What a wonderfully interesting book. It creates such feelings of dread and unease. The storyline is somewhat absurd and allegorical. There's so many layers going on it's quite impressive. I'm not sure how else to review it, though. I should note as a warning to readers that it's incredibly dense with sentences running half the length of a page on average. That may be a turn-off for many. ( )

Reason read: This was the January botm for Reading 1001 (GR) and I finally finished it. It is not an easy read. A small Hungarian town is overcome by riotous behaviors leading to violence. "...chaos was really the natural condition of the world and this being eternally the case...". The very last part of the book is a description of the "unchained workers of decay" which are just waiting for the "necessary conditions". Well, I am glad that I finished it. I was encouraged to keep trying by Anita F. who said the second part of the book did get better. ( )

A read that requires focus - with all sentences running half a page and paragraphs that run for a long chapter, keeping place is some work and not something to turn to late at night. The massive sentences are packed with content and amazing style- fascinating, brilliant, tender, horrible. Each chapter covers events in an individual’s life during tumultuous events representing revolution, alternating randomly between characters. As a political allegory it is a bit hard to know which of the two opposing groups represents which side of the political divide, though it is meant to be clear. I guess the obese circus director represents capitalism. The devious villain who simply uses both sides to achieve their own ends is one of the lives that gets chapters, as are two likeable but easily controlled characters that seem to represent the intelligentsia and the gullible public. Though likeable and by far the most sympathetic characters/stories they don’t have much of a chance against the cynicism and ruthlessness of power hungry schemers or the ignorant conservatives that support them.

The prose is exceptional, and the translation stunning. The story is in many ways timeless, perhaps reflecting the feel of an old Hungarian city. It seems almost like Crime and Punishment at times, but then a telephone, or television, or car makes a cameo and the illusion is shattered.

A literal way to look at it would be as the story of a set of related characters, parent and child, and a separated husband and wife during turmoil and violence triggered by a visiting circus and a band of its followers. Oh, and a dead whale.

The ending is very unusual - it will not round things off for you. As a biochemist I enjoyed it, but expect others may just find it weird.

In a excerpt on the back cover from a review by W.G. Sebald states that it rivals Gogol’s Dead Souls, and I see the connection. ( )

On the heels of László Krasznahorkai's victory this year for winning the Best Translated Book Award (BTBA) two years in a row, ever astute critic Scott Esposito has assembled a crash course in all things Krasznahorkai. The gist is that one can begin with Krasznahorkai anywhere, and, while I do agree with this, I also believe that my own journey through the work of the great "Hungarian master of apocalypse"—to use Susan Sontag's remarks on his work, and The Melancholy of Resistance in particular—has proven a wise move. Consider this, then, less a review proper then an account of a personal reading journey through the bleak and labyrinthine prose of one of the greatest writers in world literature today.

When Satantango was finally published in 2012 by New Directions, in a brilliant translation by poet George Szirtes, Anglophone readers finally held in their hands the very first novel by the mysterious Krasznahorkai. While The Melancholy of Resistance was the first of his novels to be translated into English, it is in fact Krasznahorkai's second novel with which Anglophone readers commended their journey through his oeuvre. Indeed, beginning with Melancholy might not be a bad move: the opening section dealing with one Mrs. Plauf's public—and increasingly private—struggles while on board a delayed train as she believes she is being watched, stalked, and finally harassed contains one of the most succinct introductions to the macabre mix of humor, pathos, and terror that readers find on every page of Krasznahorkai's fiction. Read by itself, Melancholy's introduction would, in my view, best serve as a summation of Krasznahorkai's major themes, and allow reader to get a sense of his prose style: how it saturates; how it alienates; how it buries one within it (a veritable "lava flow of narrative," as Szirtes has commented).

However, when I reviewed Satantango for the Los Angeles Review of Books (on Goodreads here), it was all I had read of Krasznahorkai—and I'm glad of this now. I stand by my review even if I refuse to re-read it now, fearful of resorting to the same adjectives to describe both the technical aspect and the experience of reading Krasznahorkai's prose (e.g., "labyrinthine," "ornate," "claustrophobic," and so on). Structurally, Satantango is extremely well-conceived—and I would invite you to read my review of the novel where I consider the Möbius
strip narrative in some depth—and this carries over into his subsequent work. It often seems that when one encounters a review or a piece on Krasznahorkai, one is faced with an exploration of his almost obsessive themes, these recursive dynamics to which he returns again and again; however, I think this does a gross injustice to Krasznahorkai's more technical side as it obscures it from most discussions of his work and his work's resonance. Melancholy's structure is not as complex as Satantango, but it shows Krasznahorkai moving forward: as such, it would do him a disfavor to read Melancholy (again, his second novel) before Satantango which, as a first novel, shows an erudite skill in uniting both schematic and thematic approaches to a small village on the brink of change.

And these schematics (structural and otherwise) as well as the much-discussed thematics span the breadth of Krasznahorkai's work. While I had read Animalinside, his collaboration with artist Max Neumann (and which I reviewed here), after Satantango I had not opened another novel of Krasznahorkai's—without really being able to answer why. Perhaps I recalled the harsh extremes in his first novel, the long sentences that leave no room to breathe, the unrelenting dissection of individual and collective psychological states—and boy, does Krasznahorkai know and channel his Freud—that leave little room outside the narrative space. Perhaps I wasn't ready to immerse myself in a textual zone from which I would have no easy way to escape.

But that is also the wonder of Krasznahorkai: that he is able to create these textual spaces so charged with violence and intimacy, with pessimism and yet an underlying humanity, with an eye keen on critiquing avarice in all its forms just as much as it is extremely interested in those who are marginal to mass culture: the outsiders, the downtrodden, those who are all too often used as scapegoats by those in positions of power. Satantango thematizes this throughout, so it was no wonder, as I began to read The Melancholy of Resistance in earnest that I felt like I was returning to a familiar space, a canny and known zone. It was only after settling back into Krasznahorkai's rhythmic prose that I realized I had been keeping him at bay for all the wrong reasons.

The Melancholy of Resistance deals, like Satantango does, with life in a small, unnamed Hungarian town; in both novels, the locals are waiting for the appearance of visitors. In Melancholy, the circus troupe that enters the town, offering the greatest spectacle on earth (the Leviathan figure of an embalmed whale) for the poor, cold, hungry, and bitter denizens to escape the shackles and desolate deprivations of everyday existence. But there is an interesting dualism at work here: that which offers escape is also a venture rooted in consumerism; it is, in effect, profiting from the immense unease and unrest of the public, all in the name of spectacle, art, and performance.

Likewise, the townspeople cling to all measures of "order" when faced with a world thrown into utter chaos. Mrs. Plauf orders her flat, meticulously, priding herself on her flowers; Eszter, the local intellect and music scholar, immerses himself in the harmonies of Andreas Werckmeister, trying to find the perfect tuning of piano keys that would best echo the music of the heavenly spheres; Valuska, our hapless hero of sorts, clings to cosmology even if his speeches about orbits and plants result in a tavern full of drunks labeling him "the village idiot," for they come to rely upon these enactments of planetary movements as much as he does himself; and, finally, Mrs. Eszter, the composer's estranged wife, who clings to institutionalized forms of power with claws sharpened so that she can take anyone down who will stand in her way.

Krasznahorkai pits these individuals against one another and the result, as one can imagine, is sinister, bloody, and downright impossible to read at times, so enveloped in the prose (this never-ending "lava flow" of black text) that any exit is entirely blocked from view. And in doing so, our position as readers mirrors those of the main characters who are similarly trapped, not only geographically, but in their attempts to apply order to a world that resists these attempts. If chaos reigns—to use a phrase plucked from Lars von Trier's film Antichrist—then the sole purpose of fashioning order from the planets, the musical scales, law and carceral codes is, in effect, pointless despite how our lives are so governed by these very attempts to fashion sense by creating cleanly demarcated lines of order.

When order collapses, Krasznahorkai is the master at providing readers with the effects at the individual and social levels. And because Melancholy opens up a bit wider in terms of its structure than the earlier novel Satantango, one can see Krasznahorkai's evolution as an artist more clearly when they are read in order of composition, not of translation. Personally, the imprisoning and shattered world of Satantango helped me to see more clearly what Krasznahorkai was doing in both his collaborative text Animalinside as well as here in Melancholy. It is my understanding, too, that the world of War & War opens up schematically and structurally a notch more as well, and so, for me, it makes sense to follow the progression of Krasznahorkai's work at it was written.

To see alone how he has woven in more philosophical strands of thoughts, more fleshed out characters, and mastered—even more so, for he was master to begin with—the mood and tone just from Satantango to Melancholy was a rewarding experience, one I would have never had had I read them back to front. It is my hope that, when I turn to Krasznahorkai again, War & War will continue this progression, this evolution, this me-learning-from-Krasznahorkai as a sort of pupil to a questionably dark shaman who is as acquainted with and schooled in the brief amount of light as he is with the immense amount of dark. Further into the darkness, then, so that we may emerge: enlightened maybe; still surrounded by pitch black, perhaps; but selves later and selves beyond the first journey—that, at least, is a certainty. ( )

I thought this book was pretty good! (Insert author name) has some serious intellectual and authorial firepower and it is obvious that he is aiming for subtle and universal themes of power, chaos, and control in this novel. The central characters were all compelling, but ultimately a bit cartoonish and over the top.

One thing I want to stress is that this book’s prose can be difficult to read. Sentences are dense: they probably average 10 lines of intricately layered clauses, and word choice/subject matter is often complex. There are almost no paragraph breaks in the the entire novel, and there are no chapters outside of a three-part breakup into (1) Intro (2) Body (3) Conclusion. The pages are also noticeably taller than the average softcover book. This is all to say that this book’s 315 page count is not reflective of how long and difficult it really is. But, to be fair, until the very last few pages (with the biology jargon), it was always decipherable content, and I don’t want to make it seem like this book is impossible to read. It was actually really pleasant and beautiful for most of the book. (Insert author name) has a great talent for details and (usually) knows when too much character rumination is too much.

I’m glad I read it and would read another of his books, but maybe not for a while. ( )

שלוש וחצי כי אני באמת מתלבט בין שלוש לארבע. מצד אחד, ללא ספק יצירת מופת שראויה להיקרא יותר מפעם אחת. עם הרבה חוכמה אפוקליפטית, סטירה עזה על הפוליטיקה, על האקדמיה ועל מה לא. מבנה משפטים מהפנט, פואטי ואינסופי שלא קראתי כמוהו מעולם. מצד שני, ספר קשה מאוד לקריאה ולפענוח. אני הצעתי אותו לחוג הספר ואני מתלבט מה לעשות כי אינני מאמין שהרבה יצליחו לקרוא אותו. בוודאי לא יונה יהב שאמור לדבר עליו. ( )

I'm starting to think that when people say a book is 'in the tradition of Gogol,' they really mean 'it's set somewhere East of Paris but West of Tokyo.' I guess this is in the tradition of Gogol, inasmuch as it's satirical, and not from Western Europe. But the point of Krasznahorkai's novel is not slight mockery-of-the-rurals. It is the sentences, the paragraphs rather, which pile up and leave you nowhere to go--and thank all that is holy for George Szirtes, who has made this masterpiece accessible to the linguistically impoverished! A distant second to the squat blocks of language that are thrust at us is the presence of the demonic and humankind's attempts, often enough successful, to outdo Satan's cruelty to ourselves. Otherwise, this is the kind of book you really want to give people like me, who grow ever more tired of and bored with twentieth century 'realism.' There's nothing particularly novel here in terms of structure, or point of view, or meta-literariness. There's just that language piling up and the depth of insights into human life. When Eszter finally broke and decides to "abjure thought," I nearly fainted with joy at Krasznahorkai's skill, while also fainting in fear of what that skill might have revealed.

Easily the best book I've read in the last six months.

( )

This is an amazing book, the best I have read in a couple of years. ( )

This book is rare in that it has as its basic theme or the core idea growing from the the inevitable fact that everything in 'the real world' over time will succumb to the entropic decay; a physical baseline none of us can escape: Everything including ourselves will eventually break down, vanish and be forgotten. The sinister forces in the story promotes the idea of 'chaos' (a circus with a dead whale arrives and with it comes uprest and a rising chaos in the city) and along the unfolding of the narrative people are estranged and alienated, not really understanding the forces at work. Only few persons has a grasp of these forces and uses that knowledge in a power play that leaves no room for being human - you either play or are being played. The composition of the story is itself exemplifying the entropic decay because in the end the story 'dies' and leaves the reader in a - yes - melancholy mood. The tale is cynical and unrelenting in showing there is no hope, but I guess you could draw the positive conclusion that decay and chaos only benefits those (in the short run) who strive for power and thus we should all fight the decay and chaos around us and seek to understand the world as it is, even when that's not possible. ( )

Μετα το συγκλονιστικο Πολεμος και πολεμος οι προσδοκιες ηταν πολυ μεγαλες οι οποιες ομως επαληθευτηκαν στο επακρο. Αλλο ενα μεγιστο επιτευγμα απο τον Ουγγρο συγγραφεα η γραφη του οποιου σε σφυροκοπαει με ανελεητο τροπο προκαλωντας σφιξιμο στο στομαχι, τεντωμα των νευρων και υπερδιεγερση του εγκεφαλου. Νοητικοι λαβυρινθοι και παραληρηματικοι συλλογισμοι διατρεχουν ολο το κειμενο μεσα σε ενα σκοτεινο, μιζερο και ζοφερο περιβαλλον γεματο απο γκροτεσκες ανθρωπινες φιγουρες που παλευουν αναμεσα στην επιβολη και στην αντισταση, στην παραιτηση και στην διατηρηση. Βαθυτατα πολιτικο, φιλοσοφικο και υπαρξιακο εργο, με μεγαλες δοσεις κοινωνικης σατιρας. Ο εγκλωβισμος στη σφαιρα του παραλογου, της παρανοιας, του φοβου και της υποταγης, δεν ειναι τιποτα περισσοτερο απο το αποτελεσμα του συνολικου αθροισματος ολων των μικροσυμφεροντων τα οποια κινουν αυτο που ονομαζεται "ζωη", αγνοωντας ομως αυτο που τελικα κυριαρχει και καταβροχθιζει τα παντα. ( )

Most beautiful final sentences of a book I've read in a long time. ( )

Susan Sontag compared this mystifying, inspiring, tiring, hilarious, disturbing book as worthy of comparisons to Gogol and Melville. Can't quibble with that. I thought more of the lines of the mutant offspring of Faulkner and Bulgakov. The book in its filibuster, paragraph-less seems like a modernist masterwork, put then Krasznahorkai, as if to spit on his own genius, takes a jarring post-modern turn with the final few pages in which he kills the reader. This is a book that will never let you cling to any emotion or thought. Moments after a guffaw someone will get raped and murdered. The story is not told in live actions but rather like a play (Eugene O'Neill meets Moliere) things happen offstage and the characters try to make sense of them in flawed retellings to other characters. This is a book of a half dozen semi-reliable narrations. It is a rare book that produces in the reader a state akin to that of the characters: disquiet, confusion, loss of faith, loss of balance, and, then, in the last few pages, loss of life. ( )

ah, if only I had understood it, I could provide it with a thoughtful review. Very strange. Surrealist novel filled with large chunks of philosophy that I had a hard time following as it was couched in metaphor of music theory. Very much reminds me of a darker version Gogol's writing. ( )

A curious book chosen as holiday reading. A Hungarian author for a visit to Budapest. In the end completed long after returning home. Skimmed through. Skimming seeming and appropriate pace for a book written with no paragraph breaks and few chapters. Page after page of unbroken close type. Strange how presentation affects perception. No thought of lingering just a romp to the end. Which seemed to suit the pace of the narrative which shifted between mundane realism and strolling surealism. Did I learn anything about Hungary? Yes, it's still the same obvious puzzle that it has always been. ( )

This is a very difficult review to write. This was one of densest books I have ever read. The basic story of anarchy in a Hungarian city which is capitalized upon by a brutal, power hungry, opportunistic woman, is told in a Kafkaesque and fairly abstruse manner. The characters are quite memorable, including, the reclusive professor, his opportunistic wife, and their humble and honorable minion. The story's trajectory occurs painfully slowly at first and then seems to proceed in leaps and bounds.

Am I glad that I read this? Yes. Do I know why? I think so. Do I understand it? On some levels, but I believe that this story would reveal new nuances with multiple readings. Do I think highly of the writing? Absolutely brilliant! ( )

This author is truly amazing -an awesome piece of literature! See notes and quotes at: https://bibliophilebethlc.blogspot.com ( )

This book creates a tone unlike any other that I've read, and features a unique setting and an interesting cast of characters. I can't explain why I like it, in fact I'm not sure why I like it so much myself, but nevertheless I do. ( )

I was really enjoying this. The prose is a little dense, and there's no question that the author has a penchant for abstraction, as seen in the musings of the musicologist; but there is also wry humor and elegant surrealism, deftly handled. The opening sequence of the elderly Mrs. Plauf going into hysterics on the train is hilarious. As we move from character (Mrs Eszter) to character (Valushka), the story deepens. We see, or feel we do, their every ratiocination. I don't want to give away the fun so I'll just say that in a trice the story turns from an almost lighthearted tale to one in which we have to wonder if we aren't heading for a meeting with our maker, or ultimate darkness, or enlightenment. Call it what you will. The setting is Budapest but you only know that through mention of various landmarks. The city itself is never named. Then at about page 200 we hit this turgid wall of philosophical musing, by the musicologist again, and it stops us dead; and try as we might, we cannot, even after successive tries, move beyond it. We long for the joys of narrative pleasure. What makes a writer think he or she can abandon the reader even for a moment? A friend here on GR has a shelf called "seduced and abandoned." Thus I file this one. Recommended with reservations. ( )

There are moments of astounding beauty in this book. My personal favourite is when Valuska,the book's holy fool, demonstrates the motion of the planets around the sun in the kind of bar only found only in Hungarian and Slav lit, 'the penny Riesling in their scratch-marked glasses...'. Dark bars they are, where tables rock on their uneven legs and pickling spices permeate the walls. I think I read this stuff for those bars.
Valuska demonstrates the motion of the planets with his fellow drinkers, and there is this stunning realization that he does this often, and that all the patrons, drunk beasts too rough to slouch towards anywhere, all know their part in this celestial drama. They curse and take their places around the Sun. They become happy in their orbits. And when the solar system breaks up, they return to their seats.
But there are no paragraph breaks. I thought I would be okay with this. It's like eating late lobster without a hammer. Egad, have I had to work for these lovely morsels. I work and work and work. I can't taste the story anymore or distinguish the characters. The writing has that slightly flattened aspect that comes with some translations, so I don't have the joys of language to keep me at it, and unfortunately, I'm not really an ideas person. I read for those moments of flying around the sun; me, my shelves, and last night's cabbage in the air, around and around.
I used to be able to shell a lobster with my bare hands. Can still do it for August season when they've shed their old homes. There are many pressure points.
I'm only 56. Am I really reaching the point where I begin that slide where things like paragraph breaks, mise en page, occasional writerly self-indulgence, make me unable to go on with a book? Is that day coming when I can't eat lobster anymore because I can't break the shells?
I am so exhausted by this book. I wish the village had one of those dark penny Riesling bars. I would settle in with a tall glass, a plate of cabbage, and a fried egg staring back at me like a little sun from the top of a piece of skirt steak.
All this, and I forget to mention the whale.

It's just not possible not to read a book that is endorsed by W.G. Sebald and Susan Sontag, and whose author -- and his amazing translator -- can write sentences like this:

"To be wise, however, soberly to anticipate what might lie in store, was truly no easy task, for it was as is some vital yet undetectable modification had taken place in the eternally stable composition of the air, in the very remoteness of that hitherto faultless mechanism or unnamed principle -- which, it is often remarked, makes the world go round and of which the most imposing evidence is the sheer phenomenon of the world's existence -- which had suddenly lost some of its power, and it was because of this that the troubling knowledge of the probability of danger was in fact less unbearable than the common sense of foreboding that soon anything at all might happen and that this 'anything' -- the law governing its likelihood becoming less apparent in the process of disintegration -- was leading to greater anxiety than the thought of any personal misfortune, thereby increasingly depriving people of the possibility of coolly appraising the facts."

But the problem with the book is also contained in this sentence, which occurs just one page into the book. The first third of the book builds a dense atmosphere of uncertainty, as we are introduced at first to a very common stereotype of a paranoid haute-bourgeois woman whose main pleasure is her hermetically sealed apartment and whose main fear is mainly being stared at in trains, but then to increasingly unprecedented characters who don't seem to follow any clear models -- a young man who cares only for the heavens, and senses only the sublime, but isn't a poet and can't articulate much of what he feels, and who runs randomly through the town like Wozzeck; and a reclusive, self-deluding retired music teacher who has increasingly unpersuasive gems of unhelpfully abstract wisdom based on a threadbare nihilism he derived, improbably, from the study of equal temperament -- and we follow those very different sorts of characters, who would normally occupy different books (the woman would be in a social satire; the ineloquent young man in a sequel to "Wozzeck," the decrepit sage to some draft by Beckett) as they move through a small Hungarian town that is prone to a series of apparently unrelated, sometimes meaningless events (a tree falls, at first diagonally onto a building across the street; people in the distance may or may not be beating someone; it hasn't snowed for a long time; cats are increasingly feral; someone may or may not be following someone else); the whole flows along in a paragraphless prose that the translator describes as "a slow lava flow of narrative."

All that is wonderful, and reminded me of Buechner, Gogol, Kafka, Musil, Canetti, and above all Bernhard. It wanders in intention and in meaning, just as its characters wander back and forth, and so I can also see why Sebald liked it. But then everything begins to turn on a mysterious "prince" (who is really some sort of circus freak; he initially came to down inside an enormous metal trailer that also held a stuffed whale) whose followers embody a kind of meaningless desire for destruction or limitless action that has echoes of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and later nihilisms and anarchisms.

Why is that disappointing? Because Beckett and Bernhard both demonstrated that it's moral, ethical, eschatological uncertainty that counts, and not the plot devices that drive that uncertainty, and certainly not whatever flimsy "explanations" there might be for the uncertainty. The sentence I quoted, together with the unaccountably blurred characters, are parts of a fictional imagination that is much more dangerous and fascinating than the Ray Bradbury-esque evil "prince of darkness" and his inexplicably demented followers. The world Krasznahorkai conjures at the beginning is so much darker than the one he eventually explains away with the paraphernalia of a circus. The lesson of Beckett and Bernhard would seem to be easy to learn, especially for someone like Krasznahorkai who has so clearly experienced many varieties of nameless unease, but for some reason authors like Krasznahorkai, and so many others all the way to Bradbury and King, keep feeling they need the machinery of a plot, the comfort of explanations. I does not help at all that the "prince" remains mysterious. He ruins the book simply by appearing in it. The title of Krazhnahorkai's newly translated book, "War and War," promises better: but then again so does "The Melancholy of Resistance," which could more accurately have been called "The Prince of Darkness and the Whale."

On the other hand, the last pages of the book are stupendous. They are an extended allegory of the dissolution of the world, couched as a forensic report on the decay of a corpse -- the same haute-bourgeois woman who opened the novel. It is a spectacular ending, as unexpected in its literal anatomizing as the end of "Jules and Jim." ( )

The giant whale exhibited by the circus is Hobbes' Leviathan, and you'd get more out of this book if you read up on that first. I hadn't. I had the feeling it somehow concerned Hungarian history too. He hates both his female characters and sets them up for sexual sticky ends, so misogynist, but only unconsciously. Hypnotically written, but very dense, so you feel like you are diving deep and drowning at the same time. Do not worry if you find the prose heavy going at first, you will be gripped. Not very like any other novel, and worth reading, but I lost so much by not knowing the ideas it was referring too. ( )

aged ( )