Status Updates From In Memory of Memory

Part III!! Last part!! I am still confused but I’ve gotten a hold on the structure a little better by now which is nice. Part II had some really good parts, ch VIII was my favourite. Anyway! Homestretch, for real this time.

I’ve read like a singular page since the last update but I keep finding discrepancies between the English and Swedish translation. I kind of want to get my hands on the original to see which is truer to the authors writing. I see more references in the Swedish one where the English one seemingly leaves them out of the text. I wonder if it’s an act of subtraction or addition from the translators.

I’m… struggling. But at least I’m over halfway done? We’re basically in the homestretch. Hah.

I’m halfway through it! It doesn’t translate between the different editions and I’m using the percentages from the ebook but I am!! To summarise what I’m feeling about this: I am confused. I have no idea how we got here, I don’t know where we are. We’re lost. What is going on?? Anyways. It’s good? But in a way where I haven’t understood what’s happening since the third chapter. You know the vibes.

This book has several words in it that mean many things… on the other hand, I don’t think I understand half of what I’m reading and am purely operating on vibe alone at this point.

[...] evaporated as I reached for it, crumbling like ancient fabric.

The expectation of success, the drive to success (and the inability to adapt to the inevitable delays and obstacles) is familiar to all children of professionals, the young musicians and ballerinas, in whom far too much effort and faith is placed [...].

It's a shame that the people in the film don't yet know that their film has a happy end. None of the rents in the fabric suggest it.

But I didn't need souvenirs, I remembered everything beneath the high windows with such a sense of heightened native precision that I seemed to know how it all had been, in this, our, place, how we had lived and why we had left. [...] About a week later my colleague from Saratov rang me sheepishly. He'd mixed up the address. [...] And that is just about everything I know about memory.

"But I didn't need souvenirs, I remembered everything beneath the high windows with such a sense of heightened native precision that I seemed to know how it all had been, in this, our, place, how we had lived and why we had left. [...] About a week later my colleague from Saratov rang me sheepishly. He'd mixed up the address. [...] And that is just about everything I know about memory."

Then the museum advisor, a historian, asked me what I was writing about and I began to explain. “Ah,” he said. “One of those books where the author travels around the world in search of his or her roots—there are plenty of those now.”
“Yes,” I answered. “And now there will be one more.”

"Every age produces it's own particular dust that settles on every surface and in every corner,"

The catastrophe is displaced, the hole is resealed, things find their places once again, everyone is alive, there are no omissions, no silences. It is, in it's own way, Paradise Before the Fall (there are far too many people now who think that Europe in 1929 or Russia in 1913 were such paradises)...but "there" does not exist.

"There is so much documentary cinema occupied with this archaeology, that any scene, even any face, looks instantly familiar...the ancient division between important and unimportant is everywhere: The hero speaks, the girl eats icecream, the crowd loiters as crowds do... the author tells a story, the passerby illustrates the story. It's never about them, they are cutaway scenes... they fill the pauses, delight the

Just reached Part Two of the book. Still asking myself the similar question that the Booker Prize judges asked themselves while reading this book, "Is Maria Stepanova's In Memory of Memory a work of fiction?" Part of it seems to me like a memoir chronicling the family history of a Jewish family in Russia, while also in times turning to essay forms in the style of Sontag. Genre is an outdated concept, sui generis

Just reached Part Two of the book. Still asking myself the similar question that the Booker Prize judges asked themselves while reading this book, "Is Maria Stepanova's In Memory of Memory a work of fiction?" Part of it seems to me like a memoir chronicling the family history of a Jewish family in Russia, while also in times turning to essay forms in the style of Sontag. Genre is an outdated concept, sui generis

just had my first tender cry of what i'm sure will be many

The matryoshka (nesting) doll insisted on the preeminence of single daughters, each emerging from the one before and inheriting, with everything else, the gift and the opportunity to be the single teller of the tale.

Ну никак Сторител не выпустит вторую часть…

Finally making a little time for this book again oops

I think I'll take a break from this one as I am struggling. This is not Sebald. I found Austerlitz to be gripping even when the author was describing some architectural details. I can't seem to be able to focus with this one.

this is very dense but so beautifully written, it just takes me so much longer to read compared to other books

Hmm, I might actually end up finishing this book it seems.

absolutely incredible

chyba się nie polubimy

It's frustrating how dense it becomes at times. Move along, what's the point you're trying to make with a discreet review for Osip Mendalstam? It's unnecessarily verbose.

Прослушала первую часть на Сторител, жду продолжения для составления родного впечатления.

How much can you write about your great grandparents' photographs? Apparently, a lot.

This sort of meandering writing isn't usually my jam but I'm intrigued. Reads like the sort of nonfiction I enjoy - a mix of the personal and the grand.

“Rembrandt’s self-portraits are beings of a different type. They don’t demand attention, but with all imaginable generosity they offer up to you their own attention. The internal space of the portraits is given over to this, the gaze we meet at the threshold opens up to us, allows us in, creates a soft indent for our momentary stay, a womb-like hollow, deliberately intended for partings.”

what a fucking book