Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Whitney wrote: "I'll be joining in this one. I went through a mini "Zweig phase" several years ago, but but haven't read him since. I've never read "Chess Story" so it's as fresh to me as everyone else not rereadi..."

Thanks for that background, Whitney! Looking forward to your continued participation.

Yes, I've been wondering if he wasn't perhaps keenly feeling the loss of that "World of Yesterday" in which he featured quite prominently. Aspects of that does seem reflected in the novella, which we can discuss when we get to a closer discussion of the text.

The above is a photocopied version of the first story, Rashomon, that you might have to reorient a bit in your PDF reader.

Google it online and you should be able to find a more or less readable copy - let's see if GR will allow me to link: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&am...

Thanks for commenting, people, it's very good to see you both on board, but lets avoid discussion of the ending for the time being, since it is quite long for a short story - it's more novella length, really, and in our previous discussions of much shorter stories (A visit by Shirley Jackson, for example), we filled more than one thread, IIRC, and it is still only December 6, if I'm not mistaken. 🧐 Our discussion of the story proper starts December 7.
Vigneswara, nice to meet you! I'm going to comment on what you said about the ending a bit later, after some more people have had a chance to catch up, I hope you understand. :)

In the meantime, let's start with a bit of an introduction: Stefan Zweig, born in 1881, was a highly acclaimed prolific and much-translated Austrian author. As per Wikipedia: As a Jew, Zweig's high profile did not shield him from the threat of persecution. In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria for England, living first in London, then from 1939 in Bath.

Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, and the threat of arrest or worse – Zweig was on page 231 of the "Black Book" - a list of people to be immediately arrested in the event of the German conquest of Britain, Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic to the United States, where they lived for a few months.

On 22 August 1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, a German-colonized mountain town in Brazil.

Zweig, feeling increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, was found dead on 23 February 1942, along with his wife.
Both died of a self-ingested barbiturate overdose in their house, holding hands. "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth", he wrote before his death.

The Zweigs' house in Brazil was later turned into a cultural centre and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig.

So, this short novella, Chess Story, was written shortly before Zweig's death, and may well have been partly based on his trip to Brazil.

Btw, this story was made into a German-language film, "Brainwashed" in 1961, and again as a film called "The Royal Game", in 2021.

Any The Queen's Gambit fans? (Either the book or the Netflix series?) I watched the show on Netflix and loved it, but haven't read the book yet.

Hello everyone, we can start commenting on the titular story of this collection by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, , RASHŌMON, on December 14. Looking forward!

EDIT: The thread for commentary on the first story, is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hello everyone, we can start commenting on Chess Story by Stefan Zweig on December 7.

BJ wrote: "One of the reasons I kind of want to read A Visit again is to pay more attention to this idea .."

(view spoiler)[ Yes, there are many layers. There's something else at the beginning that also convinced me for a long while that it was just an amazing house in our ordinary world: Schoolgirl Margaret had not brought enough, or fancy enough clothing, and she plans to get some more sent on to her from her own home. ..what I didn't at first think was significant, was that she never -did- receive this clothing, since she starts borrowing Carla's clothing. ..so perhaps she is a normal human but is becoming enchanted (in the magical sense) by the house and its inhabitants?

There's also a line somewhere that adds to the puzzle: Carla mentions that her grandmother, and her great-grandmother, and her great-grandmother's mother, and her mother, and so on, all did these embroideries that hang in the house. One wonders where they all went, if these aren't ordinary humans.

Oh! And while you're at it, there's a bit of an enigma about the river. They tell her that the river goes right around their estate, but at some point Margaret cannot see it, or something like that - what's with that? (hide spoiler)]

If you enjoy fantasy, I hope you will enjoy the Dunsany Elfland story as much as I did. :) I think it may be in the public domain by now, so you should be able to pick it up online. It's quite short, sort of novella length.

Hi BJ, I'm so glad you got to this point. :) I loved your comments. And yes, Shirley Jackson definitely loves her houses and homes - they feature in pretty much all of her stories with a few exceptions. Btw, can you believe I haven't read The Haunting of Hill House yet? :P I had read the other novel .

(view spoiler)[ Yes, agreed with how you felt when she was visiting Margaret, I had the exact same feeling.

Also, not only where the voices call her when she's with Margaret, but also when "Paul" leaves through the window and there are voices that say "all is lost" did I get a feeling that we're definitely working on the edge of some kind of reality where you can be on this side of it or that side of it.

Either death and the realm of ghostdom, or, as you mentioned "where a fairy or fairies whisk a human off to a ball in a beautiful mansion with twinkling lights that is outside of time and space, [...] in a fairy universe that existed outside of time on some kind of soft edge of the human reality."

The latter is exactly what this story feels like to me. It might be that we are talking some sort of ghostly, but I prefer rather labeling it, as I said before, something otherworldly, like this faery world you just mentioned or for example Elfland in Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, where "Elfland" is a static place, and humans and elves can move from our world to theirs and back.

But yes, it could also be that it's some kind of magic architectural thing where "the house" and it's circular river was built with some kind of magic and the humans or quasi-humans have to keep making images of it, in the form of tapestries ostensibly, perhaps some other means too, to add to it and keep it in existence - but some of the "human forms" that occupy it, are so deeply intertwined with it, that they cannot exist without it. It might also be that Aunt Margaret and "Paul" refused to conform to the rules of the house, which is why they have now become peripheral and kind of ghostly. (hide spoiler)]

...and now I'd wanted to mention something else that I'd read which reminds me of this, but I'd forgotten again, gah.

BJ wrote: "Traveller wrote: "So the change is in them, in the city couple - something bad had happened in their world and in their minds, which they could now probably never reverse again."

I think that is r..."

Excellent interpretation. (view spoiler)[BJ wrote: "...that this couple is really not liked, that their arrogance and condescension, which they either don't see in themselves at all, or else think they wear very lightly, actually makes people hate them.

Yes, nail on the head with that one, and that fit in with a lot of Jackson's stories. A lot of her characters have absolutely no insight into their own ignorance and arrogance - for example in the other collection, there's a story of how the mother of a white boy treats his black friend as if the boy should be a charity case - she tries to palm her own family's old clothes onto him for his "poor family". The boy is puzzled by this, since his family is obviously reasonably well-to-do, but instead of that giving her any insight, it actually enrages her. SMH.

In a different story, a door-to-door vendor is also treated with arrogance, and he takes exception, showing that he also has his pride. (hide spoiler)]

Ha, and now that I've caught you by the ankle, BJ, please, before you run off again, won't you tell us what your take is on "A Visit", purl-eeze?

BJ wrote: "Re: the Bus [spoilers removed]"

BJ, you are a genius! I like your interpretation, but why did she then (view spoiler)[think she wasn't in the right place? Simply because it was a nightmare and nightmares can be strange that way? This interpretation is of course much more benign than the "loop" one. (hide spoiler)]

Ok, here are a few thoughts about Summer People:
What I'm gonna say now, might be more clear if we'd done Jackson's Lottery collection of stories as well, because (view spoiler)[ in that collection, she had quite a few stories where she was calling people out re their arrogance in a racist sense or in a classist sense. You know you get the feeling that the protagonist in the story Home is rather arrogant with regard to the rural people in that you get a sense she regards them as "quaint"?

Well, in a way, these city folk in this story here are also rather arrogant, and they seem to think they "belong" here, and that just because they own property here and are here for half of the year, that they are welcome here. But now they have to face up to a completely different reality, namely the strong possibility that they are actually seen as outsiders and are just tolerated here, and that that tolerance stretches only so far, and not a second further.

...so I think the crux might lie not in necessarily what the townspeople will do to them, but in what the townspeople might do to them, since they're clearly not as welcome as they thought they were. I think maybe the point is that they thought it would be wonderful if they stayed longer, but the realization has gradually dawned on them that their world is not as rosy as they'd thought it was - that it's a much crueler, more menacing place than they had thought. So the change is in them, in the city couple - something bad had happened in their world and in their minds, which they could now probably never reverse again. (hide spoiler)] Does that make any sense or ... well, I'm not sure if I explained that idea well enough.

About The Summer People: I think that one had been published before in a magazine. (view spoiler)[ Yeah, I'm not sure what the implication is. Firstly, why would the local people not want them to stay - they mean more money to be made! Secondly, why would they break their car, instead of just letting them go - then they'd be rid of them, and can make money out of them again the next year? Either I'm completely missing the point of the story, or the local people's motive isn't really a clear or well-thought out one. 🤷‍♀️🙄 (hide spoiler)]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Man in the Woods..."

I do think this was one of her posthumous stories yes, and it's quite possible that she might still have added to or whittled from it if she knew it was going to be published. I personally found it rather boring, and also felt it didn't quite fulfill it's promise.

Also agree with your assessment of Home, I also enjoyed it. One sort of initially had the foreboding, and the resolution was pretty satisfying!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Good Wife
Actually the most chilling story in the collection."

Yes. in psychological terms, this man is quite close to the guy in that other story that I reviewed recently - the JC Oates story, 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?'. (view spoiler)[ This kind of person likes to establish their complete dominance over their victim, by hook or by crook, and yes, it is absolutely chilling. (hide spoiler)]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Sixth Sense has a similar effect to that very moved edifice thing we are talking about. It cheats a tiny bit for some things, but I think it's certainly worth watching once. (It's the only one ..."

Oh, I watched a trailer and then remembered it. I had watched it long ago, just... (view spoiler)[ I didn't really originally so much see it as a ghost story rather than just two people helping one another - you know, a drama rather than a ghost story. I also don't really view "A Visit" as a ghost story either, in the traditional sense, in any case. Rather more otherworldly or from the "Weird" genre. (hide spoiler)]

...but in the sense of that the ending makes you rethink the beginning, what you call the "moved edifice" - yes, there I certainly agree.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Of course, that character shifts so much in the closing section, it changes the foundations of the whole edifice (which I loved!)..."

I know, right! (not spoilerizing, bec we're not naming names there.) Now you've made me curious about the 6th sense movie...

I'm so glad you came up with all of that, Amy! You've added quite a bit to my various takes on the story. Oh, and yes, "homes" and abodes of various stripes is very much a central theme in Jackson's work, - her 2 most famous novels have them in the title even!

Here is some of what I haven't said yet about this story and in reply to your observations:
(view spoiler)[ One take is that there are multiple copies of things, and that "brother" has a double - but what makes it very confusing is that Margaret specifically asked the brother what his name is and he answered Paul. So either the second one that only Margaret can see is a double of the brother, but then both of their names would be Paul. I've seen a suggestion that this Margaret is the (newly-added) ghost of the Margaret on the tiles who died for love, and that "Paul" is her long-lost love, but that interpretation doesn't fit 100% for me.

Also note, young Margaret and Paul can both see "old aunt" Margaret and Paul goes to speak with her during the ball and they both speak as if they were young together.

I thought about the part where they discuss maintaining the house, that they have to maintain the house since the house maintains them - they would not be able to exist without the house, and the house would fall apart without their maintenance, or "adding".

And then I think the adding is what the ladies who embroider do - they make copies of the house that somehow sustains them and can "add" rooms, because after Paul/brother leaves, Carla tells Margaret that there are rooms she hasn't seen yet, which I now feel sure can be interpreted as that new rooms have been added.

And I also think that the visit itself is probably an endlessly recursive thing, don't know how long this Margaret will stay before becoming a ghost, if the "Aunt" is indeed a ghost, but the damn story is so cleverly written that you can sort of turn it around and around like a 3-D toy and see different angles in it's different facets. Oh, and I was also wondering where the brother keeps going to when he leaves the house. (hide spoiler)]

I THINK I have more to say if I think a bit more - I should actually re-read it...

Oh, and "Sixth Sense"? Not sure what you're referring to there?

Spoilers about chapter 40:
(view spoiler)[ I thought long and hard about what Wilder's function in the whole story would be, and then I suddenly remembered that somewhere in the novel, Jack had mentioned that Wilder was to young to know that he would one day die, and that Wilder was therefore a symbol to him of being, in my own words, because I don't remember the exact quote: "bulletproof against the fear of death." This is made clear by the fact that Wilder defies death by riding over the highway unscathed. Not too sure what the conclusion to that episode is supposed to be, but perhaps Jack got the message that it's no use to try and manipulate his own fear of death, that perhaps it's better to be oblivious to your own impending doom, since Wilder proved that to be fearless is to defy death. (Yes, that does sound like a dichotomy as well as tautology, doesn't it? 😜)

At the very end of the chapter, when they're watching the sunset, Jack says about it: It is hard to know how we should feel about this. Some people are scared by the sunsets, some determined to be elated, but most of us don't know how to feel, are ready to go either way. {...} What else do we feel? Certainly there is awe, it is all awe, it transcends previous categories of awe, but we don't know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don't know what we are watching or what it means, we don't know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to which we will gradually adjust, into which our uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass..." So he is kind of saying that they're ambivalent about the state of the world, they don't know if the way their current culture is, will eventually improve or if it spells bad news for them. Yeah, so basically he's "fading out" like they do at the ending of some movies, where the view moves out into a long shot and some narrator adds a little quip to show it's the end of the movie... 😏😆 (hide spoiler)]

Ok, something that I haven't gone into detail about, is that Gray Research obviously represents Corporate America and in particular, Tech companies. If we've been reading our news regularly, we would already have an inkling that pharmaceutical companies are in it for the money, and often skip ethics in order to make more money. So, in the novel, enter Gray Research, which is obviously such a company and perhaps worse than most. Also note how 'Mr Gray' is a staticky grey composite of people, and therefore the perfect image to represent the leadership of such a corporation, who tend to be multiple and anonymous. The author even made the name (Gray) into a color which nicely describes their relative anonymity and how hard it is to define them and pin them down as something specific or "known".

Ok, so with that in mind, spoilers re chapter 39.
(view spoiler)[ Jack goes to kill Mr Gray, in order to defeat his own death and to gain out of it the Dylar tablets he wants to steal off Mr Gray. He really seems off his rocker at this point, but that has a function in the novel. He forgets that he had three bullets and thereby gives Willie the means to fire back at him. So his murder attempt failed, and "Big Tech" fired back at him and wounded him as well, which to me symbolizes the futility of us trying to fight against these people seeking to exploit us.

The part about the nun is extremely cynical, and seems to me to symbolize the "death of religion" where all that is left of religion, is merely an icon, a figurehead to morally prop people up.
(hide spoiler)]

Bonitaj wrote: "Traveller! your summaries, your commentary, your insights have saved me 10 chapters that I would rather spend on another book! A friend says you have to preserve and finish a book in
order to pass..."

Bonitaj, please tell me on which chapter you are, because there are a few bits you need to know to not make the whole effort of having read most of the book wasted. Ok, read the next spoiler in any case, because I think you already know what you need to know if you read chapter 30.

(view spoiler)[ Have you read the part where Babbette confesses to Jack what she did with Mr Gray? If you have, then click on the next spoiler! (hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[ So if you know now that one of the people from the pharma company basically misused Babette's fear of death to make her sleep with him, then skip to Chapter 39, and read it and maybe skim through Chapter 40.

Keep in mind what I said in my comments - that Murray Siskind, Jack's colleague, explained to him that in order to overcome the fear of death, you need to kill someone, because that is part of Jack's justification to find the guy who slept with his wife.

I do want you to read it first-hand though, I promise chapter 39 goes goes very quickly, and you can concentrate on the action, don't bother yourself with the silly things that Willie Mink has to say. A lot of the novel has nonsense to show how overwhelming all the bits of data we get from the media can be. I will add my explanations of what happens there in a following post. (hide spoiler)]