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To Whom it May Concern
This book consists of a set of letters from an unidentified writer to an unidentified recipient. In the letters, a writer sets forth his plans for a book about two children who were separated from their families during a war. He plans to invent a narration that will fully reveal their experiences during that war, experiences that are at the base of their reality, and the memory of which will also retrieve them from their present, supernumerary lives.
The two children, it develops, escaped the roundups of Jews in a city much like Paris during World War II. The book contains the story of their ambiguous survival, which may or may not be that of the author. Now, fifty years later, the two have re-established contact and plan a reunion in Israel.
In the last scene of the book two figures, their features obscured by the long shadows of evening, lean toward one another as they speak from the confidence of their hearts. Also there, listening, is the writer of the letters that form the book. The novel ends mysteriously, and so continues to vibrate in our imagination. To Whom it May Concern will join that short list of books we treasure most deeply, those few statements that remind us of who we are, and of what we are capable.
The two children, it develops, escaped the roundups of Jews in a city much like Paris during World War II. The book contains the story of their ambiguous survival, which may or may not be that of the author. Now, fifty years later, the two have re-established contact and plan a reunion in Israel.
In the last scene of the book two figures, their features obscured by the long shadows of evening, lean toward one another as they speak from the confidence of their hearts. Also there, listening, is the writer of the letters that form the book. The novel ends mysteriously, and so continues to vibrate in our imagination. To Whom it May Concern will join that short list of books we treasure most deeply, those few statements that remind us of who we are, and of what we are capable.
- GenresWorld War IIFiction
186 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
2 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Federman
58 books33 followersRaymond Federman was a French–American novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. He held positions at the University at Buffalo from 1973 to 1999, when he was appointed Distinguished Emeritus Professor. Federman was a writer in the experimental style, one that sought to deconstruct traditional prose. This type of writing is quite prevalent in his book Double or Nothing, in which the linear narrative of the story has been broken down and restructured so as to be nearly incoherent. Words are also often arranged on pages to resemble images or to suggest repetitious themes.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 5, 2017
...not a day passes that I don't wish I could commune discourse babble as per usual however for the moment all I’ll muse aloud (allowed) is why do we critic books? art? anything? why do we feel or should we feel or are there those who feel compelled to pronounce upon a text a work of craft in which is contained art (at least in the spelling of it), to decode demystify deconstruct when all that such an exercise in style achieves is a comment on the pronouncer and the destruction of the potential to discover? Surely a criticism of something, like the analysis of comedy, destroys the thing it appraises? And the corollary, isn't the discussion of a topic dependent on a shared grammar of understanding that by its very explication would shift the focus from that being examined?
You're wrong about critiquing only being a comment on the commentator. A review can reveal to an author what is underlying the work; no writer can know all his intentions. An essay can link works together that reveal aspects of each in new ways. As part of human nature, we feel close to texts and sometimes want to carry on a conversation about them (or with them) or argue against them. Every poem, play, song, opera, ballet, painting, sculpture etc is a communicative act and we communicate back, or outwards to others. We do feel "compelled" as you say, though the best critics don't pronounce so much as announce something, they rein in their egos, they leave some of the mystery or allow room for multiple interpretations, and they underline the primacy of the work under discussion. A work of art isn’t the worse for wear for being analyzed. Dan Brown's books may be, but Shakespeare or Homer or Dante? Their works persist despite all the books and articles written on them.
Not to say that some commentators on art are really just talking about themselves (maybe it's Sorrentino who makes that point also), but not every one of them, surely. Statistically alone, it's not possible.
That’s all well and good, of course it’s just the usual procrastination on pontification about the author intent form content style. Perhaps the best place to start is not to start at the beginning but outside the text. . .
Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba hinges on the absence throughout the entirety of the play of the impetus for all action reaction denouement, the absence here a clearly invisible presence. The same device is employed in Gilbert Adair’s Death of The Author, in which the complete absence of specific phenomena conspire to emphatically suggest the presence of those, and without which the story could not exist. Gabriel Josipovici's Conversations in Another Room is recalled to mind with its narrative of sliding mirrors - a reflected reflecting reflective but remote reality owned by none. And it is absence which is at the core of Federman’s To Whom It May Concern both at the level of the text as well as dehors de texte (note that reference and the absence of another name).
The content, ostensibly, is concerned with a writer’s telling of the story of the experiences of two relatives, separated from families and each other during a war, reunited with each other but not families at its end, separated again when the one seeks fortune in a land of misrepresentation somewhere across the ocean and the other is unable to accompany because a visa is refused on health grounds, instead journeying to a frontier land full of false promises to forge a new nation. Correspondence between the two, prolific at first, dwindles to nothing, until one, having become a renowned artist, writes and receives a letter from the other, established in the new frontier society. But no further correspondence ensues, until an exhibition of the one’s work in the land of the other prompts not only contact but a meeting after thirty-five years, the only stable fact (that number of years) in the story.
The form is, as may be deduced from the title, a series of letters in first person present tense authored by the writer of the narrative and containing the third person present and past tense narrative (marked by occasional commentary from the writer of the narrative) telling the story of the two relatives--their histories until the present day. Those letters tell a story about the writer; textually, establishing a delineation between the writer of the story and the narrator of the story (and one of the protagonists). Except . . .
What of the Author’s language used to write the letters, the “writer” insertions as commentary in the narrative, the narrative as a self? The sentences are short, simple, unadorned for the most part, particularly when describing the experiences of the two relatives, but veer towards philosophical complexity of a lyrical disposition when the narrator comments on the experiences of the relatives, tending to the jocular in the letters , or unapologetically morbid and self-castigatory when contemplating the setting, the geometry, the telling of the story, the sense of being a non-writing writer, friend, mentor, parent, partner.
An underlying commentary from Federman the Author is the description, inserted without fan-fare or fuss, of the traumatic events that occurred, the “unforgivable enormity”, identified only once as The Great War, and the coincidence of significant dates during that time with significant acts of the relatives during the present, such as the date of the meeting thirty-five years later. Too, Federman nods at the adage “the sins of the Fathers shall be visited upon the Sons”, the attacks on the frontier land (its establishment already controversial) and the counterattacks, the characteristics of the progeny inheriting the old politics, dogmas, but not the griefs as an experience but as a motivation and validation for the call to arms, hinted at but here never owned.
This construct, of the fictional memoir or the autobiographical fiction, the double-lensed peerage at events in the past which are known as non-fiction and experienced as real by the writer in the time of experiencing and fictional by the reader, whether presented as memoir or as “realist” fiction, and by the writer when considered as past events, represents one alternative to the problem with which Christine Brooke-Rose grappled in Remake. Federman distances the work from authorbiography by having ‘a writer’, even if in first person, tell the story of the two relatives in third person, one of whom converges to the history of the persona Raymond Federman. Brooke-Rose adopted a different method, excising personal pronouns and giving the memories of the younger self to a character separate from the old lady narrator, who comments on the nature of memory recording replaying remaking. Both adopt a simplicity in style of the narration of events, avoiding the ‘excesses of emotion’ yet writing of lives no less poignant in impact for that. The absence of the author from both texts reveals that entity’s presence, yet avoids both the solipsism characteristic of innovative literature with its focus on the inner and the telling not showing, as well as the "what life has taught me and how to live it" insertions of naive authors masquerading as benevolent narrators. Nothing better illuminates the false ideology of “realistic” fiction than the narration of the real (real as experienced, real as known and accepted, real as verified) as fiction eschewing the apparatus of the realistic. But equally, it demonstrates the flaw in the logic of rejecting the realistic: what reality, after all, can be claimed as being separate from its irreality?
You're wrong about critiquing only being a comment on the commentator. A review can reveal to an author what is underlying the work; no writer can know all his intentions. An essay can link works together that reveal aspects of each in new ways. As part of human nature, we feel close to texts and sometimes want to carry on a conversation about them (or with them) or argue against them. Every poem, play, song, opera, ballet, painting, sculpture etc is a communicative act and we communicate back, or outwards to others. We do feel "compelled" as you say, though the best critics don't pronounce so much as announce something, they rein in their egos, they leave some of the mystery or allow room for multiple interpretations, and they underline the primacy of the work under discussion. A work of art isn’t the worse for wear for being analyzed. Dan Brown's books may be, but Shakespeare or Homer or Dante? Their works persist despite all the books and articles written on them.
Not to say that some commentators on art are really just talking about themselves (maybe it's Sorrentino who makes that point also), but not every one of them, surely. Statistically alone, it's not possible.
That’s all well and good, of course it’s just the usual procrastination on pontification about the author intent form content style. Perhaps the best place to start is not to start at the beginning but outside the text. . .
Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba hinges on the absence throughout the entirety of the play of the impetus for all action reaction denouement, the absence here a clearly invisible presence. The same device is employed in Gilbert Adair’s Death of The Author, in which the complete absence of specific phenomena conspire to emphatically suggest the presence of those, and without which the story could not exist. Gabriel Josipovici's Conversations in Another Room is recalled to mind with its narrative of sliding mirrors - a reflected reflecting reflective but remote reality owned by none. And it is absence which is at the core of Federman’s To Whom It May Concern both at the level of the text as well as dehors de texte (note that reference and the absence of another name).
The content, ostensibly, is concerned with a writer’s telling of the story of the experiences of two relatives, separated from families and each other during a war, reunited with each other but not families at its end, separated again when the one seeks fortune in a land of misrepresentation somewhere across the ocean and the other is unable to accompany because a visa is refused on health grounds, instead journeying to a frontier land full of false promises to forge a new nation. Correspondence between the two, prolific at first, dwindles to nothing, until one, having become a renowned artist, writes and receives a letter from the other, established in the new frontier society. But no further correspondence ensues, until an exhibition of the one’s work in the land of the other prompts not only contact but a meeting after thirty-five years, the only stable fact (that number of years) in the story.
The form is, as may be deduced from the title, a series of letters in first person present tense authored by the writer of the narrative and containing the third person present and past tense narrative (marked by occasional commentary from the writer of the narrative) telling the story of the two relatives--their histories until the present day. Those letters tell a story about the writer; textually, establishing a delineation between the writer of the story and the narrator of the story (and one of the protagonists). Except . . .
What of the Author’s language used to write the letters, the “writer” insertions as commentary in the narrative, the narrative as a self? The sentences are short, simple, unadorned for the most part, particularly when describing the experiences of the two relatives, but veer towards philosophical complexity of a lyrical disposition when the narrator comments on the experiences of the relatives, tending to the jocular in the letters , or unapologetically morbid and self-castigatory when contemplating the setting, the geometry, the telling of the story, the sense of being a non-writing writer, friend, mentor, parent, partner.
An underlying commentary from Federman the Author is the description, inserted without fan-fare or fuss, of the traumatic events that occurred, the “unforgivable enormity”, identified only once as The Great War, and the coincidence of significant dates during that time with significant acts of the relatives during the present, such as the date of the meeting thirty-five years later. Too, Federman nods at the adage “the sins of the Fathers shall be visited upon the Sons”, the attacks on the frontier land (its establishment already controversial) and the counterattacks, the characteristics of the progeny inheriting the old politics, dogmas, but not the griefs as an experience but as a motivation and validation for the call to arms, hinted at but here never owned.
This construct, of the fictional memoir or the autobiographical fiction, the double-lensed peerage at events in the past which are known as non-fiction and experienced as real by the writer in the time of experiencing and fictional by the reader, whether presented as memoir or as “realist” fiction, and by the writer when considered as past events, represents one alternative to the problem with which Christine Brooke-Rose grappled in Remake. Federman distances the work from authorbiography by having ‘a writer’, even if in first person, tell the story of the two relatives in third person, one of whom converges to the history of the persona Raymond Federman. Brooke-Rose adopted a different method, excising personal pronouns and giving the memories of the younger self to a character separate from the old lady narrator, who comments on the nature of memory recording replaying remaking. Both adopt a simplicity in style of the narration of events, avoiding the ‘excesses of emotion’ yet writing of lives no less poignant in impact for that. The absence of the author from both texts reveals that entity’s presence, yet avoids both the solipsism characteristic of innovative literature with its focus on the inner and the telling not showing, as well as the "what life has taught me and how to live it" insertions of naive authors masquerading as benevolent narrators. Nothing better illuminates the false ideology of “realistic” fiction than the narration of the real (real as experienced, real as known and accepted, real as verified) as fiction eschewing the apparatus of the realistic. But equally, it demonstrates the flaw in the logic of rejecting the realistic: what reality, after all, can be claimed as being separate from its irreality?
January 26, 2015
An elegiac and at times sentimental (necessarily so) novel told in one-sided letters to an undisclosed recipient, this short work contains fewer surfictional antics than in his two masterpieces Double or Nothing and Take it or Leave It and delivers a more subtle emotional kick than his other books where laughs punctuate the profound sadness. Since Federman’s novels are all concerned to some degree with the loss of his family in the Holocaust, a strong emotional undercurrent runs through each tale without him having to do much—if anything, Federman is seeking laughter through the torrent of tears that such a history on autopilot provides. This novel is less hilarious and more poignant and somewhat maturer in the sense that Federman allows his sentimental tale to unfurl and finds his form in the telling without recourse to the labyrinthine layers of reader-writer jostling as in his earlier opuses. The result to whom it may concern is a gentle and powerful novel to be savoured line by line.
February 13, 2014
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/7642257...
Weather, such as this winter of 2014 we are presently engaged in, can flat wear us out. There are times we question how much more we might take. But the weather comes at us like waves do, and with skill and some luck we often survive. But there are times the ferocious weather comes all at once and our ending is inevitable. Those of us who survive these storms make what we can of what is left to us. For a special few it may be what is called a good life, and for the rest of us who basically survive, we live until we die.
The two main characters of this novel have both seen terrible things due to the period during WWII. Their families have been destroyed as well as their homes and every possession. This morning I was reminded on the news that these atrocities are still happening around the world and likely will always continue as long as there are human beings on the planet. There is little mystery behind the fact that we can be an awful animal at times. And it seems the violence never ends. The two main characters of this book who physically survive their personal tragedies do go on to make something of themselves, to better the planet in some way, and to each perhaps raise a couple of kids in a way that might make a difference in the world some day. But these lives, and what they made of them, will never replace for them what has been lost.
There are scant reviews of this book from which to plunder or even get some idea what others might have thought about after reading it. It seems that those who actually did read this book like it, but they never tell us why. Perhaps they cannot express themselves sufficiently or confidently enough to satisfy the ingrates among us. Or perhaps they are not willing to place themselves in jeopardy as others of us are more wont to do. I do not mind people assuming these docile postures as it places me in a position much different than these readers and I feel even more outside and apart from those just grazing along and feeling safe within the confines of the massive herd of those just like themselves.
I felt all along that this book was an exercise for Raymond Federman, and he practiced it at the expense of us all, that is, if he decided to eventually have this title published, which is obvious to me now that he did. But I am not convinced he set out to write this book in the manner in which it was written. I believe the narrator when he says he was just trying things out in order to discover whether or not he could make a novel out of his notes and letters to his friend. Seems he did. And a pretty good one at that.
Weather, such as this winter of 2014 we are presently engaged in, can flat wear us out. There are times we question how much more we might take. But the weather comes at us like waves do, and with skill and some luck we often survive. But there are times the ferocious weather comes all at once and our ending is inevitable. Those of us who survive these storms make what we can of what is left to us. For a special few it may be what is called a good life, and for the rest of us who basically survive, we live until we die.
The two main characters of this novel have both seen terrible things due to the period during WWII. Their families have been destroyed as well as their homes and every possession. This morning I was reminded on the news that these atrocities are still happening around the world and likely will always continue as long as there are human beings on the planet. There is little mystery behind the fact that we can be an awful animal at times. And it seems the violence never ends. The two main characters of this book who physically survive their personal tragedies do go on to make something of themselves, to better the planet in some way, and to each perhaps raise a couple of kids in a way that might make a difference in the world some day. But these lives, and what they made of them, will never replace for them what has been lost.
There are scant reviews of this book from which to plunder or even get some idea what others might have thought about after reading it. It seems that those who actually did read this book like it, but they never tell us why. Perhaps they cannot express themselves sufficiently or confidently enough to satisfy the ingrates among us. Or perhaps they are not willing to place themselves in jeopardy as others of us are more wont to do. I do not mind people assuming these docile postures as it places me in a position much different than these readers and I feel even more outside and apart from those just grazing along and feeling safe within the confines of the massive herd of those just like themselves.
I felt all along that this book was an exercise for Raymond Federman, and he practiced it at the expense of us all, that is, if he decided to eventually have this title published, which is obvious to me now that he did. But I am not convinced he set out to write this book in the manner in which it was written. I believe the narrator when he says he was just trying things out in order to discover whether or not he could make a novel out of his notes and letters to his friend. Seems he did. And a pretty good one at that.
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November 23, 2014To Whom It May Concern ::
Storytelling is an ancient practice. Like eating. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Raymond Federman can still teach us what storytelling is and how to tell a story. Especially when that story must skirt the unforgivable enormity. Please find some time in your busy schedules to listen to Ray tell his story.
Storytelling is an ancient practice. Like eating. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Raymond Federman can still teach us what storytelling is and how to tell a story. Especially when that story must skirt the unforgivable enormity. Please find some time in your busy schedules to listen to Ray tell his story.
January 31, 2014
"THE LOST EPIGRAPH
The passage quoted below [by Italo Calvino] [tentatively considered on 11/20/85 as a potential epigraph to a novel then in progress entitled The Chronicle of a Disaster] was uncovered [8/12/95] while cataloguing the [handwritten] manuscript of that novel] This would-be epigraph [which does not appear in the published version of the book entitled To Whom It May Concern] reveals the radical shift in the author's view and function of literature [some ten years earlier] It is unfortunate that this epigraph was not included in the final [published] version of the novel for it clearly reveals how the author [in this work-in- progress] is renouncing his addiction to the theory that says that writing is simply playing games with language [arte dolce] and that he is now squarely embracing the theory that says that writing is an attempt to say what cannot be said [the unspeakable-unnamable] [arte utile] Had this epigraph [from Italo Calvino] appeared in the [published] book [in 1990] critics and scholars would not have been misled in their reading of To Whom It May Concern and would have understood that the author [known until then mostly as a chaos-drunk experimental surfictionist playgiarist who played gimmicky typographical games with deliberate outrageous self-reflexiveness] had not regressed into more conventional forms [as the critics claimed] [some of them going so far as t suggest that the author had returned to realism] [or what was passing for realism at the time these critics were saying that] and more conventional language [whatever that may be] [all language is a deviation from language] and that he was now writing as if he wanted to say something [tell a story] [the real story] but of course knew that it would never happen [could never happen] [but nonetheless took the risk of stumbling upon the right aggregate of words] [before the final silence] It is really unfortunate that this marvelous [most valuable and revealing] statement by Italo Calvino did not appear with the [published] book [in 1990] for it does certainly inform the entire oeuvre of the author [especially its duplicity] [its doubleness] [not to mention its evasiveness] We are delighted [therefore] to be able to present here [today] [with the kind permission of the author] the full text of the Calvino epigraph [contemplated] [in 85] so that readers [critics scholars and whoever else is concerned] may know [once and for all] that the author of To Whom It May Concern never regresses in his work [he only transgresses] Here is the absent-[epigraph]-text by Calvino: Let us attempt a thesis contrary to the one I have developed so far. That is always the best way to avoid getting trapped in the spiral of one's own thoughts. Did we say that literature is entirely involved with language, that it is merely the permutation of a restricted number of elements and functions? But is the tension in literature not continually striving to escape from this finite number Does it not continually attempt to say something it cannot say, something it does not know and that no one could ever know? It is hoped that this revelation will renew interest in this greatly neglected [even forgotten] novel and help correct a major misconception on the part of the general public [in terms of the author's view of literature] It becomes clear also [in the light of this statement] how for the past ten years or so the author has been working in a form of writing which brings together [in a critifictional-autobiographical mode] the real and the imaginary [the remembered and the forgotten]"
from: http://www.federman.com/rfsrcr0.htm
The passage quoted below [by Italo Calvino] [tentatively considered on 11/20/85 as a potential epigraph to a novel then in progress entitled The Chronicle of a Disaster] was uncovered [8/12/95] while cataloguing the [handwritten] manuscript of that novel] This would-be epigraph [which does not appear in the published version of the book entitled To Whom It May Concern] reveals the radical shift in the author's view and function of literature [some ten years earlier] It is unfortunate that this epigraph was not included in the final [published] version of the novel for it clearly reveals how the author [in this work-in- progress] is renouncing his addiction to the theory that says that writing is simply playing games with language [arte dolce] and that he is now squarely embracing the theory that says that writing is an attempt to say what cannot be said [the unspeakable-unnamable] [arte utile] Had this epigraph [from Italo Calvino] appeared in the [published] book [in 1990] critics and scholars would not have been misled in their reading of To Whom It May Concern and would have understood that the author [known until then mostly as a chaos-drunk experimental surfictionist playgiarist who played gimmicky typographical games with deliberate outrageous self-reflexiveness] had not regressed into more conventional forms [as the critics claimed] [some of them going so far as t suggest that the author had returned to realism] [or what was passing for realism at the time these critics were saying that] and more conventional language [whatever that may be] [all language is a deviation from language] and that he was now writing as if he wanted to say something [tell a story] [the real story] but of course knew that it would never happen [could never happen] [but nonetheless took the risk of stumbling upon the right aggregate of words] [before the final silence] It is really unfortunate that this marvelous [most valuable and revealing] statement by Italo Calvino did not appear with the [published] book [in 1990] for it does certainly inform the entire oeuvre of the author [especially its duplicity] [its doubleness] [not to mention its evasiveness] We are delighted [therefore] to be able to present here [today] [with the kind permission of the author] the full text of the Calvino epigraph [contemplated] [in 85] so that readers [critics scholars and whoever else is concerned] may know [once and for all] that the author of To Whom It May Concern never regresses in his work [he only transgresses] Here is the absent-[epigraph]-text by Calvino: Let us attempt a thesis contrary to the one I have developed so far. That is always the best way to avoid getting trapped in the spiral of one's own thoughts. Did we say that literature is entirely involved with language, that it is merely the permutation of a restricted number of elements and functions? But is the tension in literature not continually striving to escape from this finite number Does it not continually attempt to say something it cannot say, something it does not know and that no one could ever know? It is hoped that this revelation will renew interest in this greatly neglected [even forgotten] novel and help correct a major misconception on the part of the general public [in terms of the author's view of literature] It becomes clear also [in the light of this statement] how for the past ten years or so the author has been working in a form of writing which brings together [in a critifictional-autobiographical mode] the real and the imaginary [the remembered and the forgotten]"
from: http://www.federman.com/rfsrcr0.htm
September 18, 2017
Like possibly all of Federman's novels (though granted I've only read two), this one deals with narrativity, the approaches to writing the unapproachable, and the vast black rifts of personal/historical memory. It's a gentler experience in all ways than his pyrotechnically fragmented and avoidant debut Double or Nothing, but also more personal and piercing in its movement towards direct confrontation with the past. Probably a better entry point to his work, arguably, but less pure.
December 27, 2023
Been a few years, but it’s Moinous so it’s part of everyone’s syllabi.
Federman: a man with a heart bigger than The Beatles—X
Federman: a man with a heart bigger than The Beatles—X
March 19, 2021
How can one write such a novel with all the emphasises on the text being "fiction" and makes it feel so realistic, I know it is not the case or the concern of the writer but I am fascinated,all the narrative -or text- breaks from the writer yet losing myself in the story.
Thanks to my post-modernism class I've met such an amazing writer. This novel is not your "typical" read but definetely should be given a chance!
Thanks to my post-modernism class I've met such an amazing writer. This novel is not your "typical" read but definetely should be given a chance!
September 6, 2017
To Whom It May Concern is an eloquent surfictionist treatment of one family's experience of the Shoah. Federman alternates between telling the story of two cousins in both past and present, and describing his own struggles with the writing of the book through first-person narration and letters written to a colleague. For those readers conditioned to conventional realism, which Federman notably eschewed, this work sits on the more approachable end of the postmodern fiction spectrum and would serve as a good entry point to that wide-ranging literary mode.
November 26, 2008
to all that reading...
April 26, 2016
Slightly substantial.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews