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מצבי רוח
וישנו עוד אדם שרצינו לדבר עליו אבל שכחנו את שמו ושכחנו את מראהו. אנחנו זוכרים רק את הדברים האחרים. שהיה במרחק של גוף אדם מפני האדמה. שקרב ורחק. שהלילה כסה עליו והיום האיר אותו ודברים מעין אלו. זהו האדם המדויק ביותר שאנחנו זוכרים. ועל כן אנחנו מתגעגעים אליו כל הימים ומפני שאיננו זוכרים את שמו הגעגועים גדולים יותר מכפי שאפשר לומר. האדם הזה הולך אתנו לכל מקום ואלמלא הוא היינו מתים משברון הלב. ואם הדברים האלה נדמים למישהו כהתחכמות שיבחן את עצמו. האדם הזה הוא גם גבורו של הספר שאנחנו כותבים עכשיו (ושל כל הספרים האחרים שכתבנו). אלו זכרנו אותו לא היינו צריכים לכתוב.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
3 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Yoel Hoffmann
30 books34 followersYoel Hoffmann (23 June 1937– 25 August 2023) was an Israeli Jewish contemporary author, editor, scholar and translator.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 7, 2015
this is also the answer to the zen riddle about the sound of the one hand, and also the answer to the torments that freud says a person endures. that is, that someone should touch someone, and so forth.exquisite and engaging, wistful and wondrous, yoel hoffmann's moods (matsve ruah) grants 191 vignettes of insight and imagination. with poetic flair, the israeli novelist reflects and ruminates on moments both passing and profound. this gorgeous book is perhaps a distant cousin to the later works of eduardo galeano, awash as they both are in sincerity and wonder.
we think that our readers should use this book to look for another person. for instance, he should make it fall to the floor in a bar or a pub and then pick it up and ask a woman: is this yours? or put two glasses of red wine on it (we'll make sure it's big enough) or stick a knife into it and say, if the knife reaches the word love, you'll leave with me (we'll be sure to scatter the word throughout the book) or, if your back hurts you should put something hard under your head (and therefore we'll put out a hardback special edition).
once (we remember) we used to pile books on a chair in order to reach high places.
today the muses, damn them, went elsewhere. they come and go as they like, and we're in their hands like a weather vane in the wind.hoffmann's moods, billed as "part novel and part memoir," shifts effortlessly between memory and observation, alighting on the mundane before flitting off to explore the miraculous. life, love, literature, japan, judaica, war, history, future; hoffmann's polyphonic prose reverberates, harmonizing disparate subjects into a single lyrical voice resounding with wisdom and grace.
we haven't seen them with our actual eyes, but it's said that there are seven. and in fact, when they all come at once, the noise is unbearable. one says Write this, and another Write that, and they fight with each other and sometimes coax us into writing drivel, or worse, what's true.
mostly they sing like a choir of angels or those women in hawaii who hang leis from their necks and sway their hips. but when an evil spirit gets into them, each one goes into a corner of the room and screams. and then you sink into the lowest of spirits and begin to write - like some kind of clerk - all sorts of facts. and she left. and the phone rang. and the train arrived at the station. and the street was wet with rain. and they drew pistols, etcetera etcetera.
these are the muses of sanity, destroyers of art - who tempt writers and poets to enter into a marriage with them, then send them to take out the garbage, or fix the faucet.
and there are those who believe that movements like these (that is, who goes to whom, etc.) are scribbled in the stars, but we lift our eyes and see something else spelled out there.
first, what's written is written on infinite paper. second, it's silent (that is, it can't be pronounced). and third, it's very very old.
but beneath that writing that no one can read we receive the great effulgence that's possible to see in tall towers of canned food.
at night, when the supermarket closes, the cashiers go out into the street and return to their room-and-a-half beneath what's written in the heavens - and no doubt it's written that death will surely come, and so we shouldn't worry so much. after all, we too are made of stardust, and there is no difference between the stuff of the stars and us.
*translated from the hebrew by peter cole (aharon shabtai, taha muhammad ali, et al. cole is also an author and poet: the invention of influence, things on which i've stumbled, amongst others)
October 15, 2016
"We’re asking ourselves what the point of this book is or of books in general.
We’ve never seen books classified by genre. That is, we’ve seen them classified, but not correctly. What’s the point of classifying books as fiction or contemplative literature, for instance, when fiction is part and parcel of contemplation and contemplation is entirely a matter of fiction?
Or take, for instance, science books. These aren’t stories? Accurate ones. But stories nonetheless. Or the distinction between biographies and novels. Is there a biography that isn’t a novel? Or a novel that isn’t the story of a life?
If books are going to be classified by genre, it should be done in an entirely different manner. First, one has to distinguish between happy books and sad books. Not books that make one happy or make one sad. Happy books, plain and simple. A book that can laugh or smile or cry. The book itself. The reader can behave however he likes.
...
At first glance this book would seem to be a hybrid. That is, a book that sometimes laughs and sometimes cries. But in fact (as the logicians say), it’s laughing and crying at once, and to the same degree."
Moods has no page numbers and is told in 191 numbered brief chapters - vignettes is the better term - of typically a page or less. That Moods is no ordinary novel is flagged early on:
"[9]
I could write....a bone fide story with plot twists and intrigue and to an ending cut off like a salami (to keep it modern).
Books like these have to have at least three hundred and twenty eight pages, and in the end mobs of people running around you like holograms.
But I can't because of the turquoise sunbirds."
That this last sentence takes the text in a rather startling and, it must be emphasised, unexplained direction is key to the novel's aesthetic. This certainly isn't a book to read looking for a coherent plot or even really a coherent message. It has elements of memoir and even of poetry.
Some of the vignettes are self-contained, almost micro fiction.
"[75]
Here are some other things that break the heart: An old door. A glass left out in the yard. A woman’s foot squeezed into shoes, so her toes become twisted. A grocer whose store no one goes into. Above all, a husband and wife who don’t talk to each other. One-eyed cats. Junkyards. The stairwells of old buildings. A small boy on his way to school. Old women sitting all day by the window. Display windows with only a single item or two, coated with dust. A shopping list. Forty-watt bulbs. Signs with an ampersand (such as ZILBERSTEIN & CHAMNITZER), and when a person we love disappears (at a train station, for instance) into the distance."
More typical are others that make references that seem equally unrelated to the surrounding text, e.g. a (brief) tale of the author's tax affairs is interrupted with the following.
"[39]
The air over Nahariya is full of crows. These small black people know a thing or two that people below do not. We hear them as one hears a large synagogue.
Sometimes a crow comes down between the tables at a cafe and sees the urologist from the Clinic, or a woman named Aviva.
But at dusk, all fly up from the tops of the eucalyptus trees, like a man who can't remember if he's taken off his socks, drunk at the sight of the weakening sun."
The women called Aviva is not mentioned elsewhere in the novel and the only clninc mentioned, two vignettes earlier, is the subject of the equally unexplained comment "we've already written in another book about the donkey my Uncle Ladislaus received from the clinic."
This reference to other books is a recurring feature of the novel ("whom we've written of elsewhere", "her name wasn't what we said in another book", "we've already written in another book about..."). I don't know anything of Hoffman's former novels to know if these references are real or novelistic, but they are I suspect, in either case, inserted to add to the aesthetic.
And yet there are themes, motifs, and even (almost despite the author's intention it seems) characters that recur through the novel.
- Language and the sound of words, including onomatopoeic words
"My stepmother Francesca called the ground Boden. The two of us walked across the ground but, because of this other name, it (the ground) carried her differently."
or
"We’re wondering if the word zarzif (drizzle) is onomatopoeic. That is, a word that makes the sound the thing makes. Bakbook (bottle), they say, does that.
Or pkak (cork). But not lavlav (pancreas). No one has yet heard the sound that organ makes. But parpar(butterfly) — yes. People with a heightened sense of hearing can hear this sound when butterflies flutter around them."
(Hoffman justifies his use of the 1st person plural on the grounds that the more inclusive pronoun reduces his embarrassment)
- Movement along horizontal and vertical planes. E.g. this, which refers to a lift:
"You’re walking horizontally and suddenly you’re lifted along a vertical axis. After a while, you descend the vertical axis and go back to walking horizontally. Sometimes you’re parallel to the ground (that is, your entire body is horizontal), as when making love."
The novel at times appears playful but also infused with melancholy, and at times more serious. One passage towards the novel's end reads:
"The counting did in fact begin, as the Christians have it, with the birth of the infant Jesus. But it concluded with the birth of Adolf. We were given just 1,889 years of life."
but is followed by "We know that we need to say something amusing now".
For me it was an interesting but ultimately slightly frustrating read. A book that (rather like Pessoa's Book of Disquiet) may be best dipped into randomly for pleasure of the prose, rather than read sequentially.
WG Sebald - who was, it must be said, generous with his endorsements (including some assigned by publishers to novels -like this one - written after his death) - wrote "I am confirmed in my admiration for Hoffman's oblique and elliptical style." But both adjectives imply a sense of direction, however wayward and circular, which was missing for me. Sebald allowed this thoughts to pull him in unexpected directions, but each sentence followed from that preceding. Hoffman's text meanders randomly, and seems the novelistic equivalent of the artist who throws paint at a blank canvas.
I can perhaps accept it is worth its place on the Best Translated Book Award 2016 longlist for the quality and novelty of the writing, but I (unlike the judges) definitely wouldn't have included it on the shortlist.
Indeed it could equally have figured on the poetry rather than novel longlist - it's both and neither. To quote the author "whatever seems like a poem isn't a poem and what doesn't seem like a poem is."
We’ve never seen books classified by genre. That is, we’ve seen them classified, but not correctly. What’s the point of classifying books as fiction or contemplative literature, for instance, when fiction is part and parcel of contemplation and contemplation is entirely a matter of fiction?
Or take, for instance, science books. These aren’t stories? Accurate ones. But stories nonetheless. Or the distinction between biographies and novels. Is there a biography that isn’t a novel? Or a novel that isn’t the story of a life?
If books are going to be classified by genre, it should be done in an entirely different manner. First, one has to distinguish between happy books and sad books. Not books that make one happy or make one sad. Happy books, plain and simple. A book that can laugh or smile or cry. The book itself. The reader can behave however he likes.
...
At first glance this book would seem to be a hybrid. That is, a book that sometimes laughs and sometimes cries. But in fact (as the logicians say), it’s laughing and crying at once, and to the same degree."
Moods has no page numbers and is told in 191 numbered brief chapters - vignettes is the better term - of typically a page or less. That Moods is no ordinary novel is flagged early on:
"[9]
I could write....a bone fide story with plot twists and intrigue and to an ending cut off like a salami (to keep it modern).
Books like these have to have at least three hundred and twenty eight pages, and in the end mobs of people running around you like holograms.
But I can't because of the turquoise sunbirds."
That this last sentence takes the text in a rather startling and, it must be emphasised, unexplained direction is key to the novel's aesthetic. This certainly isn't a book to read looking for a coherent plot or even really a coherent message. It has elements of memoir and even of poetry.
Some of the vignettes are self-contained, almost micro fiction.
"[75]
Here are some other things that break the heart: An old door. A glass left out in the yard. A woman’s foot squeezed into shoes, so her toes become twisted. A grocer whose store no one goes into. Above all, a husband and wife who don’t talk to each other. One-eyed cats. Junkyards. The stairwells of old buildings. A small boy on his way to school. Old women sitting all day by the window. Display windows with only a single item or two, coated with dust. A shopping list. Forty-watt bulbs. Signs with an ampersand (such as ZILBERSTEIN & CHAMNITZER), and when a person we love disappears (at a train station, for instance) into the distance."
More typical are others that make references that seem equally unrelated to the surrounding text, e.g. a (brief) tale of the author's tax affairs is interrupted with the following.
"[39]
The air over Nahariya is full of crows. These small black people know a thing or two that people below do not. We hear them as one hears a large synagogue.
Sometimes a crow comes down between the tables at a cafe and sees the urologist from the Clinic, or a woman named Aviva.
But at dusk, all fly up from the tops of the eucalyptus trees, like a man who can't remember if he's taken off his socks, drunk at the sight of the weakening sun."
The women called Aviva is not mentioned elsewhere in the novel and the only clninc mentioned, two vignettes earlier, is the subject of the equally unexplained comment "we've already written in another book about the donkey my Uncle Ladislaus received from the clinic."
This reference to other books is a recurring feature of the novel ("whom we've written of elsewhere", "her name wasn't what we said in another book", "we've already written in another book about..."). I don't know anything of Hoffman's former novels to know if these references are real or novelistic, but they are I suspect, in either case, inserted to add to the aesthetic.
And yet there are themes, motifs, and even (almost despite the author's intention it seems) characters that recur through the novel.
- Language and the sound of words, including onomatopoeic words
"My stepmother Francesca called the ground Boden. The two of us walked across the ground but, because of this other name, it (the ground) carried her differently."
or
"We’re wondering if the word zarzif (drizzle) is onomatopoeic. That is, a word that makes the sound the thing makes. Bakbook (bottle), they say, does that.
Or pkak (cork). But not lavlav (pancreas). No one has yet heard the sound that organ makes. But parpar(butterfly) — yes. People with a heightened sense of hearing can hear this sound when butterflies flutter around them."
(Hoffman justifies his use of the 1st person plural on the grounds that the more inclusive pronoun reduces his embarrassment)
- Movement along horizontal and vertical planes. E.g. this, which refers to a lift:
"You’re walking horizontally and suddenly you’re lifted along a vertical axis. After a while, you descend the vertical axis and go back to walking horizontally. Sometimes you’re parallel to the ground (that is, your entire body is horizontal), as when making love."
The novel at times appears playful but also infused with melancholy, and at times more serious. One passage towards the novel's end reads:
"The counting did in fact begin, as the Christians have it, with the birth of the infant Jesus. But it concluded with the birth of Adolf. We were given just 1,889 years of life."
but is followed by "We know that we need to say something amusing now".
For me it was an interesting but ultimately slightly frustrating read. A book that (rather like Pessoa's Book of Disquiet) may be best dipped into randomly for pleasure of the prose, rather than read sequentially.
WG Sebald - who was, it must be said, generous with his endorsements (including some assigned by publishers to novels -like this one - written after his death) - wrote "I am confirmed in my admiration for Hoffman's oblique and elliptical style." But both adjectives imply a sense of direction, however wayward and circular, which was missing for me. Sebald allowed this thoughts to pull him in unexpected directions, but each sentence followed from that preceding. Hoffman's text meanders randomly, and seems the novelistic equivalent of the artist who throws paint at a blank canvas.
I can perhaps accept it is worth its place on the Best Translated Book Award 2016 longlist for the quality and novelty of the writing, but I (unlike the judges) definitely wouldn't have included it on the shortlist.
Indeed it could equally have figured on the poetry rather than novel longlist - it's both and neither. To quote the author "whatever seems like a poem isn't a poem and what doesn't seem like a poem is."
June 7, 2015
Who knows what Yoel Hoffmann's book Moods is. As goes for most things, and interesting books in particular, who knows. What it is, for the sake of is-ing, is a fascinating, small paperback book made up of short, poetic chapters. Some describe daily life in Galilee. Some touch on the mythological and the spiritual. And some just send up the psychiatrists, scholars, and intellectuals. Moods is full of doubt and faith; it is a book that fails to start and hesitates to end.
May 2, 2016
A unapologetically metafictional postmodern "novel" that is funny, sad and compulsively readable. 191 short chapters that feature characters and anecdotes drawn from the author's life and family are woven together with thoughtful reflections on life, the universe and absolutely everything else. For my full review see: https://roughghosts.com/2016/05/02/a-...
Read
October 9, 2023"Maybe it is finally the moment that I have to admit that there will be a book that I have nothing to say about, that defeats me with the nothingness that it is all about." I ran this sentence and its 190 inflections in my mind, one for each of the 191 short and disorienting chapters. Yoel Hoffman doesn't even pretend there's something else, something larger than the pages; nor is this book one of those speeches whose idiotic speaker says a lot but actually said nothing. It is nothingness through and through, any *thing* is but illusion--if that is what Moods is about, then I'm defeated a second time. The 191 versions of the same defeat statement may as well have been an illusion. Thoughts run on.
Critics have said (I rely on existing reviews from time to time, though original comments are what I'm getting to) Moods transgresses genres, being neither fiction nor memoir, neither poetry nor essay etcetera (I'm more certain I have been influenced by Hoffman now, spelling out etcetera rather than "etc."). That might be an underestimate. Perhaps we can be more bold to announce that Moods is not even a book (now a second symptom of influence: using first person plural, we, instead of singular, I, to avoid self-embarrassment by a big ego). It is what it says it is -- moods. It's all the moods that are not the ones in which we can do something, anything.
One can be free from emotions, if only momentarily, but not from mood. One may say, I'm not in the mood of being productive. But that's also not a vacuum of moods. That's a space crowded with emptiness where one is stuck in, if subconsciously restlessness ambushes somewhere near.
We are (maybe I am) not in the mood of writing an end, on a Monday afternoon, with sore body and eyes. So may a quote--a whole chapter--will do.
For instance, Chapter 137 -
There's someone else we wanted to talk about but we've forgotten his name and how he looks.
We remember only the other things. That he was a body's length from the earth's surface. That he came near and grew distant. That night came over him and the day made him bright, and things of this sort.
We can't recall anyone more precisely. Therefore we miss him, and because we can't remember his name, our longing is greater than we can say.
Critics have said (I rely on existing reviews from time to time, though original comments are what I'm getting to) Moods transgresses genres, being neither fiction nor memoir, neither poetry nor essay etcetera (I'm more certain I have been influenced by Hoffman now, spelling out etcetera rather than "etc."). That might be an underestimate. Perhaps we can be more bold to announce that Moods is not even a book (now a second symptom of influence: using first person plural, we, instead of singular, I, to avoid self-embarrassment by a big ego). It is what it says it is -- moods. It's all the moods that are not the ones in which we can do something, anything.
One can be free from emotions, if only momentarily, but not from mood. One may say, I'm not in the mood of being productive. But that's also not a vacuum of moods. That's a space crowded with emptiness where one is stuck in, if subconsciously restlessness ambushes somewhere near.
We are (maybe I am) not in the mood of writing an end, on a Monday afternoon, with sore body and eyes. So may a quote--a whole chapter--will do.
For instance, Chapter 137 -
There's someone else we wanted to talk about but we've forgotten his name and how he looks.
We remember only the other things. That he was a body's length from the earth's surface. That he came near and grew distant. That night came over him and the day made him bright, and things of this sort.
We can't recall anyone more precisely. Therefore we miss him, and because we can't remember his name, our longing is greater than we can say.
December 31, 2023
Short, surreal pieces on a range of topics. Reminded me a little of Solzhenitsyn's Крохотки (Miniatures, or "prose poems"), or Joe Brainard's I Remember, a wonder-cabinet of tiny childhood memories, but this is further out than both of those, a kind of poetry sometimes unmoored from coherence. The author - a professor of Buddhism and Japanese poetry, several of whose other books have been translated by New Directions - reminisces about his upbringing in Haifa, surrounded by Holocaust survivors and transplants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and a few Persians and Yemenites and boot) during the years of austerity. The author (mostly referring to himself with the royal we, but occasionally lapsing into the singular) focuses on the physical; sometimes love and sex, sometimes the feelings of animals and plants, sometimes unusual textures and sounds. Sometimes he talks about Jewish ritual and prayer, and wonders what God is thinking.
I started this in June or July, and finished it tonight, the last night of 2023, a truly terrible year in this country. The author died in August. The book was written during a war in Gaza, known here as Operation Cast Lead; on the night of writing another (longer, worse one) is taking place, known as Iron Swords. We are moving through the periodic table. A deep red moon is rising. The author expresses the hope of prolonging the book until chapter 200, but it ends as 191. There is no lesson here, just a collection of moods, still more useful than most books.
I started this in June or July, and finished it tonight, the last night of 2023, a truly terrible year in this country. The author died in August. The book was written during a war in Gaza, known here as Operation Cast Lead; on the night of writing another (longer, worse one) is taking place, known as Iron Swords. We are moving through the periodic table. A deep red moon is rising. The author expresses the hope of prolonging the book until chapter 200, but it ends as 191. There is no lesson here, just a collection of moods, still more useful than most books.
February 4, 2022
Upon hearing about this author, I bought two of his books at the same time (the other being "Curriculum Vitae"). I started my review of that book by saying that I'm a big proponent of experimental non-fiction and vignette/aphoristic/sound-bitey books. There is a fairly finite amount of books written in this style, and when I hear about an author writing in this way, I generally seek them out. But after having read two from Hoffmann, I have to say I feel like he is doing it less well than most every other book in this style that I've read. Don Paterson, Maggie Nelson, Heidi Julavits, Jenny Offill, David Markson, Rebecca Solnit, Renata Adler, Edouard Leve - if you read and enjoyed Hoffmann, pick up literally any of these authors and you'll see how what he's doing can and has been done more effectively and more impactfully elsewhere.
December 6, 2020
“Now we’re filled with love, and now it’s hatred. Sometimes we hate things we’ve loved or love things we’ve hated, and there is no end to it.”
I picked up this novel by Yoel because he happens to have the same name as my sister. This is an experimental work by an Israeli author written in short snippets that relate to each other only loosely, though major themes are memory, mortality, and writing. I did not love this book — it just didn’t quite cohere for me — but I did really admire some of the lines.
I picked up this novel by Yoel because he happens to have the same name as my sister. This is an experimental work by an Israeli author written in short snippets that relate to each other only loosely, though major themes are memory, mortality, and writing. I did not love this book — it just didn’t quite cohere for me — but I did really admire some of the lines.
January 17, 2019
So unlike my usual reading but picked it up (which actually took some effort as my library didn't have it and I ordered it from my Independent Bookstore. Slim mystical, mysterious, poetry in the form of short statements about family, loss, girlfriends, daily life, mystery. Profoundly moving.
August 26, 2018
אנחנו קוראים ביואל הופמן בעודו מנסה לחדור מבעד לעורו שלו ונוכחים לפתע שאנחנו יואל הופמן הוא כולנו.
October 13, 2024
Too many parentheses.
July 1, 2016
A few years ago I bought a very colourful, heavy book called “Buddhist Offerings 365 Days” a 750 page book with a short Buddhist quote and a colour photograph (generally from Tibet) for each day of the year. The intention was to read and reflect on the quote each day, one of those grandiose ideas that lasts a week or two, however I do revisit the book from time to time for a timely quote or two, the first quote happens to be today’s (10 June), the others are just random choices:
Every event, every situation in which you may find yourself has a positive value,
even the dramas, even the tragedies, even the thunderbolt from a calm sky.
- Arnaud Desjardins
It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Usually we think that brave people have no fear.
The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
- Pema Chödrön
Like all reflective quotes the act of pondering what is deemed as ancient wisdom permeates and can leave you with a feeling of becoming wise simply by contemplating somebody else’s musings. Unlike a novel, or even a short story, the very short form can leave itself open to many interpretations and the relationship between the writer and the reader is more along the lines of a passing “punch in the face” (immediate and extreme but quickly forgotten) or, at the other extreme, a shadowy brush that somehow lingers for longer than the relationship itself and comes back to haunt you when least expected.
Yoel Hoffmann’s “Moods” (translated by Peter Cole) is made up of 191 short musings on human emotions…moods. And each and every section impacts the reader in different ways, reflecting moods, emotions, temperaments.
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/20...
Every event, every situation in which you may find yourself has a positive value,
even the dramas, even the tragedies, even the thunderbolt from a calm sky.
- Arnaud Desjardins
It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Usually we think that brave people have no fear.
The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
- Pema Chödrön
Like all reflective quotes the act of pondering what is deemed as ancient wisdom permeates and can leave you with a feeling of becoming wise simply by contemplating somebody else’s musings. Unlike a novel, or even a short story, the very short form can leave itself open to many interpretations and the relationship between the writer and the reader is more along the lines of a passing “punch in the face” (immediate and extreme but quickly forgotten) or, at the other extreme, a shadowy brush that somehow lingers for longer than the relationship itself and comes back to haunt you when least expected.
Yoel Hoffmann’s “Moods” (translated by Peter Cole) is made up of 191 short musings on human emotions…moods. And each and every section impacts the reader in different ways, reflecting moods, emotions, temperaments.
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/20...
July 25, 2015
What's it about? Beats me. Life, I guess. Hoffmann's thoughts on people and circumstance and life in general. Fiction? Memoir? Philosophy? Beats me. It doesn't matter. It's clever, heartfelt and wise.
November 19, 2015
At times it is evocative of moods, but mostly it reads like psychosis.
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October 15, 2021So strange. So good.
May 14, 2016
Rating: 3.5
Read
August 19, 2016Fiction H711m 2015
July 10, 2022
מרטיט לאין שיעור
April 10, 2017
A strange book that I enjoyed despite its many abstractions. "Moods" was called (I believe by another reviewer) fiction for readers of poetry and poetry for readers of fiction. It's there. There are these fantastic impressionistic images along with the occasional fragments of plot. Prose poetry may be a good description here.
It's difficult to describe a work like this, broken into 191 snapshots. It's like looking at a serious of polaroids, and, most interestingly, you feel the resonance of human experience. I don't reminder too many particulars, but I remember the many feelings--ones that run the gamut from love and loss to memory and humor.
I found myself being reminded of W.G. Sebald, and I think it may be due to the brief meditations that reminded me of "The Rings of Saturn," meditations spurred by images presented in the snapshots.
Perhaps other reviewers had it right and this book is best enjoyed here and there. I read it in the space of about two or three hours, and I enjoyed the emotional roller coaster. See how it goes and plot your own course.
It's difficult to describe a work like this, broken into 191 snapshots. It's like looking at a serious of polaroids, and, most interestingly, you feel the resonance of human experience. I don't reminder too many particulars, but I remember the many feelings--ones that run the gamut from love and loss to memory and humor.
I found myself being reminded of W.G. Sebald, and I think it may be due to the brief meditations that reminded me of "The Rings of Saturn," meditations spurred by images presented in the snapshots.
Perhaps other reviewers had it right and this book is best enjoyed here and there. I read it in the space of about two or three hours, and I enjoyed the emotional roller coaster. See how it goes and plot your own course.
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March 19, 2018Episode 11:
3. I’m not a huge short story reader, but I do like novellas, particularly ones with beautiful language or imagery. I really like the work of Eileen Chang and Banana Yoshimoto. What other authors should I read? Bonus points for diversity and/or translations.
Thanks
–Jennie
Recommended by: Amanda
3. I’m not a huge short story reader, but I do like novellas, particularly ones with beautiful language or imagery. I really like the work of Eileen Chang and Banana Yoshimoto. What other authors should I read? Bonus points for diversity and/or translations.
Thanks
–Jennie
Recommended by: Amanda
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