Liquidation

by Imre Kertesz

Liquidation

published

October 19th 2004 by Knopf

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binding

Hardcover, 144 pages

isbn

1400041538 (isbn13: 9781400041534)

description

A masterly new novel from the 2002 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature: the story of a Hungarian writer whose death forces his circle of friend...more

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Trevor

Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

06/29/08

Read in June, 2008

At the book store I was in the mood to try some Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. Born in 1929, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, old enough to know what was going on. I saw his latest book (2003), written after he won the Prize.

With a title that connotes closing shops, selling assets, and cutting losses accompanied with abstract illustrations of people, none looking at each other, I was very interested. Add to that the fact that it is only a novella, some...more

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David

David rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

06/20/08

The characters in Liquidation all suffer from a form of spiritual dislocation resulting from the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. All of them were dissidents of a sort under communism, and their identities were necessarily shaped by their opposition to the old regime, however subtle that resistance might have been—often little more than spiritual and cultural. The demise of communism means the demise of their reason for being alive, and Liquidation is an attempt to dramatize this existen...more The characters in Liquidation all suffer from a form of spiritual dislocation resulting from the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. All of them were dissidents of a sort under communism, and their identities were necessarily shaped by their opposition to the old regime, however subtle that resistance might have been—often little more than spiritual and cultural. The demise of communism means the demise of their reason for being alive, and Liquidation is an attempt to dramatize this existential predicament.

The shadow of the Holocaust also hangs over the characters, and in fact the meaning of the experience of Auschwitz is one of the central preoccupations of the novel. The title, Liquidation, has multiple meanings: The liquidation of Jews at Auschwitz; the liquidation of the publishing company the main character, Kingbitter, works for in post-communist Hungary; the liquidation of communism in Eastern Europe; Sarah’s liquidation (burning) of B.’s novel, Kingbitter’s quest for which is the central force driving the “action” of the novel. The book begins with Kingbitter, reading a play by his deceased friend B., a writer and Auschwitz survivor, that narrates events that have occurred after his suicide, events he could not possibly have witnessed. Liquidation is an experimental novel that deliberately confuses the issue of where the “reality” of the story lies. Also, there’s a theme of peoples lives as stories, stories that they tell themselves and stories that are spun by larger historical forces, and that are told through them.

One train of thought the novel sets in motion is the question of what it means to be a dissident. I suppose one can argue that, in one sense, it was easy to be a dissident in communist Eastern Europe, as it is in, say, Iran today. Of course it was hard in the sense that the penalties for thought-crime could be severe--duh, the sense that matters most--but it was easy in the sense that the thoughts you had to think to cross the line into thought crime were not particularly radical, at least from the point of view of western liberal democrats. AND, in an environment that punishes thought crime, especially in so crude and obvious a manner, just thinking heretical thoughts qualifies you for a dissident status of a sort. In a place like communist Eastern Europe, or contemporary Iran, it was/is possible to be a dissident intellectual in a way that it is difficult to do in the liberal democratic West, since you can be punished simply for thinking the wrong thoughts—and I mean really punished, not just not asked to be on Nightline. It’s enough to think and write and publish them to be considered a political dissident.

In the liberal democratic West, on the other hand, and especially in the US, the right to free speech and the right to dissent is such a fundamental part of the national self-image that it’s possible to say and publish just about anything without much in the way of consequences (although this needs to be qualified somewhat post-9/11). Also, the commodification and co-optation of the idea of rebellion is so far advanced that even genuinely subversive notions simply dissolve into the official marketplace of ideas, or get converted into some kind of marketing effort. There’s so much pseudo-rebellion around that it’s hard to know real dissent when you see it.

One thing people in the US have a hard time imagining, I guess, is what it’s like to have your world turned upside down the way it was in Eastern Europe in the late 80’s or in Iraq since 2003 (Katrina nudged some of us closer to this). Sure 9/11 was a shock to the system, but it’s nothing like the kind of complete psychological and spiritual overhaul that Eastern Europe went through, and that Iraq is going through now.

The shift in worldview resulting from the demise of communism is illustrated by passages that frame the novel. At the beginning and the end we find Kingbitter standing at his window observing an encampment of homeless people. He speculates at the end of the novel about what this says about his changed relation to politics in post-communist Hungary, and consequently his changed spiritual/existential state. Under communism he used to see them as evidence of the corruption and failure of the governing regime, and as a problem that demanded amelioration. Now he’s, on the one hand, more detached. He aestheticizes them. Sees them as part of an ongoing human comedy. And also has the sneaking suspicion that, if circumstances were to alter slightly, he could find himself out there with them......less

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Eugene

Eugene rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

10/02/08

Read in October, 2008

beckett and bernhard may be the basis of "Bee," the writer whose suicide is the vacuum at the center of this novel. as such it makes sense that under the layer of gossipy bedswapping tales by intelligentsia and almost crudely titillating descriptions of common breakdowns and various life botchings is the novel's real content--our natural state of depravity which makes such crudeness and vacuity our continued mode of being.

the book is either great because it shows how litera...more beckett and bernhard may be the basis of "Bee," the writer whose suicide is the vacuum at the center of this novel. as such it makes sense that under the layer of gossipy bedswapping tales by intelligentsia and almost crudely titillating descriptions of common breakdowns and various life botchings is the novel's real content--our natural state of depravity which makes such crudeness and vacuity our continued mode of being.

the book is either great because it shows how literature redeems the banality of our evil world or because it honestly depicts how our great arts are debased and fundamentally banal. a dark choice.

the articulation of the former by the book's sometimes narrator: "But I believe in writing--nothing else; just writing. Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone. If you have a concept of the world, if you have not yet forgotten all that has happened, that you have a world at all, it is writing that has created that for you, and ceaselessly goes on creating it" (97).

and while the book is about the impossibility of existence after auschwitz, the parts that affected me most were strangely those about the comparably negligibly-weighted topic of the literary life. but i think that's the truth and greatness of keretsz--to speak unsentimentally and defiantly crudely. a crudeness that is only possible due to an elemental refinement, a rare ability to look sincerely at our limits.

here's a long passage, capturing both the pleasures of literary life as well as the self-awareness of its vanity and foolishness:

"The fact is that in my nineteenth or twentieth year...a book came into my hands... I knew about the existence of this book only from other books, in the way that an astronomer infers the existence of an unknown celestial body from the motion of other planets; yet in those days, the era of undiscoverable reasons, it was not possible to get hold of it for some undiscoverable reason. I happened to be grinding through university at the time; though I did not have much money, I staked it all on the venture, mobilizing antiquarian booksellers, denying myself meals in order to acquire an old edition. I then read the bulky volume in less than three days, sitting on a bench in the public garden of a city square, as spring was in the air outside while a constant, depressing gloom reigned within my sublet room. I recall to this day the adventures of the imagination that I lived through at the time while I read in the book that the Ninth Symphony had been withdrawn. I felt privileged, like someone who had become privy to a secret reserved for few; like someone who had been suddenly awakened in order to have the world's irredeemable condition revealed to him, all at once, in the blinding light of a judgement.
Still, I don't think it was that book which carried me into my fateful career. I finished reading it; then, like all the others, it gradually died down within me under the dense, soft layers of my subsequent reading matter...
a person becomes a literary editor, and later a publisher's reader, our of error in the first place. In any event, literature is the trap that captures him. To be more precise, reading: reading as a narcotic which pleasantly blurs the merciless outlines of the life that holds sway over us" (38-9).

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Aly

Aly rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

05/28/08

I read this book as part of my series of reading books by Nobel prize winning authors. I chose Liquidation because of the title's reference to the Nazi liquidation of Jewish towns and ghettos.

Inevitably, I feel that this may be one of the most post-modern books I've ever read. It begins by describing a play which, through the amazing foresight of the already-deceased central character, is a series of events faithfully recorded before they occur. Although the playwright was himself a ...more

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Matthew

Matthew rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

09/20/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: 8 select people, whose names i wont say

it's a little heavy handed for a commuter who has to jump from the 7 to the N/W to the 4/5 every morning, but i handled it during the summer, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. it needed to be thought about and put down to rest at a few points, though overall it was more then readable. the back of the book tries to scare you off with talk of metaphysical goings-on, but honestly, the book was quite personal and easily relatable to anyone.

i was debating whether to give it a weak 4...more

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Allen Wilcox

Allen rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

06/17/08

bookshelves: existential-canon

Read in June, 2008

It is as facile as it would be expedient to insert author X or author Y as the moral and stylistic reference to Imre Kertesz in his book 'Liquidation' - and yet the temptation to do so is immense.

An authentic existential narrative such as 'Liquidation' wraps an entire body of knowledge around its finger...and then it flicks that finger...

The book centers and finishes on the question of how to live - "am I or am I not?" - and what is the nature of my reality, this so-called rea...more

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Charlaralotte

Charlaralotte rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

08/05/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in August, 2008

I am on my 3rd read-through of this book since starting it last week. It's a mobius strip. I think it's a brilliant book, but maybe because I can't make total sense out of it, I think it's brilliant. Or else, it just doesn't make sense and isn't brilliant but is doing a brilliant snow job.

Anyway, thoroughly enjoying the existential angst and literary devices. Wish I could read it in the original Hungarian. Brutally bleak.

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Becky

Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

03/03/08

Read in February, 2008

I read this Kertez novel first as I couldn't find a copy of the updated translation of 'Fateless' without a Hollywood cover. This one is a fast read and I enjoyed it, although the first half was more interesting. It peeters into too a strong narrative drive in the second half if I remember rightly. Will certainly read 'Fateless' this year and definitely not see the movie.

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Al rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

08/14/07

Read in March, 2005

recommends it for: the well-medicated

Speaking of suicide...

Calling this pretentious is sorta missing the point, no?

That's like saying Tadeus Borowski is pretentious; or Jean Amery... to take two examples specifically invoked, here.

The Periodic Table: pessimistic!
Werner Herzog: self-important!
Mr. Death: depressing!

CNN exclusive: Sy Hersh not confirmed by White House!

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Joya

Joya rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

10/20/07

Read in October, 2007

there were things I liked a lot . . .like the study of how one lives after surviving the Holocaust ("it is not permissable to want anything"). . .and the way Kertesz intertwines B's play with the novel.. . .and the relationships were interesting (though very briefly developed--it is a short novel of 121 pages.)

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Vic

Vic rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

08/26/08

Read in August, 2008

So far, am not thrilled with this book. It's by a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, so I guess that's all me. But it's one of those books where people don't have names, just initials, and that bugs me.

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furies

furies marked it as to-read (review of isbn 140007505X)

07/22/08

bookshelves: to-read

oh, my fellow countryman! must support hungarians where you can . . . and i adored Fateless (or "fatelessness" dependingon your version) so i really should get this.

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Anthony

Anthony rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

09/27/08

Read in August, 2007

A strange novel that follows in the thoughtful wake of a guilt-ridden Holocaust survivor's suicide and his friend's struggle to find reason in the madness.

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Bryanb

Bryanb rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

11/19/07

recommends it for: everyone

This book has changed my life. I am still affected by it's haunting and beautiful prose. It is brilliant.

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kasia

kasia rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

04/03/07

Read in April, 2007

Pretentious and rather dull, but maybe I'm just fed up with Eastern European metaphysics.

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Francine

Francine rated it:

(review of isbn 140007505X)

06/02/08

Thanks to Mary Boscarino for bringing this book to my attention via her thesis!

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Kimberlee

Kimberlee marked it as to-read (review of isbn 140007505X)

09/25/08

bookshelves: to-read

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Laura

Laura rated it:

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09/22/08

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Greg

Greg rated it:

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09/22/08

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j_ay

j_ay rated it:

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09/19/08

bookshelves: novels

Read in November, 2006

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avg rating (all editions): 3.81 (80 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 4.50 (2 ratings)
number of reviews: 16

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