year long journey.
I read each daily entry as they coincided with the current date. I never fell off this habit until the last week, when I was out of the country for 8 days and could not bring a book as large as this in my luggage. This was a interesting process of reading that I've tried with a few other journal structured novels, such as this.
I am a morning reader and typically started my day with this book. This wasn't always the best. Some sections were so short or demanding that I really didn't have the focus needed first thing in the morning to truly appreciate them in the few minutes I had between waking up and going to work. I'd read a page or two and barely start getting into the story before putting it down until the next day. This is a flaw in my reading of this book but one that kept me on pace.
I've seen many people take one of two approaches with this book. Reading it day by day, like me or reading it in chunks like any other book, usually finishing in a few months. If I were to reread this book (which I want to do) I would try the latter method. That being said I did enjoy the day by day method even with its flaws. In the time it took me to read Anniversaries I finished 33 other books, many of which were not as good as this. While Anniversaries may have been slow or confusing at times it was a joy to read a few pages from it each day, taking a break from much weaker books.
So what can you expect from Anniversaries? It's a slow start. I mean it's a slow read overall but if you're reading it day by day it will take you two months to reach the 200 page mark. During this time it will only be a page or two a day and the biggest takeaway I had was how well author Uwe Johnson compares the life of 1960s New York to 1930s Germany. He showcases how violent and destructive New York in the modern era can be but also how it can be exciting.
You really don't know what you're going to get from a daily entry. Will it be 1967 New York or 1938 small town Germany? Maybe a mix? Will it be mundane anecdote or a major plot point? And which perspective will it be told from? Letters, newspapers, and memos are used to tell the story in a way that is very reminiscent of favorite works of mine like The USA Trilogy or Berlin Alexanderplatz. While I'm not sure I enjoyed Anniversaries as much as these two books I did really enjoy it.
Like I said earlier, The story of Anniversaries has some similarities with my own family story. While I noticed parallels that ran similar, it wasn't like it was my family story put to page. And should I have expected such? No, but that didn't stop me. Aside from NYC and Chicago being very different places, the lives of Gensine and my Grandmother ran very differently.
My Grandmother grew up in Pommern (present day Poland) at the age of 14 she was made a refugee, most of her family had been killed or separated from her as she made her way West in into East Germany. You get a few descriptions of these kinds of refugees in the latter half of the book and it was a very different existence from that of Gesine's. Many of these refugees were not treated well as they were relocated to other parts of Germany. Even though they were Germans they were not seen as deserving of the kind of things Germans of East and West Germans had. My grandmother really had no further education after the war for many years. When she immigrated to America she received her GED and became a nurse, a career she would hold until her retirement in the 1990s.
In the story Gesine works for a bank in a highly important office job, dealing with international finance. This is the kind of career that no one on my mothers side of the family would have until my mother's generation would graduate from college. I don't want to focus too much into the classism aspect of analyzing this text but it was an interesting realization comparing my own life where none of the many first generation immigrants I've know held jobs like this, especially only a few years after immigrating to the US.
Another comparison I found interesting was comparing my mother with Marie. While my grandmother passed away in 2020 and so I wasn't able to discuss with her the parallels of this book with their lives, I would talk about this book with my mom. She would recount how she remembered many of the events of the time mentioned in this book but it wasn't like she had a good grasp on global politics at that age. This is not the case with Marie who is the most politically and worldly 11 year old you'll meet. She makes Lisa Simpson seem immature the way she cries for the loss of Robert Kennedy or the eloquence in which she discusses racism or the war in Vietnam. All of this is just a reminder you are reading a work of fiction.
While I found these situations to seem unlikely in an actual experience of a German immigrant and her daughter in 1960s New York, I did find it to make an interest story. You wouldn't have the lead up to the Prague Revolution and it's stakes on Gensine's personal life without her bank job and many of the descriptions of actual events such as the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy are some of the highlights of the book.
With a book this long you're bound to hit slow points, especially taking it day by day as I did. It was an experience reading a book that is over 1600 pages. One that I found valuable but one that I didn't always enjoy. There's a lot of day to day descriptions that feel like filler. While I think a lot of this could've been paired down, the point of this book is to detail a year in the life and a year in the life isn't always high energy events.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I'm sad to have finished as it has become such a part of my day to day routine at this point but I'm also happy to finally get a chance to read some other German books, as I took a break from reading any others over the last year.
May 6, 2019
I’ve been background reading this since March and what enormous, vital, glorious thing it is. Finished the last bit today and don’t know when I’ll read something again that will so generously welcome me in to its endless questioning, memory collages and clamorous, thought-provoking pleasures.
July 28, 2023
Dikke Duitse boeken! Je hoeft het niet in een keer uit te lezen. Elke keer dat ik het weer oppakte verdween ik binnen één pagina weer naar Meckelenburg jaren 30-50 en de Jahrestage van New-York 1967-1968.
Een boek zoals maar weinig andere.
Een boek zoals maar weinig andere.
February 27, 2020
How to approach a novel like ANNIVERSARIES, a nearly 1700-page novel about a German émigré, Gesine Cresspahl, living in 1967-68 Manhattan, raising her eleven-year-old daughter, Marie? Its simple concept belies a complex, multilayered narrative bridging much of the 20th century.
While only a single year of 'real' time passes in the course of the novel, August 1967 to August 1968, during which we follow the day to day joys and struggles of Gesine and Marie in New York, through a weave of many thoughts and voices – imagined, remembered, voices living and dead [“Fundamentally I think of myself as normal. The exception: I hear voices... it takes me back into past situations and I talk to the people from back then as I did back then” (1343)] – Gesine's family history is revealed, expanding the novel's time and place from a year in their Upper West Side apartment to 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism, Kristallnacht, WWII, and the Soviet occupation of East Germany.
This is juxtaposed with Gesine's morning New York Times – she's an avid reader of 'Auntie Times' – headlines filled with news of Vietnam, the Cold War, Civil Rights, riots, and American assassinations.
And so time is expanded and compressed – within several paragraphs we'll have gone from New York '67 to Jerichow, Germany '38 – and back again. Parallels emerge. Foreshadowing of events to come.
I found the second volume a bit less absorbing than the first due to the backstory shift to postwar Germany and the Soviet occupation. A minor quibble, though, which evaporated when I reached the final gripping hundred pages.
These are just my impressions. I cannot begin to convey what a marvelous, thrilling journey this was, living with Gesine's story all these weeks. Despite its weight, one could read this quickly for it is not difficult: but why?
Savor it.
While only a single year of 'real' time passes in the course of the novel, August 1967 to August 1968, during which we follow the day to day joys and struggles of Gesine and Marie in New York, through a weave of many thoughts and voices – imagined, remembered, voices living and dead [“Fundamentally I think of myself as normal. The exception: I hear voices... it takes me back into past situations and I talk to the people from back then as I did back then” (1343)] – Gesine's family history is revealed, expanding the novel's time and place from a year in their Upper West Side apartment to 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism, Kristallnacht, WWII, and the Soviet occupation of East Germany.
This is juxtaposed with Gesine's morning New York Times – she's an avid reader of 'Auntie Times' – headlines filled with news of Vietnam, the Cold War, Civil Rights, riots, and American assassinations.
And so time is expanded and compressed – within several paragraphs we'll have gone from New York '67 to Jerichow, Germany '38 – and back again. Parallels emerge. Foreshadowing of events to come.
I found the second volume a bit less absorbing than the first due to the backstory shift to postwar Germany and the Soviet occupation. A minor quibble, though, which evaporated when I reached the final gripping hundred pages.
These are just my impressions. I cannot begin to convey what a marvelous, thrilling journey this was, living with Gesine's story all these weeks. Despite its weight, one could read this quickly for it is not difficult: but why?
Savor it.
January 7, 2020
January 6th, 2020. Monday
“John Ramaglia, of 211 N. Sixth St. in Newark, announces via the times that he needs an attorney, in a matter of life or death. His phone is tapped. Then he gives his number (201) HU5-6291”
Before I begin I just want to get this out of the way:
This is by far the most creative, unique, and inspiring novel on the face of the earth. If you like writing as a medium of art you must read this book.
Now I will sum up my experiences in reading Anniversaries into three words:
Awe inspiring, breathtaking, and frustrating.
There was hardly a page in this novel that did not leave me wondering at Uwe’s genius. Let me begin with the characters. His novel is peopled by hundreds of characters. Not a single one is flat or one dimensional. Each has unique attitudes and histories. Hell, even Uwe is a character in his own novel- often conversing with Gesine who calls him “comrade-writer”. The stars of this show are Gesine and Marie. I hate the cliché of “living in a book” but Goddamn this is completely true for Anniversaries. I have never felt connected to fictional characters before I met Gesine and Marie. In particular, Marie is great. Her precociousness is infectious.
The novel itself is very well written. Uwe does a bit of everything. Every once and a while I would be blown away with some rather poetic descriptions. Descriptions of the sun setting over Riverside drive, a storm passing over New York, and a description of the reproduction cycle of cockroaches, have all stuck with me.
I would also call Uwe experimental. Although slightly jarring at first, there were three forms of describing conversation throughout the book. Normal conversation in the standard quotation marks, italicized conversation was often internal and dashes represented a recorded conversation. Moving on past the basics, Uwe often played with conversations and unfolding of events. Quite frankly, Anniversaries is the most unique thing I have ever read. Almost every single chapter or “day” presents some new way of describing action or conversation. This does not just happen in the first volume. I was continually surprised throughout the novel with new gems. A conversation reported to Gesine is transformed into a one act play, a debate between Czech and Russian philosophers is described as a boxing match.
Uwe also has a real wit to him. This is especially directed towards The New York times and both the two Germanys and the USSR. Gesine often engages with articles in The New York Times, critiquing her “Auntie Times” or the actions of some socialist state. Unfortunately, my lack of any knowledge of post-war Europe left me scratching my head at some of the remarks against the latter. Nothing a bit of research cannot fix though.
January 17, 1968. Wednesday
Stalin’s daughter, his little Svetlana, just can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s sitting pretty in Princeton, New Jersey, and still feels the need to respond to the protests against the conviction of four young Moscow dissidents for writing without permission. Does she imagine that a Soviet judge gives greater weight to a defector’s voice than to anyone else’s? Or maybe she wants to defend her father’s intellectual property rights over the Socialist justice system he invented?
the East German Communists have released a Columbia University art historian even though "forbidden" buildings may have ended up in front of his camera during his dissertation research on Berlin architecture, and without the Americans having to give anything in return. "You could say it was done with mirrors"...Nine months in jail and then returned to the outside world without a trial. Slight of hand. Magic.
Finally, I should end with a note on my frustration with this book. This book broke a lot of firsts for me. One of the biggest being that never before have I been in such a love/hate relationship with a book before. I often struggled with the 1930’s to 1940’s portions of the book. That’s not to say that I did not enjoy parts of it, because I did. However, these parts often dragged and lacked the innovativeness that the 1968-9 parts had. Gesine and Marie felt more compelling and I could still appreciate both of their reactions to the events that took place in Jerichow. I could tide over my disinterest in this section because I knew that soon there would be another great 1960’s chapter. But as I approached the end of the book, the chapters dealing with the past became longer and longer.
Regardless, I still loved this book. Since starting it last February, it’s been constantly on my mind. I may have physically put it down for 6 months, but it stuck with me all the same. For me, a hallmark of a good book is one that I just cannot get out my head.
Bravo Uwe. Next time I go to New York City, I will make sure to spend a Saturday on the south Ferry and then visit Riverside Drive.
“There once was a time when we believed Herbert H. Hayes—that time when he looked up the weather over Easter 1938 for us. Let’s hope the New York Weather Bureau never employs him anywhere but in the archives. They’d have to worry about him in the forecasting department. Today was neither sunny nor dry. It might have deserved “mild” If only for the persistent rain that wouldn’t stop for hours”
“John Ramaglia, of 211 N. Sixth St. in Newark, announces via the times that he needs an attorney, in a matter of life or death. His phone is tapped. Then he gives his number (201) HU5-6291”
Before I begin I just want to get this out of the way:
This is by far the most creative, unique, and inspiring novel on the face of the earth. If you like writing as a medium of art you must read this book.
Now I will sum up my experiences in reading Anniversaries into three words:
Awe inspiring, breathtaking, and frustrating.
There was hardly a page in this novel that did not leave me wondering at Uwe’s genius. Let me begin with the characters. His novel is peopled by hundreds of characters. Not a single one is flat or one dimensional. Each has unique attitudes and histories. Hell, even Uwe is a character in his own novel- often conversing with Gesine who calls him “comrade-writer”. The stars of this show are Gesine and Marie. I hate the cliché of “living in a book” but Goddamn this is completely true for Anniversaries. I have never felt connected to fictional characters before I met Gesine and Marie. In particular, Marie is great. Her precociousness is infectious.
The novel itself is very well written. Uwe does a bit of everything. Every once and a while I would be blown away with some rather poetic descriptions. Descriptions of the sun setting over Riverside drive, a storm passing over New York, and a description of the reproduction cycle of cockroaches, have all stuck with me.
I would also call Uwe experimental. Although slightly jarring at first, there were three forms of describing conversation throughout the book. Normal conversation in the standard quotation marks, italicized conversation was often internal and dashes represented a recorded conversation. Moving on past the basics, Uwe often played with conversations and unfolding of events. Quite frankly, Anniversaries is the most unique thing I have ever read. Almost every single chapter or “day” presents some new way of describing action or conversation. This does not just happen in the first volume. I was continually surprised throughout the novel with new gems. A conversation reported to Gesine is transformed into a one act play, a debate between Czech and Russian philosophers is described as a boxing match.
Uwe also has a real wit to him. This is especially directed towards The New York times and both the two Germanys and the USSR. Gesine often engages with articles in The New York Times, critiquing her “Auntie Times” or the actions of some socialist state. Unfortunately, my lack of any knowledge of post-war Europe left me scratching my head at some of the remarks against the latter. Nothing a bit of research cannot fix though.
January 17, 1968. Wednesday
Stalin’s daughter, his little Svetlana, just can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s sitting pretty in Princeton, New Jersey, and still feels the need to respond to the protests against the conviction of four young Moscow dissidents for writing without permission. Does she imagine that a Soviet judge gives greater weight to a defector’s voice than to anyone else’s? Or maybe she wants to defend her father’s intellectual property rights over the Socialist justice system he invented?
the East German Communists have released a Columbia University art historian even though "forbidden" buildings may have ended up in front of his camera during his dissertation research on Berlin architecture, and without the Americans having to give anything in return. "You could say it was done with mirrors"...Nine months in jail and then returned to the outside world without a trial. Slight of hand. Magic.
Finally, I should end with a note on my frustration with this book. This book broke a lot of firsts for me. One of the biggest being that never before have I been in such a love/hate relationship with a book before. I often struggled with the 1930’s to 1940’s portions of the book. That’s not to say that I did not enjoy parts of it, because I did. However, these parts often dragged and lacked the innovativeness that the 1968-9 parts had. Gesine and Marie felt more compelling and I could still appreciate both of their reactions to the events that took place in Jerichow. I could tide over my disinterest in this section because I knew that soon there would be another great 1960’s chapter. But as I approached the end of the book, the chapters dealing with the past became longer and longer.
Regardless, I still loved this book. Since starting it last February, it’s been constantly on my mind. I may have physically put it down for 6 months, but it stuck with me all the same. For me, a hallmark of a good book is one that I just cannot get out my head.
Bravo Uwe. Next time I go to New York City, I will make sure to spend a Saturday on the south Ferry and then visit Riverside Drive.
“There once was a time when we believed Herbert H. Hayes—that time when he looked up the weather over Easter 1938 for us. Let’s hope the New York Weather Bureau never employs him anywhere but in the archives. They’d have to worry about him in the forecasting department. Today was neither sunny nor dry. It might have deserved “mild” If only for the persistent rain that wouldn’t stop for hours”
April 23, 2019
This is perhaps the greatest sociological novel that I have ever read. The novel traces the course of history - the German Revolution of 1918-19, the rise and fall of Hitler, the Russian annexation of Eastern Germany and the subsequent birth of the GDU, the rise of the Berlin Wall, Vietnam, the race riots of 67 and 68, MLK and RFK assassinations, and the Prague Spring - and how it affects the interior life of Gesine Cresspahl and her relationship with her ten year-old daughter Marie, one day at time, from August '67 to August '68 as they navigate their existence in the so-called capital of the 'free-world,' NYC.
There are echoes of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy all throughout this book. In fact, I'd argue that Johnson, the exiled East German novelist, may have written one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century, or more correctly, international novels of the 20th century, considering a significant amount of its narrative power is situated in Gesine's reminiscences of her home state Mecklenburg-Vonpommern, Germany.
There are so many memorable scenes in this novel that it's hard to really write about any single episode. That being said, I think the first volume, primarily focusing on Nazi Germany and contemporary America, its war in Vietnam, the racial tensions in the north, and the assassinations of MLK and RFK was more memorable than the second volume, which is more dedicated to the GDU and the events of the Prague Spring.
I know, I know, the novel is nearly 1,700 pages long! It's nearly interminable! I'm sure that's what some of you may think. But it's highly readable and worth the investment of a month or so. In fact, the novel's form is most congenial to episodic readings, dipping in and setting it aside for something else for awhile and coming back refreshed.
There are echoes of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy all throughout this book. In fact, I'd argue that Johnson, the exiled East German novelist, may have written one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century, or more correctly, international novels of the 20th century, considering a significant amount of its narrative power is situated in Gesine's reminiscences of her home state Mecklenburg-Vonpommern, Germany.
There are so many memorable scenes in this novel that it's hard to really write about any single episode. That being said, I think the first volume, primarily focusing on Nazi Germany and contemporary America, its war in Vietnam, the racial tensions in the north, and the assassinations of MLK and RFK was more memorable than the second volume, which is more dedicated to the GDU and the events of the Prague Spring.
I know, I know, the novel is nearly 1,700 pages long! It's nearly interminable! I'm sure that's what some of you may think. But it's highly readable and worth the investment of a month or so. In fact, the novel's form is most congenial to episodic readings, dipping in and setting it aside for something else for awhile and coming back refreshed.
July 26, 2023
An interesting, cleverly plotted, overly long, (1,700 pages), historical fiction novel of four parts. The story covers German history from the 1930s to the 1950s and the 1960s in New York. It describes the year in the life of Gesine Cresspahl. Gesine lives in New York with her daughter Marie, who is ten years old. Marie makes Gesine talk about Gesine’s past, beginning in a small village in Mecklenburg in East Germany. Gesine relates her experiences during the rise of the Third Reich, tells the story of her father, a carpenter who is quite astute, acting as a British spy, being mayor of a town, and generally coping with the changes in political power that occur and the affect on the people in the area.
It’s a complexly narrated novel with overlapping time levels, and the constant change of characters. I thought the first two parts were excellent. There are many interesting events that test a number of the characters. The daily events include discussion of major news items in New York. It is a time when racial activist Martin Luther King, then Senator Robert Kennedy, are shot dead. In parts 3 and 4 the daily events include less comment on ‘news’ events, with more detailed descriptions of what is happening to individual characters.
Overall, a very worthwhile reading experience, with Parts 1 & 2 rated 5 stars, and Parts 3 & 4 rated 4 stars.
This book was first published in 1970.
It’s a complexly narrated novel with overlapping time levels, and the constant change of characters. I thought the first two parts were excellent. There are many interesting events that test a number of the characters. The daily events include discussion of major news items in New York. It is a time when racial activist Martin Luther King, then Senator Robert Kennedy, are shot dead. In parts 3 and 4 the daily events include less comment on ‘news’ events, with more detailed descriptions of what is happening to individual characters.
Overall, a very worthwhile reading experience, with Parts 1 & 2 rated 5 stars, and Parts 3 & 4 rated 4 stars.
This book was first published in 1970.
December 10, 2021
Just like any year, some days are good and some are bad, some are interesting, and some are a bore, and when you take a step back and look at the year as a whole, you find that it really doesn’t amount to much at all.
A couple of the only things Anniversaries has going for itself is that it really is reasonably close to life with the daily entries, and also that the text is rendered somewhat more interesting than any other year it could have been written in, as it switches between WWII and the Vietnam War, time periods rich with sensationalist drama. Just don’t let that fool you as really this book just amounts to a series of facts and news reports. Its deceit is essentially to keep you reading for a long enough time to grow to like the characters.
There are some touching moments (it is “nice”), and Johnson’s pursuit of truth is exemplary, but it’s also incredibly tedious, which is especially apparent in the second volume. Maybe read the first volume, but I really wouldn’t recommend this overall—not that it’s bad—it’s not—it’s just too flat and boring at times and ultimately not worth the effort. Much like life.
Vol 1: 2-2.5
Vol 2: 1.5
**Note that of course the year does amount to something: there's trauma, loss, and new life changes, but the book rarely elevated itself except in a few of the entries, so it was mostly quite middling.
A couple of the only things Anniversaries has going for itself is that it really is reasonably close to life with the daily entries, and also that the text is rendered somewhat more interesting than any other year it could have been written in, as it switches between WWII and the Vietnam War, time periods rich with sensationalist drama. Just don’t let that fool you as really this book just amounts to a series of facts and news reports. Its deceit is essentially to keep you reading for a long enough time to grow to like the characters.
There are some touching moments (it is “nice”), and Johnson’s pursuit of truth is exemplary, but it’s also incredibly tedious, which is especially apparent in the second volume. Maybe read the first volume, but I really wouldn’t recommend this overall—not that it’s bad—it’s not—it’s just too flat and boring at times and ultimately not worth the effort. Much like life.
Vol 1: 2-2.5
Vol 2: 1.5
**Note that of course the year does amount to something: there's trauma, loss, and new life changes, but the book rarely elevated itself except in a few of the entries, so it was mostly quite middling.
December 28, 2021
Yes, a masterpiece. A year in the life of thirty-something German immigrant Gesine Cresspahl, who lives in NYC with her young daughter, reads the New York Times daily, works in a bank's head office, dates a businessman who often travels... In the granular and detailed setting, with the war in Viet Nam and a population of New Yorkers as backdrop, Gesine starts to tell her daughter stories from her past, equally detailed, and rich, tales of their family, of the Nazis' rise to power, the Russians who occupied her home town after WW2, and this second theme parallels and then subsumes the first. Massive and powerful.
February 16, 2020
I wish I could give two ratings - one for the first 2/3s of the book and another for the last bit. I loved the daily reading and the short sketches as well as the deeper dives into topics over days -- the way a person would think about things, circling and going back to delve into a different aspect or feeling about memory/experience/etc. I really liked reading the first book on a daily basis (though some days were so good I absentmindedly read ahead.)
In the second book my need to "just finish already" started taking over about halfway through, and that's because I found the longer entries less compelling than the earlier bits. The details threatened to overwhelm the whole, and I figured I should push through before one day I just didn't want to read. So I did, and I'm thrilled that I read this.
It's a masterpiece - it's a wonder - it's all the good things. I am a better person in some undefinable way for having read it, I feel sure. I should give it all five stars, and I probably will in a few months when the details have faded and all that's left is my eternal amazement at the feat of this book completely.
In the second book my need to "just finish already" started taking over about halfway through, and that's because I found the longer entries less compelling than the earlier bits. The details threatened to overwhelm the whole, and I figured I should push through before one day I just didn't want to read. So I did, and I'm thrilled that I read this.
It's a masterpiece - it's a wonder - it's all the good things. I am a better person in some undefinable way for having read it, I feel sure. I should give it all five stars, and I probably will in a few months when the details have faded and all that's left is my eternal amazement at the feat of this book completely.
November 14, 2021
Heerlijke lectuur, maar hier moet je echt je hoofd bijhouden. 1500 bladzijden, meerdere verhaallijnen
April 14, 2019
March 31, 2019: I just completed unabridged Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson. The two-volume set is a translation by Damion Searls. It took me 3 months to read the four sections and1668 pages. I have to say that it was a challenge. It’s not a pleasant or easy series of books to read, but definitely significant and worth the effort.
I don’t speak German and I’m not a scholar, so I found that reading reviews and supplemental articles helped me. They gave me background knowledge about Germany and the German language. They also helped me understand Uwe Johnson’s writing style. Here are some of the sources that were helpful:
• “Names and Themes in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage” by Kurt Fickert, Wittenberg University (Springfield Ohio) found in IFR (International Fiction Review).
• “The Identity of “Der Genosse Schriftsteller” in Johnson’s Jahrestage” by Kurt J. Fickert , Wittenberg University found at jstor.org (Does contain some German words)
• “ A New Translation of an Anti-Heroic German Doorstopper of 1968” by George Blaustein found in The New Yorker, November 26, 2018
Below are the reviews that I wrote about the individual sections as I was reading.
January 29, 2019 I just finished Part 1 of Volume 1: Aug. 1967-Dec. 1967, which would have been Book 1 when originally published. Gesine Cresspahl and her daughter, Marie, are introduced in this first book. Both were born in East Germany, Gesine just before WWII and Marie during the Communist occupation of East Germany. It took a little while to get used to the book's format. The entire book is written as Gesine's diary entries between August 1967 and 1968. Gesine's entries are written in a sort of stream of conscious flow. They are easy to read, but it's not always clear who is writing. The voice changes from first person to third person, so I wasn't sure if these were actually Gesine's diary entries. One reviewer said that she did write them all, but after completing Part 2, I'm not entirely sure that's true. Part 1 takes place in New York from August through December 1967. The flashback setting is East Germany before World War II from 1932 to 1935. I'm thoroughly engrossed in the book. Part 1 ended on page 417. I'm on to Part 2.
February 21, 2019 Still in Anniversaries, Volume 1: Part 2 continues with Gesine and Marie's life in New York from December 1967 to April 1968. The story flashback encompasses Gesine and her father's life during World War II in Germany. The two settings are interwoven with the United States involvement in the Vietnam War and its racial tensions being contrasted with the events in Germany during WWII. None of it is presented in a sensational way. Most of it is told through Gesine's childhood memories, as told to her daughter. At times, I can't tell which of Gesine's stories are true and which not. Some appear to just be stories to illustrate something to her daughter, Marie. I'm also left wondering about Gesine's job at the bank and her involvement with the government of Czechoslovakia. Who is Gesine's boss, De Rosny? What is he asking her to do? Is Gesine a spy? Part 2, which was actually Book 2 when originally published, ends on pg. 875. It does have an Appendix, Through Cresspahl's Eyes. I read this before starting Part 2, but it was more meaningful when I read it again after completing the book. On to Part 3!
March 6, 2019 Anniversaries, Volume 2: Part 3 was the third book in the Anniversaries series by Uwe Johnson when it was originally published. Part 3 covers two time periods. The first is the lives of Gesine and Marie in New York City from April 1968 to June 1968. Gesine’s life in East Germany under the Russian’s control after World War II is the parallel story being told in flashback sequences. All are included in the continuing diary format. The settings intermingle and segue without warning or explanation. At this point, I’m used to this and don’t really notice. It seemed to me that more graphic violence and concentration camp scenes were presented in Part 3 than in Parts 1 & 2. The occupying Russians are presented as being as violent and persecuting as the Germans under Hitler. It’s possible that I’m not remembering correctly and/or misinterpreting. Part 3 ends on page 1205. This is an epic story. On to the conclusion!
March 31, 2019 Anniversaries, Volume 2: Part 4, which was Book 4 when originally published. This fourth section took longer and was completed at the end of Johnson’s fifteen years of writing. Section 4 covers January 1968 to August 1968 in New York. It goes back and revisits some of the events that took place earlier, both in New York and in Germany. It felt good to go back and review. A lot happened in the previous 1203 pages. The ending left me feeling sad and somewhat depressed. Anniversaries wasn’t a happy or joy-filled series of books. Much is left up to the reader’s interpretation, but there are quite a few events foreshadowing how the story is going to end. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but they are easily seen as the ending unfolds. Reading all 1668 pages of Johnsons's book was a massive undertaking. I feel like I've been living with Gesine and Marie for the past three months. While not an easy read, there is deep significance to Anniversaries and great relevance to the world situation in 2019.
I don’t speak German and I’m not a scholar, so I found that reading reviews and supplemental articles helped me. They gave me background knowledge about Germany and the German language. They also helped me understand Uwe Johnson’s writing style. Here are some of the sources that were helpful:
• “Names and Themes in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage” by Kurt Fickert, Wittenberg University (Springfield Ohio) found in IFR (International Fiction Review).
• “The Identity of “Der Genosse Schriftsteller” in Johnson’s Jahrestage” by Kurt J. Fickert , Wittenberg University found at jstor.org (Does contain some German words)
• “ A New Translation of an Anti-Heroic German Doorstopper of 1968” by George Blaustein found in The New Yorker, November 26, 2018
Below are the reviews that I wrote about the individual sections as I was reading.
January 29, 2019 I just finished Part 1 of Volume 1: Aug. 1967-Dec. 1967, which would have been Book 1 when originally published. Gesine Cresspahl and her daughter, Marie, are introduced in this first book. Both were born in East Germany, Gesine just before WWII and Marie during the Communist occupation of East Germany. It took a little while to get used to the book's format. The entire book is written as Gesine's diary entries between August 1967 and 1968. Gesine's entries are written in a sort of stream of conscious flow. They are easy to read, but it's not always clear who is writing. The voice changes from first person to third person, so I wasn't sure if these were actually Gesine's diary entries. One reviewer said that she did write them all, but after completing Part 2, I'm not entirely sure that's true. Part 1 takes place in New York from August through December 1967. The flashback setting is East Germany before World War II from 1932 to 1935. I'm thoroughly engrossed in the book. Part 1 ended on page 417. I'm on to Part 2.
February 21, 2019 Still in Anniversaries, Volume 1: Part 2 continues with Gesine and Marie's life in New York from December 1967 to April 1968. The story flashback encompasses Gesine and her father's life during World War II in Germany. The two settings are interwoven with the United States involvement in the Vietnam War and its racial tensions being contrasted with the events in Germany during WWII. None of it is presented in a sensational way. Most of it is told through Gesine's childhood memories, as told to her daughter. At times, I can't tell which of Gesine's stories are true and which not. Some appear to just be stories to illustrate something to her daughter, Marie. I'm also left wondering about Gesine's job at the bank and her involvement with the government of Czechoslovakia. Who is Gesine's boss, De Rosny? What is he asking her to do? Is Gesine a spy? Part 2, which was actually Book 2 when originally published, ends on pg. 875. It does have an Appendix, Through Cresspahl's Eyes. I read this before starting Part 2, but it was more meaningful when I read it again after completing the book. On to Part 3!
March 6, 2019 Anniversaries, Volume 2: Part 3 was the third book in the Anniversaries series by Uwe Johnson when it was originally published. Part 3 covers two time periods. The first is the lives of Gesine and Marie in New York City from April 1968 to June 1968. Gesine’s life in East Germany under the Russian’s control after World War II is the parallel story being told in flashback sequences. All are included in the continuing diary format. The settings intermingle and segue without warning or explanation. At this point, I’m used to this and don’t really notice. It seemed to me that more graphic violence and concentration camp scenes were presented in Part 3 than in Parts 1 & 2. The occupying Russians are presented as being as violent and persecuting as the Germans under Hitler. It’s possible that I’m not remembering correctly and/or misinterpreting. Part 3 ends on page 1205. This is an epic story. On to the conclusion!
March 31, 2019 Anniversaries, Volume 2: Part 4, which was Book 4 when originally published. This fourth section took longer and was completed at the end of Johnson’s fifteen years of writing. Section 4 covers January 1968 to August 1968 in New York. It goes back and revisits some of the events that took place earlier, both in New York and in Germany. It felt good to go back and review. A lot happened in the previous 1203 pages. The ending left me feeling sad and somewhat depressed. Anniversaries wasn’t a happy or joy-filled series of books. Much is left up to the reader’s interpretation, but there are quite a few events foreshadowing how the story is going to end. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but they are easily seen as the ending unfolds. Reading all 1668 pages of Johnsons's book was a massive undertaking. I feel like I've been living with Gesine and Marie for the past three months. While not an easy read, there is deep significance to Anniversaries and great relevance to the world situation in 2019.
August 16, 2019
I actually read the newer translation by Damion Searles, which Goodreads doesn't seem to have. I haven't read the older abridged version, but my partner has and she says it's absolutely night and day. There's a lot of compression apparently going on in the old one, and this is a book where more is always better.
There's not enough praise in the world for mankind to heap on this project. It's not just great: it's important. By any right, it'd be as important as Joyce's Ulysses. It's not as lyrically experimental or as groundbreaking, probably, but in ambition, in intellect, in every other measure it's the equal of that book. If Joyce's task was trying to dramatize the feeling of being an Irishman at a time when the Empire was crumbling and one had to reconcile oneself to both a brutal past and an uncertain future, to understand what belonging to that kind of polity meant, this book takes the same mission and applies to a world racked by the wars that failing Empire produced. It offers the same diagnostics - a focus on a small set of characters at a particular time in history - but adds in voids of time where the needle of its incredibly detailed, finely recalled personal histories just... skips. Sometimes for five years, as in the entirety of the second World War, and sometimes for longer or just for days. It uses that to explain what happens when nationalism, ideology and the forces of history collide in the smallest of battlefields: a single village. And what happens to a product of that place when she decides to escape.
And it does all of that with singularly masterful prose and a protagonist who thinks in every way like you, the reader, do: circularly, full of trivial concerns that connect themselves to big ones, personal judgments and habits of thought that emerge from the impossible situations she has found herself in and that survive long past their expiration date, weird suspicions she examines, weird suspicions she doesn't. Gesine herself is photorealistic, and if nothing else, you will keep reading for that.
But you'll read it for other reasons, too, because when you locate a character like that in the most momentous period in recent history - the end of the Weimar Republic, the advent of the Third Reich, the fall of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany, and later, the height of the Cold War as the United States conducts a vicious war in Vietnam and comes apart at the seams under Pres. Johnson - you come to really see a time and a place and a people as they were. The power of the technique is remarkable, and Johnson must have realized it, as the project apparently dominated his life for decades, until he died in England with only Gesine for company, in the Eighties.
The dedication, in a word, shows.
There's not enough praise in the world for mankind to heap on this project. It's not just great: it's important. By any right, it'd be as important as Joyce's Ulysses. It's not as lyrically experimental or as groundbreaking, probably, but in ambition, in intellect, in every other measure it's the equal of that book. If Joyce's task was trying to dramatize the feeling of being an Irishman at a time when the Empire was crumbling and one had to reconcile oneself to both a brutal past and an uncertain future, to understand what belonging to that kind of polity meant, this book takes the same mission and applies to a world racked by the wars that failing Empire produced. It offers the same diagnostics - a focus on a small set of characters at a particular time in history - but adds in voids of time where the needle of its incredibly detailed, finely recalled personal histories just... skips. Sometimes for five years, as in the entirety of the second World War, and sometimes for longer or just for days. It uses that to explain what happens when nationalism, ideology and the forces of history collide in the smallest of battlefields: a single village. And what happens to a product of that place when she decides to escape.
And it does all of that with singularly masterful prose and a protagonist who thinks in every way like you, the reader, do: circularly, full of trivial concerns that connect themselves to big ones, personal judgments and habits of thought that emerge from the impossible situations she has found herself in and that survive long past their expiration date, weird suspicions she examines, weird suspicions she doesn't. Gesine herself is photorealistic, and if nothing else, you will keep reading for that.
But you'll read it for other reasons, too, because when you locate a character like that in the most momentous period in recent history - the end of the Weimar Republic, the advent of the Third Reich, the fall of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany, and later, the height of the Cold War as the United States conducts a vicious war in Vietnam and comes apart at the seams under Pres. Johnson - you come to really see a time and a place and a people as they were. The power of the technique is remarkable, and Johnson must have realized it, as the project apparently dominated his life for decades, until he died in England with only Gesine for company, in the Eighties.
The dedication, in a word, shows.
September 26, 2019
I've got to say something about this book, which I spent about nine months reading pretty much every day, and which I have intensely missed in the weeks since I've finished it. I saw in the London Review of Books bookshop blurbed by Hannah Arendt, of all people, and reading it since then has been one of the highlights of my year.
This book is a whole world, it's about the life of a woman, Gesine Cresspahl, over the course of a year, both as she goes about her daily life working at a bank in NYC in 1967-68 and as she tells her precocious 10-year old daughter about her childhood in Nazi and post-Nazi Germany. Two immensely fascinating times/places described through lived experience, the everyday dilemmas, the pressing questions; basically the production of identity through navigating through contingencies of social and political realities. The book is sharply and humorously observed and brims with insight (the author himself lived through both these time periods in these same times/places respectively - he even gave Gesine his same exact Upper West Side address, so the observations ring true).
The rhythm of this book has rewired me as a reader. The book is 365 chapters long, each one representing a day from August 20, 1967-August 20, 1968. Gesine reads the New York Times somewhat obsessively (relatable for anyone who's lived abroad) and so excerpts from the news frequently make their way into the text itself, as she seeks to make sense of Vietnam, race politics, and local and national politics. The plotlines are all organic and baked into the structure. It's a book you settle into and live in. It's variously textured from chapter to chapter, some are as short as just a few pages while others extend on and on (usually the Saturdays when Gesine and her daughter Marie take the Staten Island Ferry back and forth while Gesine tells stories about her childhood), with plenty of room for the author to experiment. Lots of interesting narrative tricks, like when Marie challenges her mother's memories, claiming details were nicked from other places and times, or other moments when the author breaks the fourth wall and Gesine addresses him directly. It's all done so beautifully and intuitively.
I would give this book my highest recommendation. It's a (literally) heavy commitment, but in terms of a rich reading experience, this may be the top one, alongside perhaps Proust, Knausgaard or Caro's LBJ books. I hope that everyone is able to find a time in their life when they're ready to jump in to this book and spend a year with Gesine Cresspahl.
This book is a whole world, it's about the life of a woman, Gesine Cresspahl, over the course of a year, both as she goes about her daily life working at a bank in NYC in 1967-68 and as she tells her precocious 10-year old daughter about her childhood in Nazi and post-Nazi Germany. Two immensely fascinating times/places described through lived experience, the everyday dilemmas, the pressing questions; basically the production of identity through navigating through contingencies of social and political realities. The book is sharply and humorously observed and brims with insight (the author himself lived through both these time periods in these same times/places respectively - he even gave Gesine his same exact Upper West Side address, so the observations ring true).
The rhythm of this book has rewired me as a reader. The book is 365 chapters long, each one representing a day from August 20, 1967-August 20, 1968. Gesine reads the New York Times somewhat obsessively (relatable for anyone who's lived abroad) and so excerpts from the news frequently make their way into the text itself, as she seeks to make sense of Vietnam, race politics, and local and national politics. The plotlines are all organic and baked into the structure. It's a book you settle into and live in. It's variously textured from chapter to chapter, some are as short as just a few pages while others extend on and on (usually the Saturdays when Gesine and her daughter Marie take the Staten Island Ferry back and forth while Gesine tells stories about her childhood), with plenty of room for the author to experiment. Lots of interesting narrative tricks, like when Marie challenges her mother's memories, claiming details were nicked from other places and times, or other moments when the author breaks the fourth wall and Gesine addresses him directly. It's all done so beautifully and intuitively.
I would give this book my highest recommendation. It's a (literally) heavy commitment, but in terms of a rich reading experience, this may be the top one, alongside perhaps Proust, Knausgaard or Caro's LBJ books. I hope that everyone is able to find a time in their life when they're ready to jump in to this book and spend a year with Gesine Cresspahl.
March 30, 2019
Loved this book: the framework of the novel is an entry for every day in the life of German emigre Gesine Cresspahl and her daughter Marie, summer of 1967-1968. Most days start with a summary of highlights from the New York Times, but then veer off into the story of Gesine's life growing up in Nazi Germany, surviving the war and subsequent Soviet occupation. Utterly gripping despite the 1600 page length.
Marie, by the way, is one of the greatest children in all of literature. She is a saucy little flâneur, always multiple steps ahead of her mom. Challenging, searching, brilliant, and funny, she easily steals every scene she is in. Hats off to the author, who has created one of the most delightful characters I have ever read.
Marie, by the way, is one of the greatest children in all of literature. She is a saucy little flâneur, always multiple steps ahead of her mom. Challenging, searching, brilliant, and funny, she easily steals every scene she is in. Hats off to the author, who has created one of the most delightful characters I have ever read.
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September 25, 2008I have the privilege of living in the building Uwe Johnson describes living in in NYC in 1967. It's where he, in fact, lived during the period described in this semi-autobiographical book. Recommended as a good example of post-war German writer.
February 8, 2022
Johnson heeft lang over het vierde en laatste deel gedaan als gevolg van een writers block. Wat dat betreft had ik een readers block. Ik heb me echt door het laatste deel moeten worstelen, maar ja, je wilt niet opgeven als je op pagina 1.200 bent beland. Toch geef ik het boek vier sterren, niet zozeer uit leesgenot als wel uit bewondering en fascinatie voor de ijzerenheinigheid waarmee Johnson heeft volgehouden zonder zijn oren te laten hangen naar wie of wat dan ook. Het is geen gemakkelijk boek, en zelfs als je geconcentreerd leest, blijft er veel te raden over.
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