C-Blog

Narziss und Goldmund (Narcissus and Goldmund) by Hermann Hesse

It is difficult to summarize or categorize this book. What makes it appear on my top ten list is that I only read it once, decades ago (2, to be quite precise), and it still lives in my memory.

It might be described as a tale of friendship. How true frinds can drift apart, not see one another in decades, and upon meeting again they can connect, despite both having changed, evolved, matured.
It is also a tale about the quest for perfection and how perfection can mean very different things to different people. For Narziss it a life of worship, for Goldmund it is art. They both realise that in their cases the good is the enemy of the best, that nice and friendly and calm and quiet are not good enough, that in order to achieve their goals, no compromise is possible, everything has to be done with the greatest of passion.
This is a theme that Hesse had already explored in much more drastic fashion in the Steppenwolf and, to a lesser extent, in Demain.

I find it fascinating how similar Narziss und Goldmund and The Steppenwolf are. It is something not too many people pick up on, as the style and tone of the works are dramatically different. The underlying themes however, are very similar, if not identical. Narziss und Goldmund treats these themes in a much more mature way. It is as if in the (few) years between their creation, Hesse had come to terms with not coming to terms with mediocrity, with burgeoisie and with his contempt for all things normal.

The Steppenwolf may be Hesse’s most famous novel. In my opinion Narziss und Goldmund is his best. I do realise that most scholars and experts would argue that that place should be occupied by “Das Glasperlenspiel” (The Glass Bead Game). I have tried to read and understand this, his magnum opus, but I never managed to get into the story, the world. My guess is that this is due to the fact that I am not yet adult enough to fully appreciate it. I’ll try again in maybe another decade.

My previous experiences with non- big sister operating systems are limited to OS/2 Warp and Suse Linux. The first was my primary OS for many months (in the times of Windows 3.1, as it did everything… better). Life with Suse on the other hand, ah! that was something of an experience. And not a happy one, either. Very short, though. Fortunately.

Installation (with the help of something I recall being called “Yast”, which always made me think of yeast. Not pleasant) was not nearly as straightforward as they claimed. And when the assistant told me that it was done doing its job and I found myself sitting in front of a black screen with a blinking cursor (despite having chosen to install something called a KDE), I called it a day. Suse was unceremoniously fdisked and big sister’s win95 went back onto my screaming 10k rpm scsi hard disks.

Since then, I haven’t touched anything calling itself an OS if it wasn’t designed in Redmond, WA. When Ubuntu came along, I downloaded it and started it up, once, just to see. I thought it was rather pretty, but I was a bit underwhelmed, so I didn’t install and then forgot about it again. When I got my laptop (HP Pavillion dv3550ez) it came equipped with Vista. Now, I’d heard all the bad things that are being said about that OS, and I suppose they’re true. How’s this for an example: a newly booted Vista is idling (1.5 minutes pure boot time, then all the services and agents and applications initialising for another 3 minutes) with 0.9GB memory occupied. Doesn’t look like optimised use of resources to me. In and of itself, this is not a tragedy, but it does rather seem like a waste.

That’s when I remembered Ubuntu and I decided to give it another go. read more…

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding things. Most often I have a hard time understanding myself, or to be more precise, why I like or dislike certain things. One of those conundrums (ah! conundrum has got to be one of my favorite words ever. Its onomatopoeic qualities are unsurpassed!) is my fascination with France.

Whenever there’s a sporting event with a French team playing, I cheer for them. Whenever that day in mid-July is approaching I wish I could be in Paris to witness the festivities, the fireworks over the Eiffel Tower, or over the Arc de Triomphe (or even La Grande Arche in the Défense), to hear La Marseillaise being played on les Champs Elysées.

The thing is, I’m not French. I don’t have any French relatives, I have never lived in France. However, I have lived in the French speaking part of Switzerland (la Romandie). And although in the beginning it was difficult to get used to the mentality, it is something I now miss without actually being able to put my finger on what exactly it is that I’m missing. I even tend to forget about it for months at a time, but I inevitably end up in the Romandie on business and then I’m reminded that there’s an entire different culture only a few kilometers from where I live.

Be that as it may: Here’s to a Happy Birthday to France, la dernière Grande Nation (avec le petit président ;-)

You can never wait too long before you write another blog post. Otherwise, readers might come to expect new material on a regular basis.

Inspired by another blog, one which does provide you with new material for your reading enjoyment on an almost daily basis, I have been thinking about books. Mainly, how I haven’t read very many books recently. Back in grade school, I had a little competition going on with a friend to see who could read more books from our class library. I lost, I just couldn’t keep up with his speed (something mad like two and a half books per day!), but I did read a book a day for a number of years. So, how is 2009 looking? If I’m allowed to count the books I finished in 2009, I’m at 4. If it’s books I started and finished in 2009, it’s a sad and sorry, lowly 2 books (Volumes 1 and 2 of Joe Abercrombie’s “The first law” trilogy named “The Blade itself” and “Before they are hanged”).

I really have no reasonable excuse. It’s not like the books I did read are multi-thousand page novels (Abercrombie’s clock in at around the 500 page mark each, Dan Simmons’ “The Terror” was just under 1000 pages, “Consider Phlebas”, the only other book I finished in 2009, has about 500 pages), nor did I not enjoy them while I was reading. The reason for my lack of enthusiasm is that while the book were good, they were not magnificent. In all honesty, while “The Terror” may be better written, better researched, more gruesome and more real than any of Dan Simmons’ science fiction books, it never captured my imagination the way “Hyperion” did. “The Algebraist” by Ian M. Banks was far more enjoyable than “Consider Phlebas”. Joe Abercrombie has certainly made a name for himself with his dark, gritty tale, his likeably unlikeable characters, his tight story telling, I still felt more involved in George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”.

Having said that, Mr. Martin has postponed the publication of the next installment many many times. He is probably paying the price for the lack of tightness in his storytelling, which is a pity, since he has created what is surely the most detailed world since middle earth and the most detailed, life-like, hate-able, endearing characters in fantasy literature. I do realise, that as a reader, I have absolutely no right to demand anything of an author, but I would dearly love to see at least another volume in the series.

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Long time, eh?!

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Not much needs to said about this book. Not much can be said. Every time I get into the history of its creation, I can’t help being utterly amazed at how much time and effort went into it. I remember knowing places and characters from the book long before I ever read it. Long before I even knew they were from this book, or even before I knew of the book. I’d heard of the Prancing Pony, of Gandalf and Elrond, of Mordor and the Nazgûl and was fascinated by the images those names evoked. All of them sound like the things and people they describe should look.

The Lord of the Rings is the book responsible for my addiction to fantasy novels. Before reading it, even the concept of fantasy literature was utterly alien to me, and I suspect that had I read a different book first, I might not be a fan of the genre now. Genre defining books are few and far in between, and even today, 60 years after it was first published, fantasy novels (and series!) will be compared to Tolkien’s work. And not many compare favorably.

This was the first book which after 1500 pages left me wanting more. So much more. And at the same time I was convinced that Tolkien had managed to put everything which was needed into the story. More would have taken away from my imagination, and therein probably lies the reason why I adore this book so much.

Les faux monnayeurs by André Gide

I committed the folly of choosing this book as one I was going to read for the oral part of my French final exam. Not knowing that my French teacher was (is) an expert on everything Gide. Also not knowing that it was going to prove impossible to find a German translation of the blasted book and that I’d end up having to read it in French.

Even today I am grateful to all the bookstores in Olten for not carrying the German version. I learned more French in the two weeks it took me to finish the book than in all the years of classes before then. I am still (even having re-read it) a bit unclear about the early chapters, since my French was in no way adequate to fully grasp what was going on.

Side note: I find it fascinating how these things function. I am convinced that even if I re-re-read the book now (my French has considerably improved in the meantime) I’d still be hazy on those early chapters. Kind of like Max Frisch’s Montauk. I have read the book 3 times, and all I can actually remember is that I love it, and that at one point they walk in the bushes on the beach of Montauk… But really, it’s a lovely book

Back to the book. One of the many things I enjoyed was how one of the main characters of the novel is the novel itself. How the author shares his thoughts on some of the characters, their development and their relationships, thus becoming a leading character himself. “Le roman dans un roman sur le roman”.

Great, now I want to read it again. And somehow I suspect that I no longer own the book. *sigh*