The Present

by Gabriel Josipovici

The Present is about the present, with its infinite, unrealised possibilities, a gift that withers and crumbles before it reaches us. It is a myriad realities, all equally probable, all equally unreal: Minna and Reg, married and childless, sharing their North London flat with their eccentric lodger, Alex; Minna married to Alex and living in the country with him and their two children; Minna in hospital after a breakdown, subject to fantasies and frightening memories; Minna and Reg in their North London flat trying to come to terms with Alex's suicide. Which of these realities is present, which past, which imagined, which lived through.

The novel is concerned not so much to tell a story as to explore a state: that feeling of being becalmed, adrift in a present cut off from past or future, when the imagination churns furiously and at random, re-arranging compulsively a handful of elements into story after story. But, as the novel develops, it grows clear that is there is to be any escape from this state it will lie not in the feverish construction of yet more stories but in the recognition and acceptance of the hardly bearable absence of all stories.

110 pages, Hardcover

First published July 3, 1975

About the author

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of seventeen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published A Life, a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are Two Novels: 'After' and 'Making Mistakes' (Carcanet), What Ever Happened to Modernism? (Yale University Press), Heart's Wings (Carcanet, 2010) and Infinity (Carcanet, 2012).

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

I present The Present: three characters inhabiting fluctuating realities in the same London flat. As the blurb outlines, the novel aims to explore “that feeling of being becalmed, adrift in a present cut off from past or future, when the imagination churns furiously and at random, re-arranging compulsively a handful of elements into story after story,” which sums up the effect of this short novel perfectly. Each novel from Josipovici is an intelligent and original tussle with the form, and mixes seeming simplicity with re-readable complexity, producing works that engage at the superficial and theoretical levels, a rare feat for an experimental novelist. About ten novels from Josipovici remain out of print—an omnibus is desperately needed to keep this vital and prolific author in our purviews.