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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318337.Liquidation?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Liquidation" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173728053m/318337.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318337.Liquidation?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Liquidation</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26496.Imre_Kertesz">Imre Kertesz</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8955894?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars 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...
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/613845?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

David's review
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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...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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