Greek Lessons - Initial Thoughts

[Greg]

I've been wanting to read this for a while, and I'm glad things worked out where I can read it with the group! This thread is for initial thoughts. If you have any spoilers, please use spoiler tags or put them in the spoilers thread.

This book is by an author I'm guessing almost everyone has heard of, Han Kang, who has written quite a few critically acclaimed books, including the often mentioned The Vegetarian.

I'm curious. What else has everyone read by her, and what are your favorites?

I'll be starting toward the end of the week as I finish up a couple other books that I already have underway, but feel free to start the discussion. I'll create a spoiler thread in a few days, after things get going.

[Sam]

I read her first three books in U.S. translation with The Vegetarian my favorite. I have started this and it feels much different than the earlier three. I am liking it so far.

[Henk]

Read all her novels translated into English, favourites are Human Acts and We Do Not Part, but The Vegetarian also blew me away. She is such an interesting writer in how she focuses on giving voice to the speechless, either the dead, women in society or in the case of Greek Lessons a literally character who has no speech anymore.

[Whitney]

I've read The Vegetarian and Human Acts, both of which I loved.

I also loved this one, but it's so different from the others. I saw it almost as a prose poem. Henk, I like your comment on how she gives voice to the voiceless, especially as relates to this book.

[Greg]

Whitney, that's a really good sign for me that you say it's like a prose poem. I'm even more eager to read it now!

[Whitney]

Greg wrote: "Whitney, that's a really good sign for me that you say it's like a prose poem. I'm even more eager to read it now!"

I'm thinking you'll like it, as you do seem to appreciate the more poetic writing.

[Catherine]

I've not read any of her books but have wanted to for a long time. Is there anything I you can tell me about how she writes, what her books are like?

[Sam]

As his dying wish, Borges requested the epitaph “He took the sword and laid the naked metal between them.” He asked this of María Kodama, his beautiful, younger wife and literary secretary, who had married Borges two months before he died, at the age of eighty-seven. He chose Geneva as the place of his passing: it was the city where he had spent his youth and where he now wanted to be buried.

The woman brings her hands together in front of her chest. Frowns, and looks up at the blackboard.
“Okay, read it out,” the man with the thick-lensed, silver-rimmed spectacles says with a smile.
The woman’s lips twitch. She moistens her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. In front of her chest, her hands are quietly restless. She opens her mouth, and closes it again. She holds her breath, then exhales deeply. The man steps back toward the blackboard and patiently asks her again to read.

If you’re reading this letter now—if it wasn’t returned to me unopened—your family will still be living on the first floor of the hospital, back in Germany.
The stone building, said to have been built as a printing house in the eighteenth century, would by now be covered in pale ivy. Tiny violets would have bloomed and faded in the cracks between the stone steps leading down to the courtyard. The dandelions would have withered, leaving only a crown of pale ghost-like seeds. The wild ants would be marching up and down the steps in regimented lines, looking like thick punctuation marks.

The best way to find out about Kang is to sample her prose. She often uses figuative languange, employing literary technigues like metaphor and allusion. I just randomly quoted the opening lines of three different chapters of Greek Lessons to give you a taste. Note the allusion to Borges in the first quote and the different voices in all three.

[Greg]

Thanks for the sampling Sam! I began today and am at about 11%.

As expected, I am really enjoying it based on the evocative prose alone, even though I'm finding the two unnamed protagonists mysterious. The woman's disability has a feel of something symbolic, but I'm not far enough yet to guess at exactly what it might signify.

This is a fairly short book; so I'll go ahead and open up the spoiler thread, though after opening it, I probably won't go back there until I've gotten a bit further.

[Greg]

Not having any knowledge of ancient Greek, I found her description of how the language works fascinating, including the middle voice.

[Greg]

At the beginning of chapter 6 at about 28%. The style is so lyrical, impressionistic, intelligent and yet almost intimate.

I feel puzzled in chapter 5 as to (view spoiler)[the incredible violence of his lover's reaction to his request to hear her voice. I suppose on a practical level, perhaps she is angry because she has powerful feelings for him and realizes they have no future? Is she angry with him for making her love him when there is no way for their relationship to work?

But the situation is so highly symbolic of broken communication, of distance, of people being absolutely unknowable to each other. A man who is going blind loves a woman who cannot hear and does not speak. Perhaps as a highly symbolic work, it is not meant to be approached literally?

I love the philosophical strangeness of the book, such as the wonderfully suggestive line: "when truth destroys foolishness, is truth necessarily altered by the encounter?" (hide spoiler)]

[Sam]

I have finished the novel and I liked it though as with most Kang, I am am not clear on all that happend. But I thought this was a wonderful novel on connection beyond trauma. I am starting We Do Not Part now but hope to discuss Greek Lessons a bit more. How is everyone doing with the novel?

[Greg]

I just finished yesterday too Sam. A fascinating and beautiful novel; though everything doesn't hang together perfectly, I loved it anyway. I have visitors staying with me and will add thoughts to the spoilers thread as soon as I can.