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Out Stealing Horses
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Out Stealing Horses - Discussion of Part I (October 2014)
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Terry
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Oct 01, 2014 11:37AM
This is the place for discussion about Part I of the book. Please don't post spoilers for later parts.
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Yes, me too. I'll probably start in the next couple days.
Good, good. Join when you can. I finished it and loved it. A question to start us off: Petterson has been widely praised for his descriptions of nature, and of small quiet moments in everyday life. How does his writing make these ordinary moments compelling? Which images of landscapes or domestic scenes stood out for you?
Yikes, this has started!? I need to get reading, not likely until the weekend. I will join in soon.
The first thing I noticed was that this book was actually translated into British -- not American English. At some point early on, the narrator goes out with a "torch," which I assumed meant a torch. It was 10 pages later that I realized he just had a flashlight.
Also, I don't think I have read so many run-on sentences in my life! I wish I had some sort of word count app that would tell me how often the word "and" appeared in the novel.
The "quiet" part of that description really stands out for me. I'm really appreciating how Peterson can keep his storytelling at such a narrative remove while still managing to hold on to the emotion and impact of the moment. Listening to the audiobook makes it a bit of a challenge to restrict my examples to a specific part, so I will refrain from getting into specifics just yet.Something else that stood out to me is how the narrator describes "out stealing horses" as being nothing about theft, but rather a way to make their reality sound more exciting. Peterson's timing of this comment made me interpret it as a metaphor of life. How often do we wrap the pedestrian and mundane in bombastic verbiage?
For me, too, Daniel. It almost seems like an embodiment of zen, of presence, of mindfulness. For me there was something beautiful in the way the descriptions showed his temperament, showed a pace of life. I am looking forward to picking out a few favourite moments but I will see what others post first.
Matthew wrote: "Also, I don't think I have read so many run-on sentences in my life! I wish I had some sort of word count app that would tell me how often the word "and" appeared in the novel."Are there any comments in the reviews about the perceived quality of the translation? Or anyone here who has read it in both the original Norwegian and in English translation?
(Sidebar on the author from his Wiki entry:
"I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 (Petterson himself lost his mother, father, younger brother and a niece in the disaster); it won the Brage Prize for 2000.")
I can sometimes have difficulty with long sentences [I've certainly seen much longer and more consistently long than here], but I found this book incredibly easy to read. I wonder if anyone else found that long sentences seemed to suit the pace of the book, slowing it down and coaxing you into spending time with each one, so it could be enjoyed at its own pace?
I just discovered that there is a timeline of the events of the novel on its Wiki page. I don't recommend seeking that out before reading the novel, but I am definitely going to use it when/if I get a chance to revisit the novel. Probably not a spoiler, in terms of revealing plot, but will be cautious: (view spoiler)
Re: the translation, it won the Best Translated Book Award...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Tra...
The wiki page is interesting, the quote from the author seems very much in the same voice that the book is written in. It has the same solidness, the same slowness and dignity.
I didn't notice that the sentences were unusually long and I normally don't like that either. Now I want to go home and look in the book!
Regarding long run-on sentences, here are three selected from pages 61-66, which in when it started bothering me enough that I started marking them. These three have 10, 5, and 6 ANDs, respectively:Jon and Trond's fathers hauling logs (p. 61, NOOK):
"AND he was scarely in control, AND I realised then that what he was doing was challenging my father's authority, AND they took hold AND pulled AND swayed so that the sweat poured AND their shirts slowly turned dark on their backs AND the veins stood out on their foreheads AND necks AND on their arms as blue AND broad as the rivers on a map of the world: the Rio Grande, the Brahmaputra, the Nile."
Jon's father falls and his mother comforts him (p. 64):
AND for the first time I felt a flash of bitterness towards my father because he had ruined the most complete moment of my life up to then, AND suddenly it overwhelmed me, on the brink of rage, my hands shook AND I started to feel cold in the heat of the summer's day, AND I do not even remember whether I felt sorry for Jon's father, who was so obviously in pain; in the leg that was broken AND the shoulder he had fallen on."
Trond and his father out in nature (p. 66):
"AND we walked on our hands in the wet grass as the rain beat our rumps in a way so icily weird that I had to get back on my feet very soon, but never did anyone have cleaner arses that ours as we ran into the house again AND dried ourselves on two large towels AND massaged our skin with the coarse cloth to get the circulation going AND make the warmth come back, AND with a cock of his head my father looked at me AND said: "Well, so you're a man now."
I've just started the book and not very far along but I like how Trond, both old and young, is always noticing the birds. I'm the same way. My home here in Indiana is not really conducive to watching birds, you have to be standing at the kitchen sink. But last year, when we spent the winter in Phoenix, the kitchen table sat right by the window looking out to the backyard, and most mornings my husband and I would look out at the dark yard as it gradually lightened and watch the birds that came to the feeder. Some of the birds were the same as out Indiana birds such as the morning doves, cardinals, house finches. Some were new and we enjoyed their antics such as the bird we named the "kicking bird" a kind of towhee who kicked at the rocks to uncover fallen seeds in the funniest and cutest manner. My cat enjoyed it there as well!
Terry wrote: "Re: the translation, it won the Best Translated Book Award...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Tra...
..."
If I understand that link correctly, it made the short list, but did not win that particular award? Still no mean accolade. Thx for the info, Terry.
Sorry, you're right.
There's a simplicity to those ands, like the consistent use of said instead of other words to tag speech. I think it's beautiful (although less so in capitals). The first excerpt you quote in particular scans beautifully to me. It makes me feel the rhythm of his thoughts. Taste governs this kind of thing as ever; there are sentences in Pynchon that lost me completely and I'm daunted by Joyce.
Matthew wrote: "Regarding long run-on sentences, here are three selected from pages 61-66, which in when it started bothering me enough that I started marking them. These three have 10, 5, and 6 ANDs, respective..."None of these sentences bother me (if I can ignore the capitalization). The first sentence having so much info in it adds to the feeling of a lot of things going on at once. All the toughness packed into one sentence contrasts the laid-back easiness in much of the novel and creates emotion. The second example does something similar for me. The third...I just find to be a humorous tidbit in the book. :-)
Terry wrote: "The first excerpt you quote in particular scans beautifully to me. It makes me feel the rhythm of his thoughts."This too.
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Just started this. There's something very clean and lonely in the mood. (That's a phrase I don't use often.)
Part I ends with Trond remembering a dream, closing with the lines, 'I realised that what I was most afraid of in this world was to be the man in Magritte's painting who looking at jimself in the mirror sees only the back of his own head, again and again.He is referring to 'La reproduction interdite' ('Not to be Reproduced'):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_b...
What do you think Trond means by this? What does it tell us about him?
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
I kjølvannet (other topics)In the Wake (other topics)
