The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories

by Ivan Vladislavić

 “Not writing is always a relief and sometimes a pleasure. Writing about what cannot be written, by contrast, is the devil’s own job.”In this unusual text, a blend of essay, fiction, and literary genealogy, South African novelist Ivan Vladislavic explores the problems and potentials of the fictions he could not bring himself to write. Drawing from his notebooks of the past twenty years, Vladislavic records here a range of ideas for stories—unsettled accounts, he calls them, or case studies of failure—and examines where they came from and why they eluded him. In the process, he reveals some of the principles that matter to him as a writer, and pays tribute to the writers— such as Walser, Perec, Sterne, and DeLillo—who have been important to him as both a reader and an author. At the heart of the text, like a brightly lit room in a field of debris, stands Vladislavic’s Loss Library itself, the shelves laden with books that have never been written. On the page, Vladislavic tells us, every loss may yet be recovered. An extraordinary book about both the nature of novels and the process of writing, The Loss Library will appeal to anyone seeking to understand the almost magical and mythical experience of breathing life into a new work of fiction. Praise for  Vladislavic “In the tradition of Elias Canetti, a tour de force of the imagination.”—André Brink “The prose is stunning. It gives the impression of the words and the phrases having been caught from the inside—as though the author lives on the other side of language, where every word is strange and dancing, and the way they are put together produces complicated patterned exchanges like minuets.”—Tony Morphet  

Genres: South Africa, Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Africa, Writing, African Literature

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Ivan Vladislavić is a novelist, essayist and editor. He lives in Johannesburg where he is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. His books include The Folly, The Restless Supermarket, Portrait with Keys and Double Negative. Among his recent publications are Flashback Hotel, a compendium of early stories; The Loss Library, a reflection on writing; and 101 Detectives, a collection of new short stories. He has edited volumes on architecture and art. His work has won several prizes, including the University of Johannesburg Prize, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction. In 2015, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction by Yale University.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

At every author reading, invariably somebody asks where inspiration comes from, which is an interesting question more to see the author’s reaction (ranging anywhere from humorous contempt to frustrated anger. I’ve heard stories of people like David Foster Wallace chastising the asker and walking off the stage) than to hear any sort of answer. It’s considered by many to be to be an impossible answer, and perhaps most authors are satisfied to be authors without having to be neurologists as well. There are numerous writings that attempt to answer this question however, notably in my mind is Ray Bradbury’s writings regarding feeding the muse in ‘Zen in the Art of Writing’.
What‘s extraordinary in ‘The Loss Library’ is how much it deals with the questions of inspiration and process by meditating on a few of the ideas that failed. Starting off with an idea from old notebooks, Ivan Vladislavic revisits stagnant jottings and ruminates on the ideas themselves while at the same time giving the not-stories historical and personal context and reasons why these were never aloud to grow and take steps. By the time the reader gets to the story of ‘The Loss Library’, striking from the first sentence in how it’s flushed out as a story in comparison to the elucidations that precede it, we expect this story to drop off at any moment, but the completeness of the story leaves an eerie space, being at the same time unfinished and finished; keeping with the theme of the first half of the book and pushing it as well. The book shifts, perhaps in mood but certainly in scope, and a book of jottings about unfinished and abandoned ideas rounds out almost to a novel, but certainly full and rounded, making these orphaned thoughts one whole being. Vladislavic’s project is beautiful, original, inspirational, humble…

[Eoin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect this might be the most post-modern book I have read. It claims to be a collection of unfinished stories with explanatory essays for each, but I'm pretty sure it's a novella whose protagonist is Ivan Vladislavic. Basically, it's a writer writing about not writing, while demonstrating such proficiency that the premise (that Vladislavic did not or could not finish the stories) becomes unsupportable. This is a book that unwrites itself. Worth it for any story, the Robert Walser piece especially.

[Richard Cho · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an ingenious book! It is composed of the author's various notes that outlines the beginning of creative projects that failed! Hence the "loss library." An inspiration that begets a project but never completes. The books is a mix of essay, fiction, and lament.

An in-depth look at the creative/writing process. The author's witty, and although he details those projects that failed, there's certain optimism in his voice. One quote says:
"An imperfect mechanism is often beautiful. There must be play in the mechanism for it to function properly: the perfectly tooled device, one whose components fitted together perfectly--by what measure?--would be rigidly immobile. It would seize up, it would not move." P 114

I particularly enjoyed his reference to great writers: Robert Walser, Georges Perec, Rebalais, etc..

--------
Quotes:

Is it fair to weave fictions out of the lives of real people? How else are fictions to be made? All fiction is the factual refracted. Is the degree of refraction, that is, the extent to which the factual is distorted, the mark of accomplishment? P. 27

Operating within self-imposed constraints or carrying out a set of rigid procedures can lead to the discovery of new and surprising effects. Constraints are welcomes as a kind of resistance against which the imagination grinds and sparks. Difficulty often produces a daring imaginative response. P. 32

Play, according to Barthelme, is one of the great possibilities of art. P. 33

But standing on the shoulders of giants is a skill that comes from long practice. When you start out, you are more likely to get under their feet. P. 45

In Sebald, the images are cut down to size and drained of authority. They are always less than or more than illustrative; they do not live up to the text or they carry an excess that demands an explanation. Their purpose is less to define than to disrupt, to create ripples and falls in the beguiling flow of the prose. They are pebbles and weirs. P. 54

On 10 May 1933, the day of the book-burning in Berlin, it poured with rain. It is tempting to read this chance event as divine disapproval but worse conflagrations have passed without the heavens shedding a tear. In any event, the wood that stood ready to fuel the fire on Opernplatz was damp and had to be doused with petrol before it would catch. P. 101

[David Klompas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ivan Vladislavic's collection of unfinished stories is at first interesting as a novelty item - some essays that reflect on unfinished stories in a unique way. But upon reading through these rich essays, the novelty fades away and it becomes clear that Vladislavic had grander intentions in mind when he composed this book.

Composition is indeed an apt term for Vladislavic's musings, for they are not merely essays which describe a process. They are rather a collection of prose, pieces interspersed with notebook entries, which come to life when considered as a singular body of work.

The entire collection, twelve essays in total, are structured neatly around one central eponymous short story that was written in 2005, The Loss Library. It tells the tale of a writer who finds himself in a massive library where all the unwritten stories of history land up.

This structure, which finds The Loss Library directly in the middle, reveals itself to be the overriding purpose of this wonderful contemporary piece of literary achievement. Upon completion, the reader is able to look back on the ravages of these lost stories and realise that they have been woven into a coherent narrative which reveals the frustration at the bottom of a writer's creative process.

In truth, it is only once the reader completes the journey through this exciting world that they are able to realize just how beautiful Vladislavic's prose is. Instead of lamenting his inability to finish all the ideas that come into his head, Vladislavic decides rather to construct an ode to writers everywhere. And in so doing, he has composed a charming collection of what might have been which actually speaks to what actually is.

[Emma-Louise Ekpo · Rating 5 out of 5]

More authors should be releasing their unfinished stories, the fusion of essays, fiction and history creates an fruitful peak in to Vladislavić’s written journey.

My favourites were The Loss Library, Gross and Mouse Drawing. I cannot express the beauty of these unfinished fictions and the stream of consciousness around them. The imagery is classic Vladislavić at his best, any fans of his work should pick this up.

I can’t wait to read again.

[Varun Nayar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been obsessed for some time now with Vladislavić's writing on post-apartheid Johannesburg/Pretoria, and his ability to approach complex and polarizing political problems with sincerity and directness. Although not his best work (nothing beats 'Missing Persons'), The Loss Library is a gem for anyone who's interested in how he thinks.

[Josh Slingers · Rating 5 out of 5]

In another life I have a third major - English lit. I spend my days reading Vladislavic and attempt to make observations as humorous and insightful as his.

“Yet words on a page make all things possible. Any line, even this one, may be a place to begin”.

[Tristan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first, middle, and last short stories are good, the rest are mediocre at best.

[Tonymess · Rating 4 out of 5]

In recent weeks I have reviewed a couple of books by Jacques Poulin which celebrate the written word, both novels having the protagonist as a writer or translator and working in a remote location, struggling with writer’s block or simply coming to terms with the written word. I have also reviewed “Dear Reader” by Paul Fournel, lamenting the death of publishing and the interference of editors. Another being “The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell” by Carlos Rojas where our author says “my novel, we’ll call it that in order to call it something, represents absolutely nothing.” So a series of reviews celebrating the written word. Let’s continue the theme for a little longer shall we?

Just over a year ago I reviewed Ivan Vladislavic’s “Double Negative”, from South Africa, a story of Neville Lister, a university drop out, who has returned to live in his parent’s home, working meaningless jobs (painting the lines in car parks). A family friend and famed photographer agrees to take Neville on a tour for a day, teaming up with a journalist they are seeking a story and images of the pre-Apartheid era of South Africa.

“The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories” is a beautifully presented book, containing eleven explorations and narrations of short stories the writer never finished. Each “story” having an inserted artwork by Sunandini Banerjee, each specially created for each fragment. As our cover flap says this is an “unusual test, a blend of essay, fiction and literary genealogy” where “South African novelist Ivan Vladislavic explores the problems and potentials of the fictions he could not bring himself to write.”

Unlike a number of reviews I have done in the past, of short story collections, I won’t go into each of the eleven “stories” here, picking only a few as an example of the book.

For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/

[Tiah]

- I want to write a story about the last days of a writer, but I am preoccupied with hats. . . . Of all the things people wear, nothing is more expressive of character than a hat, perhaps because it is so close to the wearer's face, or even to his mind. This dead man's hat is small, light and jaunty, with an impish tilt in the brim. It makes the random ending of his life seem more outrageous. -

- In the end, real people are nearly harder to like than fictional characters. Is it fair to weave fictions out of the lives of people? How else are fictions to be made? All fiction is the factual refracted. Is the degree of refraction, that is, the extent to which the factual is distorted, the mark of accomplishment? -

- It is interesting that we do not often think of figures or landscapes "frozen" in words. -

- 'All the books in our library are lost in their own way,' she says, 'but the sorriest of all, in my opinion, are those that were talked away by their authors. -

- Not writing is always a relief and sometimes a pleasure. Writing about what cannot be written, by contrast, is the devil's own job. Yet words on a page make all things possible. Any line, even this one, may be a place to begin. -

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do writers do with their unfinished stories, novels and essays?
This extraordinary collection of stories by South African novelist Ivan Vladuskavic is an exploration of unsettled accounts of writing; stories begun and abandoned and others that ultimately ended life as a line or two in a notebook. There are eleven in all of what the author calls case studies taken from his notebooks of the past 20 years. Along the way he pays homage to other writers such as Walser, Perec, Sterne, and DeLillo. This collection is less about the stories and more about the writing process and the nature of novels,
I am not a huge reader of short stories but found each one to be compelling, provocative and unique. The title story is hauntingly beautiful and Vladislavic's prose is stunning.

“Not writing is always a relief and sometimes a pleasure. Writing about what cannot be written, by contrast, is the devil’s own job. Yet words on a page make all things possible. Any line, even this one, may be a place to begin.”

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Slate's written
a good article on The Loss Library

"The Loss Library is a beautifully made book. Illustrations by Sunandini Bannerjee are tipped into the opening pages of chapters – their distortions, suggestions and incompletions complement the author’s intent and style. There is a sly slightness to the book, an airiness that inspires wonder about the elusive narratives all around us."
The Loss Library is published by the University of Chicago Press and by Umuzi, Randomstruik in South Africa

[Katy Derbyshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun. Stories about lost stories, grouped around a story about a library of lost books. I enjoyed them a great deal and then even more when I stopped taking them at face value. Wouldn't it be delightful if the premise were all a deceit? If Vladislavic hadn't ever started his abandoned fragments but made these up too, and wrote stories around them? I think I half-believed that by the end, when the final piece echoed the first in its description of a photograph of a dead body.

All accompanied by collages by Sunandini Bannerjee, as beautiful as we now expect of her work, almost falling off the pages of my copy because they're hand-glued. Really the ultimate book fetishist's book.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beguiling series of lost and near-begun stories, fictions, pieces of life. Vladislavic is as ever effortless in his creation of striking images and catching tales, and as ever honest with his own sense of pride and self-effacement. Stand out stories include the nearly-fledged "The Loss Library", the wonderfully whimsical tale of inadvertent creation "Mouse Drawing", and the whimsically melancholic "Dictionary Birds". As Vladislavic and other reviewers have noted, these fragments work better in their unfinished form than they would have as finished pieces. Also enclosed are a series of clever prints, most graphics overlaid with simple drawings.

[Monster · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely a booknerd's book. When I told someone what it was "about," they asked, "How do you even publish something like that?!"

Regardless of the answer, I'm happy someone did. This book feels like being in a modern art museum where half-formed Kurosawan dreams about literary compulsion and bibliophilia line the walls. I didn't really understand the intention of the book until it was over and my rating likely reflects the continual uncertainty that accompanied my read of this book. I recommend it anyway.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully presented, this unassuming little book contains wry observations and great wisdom about the mysterious process of literary inspiration and the ways it can get lost or waylaid. Vladislavić is a gifted writer and to spend time with him in this relaxed format is great gift. For my detailed review, please see: http://wp.me/p4GDHM-kc

[Paige Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredible. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
A book that is as much about the process of writing as it is about the lost stories.
Now really want to read his book/story The Book Lover.

[Poupeh]

stories about stories that were not written, stories of failed attempts that are failing and yet succeeding.

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of my thoughts on it embedded here: http://www.5cense.com/12/numb_daze_3.htm

[Fela · Rating 3 out of 5]

the only complete story in the book, "the loss library" is a masterpiece.

a very good book of the writer discussing his unfinished work and inspirations behind them.

[José Toledo · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of us who write have been through this, it's a well-worn path. So an entire book dedicated to musing about fiction you could not bring yourself to write is, well ... boring.