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perlman's silence
In a quiet seaside town near Genoa, experts gather for a linguistics conference. One speaker, Philipp Perlmann, is recently widowed and, struggling to contend with his grief, is unable to write his keynote address. As the hour approaches, an increasingly desperate Perlmann decides to plagiarize the work of Leskov, a Russian colleague who cannot attend, and pass it off as his own. But when he learns that Leskov has arrived unexpectedly in Genoa, Perlmann must protect himself from exposure by constructing a maelstrom of lies and deceit that will push him to the brink of murder. In this intense psychological drama, the bestselling author of Night Train to Lisbon again takes the reader on a journey into the depths of human emotion and the language of memory and loss.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Pascal Mercier
12 books612 followersPascal Mercier is the pseudonym of Peter Bieri, a Swiss writer and philosopher.
Bieri studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg.
Bieri studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg.
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August 20, 2018
The Personal Past as Linguistic Creation
Beck closed the book. Done! He smiled; another novel of 600 pages under his belt. And it wasn’t even boring, not once. Now all he had to do was to write down his thoughts and impressions in form of a review.
After a brief hesitation, Beck decided to first write his review in German. That’s because he read the book in this language, and he figured that in his native tongue, it should be a matter of a few minutes to convince others of the high quality of the book. Later, he would translate it into English, all in one go.
Maybe, Beck thought, it would be a neat idea to use the first sentence of the book as the first sentence in the review. So he wrote:
Philip Perlmann didn’t know how to live in the present.
So far so good. Beck didn’t even had to translate this sentence. He just stole it from the English version of the book from the bookseller’s website. That’s a great sentence, thought Beck, a fitting and important one. But only in retrospect after you read the whole book. What should someone do with it, who has not read the book? He realized that this sentence won’t do. The name of the main character should be mentioned but not like this. It also needed a personal touch. Most of Beck’s reviews are too impersonal; they don’t speak to the readers. This one has to be better. The book is too good for a mediocre review. Beck deleted the first sentence and replaced it with:
Philip Perlmann is a man after my own taste.
First person – that’s good. Only it’s not true, thought Beck. Firstly because Perlmann is not a man after Beck’s taste, not in the least, and secondly because Beck would look like a cannibal. He changed the sentence again:
Philipp Perlmann is a man not unlike you and me.
That’s even worse! What are the female readers supposed to think? Beck replaced “man” with “person”. It still doesn’t sound good. And the alliteration of the three Ps seemed ludicrous. Beck looked at his watch: Of the few minutes he anticipated five had already passed, and all he got was a single sentence that he finally deleted. He leaned back and lit a cigarette. This is going to be harder than I thought, he thought.
Without being really aware of it he typed “Perlmanns Schweigen Review” in the input field of the search engine. It could not hurt to see what others write. The third search result linked to the review in the FAZ. Good paper, Beck said. Let’s see what they have to say. This review even had a title: “A professor on lookout”. Beck startled. Did he miss something? It’s true that Perlmann taught linguistics at the university in Frankfurt. He even got a call from Princeton. But Perlmann “on lookout”? Beck found this expression to be totally inappropriate. He opened the FAZ review anyway. Gee! What a long review! Beck decided to only read the first few words of each paragraph and only the last paragraph completely. What he read wasn’t so bad, but once again it was an intellectually over-boarded text, in which the reviewer seemed to raise himself above the book. Nevertheless Beck copied a few passages of the FAZ review:
a self-reflective, philosophical and analytical crime- and adventure novel in the best artistic tradition.
That’s actually positive, isn’t it? Whereby Beck asked himself to what extend can a novel, a book if you like, be self-reflective? Beck would not necessarily want to dedicate a “self” to an abstract object like this. The word is simply too human, Beck thought. Then maybe something else:
without postmodern forging, excellent working, and linguistically of crystalline elegance
Crystalline elegance? That’s something Beck would never dream of. But the prose was elegant all right, Beck had to admit that. Even simple in large parts. The word “effective” came to his mind. He recorded it for later use: “elegant, simple, effective.” Beck leaned back again. That was something. But please not “crystalline”.
Beck decided to refrain from further extracts of the FAZ review. It made no much sense to him to adapt the thoughts of others and make them his own. He looked at the paper on which he had taken notes while reading and realized how few there were. He jotted down some sentences in which the most important words appear. The themes of the book, so to speak, that had to go into his own review in any case:
Language, for instance. Dealing with it, and its importance for the protagonist. Language as a crucial tool for yourself to learn about your memories, or even to retroactively give one’s life meaning. That was an important issue in the book, no question, at least in the first half. Also the translation of language. For example, when Perlmann tried to translate a paper by a Russian fellow linguist from Russian into German and because his, Perlmann’s, Russian/German dictionary isn’t sufficient, and then Perlmann finds a much more comprehensive Russian/English dictionary and then translates from Russian via English to German, with some detour into Italian vocabulary— Beck stopped and looked at what he just wrote and realized that no one who hasn’t read the book would understand this, and wouldn’t even care to. Those were the best parts in the book for him and now he didn’t have a clue how to make this appealing to readers of his review. He split the long sentence into several shorter ones that are more manageable. It still sounded rather dry, but that’s how it is sometimes.
Then Beck thought about the problem of translating this book into other languages. He didn’t know if there were a Russian version, but he knew the English title of the book is “Perlmann’s Silence”. And just like Perlmann in the book Beck started to think about the German word Schweigen and what associations it triggers in his mind. Silence could also mean Stille, or Ruhe in German, and those clearly have other connotations. Will an English native speaker respond to Silence the same way Beck does to Schweigen? Beck didn’t know. He didn’t even know if there is a certain way to find out.
Another theme would be time. Not as a physical quantity but more like the perception of time. The past, the future and especially the presence. Here the first sentence of the book actually made sense, so Beck wrote it down, again: Philip Perlmann didn’t know how to live in the present.
He read his review. It’s still not very personal. What he wrote so far wasn’t too bad, but something is still missing. To Beck a good book, a great one, should always let its readers make some connections to their own lives. For Beck that was the day when he had to hold a lecture in London on a software program in front of a thousand people...in English! His preparations were, as it turned out, insufficient and he had to improvise all the time. Wasn’t that some kind of Perlmann experience? Beck believed so. And then he asked himself how far the memory of that day, 18 years ago, is at all correct. Maybe he started to make things up, just like Perlmann, and reinvented his own history, his own self. Beck’s head swam. He chose to delete the section on London again. Despite all the personal touch it was too long and it would not interest the readers anyway and the relevance to the book was only marginal. He also wanted to add some references to other books. Although this thing like “A meets B” is only helpful for readers who read A and B, but it looks good in a review. And it’s sort of quotable. So he wrote down “Magic Mountain” and “Evil under the Sun” and “Crime and Punishment”. Then he deleted “Crime and Punishment”, because he hadn’t even read the book himself. But he recalled another book by the same author as “Perlmann’s Silence”, a book about free will in which Raskolnikov hat to serve some example cases. Come to think of it Beck added free will and freedom of choice and chance to the list of themes. And then he added “Ripley” to the list of books. The exact title of this book escaped him at the moment and he had to look it up later. It wasn’t “Ripley’s Silence” that’s for sure.
He briefly considered if he should tell the readers about the other major themes of the book. Maybe it would help to let them know that the story turned into some sort of psychological-crime-thriller. Beck thought back on the crime and how meticulously it was planned. He also realized how little he had written about the other characters of the book. Are they worth mentioning in his review? Perlmann’s colleagues for instance; from Amercia, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Or his daughter Kirsten. Her role isn’t very large, but quite important. And all the tiny little things that pop up again and again until they come so huge in Perlmann’s mind. Beck wasn’t sure what to include and what not. He saw that he should come to an end now. Otherwise his review would become too long. He only added one more sentence about Perlmann’s Silence not being the perfect book, because there’s no such thing; objectively spoken. Perfection lies in the eyes of the beholder, and for Beck this book comes pretty close to it.
While Beck was translating his review into English and came to the word “self-reflective” he stopped and an idea popped up in his mind. What if, just hypothetically, he would not write not an ordinary review, but a text about his attempts to write one, and in a style similar to the one in book? Would his friends and followers understand this approach? Beck believed so, for there are many smart people in this group. Of course he had to write in the third person, just like in the book, so he would keep a distance from himself. And he would also have to give himself another name. All the personal touch would be gone, true, but that would be no big deal after all. He would also add a title to review, preferably one that is used in the story as well. Beck smiled, saved what he had written so far, and opened a new file to start over again.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Beck closed the book. Done! He smiled; another novel of 600 pages under his belt. And it wasn’t even boring, not once. Now all he had to do was to write down his thoughts and impressions in form of a review.
After a brief hesitation, Beck decided to first write his review in German. That’s because he read the book in this language, and he figured that in his native tongue, it should be a matter of a few minutes to convince others of the high quality of the book. Later, he would translate it into English, all in one go.
Maybe, Beck thought, it would be a neat idea to use the first sentence of the book as the first sentence in the review. So he wrote:
Philip Perlmann didn’t know how to live in the present.
So far so good. Beck didn’t even had to translate this sentence. He just stole it from the English version of the book from the bookseller’s website. That’s a great sentence, thought Beck, a fitting and important one. But only in retrospect after you read the whole book. What should someone do with it, who has not read the book? He realized that this sentence won’t do. The name of the main character should be mentioned but not like this. It also needed a personal touch. Most of Beck’s reviews are too impersonal; they don’t speak to the readers. This one has to be better. The book is too good for a mediocre review. Beck deleted the first sentence and replaced it with:
Philip Perlmann is a man after my own taste.
First person – that’s good. Only it’s not true, thought Beck. Firstly because Perlmann is not a man after Beck’s taste, not in the least, and secondly because Beck would look like a cannibal. He changed the sentence again:
Philipp Perlmann is a man not unlike you and me.
That’s even worse! What are the female readers supposed to think? Beck replaced “man” with “person”. It still doesn’t sound good. And the alliteration of the three Ps seemed ludicrous. Beck looked at his watch: Of the few minutes he anticipated five had already passed, and all he got was a single sentence that he finally deleted. He leaned back and lit a cigarette. This is going to be harder than I thought, he thought.
Without being really aware of it he typed “Perlmanns Schweigen Review” in the input field of the search engine. It could not hurt to see what others write. The third search result linked to the review in the FAZ. Good paper, Beck said. Let’s see what they have to say. This review even had a title: “A professor on lookout”. Beck startled. Did he miss something? It’s true that Perlmann taught linguistics at the university in Frankfurt. He even got a call from Princeton. But Perlmann “on lookout”? Beck found this expression to be totally inappropriate. He opened the FAZ review anyway. Gee! What a long review! Beck decided to only read the first few words of each paragraph and only the last paragraph completely. What he read wasn’t so bad, but once again it was an intellectually over-boarded text, in which the reviewer seemed to raise himself above the book. Nevertheless Beck copied a few passages of the FAZ review:
a self-reflective, philosophical and analytical crime- and adventure novel in the best artistic tradition.
That’s actually positive, isn’t it? Whereby Beck asked himself to what extend can a novel, a book if you like, be self-reflective? Beck would not necessarily want to dedicate a “self” to an abstract object like this. The word is simply too human, Beck thought. Then maybe something else:
without postmodern forging, excellent working, and linguistically of crystalline elegance
Crystalline elegance? That’s something Beck would never dream of. But the prose was elegant all right, Beck had to admit that. Even simple in large parts. The word “effective” came to his mind. He recorded it for later use: “elegant, simple, effective.” Beck leaned back again. That was something. But please not “crystalline”.
Beck decided to refrain from further extracts of the FAZ review. It made no much sense to him to adapt the thoughts of others and make them his own. He looked at the paper on which he had taken notes while reading and realized how few there were. He jotted down some sentences in which the most important words appear. The themes of the book, so to speak, that had to go into his own review in any case:
Language, for instance. Dealing with it, and its importance for the protagonist. Language as a crucial tool for yourself to learn about your memories, or even to retroactively give one’s life meaning. That was an important issue in the book, no question, at least in the first half. Also the translation of language. For example, when Perlmann tried to translate a paper by a Russian fellow linguist from Russian into German and because his, Perlmann’s, Russian/German dictionary isn’t sufficient, and then Perlmann finds a much more comprehensive Russian/English dictionary and then translates from Russian via English to German, with some detour into Italian vocabulary— Beck stopped and looked at what he just wrote and realized that no one who hasn’t read the book would understand this, and wouldn’t even care to. Those were the best parts in the book for him and now he didn’t have a clue how to make this appealing to readers of his review. He split the long sentence into several shorter ones that are more manageable. It still sounded rather dry, but that’s how it is sometimes.
Then Beck thought about the problem of translating this book into other languages. He didn’t know if there were a Russian version, but he knew the English title of the book is “Perlmann’s Silence”. And just like Perlmann in the book Beck started to think about the German word Schweigen and what associations it triggers in his mind. Silence could also mean Stille, or Ruhe in German, and those clearly have other connotations. Will an English native speaker respond to Silence the same way Beck does to Schweigen? Beck didn’t know. He didn’t even know if there is a certain way to find out.
Another theme would be time. Not as a physical quantity but more like the perception of time. The past, the future and especially the presence. Here the first sentence of the book actually made sense, so Beck wrote it down, again: Philip Perlmann didn’t know how to live in the present.
He read his review. It’s still not very personal. What he wrote so far wasn’t too bad, but something is still missing. To Beck a good book, a great one, should always let its readers make some connections to their own lives. For Beck that was the day when he had to hold a lecture in London on a software program in front of a thousand people...in English! His preparations were, as it turned out, insufficient and he had to improvise all the time. Wasn’t that some kind of Perlmann experience? Beck believed so. And then he asked himself how far the memory of that day, 18 years ago, is at all correct. Maybe he started to make things up, just like Perlmann, and reinvented his own history, his own self. Beck’s head swam. He chose to delete the section on London again. Despite all the personal touch it was too long and it would not interest the readers anyway and the relevance to the book was only marginal. He also wanted to add some references to other books. Although this thing like “A meets B” is only helpful for readers who read A and B, but it looks good in a review. And it’s sort of quotable. So he wrote down “Magic Mountain” and “Evil under the Sun” and “Crime and Punishment”. Then he deleted “Crime and Punishment”, because he hadn’t even read the book himself. But he recalled another book by the same author as “Perlmann’s Silence”, a book about free will in which Raskolnikov hat to serve some example cases. Come to think of it Beck added free will and freedom of choice and chance to the list of themes. And then he added “Ripley” to the list of books. The exact title of this book escaped him at the moment and he had to look it up later. It wasn’t “Ripley’s Silence” that’s for sure.
He briefly considered if he should tell the readers about the other major themes of the book. Maybe it would help to let them know that the story turned into some sort of psychological-crime-thriller. Beck thought back on the crime and how meticulously it was planned. He also realized how little he had written about the other characters of the book. Are they worth mentioning in his review? Perlmann’s colleagues for instance; from Amercia, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Or his daughter Kirsten. Her role isn’t very large, but quite important. And all the tiny little things that pop up again and again until they come so huge in Perlmann’s mind. Beck wasn’t sure what to include and what not. He saw that he should come to an end now. Otherwise his review would become too long. He only added one more sentence about Perlmann’s Silence not being the perfect book, because there’s no such thing; objectively spoken. Perfection lies in the eyes of the beholder, and for Beck this book comes pretty close to it.
While Beck was translating his review into English and came to the word “self-reflective” he stopped and an idea popped up in his mind. What if, just hypothetically, he would not write not an ordinary review, but a text about his attempts to write one, and in a style similar to the one in book? Would his friends and followers understand this approach? Beck believed so, for there are many smart people in this group. Of course he had to write in the third person, just like in the book, so he would keep a distance from himself. And he would also have to give himself another name. All the personal touch would be gone, true, but that would be no big deal after all. He would also add a title to review, preferably one that is used in the story as well. Beck smiled, saved what he had written so far, and opened a new file to start over again.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
June 29, 2020
"There is no such thing as a true story about the experienced past”
This debut by the Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri as a novelist, published in 1995 under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier, is a true 'thesis novel', thus intended to illustrate a certain philosophical insight. In this case it is the postmodernist view that we all ‘invent’ (or construct or appropriate) our own past through language and narrative; even remembered sensory experiences are actually a construction.
Author Mercier uses as protagonist the acclaimed professor of linguistics Philip Perlmann, who experiences a grave form of crisis, after the death of his wife and the loss of his faith in science. Perlmann is not a sympathetic figure at all, he is even downright antisocial and very self-centred. Against his will, he is forced to interact with other academics in his field at an international conference somewhere on the Ligurian coast in Italy. Retelling the plot would lead us too far and of course diminish the reading pleasure. Because there certainly is both intellectual and narrative delight to find in this novel.
Mercier (/Bieri) has succeeded in intertwining a lot of interesting themes: the existential struggle of Perlmann, the nasty envy between academic people, the intriguing world of language and narrative imagination, and the challenge of living in the present and dealing with the social pressure of others. But as said, the central theme is about how language and narrative are pivotal in how we construct our past and project our future, and by doing so build up our identity in the present. Mercier puts all the pieces of this puzzle together mainly in the first part of this novel, and that was also the part that appealed the most to me: together with Perlmann we wrestle with the translation of a Russian text about that central theme, we see Perlmann playing with words and meanings in different languages, and always confronting the ideas of his Russian colleague with his own experiences. This is a fascinating journey.
But then things start to go wrong, both in the story and the book. At the conference, Perlmann - in consequence of an existential and creative deadlock -, gets at a total loss, and impulsively submits the translated Russian text as his own contribution, in other words commits plagiarism. Afterwards he doesn’t struggle so much with his conscience, but more with his reputation and ultimately also with the meaning of his existence as such. All this results in an unlikely succession of events, including plans for suicide and even murder. Mercier presents a whirlwind of constantly changing, seemingly hopeless situations and Perlmann is clumsily dealing with them, permanently imagining different outcomes. He seems completely stuck in a feverish dream about both past and future, forgetting to live in the present.
With this almost burlesque story, Mercier illustrates the thesis that we not only reinvent our own past through language, but also constantly design future perspectives that are equally bound by the conventions of language and narrative. But he does this in such a detailed and extensive way that the story gets a bit stuck-in-the-mud (literally!) and even incredible. Also in the end, he lets Perlmann choose a way out that seems to suggest that our existence is not just dependent on stories, but that we can make existential choices ourselves. After 600 pages that is a bit "too little, too late", if you ask me.
As said: there certainly is reading pleasure to be found in this novel, and it is also very varied and interesting in terms of content. And because of the (more or less) unity of action and place, it’s also more homogeneous than Mercier's best-known work Night Train to Lisbon. But the degree of exaggeration is so extreme and often tedious that it's getting in the way of the story itself, and that is a pity. Hence my rather mixed assessment.
This debut by the Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri as a novelist, published in 1995 under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier, is a true 'thesis novel', thus intended to illustrate a certain philosophical insight. In this case it is the postmodernist view that we all ‘invent’ (or construct or appropriate) our own past through language and narrative; even remembered sensory experiences are actually a construction.
Author Mercier uses as protagonist the acclaimed professor of linguistics Philip Perlmann, who experiences a grave form of crisis, after the death of his wife and the loss of his faith in science. Perlmann is not a sympathetic figure at all, he is even downright antisocial and very self-centred. Against his will, he is forced to interact with other academics in his field at an international conference somewhere on the Ligurian coast in Italy. Retelling the plot would lead us too far and of course diminish the reading pleasure. Because there certainly is both intellectual and narrative delight to find in this novel.
Mercier (/Bieri) has succeeded in intertwining a lot of interesting themes: the existential struggle of Perlmann, the nasty envy between academic people, the intriguing world of language and narrative imagination, and the challenge of living in the present and dealing with the social pressure of others. But as said, the central theme is about how language and narrative are pivotal in how we construct our past and project our future, and by doing so build up our identity in the present. Mercier puts all the pieces of this puzzle together mainly in the first part of this novel, and that was also the part that appealed the most to me: together with Perlmann we wrestle with the translation of a Russian text about that central theme, we see Perlmann playing with words and meanings in different languages, and always confronting the ideas of his Russian colleague with his own experiences. This is a fascinating journey.
But then things start to go wrong, both in the story and the book. At the conference, Perlmann - in consequence of an existential and creative deadlock -, gets at a total loss, and impulsively submits the translated Russian text as his own contribution, in other words commits plagiarism. Afterwards he doesn’t struggle so much with his conscience, but more with his reputation and ultimately also with the meaning of his existence as such. All this results in an unlikely succession of events, including plans for suicide and even murder. Mercier presents a whirlwind of constantly changing, seemingly hopeless situations and Perlmann is clumsily dealing with them, permanently imagining different outcomes. He seems completely stuck in a feverish dream about both past and future, forgetting to live in the present.
With this almost burlesque story, Mercier illustrates the thesis that we not only reinvent our own past through language, but also constantly design future perspectives that are equally bound by the conventions of language and narrative. But he does this in such a detailed and extensive way that the story gets a bit stuck-in-the-mud (literally!) and even incredible. Also in the end, he lets Perlmann choose a way out that seems to suggest that our existence is not just dependent on stories, but that we can make existential choices ourselves. After 600 pages that is a bit "too little, too late", if you ask me.
As said: there certainly is reading pleasure to be found in this novel, and it is also very varied and interesting in terms of content. And because of the (more or less) unity of action and place, it’s also more homogeneous than Mercier's best-known work Night Train to Lisbon. But the degree of exaggeration is so extreme and often tedious that it's getting in the way of the story itself, and that is a pity. Hence my rather mixed assessment.
March 29, 2014
This novel is difficult to characterize. It is an incredibly courageous debut, in that it puts the reader through hell, which is not what most readers are looking for. And the novel is unrelentingly serious (like its grief-stricken protagonist). The hell is an emotional one, a train wreck in slow motion, but one presented in the third person rather than in the first person. This doesn’t create distance, but does create a difference that is somewhat refreshing.
The novel starts off with a hundred pages of setup, which, as in some Victorian novels, is something to get through more than enjoy. The setup involves the characters at an academic conference near Genoa, Italy, seen through Perlmann's eyes.
Then comes the best part of the novel, at least for me: two hundred pages of feverish thought, reading, and translation, focused on the theme of language and memory, on paper and in life. It’s fantastic.
There is a section of this second part that provides one of the best looks at self-justification that I’ve ever read. It could be taught in a moral philosophy class with a psychological bent.
The author approaches the irrational in a rational, systematic way which, as a lawyer by training, I enjoy. The result is humorless, but appropriately so. This kind of seriousness, outside of a gothic novel, provided me with a new reading experience.
Then comes the descent into hell. Another two hundred pages that feature feverish overthinking and activity (but not thrilleresque activity). Following this are the final, hundred, post-climactic pages that didn’t completely work for me. The second half could have been much shorter, but if the author’s goal was to drag us through Perlmann’s hell as painfully as possible, he certainly succeeded.
I don’t think this novel is nearly as successful as Last Train to Lisbon, but it is more courageous and definitely provides a unique literary experience. And the second section itself is worth the price of the book. You can then decide how much hell you can take.
The novel starts off with a hundred pages of setup, which, as in some Victorian novels, is something to get through more than enjoy. The setup involves the characters at an academic conference near Genoa, Italy, seen through Perlmann's eyes.
Then comes the best part of the novel, at least for me: two hundred pages of feverish thought, reading, and translation, focused on the theme of language and memory, on paper and in life. It’s fantastic.
There is a section of this second part that provides one of the best looks at self-justification that I’ve ever read. It could be taught in a moral philosophy class with a psychological bent.
The author approaches the irrational in a rational, systematic way which, as a lawyer by training, I enjoy. The result is humorless, but appropriately so. This kind of seriousness, outside of a gothic novel, provided me with a new reading experience.
Then comes the descent into hell. Another two hundred pages that feature feverish overthinking and activity (but not thrilleresque activity). Following this are the final, hundred, post-climactic pages that didn’t completely work for me. The second half could have been much shorter, but if the author’s goal was to drag us through Perlmann’s hell as painfully as possible, he certainly succeeded.
I don’t think this novel is nearly as successful as Last Train to Lisbon, but it is more courageous and definitely provides a unique literary experience. And the second section itself is worth the price of the book. You can then decide how much hell you can take.
January 12, 2012
I've been living with this book for a couple of days. It's utterly compelling, but also almost too rich. I keep putting it down in order to breath! It's a pity that the writing is marred from time to time by the use of inappropriate translations; but maybe these are intrusive only because reading the book is such an intense experience.
Well worth all the effort it requires ...
Well worth all the effort it requires ...
March 11, 2024
Philipp Perlmann is having a mental crisis. He is still grieving the death of his wife and has lost his enthusiasm for his academic career as a linguist. However he still needs to maintain his reputation as a leader in his field for the sake of his ego, if one were being unkind, or to preserve his sense of his own identity, if one were trying to be sympathetic. He has been roped in to leading a research group funded by Olivetti, which will take place over a period of five weeks in a hotel in Italy. Five weeks stuck in a hotel with a bunch of linguists. No wonder he’s feeling anxious and depressed! To add to his woes, he hasn’t prepared anything for the group and fears they’ll see through him as a fraud. So when a Russian delegate writes to him explaining he can’t get an exit visa to attend but enclosing the paper he had intended to present, the temptation for Perlmann to plagiarise his work is, apparently, irresistible. But first he’ll have to translate it from Russian…
As I write that little blurb it still sounds mildly interesting, but, oh dear, the book is buried under the sheer weight of words. Every little thought, every emotion Perlmann has, the author feels the need to describe. He’s anxious, he’s hungry, he’s depressed, he’s anxious, he’s euphoric, he’s exhausted, he’s anxious, he’s lustful, he’s grief-stricken, he’s anxious, he’s furious, he’s anxious, he’s anxious, he’s anxious!! And that was just the first morning. After a very short space of time I was anxious too – anxious that I was stuck forever in this sad man’s angst about the pinnacle of first-world problems – suffering the extreme penance of five weeks in a luxury hotel, all expenses paid, unable to write a paper on some abstruse aspect of linguistics. Dear me! I wonder how anxious he’d have been if he’d had to live in a war-zone, or suffer from poverty, or been incarcerated as a prisoner of conscience, or even just had to do a real job. My sympathy had worn off before the other guests even arrived.
At 625 pages, it’s a brick. I stuck it out for over a hundred pages, but it was becoming an exercise in masochism. To be fair, it is well written and I found Perlmann’s tortured thought processes quite believable. There is some mild humour in it as Perlmann’s idiosyncrasies are revealed, and as the other academics all jostle for the top position. But mostly it’s simply overly wordy, with not enough story to underpin the sheer weight. My Kindle felt much lighter once I’d deleted it, and my anxiety disappeared as if by a miracle…
As I write that little blurb it still sounds mildly interesting, but, oh dear, the book is buried under the sheer weight of words. Every little thought, every emotion Perlmann has, the author feels the need to describe. He’s anxious, he’s hungry, he’s depressed, he’s anxious, he’s euphoric, he’s exhausted, he’s anxious, he’s lustful, he’s grief-stricken, he’s anxious, he’s furious, he’s anxious, he’s anxious, he’s anxious!! And that was just the first morning. After a very short space of time I was anxious too – anxious that I was stuck forever in this sad man’s angst about the pinnacle of first-world problems – suffering the extreme penance of five weeks in a luxury hotel, all expenses paid, unable to write a paper on some abstruse aspect of linguistics. Dear me! I wonder how anxious he’d have been if he’d had to live in a war-zone, or suffer from poverty, or been incarcerated as a prisoner of conscience, or even just had to do a real job. My sympathy had worn off before the other guests even arrived.
At 625 pages, it’s a brick. I stuck it out for over a hundred pages, but it was becoming an exercise in masochism. To be fair, it is well written and I found Perlmann’s tortured thought processes quite believable. There is some mild humour in it as Perlmann’s idiosyncrasies are revealed, and as the other academics all jostle for the top position. But mostly it’s simply overly wordy, with not enough story to underpin the sheer weight. My Kindle felt much lighter once I’d deleted it, and my anxiety disappeared as if by a miracle…
November 12, 2012
A long and winding journey into the troubled mind of the academical protagonist, who has put himself into an impossible dilemma. I feel like having lived for a long time with Philip Perlmanns traumas towards the academic world with all its demands and neverending pressure. "Perlmanns silence" is definitely not a page-turner in the traditional sense. Every page offers a density of troublesome inner struggle and philosophic reasoning. Still, I was simply unable to put it away, bound to follow this highroad of psychological suspense, and actually, I find myself missing this book after finishing it! Pascal Mercier is a very fine author, demanding an effort from his readers, but it was all worth it!
July 2, 2013
Stopped reading, but there isn't a shelf to indicate that and I didn't want this book to linger the rest of my Goodreads-life on my currently-reading shelf. After 180 or so agonizing pages I finally feel freed from the boredom of this story and its most irritating main character. Summarized: nothing happens. Point final (.)
February 25, 2019
Een goed boek, maar pittig om te lezen. Zo’n verhaal wat van kwaad tot erger wordt en uitzichtloos lijkt. Heel vermoeiend. Samen met de theoretische verhandelingen over taal was het soms taaie kost. Voor het literaire niveau geef ik vier sterren, voor leesplezier drie.
May 21, 2017
het is een prachtboek, prachtverhaal, prachtig geschreven, één kleine maar, eeeeeen beeeee-tje laaaaang-draaaaa-dig
August 7, 2011
I have mixed feelings about this one. The first third or so was definitely five-stars: Mercier does a great job of depicting a linguist who's tired of the academic conference circuit and all the rivalries he has with other linguists (including oneupmanship over getting BWV numbers right). But then the main character starts to go insane (or rather, even more insane than one has to be in order to be an academic in the first place), and while Mercier does a good job of bringing the reader along as the protagonist suffers this excruciating break-down, it remains an excruciating break-down, and 400 pages of that got to be rather a lot.
June 20, 2025
Op aanraden van een goede vriend begon ik 'Perlmann's zwijgen' te lezen op weg naar een conferentie, waar ik een presentatie moest geven. Lichtelijk nerveus was ik daarvoor, maar dit boek lezende besefte ik: het kan allemaal nog zoveel erger. Een heerlijke leeservaring!
4,5 ster.
4,5 ster.
June 22, 2023
Veľmi silný príbeh o zúfalstve a intenzívnych pocitoch strachu a úzkosti za zdanlivou maskou istoty u váženého človeka a vedca. Aj keď ide o filozofický, "úvahový" román, napätie gradovalo a do poslednej chvíle som si nevedela predstaviť, ako to dopadne.
Perlmann, profesor a uznávaný vedec v oblasti lingvistiky sa dostáva do kolotoča vyššie spomínaných pocitov, odcudzenia, hrôzostrašných fantázií a neutíchajúcich obáv, pretože má pocit, že svetu akademikov už nemá čo povedať a ponúknuť. Prehodnocuje svoju kariéru a dovtedajší život. Utieka sa k textu iného autora (text pojednáva o neskutočne zaujímavej téme, o tom, ako si vytvárame svoju minulosť, a bola som rada, že sa mu autor venoval a napokon sa tiež dozvedáme, aký ďalší príbeh stál za jeho vznikom) a dúfa, že ho zachráni. Všetko je však komplikovanejšie a jeho nesmierna únava začala dopadať aj na mňa. Miestami to bolo až neznesiteľné, mala som chuť vstúpiť do príbehu, zatriasť ním a pomôcť mu.
V mojom ponímaní a vedomí po dočítaní silno rezonovala a stále rezonuje myšlienka - je dôležité nebáť sa vymedziť, byť autentický a úprimný najmä sám k sebe, uvedomiť si, že nikdy nie je neskoro tak urobiť aj napriek vplyvu okolia a očakávaní iných.
"Postupne začal tušiť, že desaťročia žil v omyle. Vôbec nebola pravda, že vymedzovanie znamená chrániť sa a uzatvárať sa do seba ako do vnútornej pevnosti. Záležalo na niečom úplne inom - že keď sa to ostatní dozvedia, má si človek nebojácne a pokojne stáť za tým, čím je vo svojom najhlbšom vnútri. A Perlmannovi sa zdalo, že toto poznanie je tiež kľúčom k vytúženej prítomnosti, ktorá zostávala vždy neuchopiteľná a prchavá ako prelud."
Perlmann, profesor a uznávaný vedec v oblasti lingvistiky sa dostáva do kolotoča vyššie spomínaných pocitov, odcudzenia, hrôzostrašných fantázií a neutíchajúcich obáv, pretože má pocit, že svetu akademikov už nemá čo povedať a ponúknuť. Prehodnocuje svoju kariéru a dovtedajší život. Utieka sa k textu iného autora (text pojednáva o neskutočne zaujímavej téme, o tom, ako si vytvárame svoju minulosť, a bola som rada, že sa mu autor venoval a napokon sa tiež dozvedáme, aký ďalší príbeh stál za jeho vznikom) a dúfa, že ho zachráni. Všetko je však komplikovanejšie a jeho nesmierna únava začala dopadať aj na mňa. Miestami to bolo až neznesiteľné, mala som chuť vstúpiť do príbehu, zatriasť ním a pomôcť mu.
V mojom ponímaní a vedomí po dočítaní silno rezonovala a stále rezonuje myšlienka - je dôležité nebáť sa vymedziť, byť autentický a úprimný najmä sám k sebe, uvedomiť si, že nikdy nie je neskoro tak urobiť aj napriek vplyvu okolia a očakávaní iných.
"Postupne začal tušiť, že desaťročia žil v omyle. Vôbec nebola pravda, že vymedzovanie znamená chrániť sa a uzatvárať sa do seba ako do vnútornej pevnosti. Záležalo na niečom úplne inom - že keď sa to ostatní dozvedia, má si človek nebojácne a pokojne stáť za tým, čím je vo svojom najhlbšom vnútri. A Perlmannovi sa zdalo, že toto poznanie je tiež kľúčom k vytúženej prítomnosti, ktorá zostávala vždy neuchopiteľná a prchavá ako prelud."
May 20, 2018
Voor Philipp Perlmann, een gerenomeerd taalkundige, boeit het wetenschappelijk onderzoek niet meer, hij ziet er de zin niet meer van in. Dat is al een aantal jaren aan de gang maar tot nu toe heeft hij dat goed verborgen weten te houden voor zijn collega’s.
Hij laat zich echter onverhoeds overhalen om een kleine internationale taalkundige conferentie in Italië voor te zitten.
We worden als lezer geconfronteerd met zijn worsteling als gevolg van deze beslissing, zijn onmacht om nog iets op papier te zetten, zijn gebrek aan zelfvertrouwen, zijn twijfels, zijn onverschilligheid ten opzichte van zijn vak en de wetenschap dat hij niets meer te zeggen heeft, zijn gebrek aan opinies over taalkundige kwesties, …
Schitterend geschreven al hadden sommige delen voor mij zeker een heel stuk korter gekund.
En het is natuurlijk jammer dat een dergelijk boek, over een taalkundige dan nog notabene, een Nederlandse titel met een kanjer van een spelfout heeft.
‘Wie de doodstraf in overweging neemt, lijdt aan een ongeneeslike ziekte: fantasieloosheid,’
Hij laat zich echter onverhoeds overhalen om een kleine internationale taalkundige conferentie in Italië voor te zitten.
We worden als lezer geconfronteerd met zijn worsteling als gevolg van deze beslissing, zijn onmacht om nog iets op papier te zetten, zijn gebrek aan zelfvertrouwen, zijn twijfels, zijn onverschilligheid ten opzichte van zijn vak en de wetenschap dat hij niets meer te zeggen heeft, zijn gebrek aan opinies over taalkundige kwesties, …
Schitterend geschreven al hadden sommige delen voor mij zeker een heel stuk korter gekund.
En het is natuurlijk jammer dat een dergelijk boek, over een taalkundige dan nog notabene, een Nederlandse titel met een kanjer van een spelfout heeft.
‘Wie de doodstraf in overweging neemt, lijdt aan een ongeneeslike ziekte: fantasieloosheid,’
July 1, 2015
The book is probably a 3 star, but I am giving it 1 star to save other readers with tastes similar to mine from wasting their time reading it. I read the whole 600+ pages. First of all it was vastly overwritten - nothing would be missed in plot or tone if it was 400 pages. I like books about intellectuals, particularly university types. I like psychological and philosophical subjects. That is what attracted me to this book: essentially the story of a prominent German linguistics prof who has a form of mental breakdown and late mid-life career crisis after the death of his wife and while attending a 5 week symposium with a small group of fellow linguists. Great concept, but failed execution. The crucial plot element that drove so much of the story was easily and obviously resolvable without any drama, and the ultimate outcome of his mental crisis was unconvincing. Invest your reading time in something that will provide a better payoff.
July 29, 2012
(Nederlandse vertaling uit het Duits)
Een professorenroman die (toch?) spannend is. Aan het plot ligt het zeker niet en Pascal Mercier weet de taalkundigen (niet bepaald doorsnee-helden) tot leven te brengen. Kortom, Perlmann's zwijgen verdient het een klassieker te worden/zijn. Maar wat houdt deze roman dan van een hogere beoordeling?
Het is té lang. Niet omdat het erg lang is, maar omdat met 523 of zelfs 423 pagina's een even goed boek geschreven had kunnen worden (misschien zelfs wel beter). En dat is ironisch, want breedsprakigheid is juist het verwijt dat de hoofdpersoon aan het einde van het boek zowel Maksim Gorki als een Russische collega maakt.
Een professorenroman die (toch?) spannend is. Aan het plot ligt het zeker niet en Pascal Mercier weet de taalkundigen (niet bepaald doorsnee-helden) tot leven te brengen. Kortom, Perlmann's zwijgen verdient het een klassieker te worden/zijn. Maar wat houdt deze roman dan van een hogere beoordeling?
Het is té lang. Niet omdat het erg lang is, maar omdat met 523 of zelfs 423 pagina's een even goed boek geschreven had kunnen worden (misschien zelfs wel beter). En dat is ironisch, want breedsprakigheid is juist het verwijt dat de hoofdpersoon aan het einde van het boek zowel Maksim Gorki als een Russische collega maakt.
November 17, 2019
Één lange lijdensweg. Heerlijk.
January 14, 2023
Het is een pittig boek om doorheen te komen maar dubbel en dwars waard geweest. Beste boek dat ik tot nu toe heb gelezen!
July 30, 2022
Perlmann’s Silence by Pascal Mercier is a novel that promises much. It’s central character, Philipp Perlmann, is a professor specialising in the psychology of language, or at least something like that. We soon learn that he is now someone who has become disillusioned with his career, is suffering from writer’s block and is in the depths of a personal hole because he has lost his wife, Agnes. She used to take photographs, those frozen moments of visual time that themselves become memory.
The writer’s block is a problem specifically because Perlmann has organized a conference, a gathering of eminent thinkers in this specialized field. Most of the guests are known to one another after years of sharing time together at other such events. As coordinator, Perlmann controls the timetable and so he places his own contribution of the end of the month-long conference to give himself time to find the necessary inspiration.
He is, however, disappointed that one possible attendee, one Leskov from Russia, can’t get an exit visa. There’s a paper by him that Perlmann has been trying to read. The Russian is opaque to him. Besides his native German, he can manage Spanish, much Italian and French and English to boot, but he has never studied Russian. He gets to work on Leskov’s text with dictionaries and comes across many Russian words whose translations he has to interpolate in the context of the paper’s overall message, which seems elusive because that itself has to be constructed from an imperfect grasp of its language.
Leskov’s main thrust, it seemed, is that memory, though it may relate to identifiable and indeed experienced events, only exists as a construct of associations and sensory inputs, a narrative that becomes new, even unique once memory tries to reconstruct it. Thus the recreation of events as memory actually becomes a new version, answerable only to itself, just as if someone had imagined it. Preoccupied with his own memories and pressed by a demanding present, Perlmann becomes obsessed with Leskov’s ideas. Confronted by his own writer’s block, the temptation to present Leskov’s paper in translation as his own becomes a temptation hard to resist. Thus far through the book, one feels that this scenario might present a writer with a major opportunity to examine the theme of reconstructed memory.
The theme, however, like much else in this book, is lost. What happens in Perlmann’s Silence is merely an obsession with the present. Having distributed Leskov’s text, albeit unsigned, Perlmann learns that the Russian academic will be coming after all. Given that for an academic plagiarism is worse than murder, this presents a problem.
In this novel it is the content of the plot, not the book’s construction or style or indeed characterisation, that rules. Details of plot become merely a sequence of events. The review will not detail those events, because without them there is not much point in reading the book. Suffice it to say that what does transpire is rather reminiscent of Brian Rix Whitehall Farce were wholly predictable unwanted consequences that are obvious to the audience remain apparently not so to the characters on stage who, by ignoring the obvious, further complicate things. In the Whitehall Theatre those years ago, the aim was to create laughs. In Perlmann’s Silence, the over complication and detail merely become trite.
The book is much too long. The other characters, of whom Pearlman is always conscious, possibly obsessively preoccupied, don’t really come across as credible. And, despite the book’s length, we never really understand clearly what the subject is the focus of all these academics lives. It seems to revolve around the psychology of memory, or its function. The analysis seems philosophical, rather than analytical, so this is clearly not a physiological inquiry involving experiment and the collection of data. And if this is the case, why would the insertion or not of a bracket or other character in a formula invalidate a paper or an argument? Are these people modelling memory functions logically or mathematically? There is no evidence in the text they are doing so, but the author makes reference to their using mathematics to express their results. A confusion of collective memory?
The great problem with the book, however, is the author’s insistence on playing God. He seems to know the innermost thoughts of every character, switches between them apparently at will and can even put thoughts into heads when he wishes. And then, what the author dreams up as Perlmann’s plan of action comes across, certainly to this reader, as simply incredible. The actions are also probably also out of character, but when a character merely gets pushed around by the author, who knows what he is thinking?
Perlmann’s Silence has its moments. It’s the hours in between that are the problem. I must record, obviously, look the problem might be in the translation from the original German, but I doubt it.
The writer’s block is a problem specifically because Perlmann has organized a conference, a gathering of eminent thinkers in this specialized field. Most of the guests are known to one another after years of sharing time together at other such events. As coordinator, Perlmann controls the timetable and so he places his own contribution of the end of the month-long conference to give himself time to find the necessary inspiration.
He is, however, disappointed that one possible attendee, one Leskov from Russia, can’t get an exit visa. There’s a paper by him that Perlmann has been trying to read. The Russian is opaque to him. Besides his native German, he can manage Spanish, much Italian and French and English to boot, but he has never studied Russian. He gets to work on Leskov’s text with dictionaries and comes across many Russian words whose translations he has to interpolate in the context of the paper’s overall message, which seems elusive because that itself has to be constructed from an imperfect grasp of its language.
Leskov’s main thrust, it seemed, is that memory, though it may relate to identifiable and indeed experienced events, only exists as a construct of associations and sensory inputs, a narrative that becomes new, even unique once memory tries to reconstruct it. Thus the recreation of events as memory actually becomes a new version, answerable only to itself, just as if someone had imagined it. Preoccupied with his own memories and pressed by a demanding present, Perlmann becomes obsessed with Leskov’s ideas. Confronted by his own writer’s block, the temptation to present Leskov’s paper in translation as his own becomes a temptation hard to resist. Thus far through the book, one feels that this scenario might present a writer with a major opportunity to examine the theme of reconstructed memory.
The theme, however, like much else in this book, is lost. What happens in Perlmann’s Silence is merely an obsession with the present. Having distributed Leskov’s text, albeit unsigned, Perlmann learns that the Russian academic will be coming after all. Given that for an academic plagiarism is worse than murder, this presents a problem.
In this novel it is the content of the plot, not the book’s construction or style or indeed characterisation, that rules. Details of plot become merely a sequence of events. The review will not detail those events, because without them there is not much point in reading the book. Suffice it to say that what does transpire is rather reminiscent of Brian Rix Whitehall Farce were wholly predictable unwanted consequences that are obvious to the audience remain apparently not so to the characters on stage who, by ignoring the obvious, further complicate things. In the Whitehall Theatre those years ago, the aim was to create laughs. In Perlmann’s Silence, the over complication and detail merely become trite.
The book is much too long. The other characters, of whom Pearlman is always conscious, possibly obsessively preoccupied, don’t really come across as credible. And, despite the book’s length, we never really understand clearly what the subject is the focus of all these academics lives. It seems to revolve around the psychology of memory, or its function. The analysis seems philosophical, rather than analytical, so this is clearly not a physiological inquiry involving experiment and the collection of data. And if this is the case, why would the insertion or not of a bracket or other character in a formula invalidate a paper or an argument? Are these people modelling memory functions logically or mathematically? There is no evidence in the text they are doing so, but the author makes reference to their using mathematics to express their results. A confusion of collective memory?
The great problem with the book, however, is the author’s insistence on playing God. He seems to know the innermost thoughts of every character, switches between them apparently at will and can even put thoughts into heads when he wishes. And then, what the author dreams up as Perlmann’s plan of action comes across, certainly to this reader, as simply incredible. The actions are also probably also out of character, but when a character merely gets pushed around by the author, who knows what he is thinking?
Perlmann’s Silence has its moments. It’s the hours in between that are the problem. I must record, obviously, look the problem might be in the translation from the original German, but I doubt it.
January 22, 2021
Liebs
September 30, 2023
I didn't really enjoy this book. I felt it dragged on a lot at the start with the scene setting. The second half was better but this book took me ages to read.
It just wasn't for me.
It just wasn't for me.
September 6, 2023
Apparently the book is only 600-odd pages and took me only a month to read. It felt as if it were many thousands and that I had been reading it for years! A quite extraordinary book!
December 18, 2016
Tortured. Tormented. Traumatised. Troubled. Tragic.
These are but a few T words to describe not only the story but the main character, Philip Perlmann. A man gripped by demons, we assume brought on by the unexpected death of his wife Agnes, a year ago. But we can't be sure this is what's driving his erratic, pointless, senseless, capricious and inexplicable behaviour - it could be something else, or a combination of factors. Well we know it's a combination of factors, because he speaks of losing his professional capacity (as a professor of linguistics).
So we are left to cling to the idea that Herr Perlmann is behaving like a raving lunatic because his wife's death has caused his entire life to upend, leaving him gasping and grasping. Gasping for air, grasping for something solid to hang onto. Floundering, failing, flailing.
He's a mess. A big hot stinking mess. His behaviour is so bizarre at times as to beggar belief. It would be hilarious if the internal dialogue we are privvy to didn't clue us into just how neurotic and deeply disturbed, as well as self-obsessed, Herr Perlmann is. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop thinking about himself. He can't stop thinking about what other people (might be) thinking about him. He's caught in a ever-decreasing circles of compulsive, obsessive and manic thoughts.
I felt myself going slightly mad just reading it. Like it was contagious in some way.
It was kind of a fun ride, and I could definitely see it as a movie where Herr Perlmann's hysterical antics were brought to life in a way that makes us both cringe, cry and laugh. But the book has far more of the former - cringing and crying, which makes it a cumbersome and awkward read than a lighter touch would have given it. It could have been a flight of fancy, flippant and whimsical and funny, in other hands. But these hands, Pascal Mercier's hands, it was a bit heavy.
The ending was satisfying in that our main man Herr Perlmann is given redemption. Right to the very last, we weren't sure if redemption would be his, or if he would be condemned to life in a tortured silence forever. Because we had travelled his interior world of pain for the entire story, it was a relief to have him restored somewhat. Hopefully to some kind of equilibrium, and sanity.
A tome of a book, it's not a quick or easy read, and the reader needs to not only endure the action as it actually happens, but the many imagined sequences that Herr Perlmann torments himself (and us) with. .If I brush my teeth, then go down to breakfast, and shave when I get back, will the others notice my morning beard and think I'm a sloth and don't care about my appearance and then they will think I'm not a very intelligent person and then Laura who said she would go for a walk with me later might say she won't and then...... At times, this inner rambling dialogue seems like it will never end.
But end it does, and I confess to feeling relief when the final prophetic words appeared on the page, and I could say goodbye to Herr Perlmann and his tortured, tormented, tragic story.
These are but a few T words to describe not only the story but the main character, Philip Perlmann. A man gripped by demons, we assume brought on by the unexpected death of his wife Agnes, a year ago. But we can't be sure this is what's driving his erratic, pointless, senseless, capricious and inexplicable behaviour - it could be something else, or a combination of factors. Well we know it's a combination of factors, because he speaks of losing his professional capacity (as a professor of linguistics).
So we are left to cling to the idea that Herr Perlmann is behaving like a raving lunatic because his wife's death has caused his entire life to upend, leaving him gasping and grasping. Gasping for air, grasping for something solid to hang onto. Floundering, failing, flailing.
He's a mess. A big hot stinking mess. His behaviour is so bizarre at times as to beggar belief. It would be hilarious if the internal dialogue we are privvy to didn't clue us into just how neurotic and deeply disturbed, as well as self-obsessed, Herr Perlmann is. He can't stop thinking. He can't stop thinking about himself. He can't stop thinking about what other people (might be) thinking about him. He's caught in a ever-decreasing circles of compulsive, obsessive and manic thoughts.
I felt myself going slightly mad just reading it. Like it was contagious in some way.
It was kind of a fun ride, and I could definitely see it as a movie where Herr Perlmann's hysterical antics were brought to life in a way that makes us both cringe, cry and laugh. But the book has far more of the former - cringing and crying, which makes it a cumbersome and awkward read than a lighter touch would have given it. It could have been a flight of fancy, flippant and whimsical and funny, in other hands. But these hands, Pascal Mercier's hands, it was a bit heavy.
The ending was satisfying in that our main man Herr Perlmann is given redemption. Right to the very last, we weren't sure if redemption would be his, or if he would be condemned to life in a tortured silence forever. Because we had travelled his interior world of pain for the entire story, it was a relief to have him restored somewhat. Hopefully to some kind of equilibrium, and sanity.
A tome of a book, it's not a quick or easy read, and the reader needs to not only endure the action as it actually happens, but the many imagined sequences that Herr Perlmann torments himself (and us) with. .If I brush my teeth, then go down to breakfast, and shave when I get back, will the others notice my morning beard and think I'm a sloth and don't care about my appearance and then they will think I'm not a very intelligent person and then Laura who said she would go for a walk with me later might say she won't and then...... At times, this inner rambling dialogue seems like it will never end.
But end it does, and I confess to feeling relief when the final prophetic words appeared on the page, and I could say goodbye to Herr Perlmann and his tortured, tormented, tragic story.
January 8, 2013
Author
Peter Bieri was born in Bern on June 23th 1944. He is better known under his pseudonym Pascal Mercier. Bieri studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg. He currently lives in Berlin where he is a professor of philosophy.
Review
I finished this book. I would say finally but that does not sound nice. Still I am not sure if I want to write nice things about this book because though I finished it I kind of despised it too. It took me a few rants to people in my surrounding to understand that my experienced feeling on the book and the fact that I could not put it away where not really making sense until I realized that I actually was interested in how it would finish and what would happen to all the characters. So to start with them.
The book's main character is Phillip Perlmann. A man of whom I do not remember an age but he must be around 50. During the book you live inside his head and this man should really stop thinking for just a second and realize what is really going on. His thoughts are scary and there are to many. It does not matter what happens to him he can see it all go wrong. His thoughts take him to all the dark spots. As you see the other characters trough his eyes you get a very dark colored view on them, even though not all of them are having that effect on Perlmann, specially not the woman in the book. Still you really want to slap his face to get him back to reality, cause the actions the other characters show, even seen trough his eyes are really not all that bad. As I am a more positive personality myself I could not relate to him at all, in would probably not want to spend more than an hour with that man.
The story itself is dragging and kind of depressing still you get curious eventually if Perlmann gets away with all the evil he comes up with in his head. So I did finish the book but am now doubting between giving it 2or 3 stars. Under indifferent circumstances I would have given it two stars for sure but because there where some very beautifull written sentences in the book I will be generous and give three stars.
Favorite quotes:
"Things were obtrusively only themselves, they had not significance and no lustre." ~9
"To think of these things you have to be right inside - as I am no longer inside." ~79
“What separates me from my present is like a fine mist, an intangible veil, an invisible wall. They don't put up the slightest resistance. Nothing would shatter if I were to walk trough it. Because there is actually nothing at all between me and the world. A single step would be enough. Why didn't I take it long ago?” ~183
Peter Bieri was born in Bern on June 23th 1944. He is better known under his pseudonym Pascal Mercier. Bieri studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg. He currently lives in Berlin where he is a professor of philosophy.
Review
I finished this book. I would say finally but that does not sound nice. Still I am not sure if I want to write nice things about this book because though I finished it I kind of despised it too. It took me a few rants to people in my surrounding to understand that my experienced feeling on the book and the fact that I could not put it away where not really making sense until I realized that I actually was interested in how it would finish and what would happen to all the characters. So to start with them.
The book's main character is Phillip Perlmann. A man of whom I do not remember an age but he must be around 50. During the book you live inside his head and this man should really stop thinking for just a second and realize what is really going on. His thoughts are scary and there are to many. It does not matter what happens to him he can see it all go wrong. His thoughts take him to all the dark spots. As you see the other characters trough his eyes you get a very dark colored view on them, even though not all of them are having that effect on Perlmann, specially not the woman in the book. Still you really want to slap his face to get him back to reality, cause the actions the other characters show, even seen trough his eyes are really not all that bad. As I am a more positive personality myself I could not relate to him at all, in would probably not want to spend more than an hour with that man.
The story itself is dragging and kind of depressing still you get curious eventually if Perlmann gets away with all the evil he comes up with in his head. So I did finish the book but am now doubting between giving it 2or 3 stars. Under indifferent circumstances I would have given it two stars for sure but because there where some very beautifull written sentences in the book I will be generous and give three stars.
Favorite quotes:
"Things were obtrusively only themselves, they had not significance and no lustre." ~9
"To think of these things you have to be right inside - as I am no longer inside." ~79
“What separates me from my present is like a fine mist, an intangible veil, an invisible wall. They don't put up the slightest resistance. Nothing would shatter if I were to walk trough it. Because there is actually nothing at all between me and the world. A single step would be enough. Why didn't I take it long ago?” ~183
April 8, 2012
At a month-long academic conference near Genoa, a burned out professor procrastinates to the extreme. Perlmann shows up with no paper to present or even work on because he believes he has nothing left to say. Recently widowed, he's not sure why he's even ended up at this conference. The first 300 pages build up to Perlmann committing the worst academic crime ever: presenting someone else's paper as his own. The next 300 pages deal with his wild efforts to keep the crime from coming out.
This book is a chunkster, and the digressions about linguistics and classical music tried my patience. But it's also very very funny. If this were a movie, Perlmann could be played by Paul Giamatti. Almodovar could direct, or Woody Allen if he wanted to revisit his Crimes and Misdemeanors days. Perlmann is crazy in that obsessive, over-analytical, incredibly self-absorbed way that, well, seems to fit with an academic career.
Frame-by-frame details show that the author knows what he's talking about when it comes to the academic life. The way academic jealousies start over nothing and simmer for decades. The subtle jousting during a colloquium, where the person presenting the paper is almost irrelevant, because the real show is how the colleagues in the audience display their knowledge. The various ways Perlmann puts off working on his own paper, but then doesn't actually work on it, geeking out instead over translating something from one foreign language to another foreign language, reviewing world events from the year of his birth on . . . All crazy, all realistic.
When it comes to academic satire, this is not knee-slapping funny like Russo's Straight Man or Smiley's Moo. It's quieter, and much slower. It's about a man losing (and recovering) his mind. But I did laugh out loud at Perlmann's extreme efforts to track down a Bach CD just to shame his piano-playing rival, his jamming coins into a seatbelt latch as part of a murder plan, his showdowns with a waiter at a nearby hotel, and his lunatic efforts to rescue a text that he himself had destroyed.
Recommended for anyone who likes academic satires. Caveat: be patient.
This book is a chunkster, and the digressions about linguistics and classical music tried my patience. But it's also very very funny. If this were a movie, Perlmann could be played by Paul Giamatti. Almodovar could direct, or Woody Allen if he wanted to revisit his Crimes and Misdemeanors days. Perlmann is crazy in that obsessive, over-analytical, incredibly self-absorbed way that, well, seems to fit with an academic career.
Frame-by-frame details show that the author knows what he's talking about when it comes to the academic life. The way academic jealousies start over nothing and simmer for decades. The subtle jousting during a colloquium, where the person presenting the paper is almost irrelevant, because the real show is how the colleagues in the audience display their knowledge. The various ways Perlmann puts off working on his own paper, but then doesn't actually work on it, geeking out instead over translating something from one foreign language to another foreign language, reviewing world events from the year of his birth on . . . All crazy, all realistic.
When it comes to academic satire, this is not knee-slapping funny like Russo's Straight Man or Smiley's Moo. It's quieter, and much slower. It's about a man losing (and recovering) his mind. But I did laugh out loud at Perlmann's extreme efforts to track down a Bach CD just to shame his piano-playing rival, his jamming coins into a seatbelt latch as part of a murder plan, his showdowns with a waiter at a nearby hotel, and his lunatic efforts to rescue a text that he himself had destroyed.
Recommended for anyone who likes academic satires. Caveat: be patient.
March 15, 2013
This is an immensely difficult book to read, and an even harder one to review. I have spent the past week wishing it would just end, and yet I was psychotically unable to leave it unfinished. To say this was a slow book would not only be an understatement, it would be misleading. There are hundreds of pages where almost nothing happens. In fact, near the end (and that would mean past the 600th page), the protagonist, Perlmann, himself has an experience similar to mine where he notes: "Often he succumbed to the temptation to ease his attention and just let his eye slip over the pages without really reading." Which is how I got through most of this novel.
And yet, there is so much of brilliance here. I was enthusiastically describing the madcap events of the first half of the book to someone else, and I realized that just the plot line was by itself genius. The relationships between the academics, the jealousies, the paranoia, were beautifully drawn.
But the most interesting part for me was the gripping and gradual slide into insanity that Perlmann experiences along with his internal struggles, his panic, his introspective ramblings. In some ways this reminded me of Crime and Punishment except here the great mental anguish happens equally before the crime as after.
And yet, there is so much of brilliance here. I was enthusiastically describing the madcap events of the first half of the book to someone else, and I realized that just the plot line was by itself genius. The relationships between the academics, the jealousies, the paranoia, were beautifully drawn.
But the most interesting part for me was the gripping and gradual slide into insanity that Perlmann experiences along with his internal struggles, his panic, his introspective ramblings. In some ways this reminded me of Crime and Punishment except here the great mental anguish happens equally before the crime as after.
February 18, 2015
Perlman's Silence demands a lot of courage, patience and persistence of the reader, but it is worth it. Bieri's insightful description of the slow inner deterioration of the middle aged academic Perlman is a compelling read. At first I thought that it was all too detailed and long, but that is the way it also is for the protagonist. As a reader you have to crawl so deeply into Perlamn's skin that his thoughts almost become yours. And that is great writing!
Just like in 'Ńight train to Lisbon', the protagonist is a man who is well settled in his academic interest, but through an emotional upheaval starts to obsess about something completely illogical, which changes the way he experiences the world around him, and the course of his life. Both books are sort of a quest for the right relationship with reality.
I found Perlman's quest harder to read, because I didn't like Perlman as a person, so I was not always sympathetic to crooked reasoning of this egocentric man.
By the way the English translation of this book is a lot better than the one for 'Night train to Lisbon'.
Just like in 'Ńight train to Lisbon', the protagonist is a man who is well settled in his academic interest, but through an emotional upheaval starts to obsess about something completely illogical, which changes the way he experiences the world around him, and the course of his life. Both books are sort of a quest for the right relationship with reality.
I found Perlman's quest harder to read, because I didn't like Perlman as a person, so I was not always sympathetic to crooked reasoning of this egocentric man.
By the way the English translation of this book is a lot better than the one for 'Night train to Lisbon'.
May 21, 2012
Largement inspiré par "crime et chatiment", le nouveau star de la scène litteraire européenne décrit avec grande finesse les émotions qui traverse une personne dépourvu de confiance en lui-même. L'histoire demontre sa peur de dévoiler ses limitations intellectuelles vis-á-vis de ses colleguès si brillants, si intelligents, si tellement meilleurs que lui.
Rarement ai-je lu quelque chose qui décrit si bien la peur de ne pas réussir et la torture psychologique que notre protagoniste doit traverser avant de comprendre la vérité sûr la vie.
Et la vérité sûr la vie - n'est pas inintéressante.
Rarement ai-je lu quelque chose qui décrit si bien la peur de ne pas réussir et la torture psychologique que notre protagoniste doit traverser avant de comprendre la vérité sûr la vie.
Et la vérité sûr la vie - n'est pas inintéressante.
September 15, 2014
De overspannen Perlmann. Perlmann die het zicht op de realiteit verliest. Het wordt schitterend en gedetailleerd uitgesponnen door Pascal Mercier. Waarom dan geen hogere beoordeling? Voornamelijk omdat Mercier dreigt door te schieten in Perlmann's misère, tot een niveau dat het m.i. niet meer realistisch is. Of in ieder geval tot een niveau dat het mijn inlevingsvermogen tartte. Dat gaf ook dat ik maar langzaam in het boek vorderde; de droefheid noopte me tot maar korte stukken per keer.
Zoals gezegd; een mooi geschreven boek, maar niet Mercier's beste (in ieder geval niet op grond van leesplezier)
Zoals gezegd; een mooi geschreven boek, maar niet Mercier's beste (in ieder geval niet op grond van leesplezier)
December 27, 2017
I may be going out on a limb here when I say that what I loved about it was the similarity to Thomas Mann's Sauberberg. Mercier was relentless in describing poor Permann's anxieties and the ramblings of his unravelling mind, that may not sound like fascinating reading but it was. I was totally drawn into the small, small world of the group of linguists and Perlmann's moral dilemma. Fabulous book but I know it won't suit some readers, it requires a certain patience and willingness to sit with Perlmann as his world spins out of control.
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