Go, Went, Gone - Whole Book (Spoilers Allowed) (Nov 2018)

[Carol]

This thread is the place to share your thoughts about the second half of the novel, as well as comments and questions on the book as a whole. No need to hide spoilers here.

[Carol]

At this link is an interview with Erpenbeck entitled, "A Broken Story." It includes quite a few spoilers; hence, my posting it here.

https://www.bookforum.com/pubdates/18600

Two quotes stand out. First:

"Go, Went, Gone, in an early passage, meditates on how surface misleads us; it posits 'language as a skin.'"

Does this resonate with you as a reader?

Second, in a portion of this interview, Erpenbeck responds to the suggestion that, unlike Visitation and The End of Days, in Go, Went, Gone she presents her tale in a relatively straightforward fashion, with a single character, Richard, who changes and develops in a linear fashion:

“Every biography winds up broken,” she argued. “Every life suffers a cut, even if from chapter to chapter, they stay in the same place.”

If you've finished the book, was Erpenbeck successful in telling the story she set out to tell?

Were you familiar with Dublin II before reading GWG? If, not, are you surprised, dismayed, horrified, ... something else? If, yes, does Erpenbeck's commentary and description comport with your understanding of it, or is her version skewed in your opinion?

Were you invested in Richard as a character, or was he to you merely a means of telling the story of the African refugees and the pain of displacement?

[Carol]

Here's a link to one of my favorite (because provocative - not because I agree with it) reviews, from an Edinburgh-based literary magazine heretofore unknown to me, Tychy.

https://tychy.wordpress.com/2018/03/3...

Is Go, West, Gone a "liberal protest novel"?

Is it a flaw in GWG that "Richard’s empathy does not necessitate any ultra self-denial."

"The man in the lake is the weakest feature of this novel and it is here that the realism registers the most strain." Do you agree?

[Elaine]

Athough I haven't finished the novel, I find the review much too cynical. There are some valid criticisms raised that are worth considering, but in view of what is happening today, I think Erpenbeck was not mistaken in drawing a direct connection between Germany's Nazi past and the acceptance of asylum seekers. Even better would be connecting the asylum seekers with the devastating consequences of colonialism, which Erpenbeck does but Tychy overlooks.

[LindaJ^]

Carol wrote: "Here's a link to one of my favorite (because provocative - not because I agree with it) reviews, from an Edinburgh-based literary magazine heretofore unknown to me, Tychy. https://tychy.wordpress....

Thanks Carol for that review and the questions. I disagree with much of the review. I did not make the connections the review's author did.

Is Go, West, Gone a "liberal protest novel"?

What exactly is a "liberal protest novel"? Does everything these days have to be labeled in some political parlance?

Is it a flaw in GWG that "Richard’s empathy does not necessitate any ultra self-denial."

Honestly, I do not know what "ultra self-denial" is. I think Richard's empathy is a result of his deciding to pay attention to a group of people, i.e., immigrants, that he had never done before and learning about them.

"The man in the lake is the weakest feature of this novel and it is here that the realism registers the most strain." Do you agree?"

I read the book in the spring. I did not remember the "man in the lake." Even after reading the review, I do have little recollection of it. It obviously was not what impressed me (and did not cause me any strain) about the novel. What struck me most about the book was the following (taken from my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

About halfway through the book Richard, as Richard's self-education about the countries the refugees are from grows, I was struck by the following passage (page 142 of the paperback):

"How many times, he wonders, must a person relearn everything he knows, rediscovering it over and over, and how many coverings must be torn away before he’s finally able to truly grasp things, to understand them to the bone? Is a human lifetime long enough? His lifetime or anyone else’s?"

This seems to me to be a core point in this book - we cannot really understand something without viewing it through all its perspectives. Many times, as with Richard at this point, we do not even know what perspectives we are lacking until we look for them.

[Carol]

Elaine wrote: "Athough I haven't finished the novel, I find the review much too cynical. There are some valid criticisms raised that are worth considering, but in view of what is happening today, I think Erpenbec..."

I am around page 70 and am delighted at the parallels she's drawing to colonialism. I hope she continues to do so as the novel progresses. Two of my favorite quotes on that topic follow:

page 51
"For the first time in his life, the thought occurs to him that the borders drawn by Europeans may have no relevance at all for Africans. Recently, opening the atlas to look up the capital cities, he was struck by all the perfectly straight lines, but only now does he grasp the arbitrariness made visible by such lines."

page 49
"Bureaucratic geometry — he read this term a few days ago in a book by a historian on the consequences of colonialism. The colonized are smothered in bureaucracy, which is a pretty clever way to keep them from taking political action. Or was it just a matter of protecting the good Germans from the bad Germans, sparing the Land of Poets the indignity of being dubbed the Land of Killers once more?"

[Carol]

LindaJ^ wrote: "Carol wrote: "Here's a link to one of my favorite (because provocative - not because I agree with it) reviews, from an Edinburgh-based literary magazine heretofore unknown to me, Tychy. https://tyc..."

The "liberal protest novel" was one of the points I found intriguing, for purposes of discussion. The examples the reviewer raised - particularly Uncle Tom's Cabin and James Baldwin's criticism of it, then Tolstoy - from his wealthy, educated background - seem to merit at least a moment's consideration. I'm one, for example, who was touched deeply by UTC (I read it when I was 13 - 14 years of age) and was oblivious to the controversy around it in academic circles. I can see in retrospect why it disturbed Baldwin, and I can still see virtue in it. On the other hand, I read a short story by Tolstoy last year or earlier this year that made me want to throw it against a wall. It basically cautioned the poor against being greedy about possessions, which I found rich, pardon the pun.

When you read a novel that so obviously is intended to speak to current social justice issues, is the most important determiner of whether you like the novel whether you agree with the author on that subject issue? It probably is for me. I likely wouldn't be reading a novel that extolled the opposing viewpoint.

I admit, though, that Richard already is getting on my nerves. I find it difficult to relate to the level of ignorance he brings to the topic, and his lack of observation - the fact that he didn't notice the protest as he initially walked past it - puts him in the category of the comfortably sheltered and unconcerned - for me. I'm glad he's now interested in educating himself, but was unimpressed by his self-absorption prior to the events that draw him in. There are so very many people in the West like Richard. They react with surprise to so many horrors that have been going on all around them for years, but they close themselves off in their homogeneous environments until something flings itself against their bubble and perhaps pierces it. Oops. I feel my judginess emerging. :)

@Linda - it's interesting to me that you don't recall the man in the lake - only because he is the entry point for Richard. On page 3, Richard first mentions a man having drowned and his body not having been recovered. The man is referenced probably every 10 pages in the early part of the book. Perhaps those references tail off. I'm off to find out.

[Aga]

I did not like Richard to start with as I found him emotionally detached, oblivious to what was happening around him. I evolved into appreciating him...for opening his life and his mind. What speaks to me most in the book is how Erpenbeck intertwined details of Richard’s life and the lives of refugees. Initially I found it grotesque but then saw purpose in it, it drew my focus to the characters as individuals and not just a group political/legal problem.

[Hugh]

I found this book very impressive, but I am finding it difficult to explain why with any coherence. Having read all of Erpenbeck's novels and novellas, this is the most straightforward linear story, but it touches on so many other things, and feels vital and compelling.
Richard is something of a cipher, and I don't think we are meant to sympathise with him early in the book.

[Lyn]

I find this book personally challenging, in that in the end, Richard allowed himself to become involved and open his life up to the humanity around and inside of him. Most of us have protective barriers that might allow community action in causes, but would stop short of personally and directly opening up our lives and homes as Richard did. In this way, the book laid out how simple it would be to live as an open, loving human being, and also made us face the fact that the great majority of us will never do so.

[Elaine]

Well put, Lyn, and oh, so true.

Hugh, it occurred to me that Erpenbeck may have kept a distance from Richard so that we wouldn't become too involved in his thoughts and feelings, thus leaving the necessary space for the other characters. She creates a good balance although I did find myself empathizing with Richard. I could feel his loneliness and understand his need for contact with the refugees. In a sense they may have been replacing his students, yet he is now learning from them.

This is a beautiful book. I hope to finish today.

[Elaine]

I finished last night and was surprised and disturbed by the ending. I more or less expected Richard to take in some of the refugees he had befriended, but I didn't expect his friends to do likewise. There certainly is much beauty in reading about people opening their hearts and homes like that. What surprised me was the anecdote about Richard's wife having an abortion early in their relationship. It made me wonder if the refugees became surrogate children for Richard, possibly as his students had been. I imagine Richard reflecting on that shows how he has become willing to acknowledge his own shortcomings, unlike most privileged middle-class, who remain self-righteous and closed in their stance.

The final comments, which relate to the drowned man in the lake, left much to reflect on. How we can only really endure that which remains on the surface of what we can't endure. I think Erpenbeck opened the world for us, bringing us below that surface. She succeeded. The book did alter my consciousness although I don't think I'm ready to bring home any refugees. At least, not yet.

Last year I came across an article Henry James wrote for the NYTimes in 1916, urging readers to help refugees of the first world war, in particular displaced Belgiums, who were also perceived with suspicion. I later read that James actually had a family staying in his home. I remember reading how in his later years he urged kindness.

[Laurie]

I finished today, and like most of you, I found the story compelling and worth much reflection. Like Hugh, I can't coherently explain what my feelings are, but there are many things about the book that will stay with me. I don't think I will remember specific facts about Richard in a few months. What I will remember is his willingness to get to know the refugees and to be open to helping them as best he can. It wasn't his plan from the beginning. Actually his initial interest was kind of creepy voyeurism. But as the refugees became people instead of characters to Richard, he changed into a quiet activist.

I admit that some aspects of Richard bothered me at first. His habit of giving the refugees names from classic literature seemed demeaning as if their real names were too odd to bother with. And one time he reflected that he couldn't see them well in a photo because their dark faces all looked so similar. Richard seemed like a dichotomy of open to change and stuck in antiquated racist attitudes. He finally fell on the right side of the fence, so I was able to gain some admiration for him.

[Lia]

I stopped reading for a while. The politicization of migrant issues just before the midterm made me want to filter out all messages about migrants, regardless of who is peddling them. I feel so exhausted by images and narratives and comments pushed from all sides on social media that are designed to provoke emotions (mostly rage and fear); I feel like managing what I’m exposed to is a necessity. Unfortunately, the books I read get filtered out off-hand along with my social media management.

I’m finally able to pick this up again, I still feel like I have to read this as literature, and force myself to separate this from current events, politics. FWIW, given my aversion to politicized bots-driven issues, I think the author did a good job making me willing to continue to engage.

So, speaking of reading this as literature ... in Ch 27 Awad wondered if his father’s hands are eaten by birds and dogs; and then we return to the topic of chickenpox. And there’s a character nicknamed Apollo ... I wonder if this is some kind of elaborate allusion to Homer’s Iliad.

[Carol]

Lia wrote: "I stopped reading for a while. The politicization of migrant issues just before the midterm made me want to filter out all messages about migrants, regardless of who is peddling them. I feel so exh..."

Lia, I can relate to your recent aversion. I also have focused on reading stories about displaced persons and immigration debates grounded in public policy from Europe (excluding the UK) and Israel, in part to observe and consider it from eyes other than American and British ones.

I had wondered about Apollo but had not considered the Iliad. That’s a most intriguing possibility.

[Lia]

Thanks Carol, I’m still at Ch. 40, I see that Richard makes so many connections to foundational (“classics”) western texts, I suspect this is about the entire western civilization, the whole history, trajectory, recurrence: the endless struggles, wars, migrations, separations, reunion, oral narratives, death, birth — even the (repetitive) falling leaves metaphor is itself a much repeated motif in the western canon that signals life cycle, renewal, recurrence.

In Ch 8, Richard used a very peculiar term — ”always already”. Especially since this was originally written in German. I wonder if she (the author) meant to evoke Heidegger’s terminology (because “always-already” is signature-Heideggergegacker) :

Often when he was starting a new project, he didn’t know what was driving him, as if his thoughts had developed an independent life and a will of their own, as if they were merely waiting for him to finally think them, as if an investigation he was about to begin already existed before he had started working on it, and the path leading through everything he knew and saw, everything he encountered and experienced, already lay there waiting for him to venture down it. And probably that’s just how it was, given that you could only ever find what was already there. Because everything is always already there. In the afternoon, he rakes leaves for the first time. In the evening, the newscaster says it’s just a matter of time before a solution is found for the untenable situation of the refugees on Oranienplatz. Richard’s heard sentences like this many instances before, referring to all sorts of untenable situations. Other things too — the leaves becoming earth again, the drowned man washing up on shore or dissolving in the lake — are basically just a matter of time.

Sorry I’m going to geek-out a bit. Seen through Heidegger’s interrogation of Being and Time, the title, Go, Went, Gone makes a lot of sense — suppose our existence as “Being” is intelligible to us only through time: we don’t just have a past and a future, we are always already simultaneously our past, our present, and our future, we are constantly becoming. We cannot isolate human being in the present-frame and define that blink of a moment as our factual existence: to do so would reduce human existence to that of rocks, chairs, things.

I haven’t finished the novel yet, I don’t think it humanizes anyone by comparing them to mythological figures; I also suspect it’s not a narrative advantage to tell the story through the lens of a boring, somewhat alienated classic professor. It makes much more sense if temporality is the theme (the title!), and the professor is only able to become authentic (another Heideggergegacker) by embracing the temporality of his existence: the long history and legacy of where he came from; and the shared fate and possibilities (i.e. what the young migrants can experience, what are their projections, hopes, future).

Of course I should finish the novel before I write another book-length essay.

[Cactus]

Elaine wrote: "I finished last night and was surprised and disturbed by the ending....What surprised me was the anecdote about Richard's wife having an abortion early in their relationship.”.

I agree — this hit me like a sock to the gut. It is written in a way that suggests it is designed to be maximally disturbing. The abortion was done against his wife’s wishes, was illegal, and was performed in a barbaric fashion by someone who was not medically trained. Further, Richard is put in the worst light by saying that after the event, traveling on the train, when his wife bled, he felt ashamed of her.

This got me to thinking about Richard,s evolution in the story, and I wondered if a kind of redemption was intended. Which got me to thinking about modern German history and the earlier quote to the effect that, if the refugees are denied asylum, the Nazis will have won.

Just to forestall unnecessary misunderstandings, let me add a few comments. This posting is not meant as a prolife argument, nor do I in any way, shape, or form mean to suggest a moral equivalence, or even a parallel, between one person’s abortion and the Holocaust. What I am suggesting is that there may be a literary parallel between the course of the protagonist’s adult life and some features in the course of modern German history, and that, in the enlightenment and redemption of that character through the embrace of the Other, the author may be lighting a path for Germany.

[Carol]

Karen wrote: "Elaine wrote: "I finished last night and was surprised and disturbed by the ending....What surprised me was the anecdote about Richard's wife having an abortion early in their relationship.”.

I ag..."

This is quite interesting, Karen. I like that possibility.

@lia, I’m delighted at your Heidegger insights. The freedom to geek out here enlightens us all! I have resisted finishing this novel because I remain uncertain why I like it so much when I am ever-tired of Richard. I think the core of my delay is that I most appreciate and want to continue to soak up the German-ness that infuses Erpenbeck’s stories.

[Mark]

Per the ending, yes it was shocking, made more so by Richard's self-centered personal shame. Perhaps it ties into Richard's recurrent images of the dead man under the lake. On another level, Richard is now gaining the family he denied his wife and himself at the beginning of their marriage.

It is a little less shocking due to the setting: 1) a place (GDR) where and when abortions were always illegal, and 2) a place where discussing them (along with discussing his extramarital lover) was commonplace. Here in the US, thanks to the hysteria and political freight loaded onto the abortion (and the immigrant) questions, open discussions like this are basically unthinkable.

For a bit of synergy, an Atlantic article, "The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely":

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/...

[Carol]

I’ve finished and thought about this novel for a bit. I remain a huge fan of Erpenbeck’s writing — her plot structure, her ability to make multiple characters take form without unnecessary words or pages of background info, her chapter endings, more often than not forceful and breathtaking. On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy the character of Richard as the center of this novel. I wanted more of the refugees — any of them — and less of him.

@Mark — thanks for that link. Great article.

I’m delighted that we read GWG, and I gained tremendously from this discussion, and am grateful to all who participated and shared their insights.

[Pam]

My library hold just came in so I hope to start it next week.

[Jessica]

It took me longer than I expected to finish this book, but I am glad I finished it. I also can't quite put into words what all I liked in this book but it did speak to me and gave me a better understanding of the refugee crisis in Germany and Europe. Even though here in America the situation is different there are still many issues with asylum and immigration that I can only begin to understand through the eyes of the refugees.

As far as Richard goes, I did like that he was kind of detached at first, it helped me see the situation in a more objective way, and then as he got more involved I felt I also became more involved in the refugees lives. I was shocked by the reveal of the abortion at the end, it felt a little out of character and actually made me hate Richard a little bit, his poor wife...

Lia, that was a very interesting insight about Heidegger, I am not familiar with his philosophies but I can see the meaning of the title now and I find it fascinating.

It's always a pleasure to read all the thoughts in these discussions after I finish a book, I wish I had been able to participate earlier.

[Lia]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who took her time to read this!

I’m starting to think that this book touches on so many canonical images, metaphors, peculiar words, myths, heritages, weaving these strands together is the point, maybe it’s not especially Heideggerain.

BTW, I found the falling leaves passage in The Iliad

As the generation of leaves, so is that of mankind:

some leaves the wind scatters earthwards, but the fertile

woodland grows others as spring returns in season.

So with men: one generation grows, while another dies.

As mentioned, there are many references to falling leaves in GWG as well, I think it’s deliberately harking back to this famous passage, (which Dante and many canonical writers also alluded to for similar resonance) to imply the impermanence of the artificial borders, the unity of the entire trajectory and history, and the fact that these young refugees are in fact part of the next generation of his own community.