Sağırlık

by Jesse Ball, Berrak Göçer (Translator)

“Sabah yürüyüşe çıkılırsa olacağı buydu. Evinden çıkan herkes başına gelecekleri hak etmiş demektir.”

James Sim bir pazar sabahı parkta yere kıvrılmış yatan bir adamla karşılaşır. Göğsünden bıçaklanmış olan adam son nefesinde bir isim fısıldar: Samedi. Ve bu tek kelimeyle James kendini bir kedi-fare oyununun ortasında bulur.

Onu evine kadar izleyen etkileyici kızın amacı nedir? Samedi kimdir? Yedinci günün sonunda neler olacaktır?

Çağdaş Amerikan edebiyatının en heyecan verici isimlerinden biri olan Jesse Ball, Sağırlık’ta yer yer sersemletici olan sıradışı bir dünya yaratmakla kalmamış, bir o kadar da çarpıcı bir karakter ortaya koymuş. Sonuç: nefes kesici bir roman.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Novels, Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Thriller, Literature

333 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2007

About the author

Jesse Ball (1978-) Born in New York. The author of fourteen books, most recently, the novel How To Set a Fire and Why. His prizewinning works of absurdity have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recipient of the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize, as well as fellowships from the NEA, the Heinz foundation, and others, he is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

”I don’t know what to think, said James. It’s all rather strange to me.”

My first experience of Jesse Ball was in Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017. Here, I read the short work, “A Wooden Taste Is the Word for Dam a Wooden Taste Is the Word for Dam a Wooden Taste Is the Word For”. In fact, I read it three or four times trying to make sense of it.

Those who know me will know that meant I was hooked - I do love a book that makes no sense. In my review of that magazine, I said “…you have to like your reading to have surreal element if you are going to like Jesse Ball's contribution.” But it took a while for Ball to then reel me in as I got side-tracked by other books until I picked up Census about a year later and then The Divers’ Game more recently which prompted me to explore more of Ball’s work.

So, here we are at the beginning. Ball’s debut novel, published in 2007, a full 10 years before the bizarre short story that first captured my interest.

And it’s a weird one. Jesse Ball has a remarkable ability to write in a way feels simultaneously carefully planned and completely spontaneous. Never once does it feel like the story is getting out of the author’s control. But the book is so full of plot twists and turns and bizarre events that it feels as though, like Murakami, Ball is making it all up as he goes along. I have read in some interviews with Ball that he “saw” the story he tells here in his mind’s eye and essentially just sat down and wrote it out: what we read is, in essence, a first draft.

All this adds up to a sense of shifting foundations. Or perhaps no foundations. The reader quickly learns that nothing is trustworthy. Indeed, we spend a lot of the book in a “verisylum” which is an institution for the treatment of chronic liars.

Take a step back. James Sim discovers a dying man in a park and that man’s final words link his murder to a terrorist conspiracy. Elsewhere, men keep arriving, one a day, at the White House where they commit suicide whilst carrying a warning note signed by the eponymous Samedi. Very quickly, James is drawn in a web of intrigue and deception where absolutely nothing is what it seems to be. As he follows clues, he finds himself at the verisylum where it becomes increasingly difficult for both him and the reader to know what is true and what is a lie. For the reader, it is safest to assume that everything you read will turn out to be false and several new versions of potential truths will be presented on subsequent pages. Several times I thought about the TV series 24 where it seems no matter how trapped the bad guys are, there is always another hidden escape: the plot of this book feels very much like that. If you accept that and go along for the ride, it is actually tremendous fun.

With the odd flashback to James’ childhood, including a talking owl, and a strange episode where James calls his wife to ask if he is actually at home asleep in his bed and dreaming, everything is often rather surreal. And, by the way, his wife says he is asleep at home. But then the phone turns out not to be real. Read this telephone episode carefully, though, as your thoughts will return to it when you read the final page. Ball takes great delight in language and often uses phrases or sentences that add to the reader’s confusion - there are several points in the book where you sit up straight and go back thinking “What did I just read? And what does it mean?”. You can re-read it to answer the first question, but you may not be able to answer the second.

I took great delight in reading this book. The key comparisons I have seen that resonate with me are with David Lynch, Hitchcock and my very limited understanding of Kafka (I bought a copy of The Trial whilst reading this as I realised I need to address my lamentable lack of Kafka experience). Those are three very big names to be compared with! It could have got rather predictably unpredictable once I realised everything was going to turn out to be a lie, but it didn’t. Get predictably unpredictable or all turn out to be a lie.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liars are very rooted in identity. Their passion for identity might even be said to be greater than that of honest folk. An honest man is content with his identity, content with the facts of the world. A liar goes past the world’s facts and the world’s state and says, I am not as has been seen; what I have done is not what I have been seen to have done. They replace what has been seen with what they have supposed, with what they have hoped for, with divergent accounts of greater or lesser fabulousness.

Jesse Ball’s first published novel, one very heavily inspired by Kafka’s The Castle/The Trial but which also builds on Ball’s own interests (and teaching) in storytelling, poetry and of particular reference here – lying as part of training for writers.

This review (by Paul) explains the (rather ridiculous) plot of the book

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A highlight for me was a brief and rather jarring to the main narrative cameo, when the protagonist calls his wife from his detention to check that he is actually safely asleep in his own bed (a sequence which I think draws on another interest and teaching subject for Ball – dreaming and lucid dreaming); the lowlight undoubtedly the owl.

Also as with “The Way Through Doors”, Ball makes too frequent use of what I can only call the non-sequitur simile (not so much mixed metaphors as missing metaphors) – phrases that don’t really mean anything but which seem designed to add a layer of pretention to what can otherwise be rather banal prose

For example a section which starts: “An hour passed. He feel asleep and woke in the chair …” and continues “I know the whole plot. They can’t forget me so easily” suddenly switches to “If this decimal were to be placed like light in a tube then in what becoming would he have failed”.

But despite the silly plot, the owl (did I already mention the owl, how can I ever forget the ridiculous owl) and the "non-sequitur similes", Ball’s fascination with the art of storytelling and the devices which permit it, does give the book merit and does I think go a little way towards achieving something Ball said in an interview about his early writing:

One of the finest things a good book can provide is a new set of thought shapes, a glimpse at how that writer takes the objects of the world and combines them or holds them separately. That matter, of divisions, joinings, conflations (sometimes useful), hierarchies, really can help us to see better, to deal more sharply or more generously with the confusions and ransackings of our day-to-day existence

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I said outloud to myself when I finished this, after rereading the last page a few times, was "f--king stupid." Yet, I admire a lot about this book: it seemed like it was initially composed as a screenplay, but then transformed into a VERY SPARE whodunnit, apparently heavily influenced by Ben Marcus more than any of the canonical surnames mentioned all over its covers. At times, yes, it reminded me of Kafka (Grieve instead of Lena, the egg room instead of the whipping room, etc) and Lewis Carroll, with the long-time invisible owl friend (or more like Philip Pullman, really), but each time it reminded me of another novel or author -- and, further, every time I admired the audacity of the author (the clouds!) -- all my thoughts went toward the author instead of something maybe more interesting to consider of VALUE (in all caps like that). So, mainly, I applaud the author, agent, and editor on getting this published and into my hands (via my mother's hands/wallet). Also, again, something that people might like (or not) is that it's insanely spare. I am not a particularly fast reader, but I managed 180 pages today in about an hour and half. Lots of white space. Also, in terms of the prose, it's spare and simple, mainly declarative (random representative sentence: "He took James by the arm and lead him to the window", with a handful of lyrical passages, some I thought were pretty awesome (a sex description my mother dog-earred) and some I thought were sort of too precious, especially toward the end of sections as things moved toward the climax . . . So: If you want to have read a book this season without having to devote much time to it, this is it. If you only intermittently read and want to have read a hip book this season that isn't particularly generous in terms of doing much more than confusing you, but is still somehow (remarkably) very readable (in part because it doesn't really seem to matter if you miss something or not), this is the book for you. Honestly, I'm glad I read it. It didn't take too much out of me. And it certainly didn't put anything negative into me. Its intentions seem wholly good. In that way, it's maybe the perfect beach read for literary sorts who never go to the beach and will openly admit to caring way more about form (style) than content (serious shit)? Though, yeah, content-wise, there's meta-fictional stuuf about representations of reality and experimentation, topical political suggestions re: truth-telling etc, a catastrophic humbling reprisal seemingly emitted from on high perpertrated by self-righteous folks on the ground (why no mention of Saramago on the cover?!), but still . . . I think the book plays too many games for me, without much of a sense of thematic victory, the walk-off home run of literary heft . . . Seems like irreal reality's not really my bag no more. I blame Leo F--king Tolstoy!

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Jesse Ball's work. This is the earliest of his books that I've read. It held up well over part of a 9-hour flight.

I loved the unreliable machinations and paranoia of the first two thirds or so. Ball is already playing with themes that he'll develop further: confusion of identity, mysterious disappearances and violent deaths. I can't say I'm that enthusiastic about the reveal regarding Stark's apocalyptic conspiracy; not sure the pseudo-science worked for me. Ball almost seemed to try to make up for the explanations with the two endings, but it's the sort of thing he'll pull off much more skillfully in later novels.

But this was great thoughtful fun, especially for an in-flight novel.

[Beril Heral · Rating 4 out of 5]

hiçbir şey anlamadım ama huşuyla sayfaları çevirdim

[Colette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amanda lent me her copy before she left for China. It was difficult to put down after getting through the first 10 pages. Occasionally I would laugh out loud to myself while reading it, which I rarely do these days (maybe with Pynchon). I found myself reading it on the subway mostly, even when drunk (which almost made me miss my stop - something I've never done before).

I love the way he presents characters and their speech patterns and trains of thought, and the ideas presented about truth and fiction/fantasy. I love the imaginary pet owl and the excursions into his childhood memory the most, I think

My only difficulties with the book lie in its language and style vs. length. It's actually quite a short book, but because of the style in which it was written, it's really easy to feel like it's rambling if a paragraph of description gets a little long. Even more brevity/editing might have done it some good at a few points. That could've also been my alcohol consumption talking, though.

I'm not sure I dislike the last page as much as other reviewers. I understand your disdain, but I also feel like the juxtaposition of the two 'endings' fits within the themes of the book rather well (and maybe he's just trying to assert his optimism).

The most inspiring thing about this book came about from my online research into the author. Apparently, 'Samedi' came to him almost like a dream, and he spent weeks at a writers workshop in a Scottish castle getting it all down. He would write parts of it, and tape up the sheets of paper all around his room... I like the idea of any creative work coming together like this - living and sleeping underneath all of the pieces of this being that you are creating.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

SEVEN DAYS, THEN. SEVEN DAYS AND THEN THE ROD.

SAMEDI

Jesse Balls Census was one of the more egregious omissions from the 2018 Man Booker list.

Samedi the Deafness was his debut novel, written straight through from beginning to end over a few weeks, albeit carefully planned beforehand.

Ball has acknowledged as influences Gogol, Walser and Kafka, Sebald, Calvino, Agota Kristof and, perhaps above all, Thomas Bernhard and from the present day, Fleur Jaeggy and Samanta Schweblin. But for this book, his goto source while writing it was Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent.

As the novel opens, on Sunday (Day 1), James Sim, a mnemonist by profession, is in a park when he comes across a dying man, apparently stabbed to death. With his final breaths the man tells him he is one of the conspirators involved in 'Samedi' and gives Sim clues to follow to unearth the conspiracy.

The reference means nothing to Sim until one hour later he buys a newspaper and sees that a man has committed suicide in front of the White House, leaving a handwritten note that reads:

SEVEN DAYS AND THEN THE ROD. PATHS THAT HAVE BEEN TAKEN ARE WRONG AND MUST BE CORRECTED. THOSE WHO CAN SHOULD NOW DO WHAT THEY WILL TO CHANGE THE WORLD AND LEAVE THEIR NATION IF THEY DO NOT LIKE WHAT IT DOES.

SEVEN DAYS, THEN. SEVEN DAYS AND THEN THE ROD.

SAMEDI

As Sim follows up on the clue - accidentally and fatally aiding and abetting in the defenestration of a drug dealer while he does so - he sees from the newspapers that on Monday and Tuesday as well, suicides take place in front of the White House, each accompanied by a similarly apocalyptical note in the same handwriting.

Meanwhile Sim continues his rather blundering and eccentric pursuit of the clues. His own thinking is somewhat odd - at one point when approached in a bar by a woman, a stranger to him, returning the wallet she says he just dropped, Sim seems to channel Sally's brother from The Cat in the Hat:

I will not marry you, thought James. You are not suitable at all. I don’t like your yellow dress. I don’t like your hair-cut. And I don’t like your approaching men in public places.
...
He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Eventually Sim finds himself in a large country house, which he learns is the world's own Verisylum, designed for treating chronic lying, cases where the lying end up compromising the identity of the individual. This it does, following a 19th Century model, by making the inmates follow an arcane set of rules. For example, if anyone wishes to speak to someone else they must first ring a bell, everyone freezes, and then after 15 seconds, while all others remain still, the bellringer may approach their intended listener and speak to them.

there would be no prohibition against lying, but the individuals present in the house, the chronic liars, would find in the arbitrary rules, which, as you’ll come to see, are many, a sort of structure that allowed them, as time passed, to construct an identity for themselves.

The daughter of the man, Stark, who runs the Verisylum is the girl he met in the bar (their meeting no accident, and the wallet she returned one she had pickpocketed some time earlier) and she proves to be a chronic liar herself. When he asks what she had done one afternoon when she is absent from the house she casually replies:

I go on Thursdays to a hospital and see people’s arms and legs back on. I’m not a doctor or anything. I just discovered one day how good I was with sewing on arms and legs. I’d done it often enough with puppets and stuffed animals and so, I thought, well, a person can’t be so much different. To be honest I tried it first with a dog, but the human arm was much too big and the dog just kind of dragged it around.

and when he catches her in flagrante with another man, she claims to have an identical twin, although her father tells Sim her sister is actually 6 years older and very different in appearance. But perhaps the father is lying?

As the days tick by till day 7 - Samedi - and the suicides continue, Sim's investigations of his strange surroundings and even stranger companions are mixed with some flashbacks to his equally odd childhood, brought up by his grandparents after his brother and both parents had each died in separate incidents (ones to which Sim ascribes rather odd causes - his brother's death under the wheels of a bus he attributes to him having thrown a stone at a monkey in the zoo the previous week). Sim's sole childhood friend is a 306-year-old invisible talking owl,

The best hiding place of all, said James’s friend Ansilon, from his perch atop James’s shoulder, is inside something hollow when no one knows it’s hollow. Ansilon was James’s one friend. He was an invisible owl who could tell the future and also speak English, although he preferred to speak in the owl language, which James understood perfectly. -But if no one knows that it’s hollow, said James, then how would I manage to know that it’s hollow? Should I just go around with a little hammer, tapping things?

an lo and behold the owl produces a tiny hammer from under his wing, one that many years later proves useful to Sim as he explores.

And Sim alternates between thinking those in the house are eccentrics with nothing to do with the Samedi conspiracy - which perhaps is all a hoax - to thinking the Stark is himself Samedi. He is able to memorise a book written in code by Stark, and then having the leisure to consider it, crack the simple code, to find that Stark's vision is that, to reform society:

an artificial catastrophe must be made to take place along with a specifically stated explanation. The method of this explanation must be biblical. Men are used to taking such instructions. Biblical too must be the disaster. The nation that must be humbled is the nation in which the most had once been possible, in which the greatest chance had been squandered.

To Deafness, we must send a plague of Deafness, that the world learn the need to hear.

An odd book to say the least, much more abstract that Census, and one where at times the reader simply has to go with the flow. But another striking novel from an impressive author.

[Lee Glanville · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really loved this book. A momentous story filled with poetry and paranoia.


Actually I didn't. That was a lie. I haven't even read the book. Here follows a review of The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua instead.


That was another lie. I have read it right through to the end and I didn't like the book at all. But how do you know even if that is true?

You don't. And so it follows in Jesse Ball's frustrating novel Samedi, the Deafness.

The problem with basing a novel around lying is that eventually you have no idea what is true and what isn't. Not only do all the characters lie, but the narrator does too. It releases all tension from the story because every time something happens you think is this even true?

It seems as though Jesse Ball was trying to write something like Kafka, (in the back of my book Ball also credits Kafka as one of his favourite writers) with the character always in the dark, never truly knowing who to trust, but it only comes across as a bad imitation. There is no tension and no atmosphere of dread or paranoia such as you'll find in The Trial or The Metamorphosis.

I also found the language in Samedi pretentious at times. There are many awkward phrases. It's as if Ball has thought of something that sounds nice but doesn't really mean anything.


"A dark name like a walking stick broken in anger."

"He thought of colours in a string, and how light wasn't really what they said, wasn't really a ray, but more a substance, like water, that could be gathered and kept."

"Steam rose. That was good, he thought. Steam was good. It had often been a solution to problems. Why not now?"

"One can only speak slowly all the things one has thought while out drowsing in a world broken up not as we think, into places, seperated by space, but broken up solely by time, which moves slow then fast again, while all else holds still."

"A bird that sits in a cage is likewise endowed with the fortune of domesticity and the failuire of civilisation."


Small bits of information are revealed about the main character as the story progresses but none of them tell you anything about him or are important. You are told something whimsical then it never appears in the story again.

The main character also doesn't have a personality at all. He does not change at all throughout the book and remains the same flat character the whole way through. Ball tries to flesh out his character a bit with flashbacks to when James Sim is a child, but they don't tell us anything about him; only that he was very lonely and had an imaginary friend.


A shame since I found the initial mystery interesting but it just became frustrating and then simply boring.

[Patrick Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is one of the best books I have read in a long while. Jesse Ball is firstly a poet, and his writing style is amazing and easy to read, and he is also a great plotter, and this story has an amazing fast-paced plot that keeps you on edge for most of it.

The story centers around James Sim, a mnemonist that seems to moonlight as a detective, who stumbles upon a dead man that says he knows what Samedi is doing, and that his friends are planning something horrible. A string of suicides on the lawn of the White House, all with notes from the mysterious "samedi" confirm the dying man's warning. James Sim goes to a asylum for chronic liars in order to uncover the plot and in doing so meets with some of the most interesting characters I've ever read.

The books asks a lot of questions, about identity, about truth, and all about right and wrong. It is worth everybody reading, it will take about 7 hours or so to read, but you will start reading it again the moment you finish it, it is that good and probing. Be prepared to warm up your brain cells. The book comes out on Tuesday (Sept. 4)

[Will Kaufman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started off really liking this book, and it had its moments the whole way through. In the end though there were too many moments when I either just wanted the book to get on with it, or felt like uninteresting diversions were distracting the story. This book didn't really live up to its potential. Ball's poeticism is undeniable, but the book gets bogged down in poeticizing certain seemingly minor plot elements.
For anyone who's read the book: I didn't give a damn about all the minutiae of the madhouse, and I wish there was more with the invisible pet owl. I also got pretty sick of the hero's back and forth on who he believes.
It's an ok book and a quick read, I recommend it if you're into experimental takes on genre fiction, but not if you're looking for either a good piece of literature or an entertaining genre work.

[Gastón · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esta novela es extraña, no por su narración lisérgica o por no saber qué es mentira y qué es verdad, sino porque la verosimilitud temblequea a cada rato.
La historia va más o menos así: James es un tipo común, normal, que pasea por un parque lo más tranquilo hasta que de repente se cruza con un hombre al que apuñalaron. Con lo último que le queda, ese hombre dice "Samedi".
A partir de ahí comienza una historia inentenible y divertida por momentos: James va a parar a un lugar para mentirosos clínicos tras ser acusado de matar a un hombre; allí conoce a muchas personas que llevan el mismo nombre, mienten constantemente, juegan con la identidad y varios refieren a una conspiración en ciernes.
El tema es que, en esta primera lectura, nunca logré entrar en la historia. Parece más un ejercicio que una novela. Todo el juego verdad/mentira lo sentí como un "a ver si te la creés o no" apuntado hacia el lector. Para algunos ese puede ser su punto fuerte pero a mí, en cambio, me hace pensar en poco trabajo de escritura.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay. Am totally biased. I had such a crush on Jesse Ball when he was at Columbia studying for his MFA. It was a shocker to pass by a bookshelf and see him on it. Now I'm ready for a binge. I remember he was into Kafka, Rilke, Borges--all of whose influence you can see in this fast-paced, quirky, detective novel. For me it's his phrasing of things, as well as the off-kilter images--i.e. man receiving a mask of his own face, girl sewing herself into a sack so she can sleep next to a guy, etc.--that makes the narrative peculiar and intriguing. You can tell Ball's roots are in poetry. Definitely can see the comparison with David Lynch. Wanted more endings--not just the two. But, wow, how amazing to read how Jesse has metamorphosed from the rather shy teacher of an uncredited poetry class to this. Definitely an author to keep an eyeball on.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somebody please read this and explain to me what the hell happened! It was very Alice in Wonderland crossed with Waiting for Godot or some other surreal, existential whatever. It begins with an average man (who's profession is as a mnemonist--rememberer) witnessing the assassination of a man who claims to be part of a global conspiracy. Things the dead man said begin coming true and soon the main character is abducted and taken away to the conspiracy headquarters, which doubles as a "verisylumn," a hospital for chronic liers, where everyone lies. Even though it's confusing, the book is never boring, and the confusion is all part of the story. I do know what happened, it's just complicated. I'm thinking of re-reading it. It's a quick read. And I loved it, by the way.

[Mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this story, he’s great at really selling something in the second half, there were just some moments when it was unbearably twee.

[Deepthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child, I learned to conceal my love of fantasy. Reading it was apparently a geeky pastime, and other kids didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for talking animals and magical forests. These days, it’s a very different story, with pop culture tropes like cute robots and unicorns, artists like Bjork making living in an elfin world a reality, and a slew of mainstream movie adaptations following in the vastly successful footsteps of Lord of the Rings. Having cast off my mantle of fantasy shame, I can proudly acknowledge that my literary diet of fairy tales, young adult mysteries like The Westing Game, and fantasies like The Dark is Rising prepared me well to appreciate the half-lit pleasures of Samedi the Deafness, the lyrical first full-length novel by author Jesse Ball. A dreamlike literary thriller, Samedi the Deafness plunges readers into a dubious reality that seems to have been distilled from the burdens and escapist tendencies of our modern society. Elements of the fantastic and the absurd pepper the narrative, which concerns one week in the life of James Sim, who stumbles across a mysterious conspiracy that may or may not threaten a doubting nation.

Samedi the Deafness gets going as James Sim is taking his Sunday walk and encounters a dying man in a park, who tells him the desperate details of a conspiracy unfolding on the lawn of the nearby White House. Sim has been trained as a mnenomist, able to remember any detail he sees with an elephantine memory, which of course comes in handy as he investigates the dying man’s story. The novel follows a common plot outline from thrillers of decades past -- a bewildered protagonist meets a mysterious and fetching young woman. The young woman turns out to be the daughter of the man who is the powerful, shadowy figure at the center of a mysterious conspiracy carried out by an intimate circle of male colleagues. The protagonist must deal with a steady stream of secret notes, numerous lies and half-truths, and the occasional death as he fumbles his way towards an ambiguous truth.

Sim’s character is developed at a leisurely pace, introduced as a pondering sort of soul, but left a largely blank canvass for several days. In the main story, he emerges as a somewhat naïve figure who makes a few unforced errors in judgment that force the reader to cringe slightly, but also to identify with him as a fallible sort. In a series of vignettes from his prodigious memory, Sim becomes even more personal to the reader, as an illumination of some mostly forgotten suspended state of emotion from childhood. And upon rereading, I realized just how much rumination on childhood is inserted into a generally fast-moving plot. The story even opens with Sim’s encounter with two young boys rather than plunging immediately into the Kafkaesque events.

A series of suicides taking place on the lawn of the White House is the only real reference in Samedi the Deafness that places the story in the United States or any other modern nation. And very soon, Sim is taken to a wealthy estate removed from routines of normal daily life, where the inhabitants abide by a set of elaborate rules governing conversation, dress, and even naming conventions. But the series of dreamlike scenes that intersperse the main narrative remove us even further from the harsh light of modern society as Sim’s childhood is presented in an otherworldly light. These scenes, in which Sim talks with his best friend, an invisible talking owl, are hardly a whimsical throwaway, as the author develops a melancholic theme on childhood and its relationship to truth and clarity to complement and interact with the main narrative.

Author Jesse Ball’s lyric yet spare style brings a finely balanced melancholic emotion to the journey of James Sim, reminiscent of Murukami’s finest works (at least in the English translations). A tension quietly builds as Sim enters the eerie country house and encounters a gently bizarre landscape of characters who share names but not their meals, quarters but not a social life. It is only when Ball has his characters explain their motivations behind the unfolding events that the novel loses a little of the atmosphere Ball has painstakingly constructed. Even though very little explanation is given, even less might be desirable, leaving the reader to independently interpret the themes of lies and responsibility, childhood and honesty.

While many have remarked on Ball’s genre subversion of the thriller, I was equally struck by how organically he integrates elements of children’s fantasy into Samedi the Deafness. The nonsensical wordplay of Lewis Carroll and the dimly-lit foreboding of Susan Cooper are as strongly evoked as the bewildering complexity of Thomas Pynchon. Samedi the Deafness is almost pitch perfect in technique, and approaches greatness in substance. I expect Ball will only continue to develop his talents, fine-tuning his unique amalgamation of plot and style in the forthcoming World’s Fair 7 June 1978.

[Ellen IJzerman (Prowisorio) · Rating 4 out of 5]

De hoofdpersoon, James Sim, ia een 'mnenomist', iemand die - in dit geval na langdurige training - over een fotografisch geheugen beschikt. Het is niet alleen een eigenschap van James, maar ook zijn werk. Maar hoe, waarom en voor wie hij dit werk doet blijft 'duister'. Het betaalt in ieder geval goed.

Op een dag, tijdens een wandeling, is James net niet getuige van een moord. De daders heeft hij nl. niet gezien, maar hij is wel net op tijd bij het slachtoffer om van hem nog het e.e.a. te horen over een samenzwering. Thomas McHale, zoals het slachtoffer heet, kan nog net wat namen en andere informatie uiten alvorens te sterven. James maakt dat hij wegkomt, bang als hij is dat de daders nog in de buurt zijn en neemt zich voor de boel de boel te laten. Helaas wordt hij de volgende dag weer geconfronteerd met de naam Samedi en aarzelend volgt hij een van de aanwijzingen die hij van McHale heeft gehoord op. Het resulteert erin dat een man door het raam springt en James in een verisylum belandt, gekidnapt door de tweelingbroer van Thomas McHale, Thomas McHale.

James, opgesloten en verliefd op wat waarschijnlijk de dochter van Samedi is, heeft intussen nog slechts zes dagen om de bijbelse tragedie te voorkomen die Samedi de Amerikanen belooft. Hij doet er alles aan om te begrijpen wat er aan de hand is en wat er staat te gebeuren, maar hij merkt al snel dat het niet alleen lastig is om zijn weg te vinden in het gebouw, maar dat de mensen die het bevolken net als de regels die gevolgd moeten worden net zo moeilijk te vatten zijn.

Doorspekt met schitterend geschreven jeugdherinneringen van een eenzaam jongetje die geholpen wordt door zijn onzichtbare wijze uil, is Samedi the Deafness bijna een thriller. Het begint razend, met moorden en een kidnapping, maar komt tot bijna stilstand als James eenmaal in het verysilum is terechtgekomen. Uiteindelijk breekt de laatste dag aan en wordt James het een en ander duidelijk.
Samedi the deafness bevat diverse passages waar ik - eerlijk is eerlijk - eigenlijk geen kaas van kon maken, maar die ik wel ontroerend mooi vond. Poëtisch, eigenlijk. En naarmate ik ze vaker herlas om het toch te pakken te krijgen, nog mooier. Verpakt in een maf, onderhoudend, kronkelig, thrillerachtig verhaal met een superschurk die het goed bedoelt, is dit een absurd verhaal dat net op tijd stopt. Langer doorgaan zou desastreus zijn geweest.

rule 37
It is necessary when proceeding from hall to hall and along the stairways never to speak with anyone you see, aside from servants. Should you wish to speak to someone, ring the bell that has been provided to you. Everyone in the vicinity will stop his or her movements. Count then to fifteen and approach the other person, giving them time to gather their thoughts. Then you may pose your question or voice your concern.
Also, a better method of interaction is afforded by the system of note-sending. All the rooms of the house are provided with a small mail shelf on the near wall beside the door. Simply place your note on the shelf, and it will be received and responded to at the person's leisure. If you suspect that the person is within the room, and you are leaving a note when time is of the essence, you may knock once upon the door knocker.
See rule 14 for the particularities of the use of the door knocker.

Met dank aan Justin Waerts, door wiens essay ik Jesse Ball ook heb mogen ontdekken.

[Sean Carman · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the end it was like Jesse Ball had a great idea that didn't quite pan out.

"Samedi" starts with a kick. James Sim, who thinks and speaks cautiously, and in formal sentences, discovers, on his Sunday morning walk, a man dying in the park. He's been stabbed in the chest, and in his dying words utters a string of clues about a sinister-sounding conspiracy led by "Samedi." He tells James to start with a man called "Estrainger," who lives in "The Chinese district" and poses as a playwright. The next day James sees an item in the paper about a suicide near the White House who carries a note that warns in ominous language about the coming end of the world.

So far, so good. A noir thriller in the style of a Kafka novel or a Ben Marcus story.

But when James tries to track down Estrainger, he ends up instead walking in on a domestic scene involving another man, who leaps from the window, killing himself. James flees the scene. Then he's tailed by a young woman who flirts with him, and finally he's kidnapped and taken to a country estate, of sorts, which is also an institution, where he spends the rest of the novel wandering around the grounds, trying to make sense of his new environment, and having an affair with Grieve, the young woman who tailed him. We learn that the man who threw himself from the window of the apartment doesn't matter to the story. There are a million rules that James must follow at the estate. People are always writing notes to each other. All of the women seem to be named Grieve. Occasionally, James wonders whether the people around him might be involved in the conspiracy, or whether there even is a conspiracy. It seems possible, as James dallies with new girlfriend, and passes notes to others on the grounds, that it was all one big misunderstanding.

In other words, when James gets trapped in the estate, the story loses a lot of its energy. With each new turn in the plot, the initial murder matters and less and less. Soon we care more about whether the police, who keep coming to the country estate/institution only to be turned away by its management, will wrongfully arrest James for murdering the irrelevant bystander. James keeps having encounters with various people in the estate -- his new girlfriend Grieve, a maid with the same name, Grieve's twin sister, and several of the would-be conspirators, but it all feels like treading water. James starts to seem more like a butler at loose ends than an outsider trying to solve a murder.

Finally, I have to say, that at the story stalls out, the novel (perhaps unavoidably) becomes increasingly pretentious, and mired in seemingly pointless confusions, like the fact that so many of the characters are named Grieve. In a couple of places, yes, you will roll your eyes.

But "Samedi" is a spare novel and is very easy to read. There's a lot of white space on the page, and the story moves very quickly. So, even though the story loses its way, it's easy to push through to the end. Where, by the way, Jesse Ball throws in a nice narrative touch. So I give him props for that.

I would read another Jesse Ball novel. This one had tremendous potential, and I can easily see him hitting another one out of the park.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very glad this was a good book. I very much wanted it to be. Kind of Murakami-esque, which is to say, post-modern semi-noir combined with a few strange occurrences, talking animals and shifting identities. I also liked the jacket's comparisons to David Lynch and Kafka. I get it. Probably not enough violence to merit the Lynch, but certainly enough confusion. And the largely passive, seldom speaking, always observing narrator connects to Kafka. I've only just now finished the book, but I'm still not certain whether I should be taking any sort of solace in the conclusion. I do, at the moment, but I suppose time will tell whether that holds up to more scrutiny.
Certainly one of the best books I've read in a while. Very cleverly written, strong characters (particularly Grieve/Lily, who I found endlessly charming in a way that I am sure I don't want to), unique formatting and serious without losing any sense of humor/being pretentious.

[Barbara Bagatin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Scrittura premiata, grazie all' "invenzione" di personaggi fantamoderni da romanzo rosa. Trama del tutto inesistente, vuota come una pubblicità di detersivi per la casa con uomo catatonico e donna passiva. Impossibile riuscire a seguire la vicenda: in pochissime pagine, di cui molte scritte solo a metà ( i nuovi metodi di scrittura di chi non ha idee) riesce a rendere la narrazione una matassa talmente ingarbugliata che neanche se uno riuscisse a leggere "Guerra e pace" all' incontrario potrebbe vivere tanta sofferenza ed insofferenza tali da provare l' acuto desiderio di maledirlo per l' eternità.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a bizarre book. I could not put it down. I wanted to know what was going to come out of the author's imagination next.... The plot was really secondary to the details of the strange little world that the main character was caught up in... It was a very quick read.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breathtakingly good. I almost dismissed it as gimmicky (a most favorite way for me to immediately despise a book), but was pleased to be proven wrong.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to write like Jesse Ball.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had been a few years since I'd read one of Jesse Ball's books, so it was somewhat with a feeling of returning to an old lover or a previous stage of life (my early 20s) that I picked up "Samedi the Deafness" when recommended to me by a close friend I visited last weekend.

I had a strong phase when I first discovered Ball's work in ~2015 (I can't remember how), and in quick succession I'd read "The Curfew", "Silence Once Begun", "A Cure for Suicide" and "How to Set a Fire and Why". At that time, his books held a strong enigmatic appeal for me: similarly to my relationship with Kafka - which reference, along with Borges and Calvino, is almost a given when discussing Ball's work - Ball's work is ambiguous, suggestive, "surreal", captivating; it conceals more than it lets on. I was a Ball stan, and introduced his work to many of my literary friends - including I believe the aforementioned friend who leant this particular volume to me! His work spoke to me at the time, although I'm not quite sure what was being said - that is, I suppose, the work's enigma, and its appeal.

That appeal has since worn off. Perhaps it's that I'm no longer a young man and subsequently less easily impressed. My literary tastes have certainly become more "conservative", and I nowadays find brilliance in the work of writers I would have written off as "boring" in a past life. It can be a strange and disconcerting and sad experience to see an old lover again after some time has passed and wonder "whatever was the appeal of that particular person anyway...?".

Which is probably what Jesse Ball would say.

Look, Ball is an enchanting writer, and "Samedi" was a delightful read, but it isn't clear why his stories are out there. What was this book trying to say? Why did it need, so urgently, to be said? With a familiar voice come familiar frustrations: there are a few interesting armchair remarks on typical Ball themes - lying, ambiguity, and games, amongst others - these predictably go nowhere and fade into the background of a larger and ultimately much more conventional political narrative. The brilliance of Kafka, as Deleuze and Guattari noted in "Towards a Minor Literature", is that he resists the call of the political or the religious (or of anything system) and his narratives remain forever suggestive; in a sense, his works are the perfect allegories. Ball on the other hand doesn't seem to know how to end a story and so resorts to the familiar narrative deus ex machine, what D&G would probably call the tools of the prevalent "major literature". It's close to being the literary equivalent of a Wes Anderson film.

So don't expect any revelations or insights from this book. Like most products of the American mind, it's entertainment, at the end of the day.

[Anders · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Don’t worry, he thought. Worry is a thing for those with agency. We who have none of the one can have none of the other. But he did not believe it.”
~
“There is a feeling things have when use is not being put where it might. Shall I say the world soon bore this feeling? Yes, the world bore this feeling like a loose scarf that flaps insolently against one’s perhaps too frivolously jacketed shoulder.”
~

Alrighty so I've been meaning to read one of Jesse Ball's proper novels ever since I read his short story The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr in New American Stories ed. Ben Marcus, given to me by my illustrious and dear friend Jill (Hey thanks Jill! I never finished that book, but I'll get around to it some time). The short story, which I learned was what earned him some prize (Plimpton?), was captivating to me cuz I had read The Trial and it had a very similar feel but was much more contemporary—and of course a short story rather than a novel. I've read The Metamorphosis too but it seems so unique that I don't want to use it as my parallel here. I always find Kafka's absurdism a bit extra alienating because of the chronological separation, but Ball is more intimate in some ways because he's contemporary-probably also because of his non-Kafka tendency toward fable (And maybe I just haven't read enough Kafka to know what the hell I'm talking about).But let me be clear, The Early Deaths didn't just captivate me, it bothered me. Maybe that isn't saying much but I like to think I'm pretty good at getting involved with a story when I need to be an detaching myself when I need to. More often than not, I consider it the mark of good writing when a book gets me to be involved more than I expect to be. This short story was disturbing to me not just because it centered around the untimely deaths of 4 seemingly hapless young men, but also because there was an uncanny realness to it that made it stick in my mind like an Ohrwurm. I even ended up recording myself reading it so that I could send it to people who would never listen to it. I also tried reading it to some other friends but they weren't that into it. OH WELL. Eventually it passed as all things do, but on reflection it was that short story that got me interested in Mr. Jesse Ball, about whom I think I might have just said “oh another contemporary mfa blah blah who cares let's read some older books, I mean COME ON”. Although that isn't completely felicitous because I do like to pretend that I enjoy many contemporary genres including contemporary American fiction. In that vein, I'd compare Ball to Shane Jones who is a little less Kafka and more surrealism and whose Light Boxes I really really love (they both are noted for being influenced by Calvino and Borges-two other fabulists/absurdists/fiction authors whom I absolutely adore). I think Ball is a better writer but Jones is a better emoter? Hmph; that's another whole thing. In any case, all this is to provide a short introduction into my introduction of Ball and how I've finally come to read one of his actual novels and not just a short story (I also read two of his nonfiction pieces a year ago. You can check my reviews of those if you care to but I'm not gonna give them an accounting here and indulge my more prolix nature). I actually bought several of his books over the years, and so had many options to start and rather than starting with the most popular I resolved to start with the first.

So onto this book. It starts out as a sort of murder mystery and there's some play with the mystery genre throughout. I think that part works pretty well as a way of engaging the reader in an otherwise sparse novel. Some other preliminary notes are that the novel is quite spare--many compare it to a screenplay--I think its more a mark of Ball's style/prose but it works well at any rate. The novel does some meta-type stuff-I already mentioned the play with the mystery genre-but also with the idea of lying and an unreliable narrator. Some other review also mentioned the influence of Lewis with an imaginary friend. I don't know much about that, but it's there. And then there's the Kafka, which I think works really well. It's not so much a boring imitation or an attempt at homage. It works really was as a kind of successor style. When they arrive at the complex where the bulk of the story is set, it reminded my remarkably of The Trial and I really enjoyed that part of it. But later the book steps away from the unadulterated absurdity of Kafka and becomes a little more straightforward if ultimately resolving in a more fable-like (I want to use the word fabulous but does that word really mean what I want it to here?) and parodic way.

Let's get a little more in depth. There are some interesting ideas that are cultivated in the novel in an almost philosophical way. I say almost because certainly they are, but at the same time they lack a certain seriousness and so it's more like a theme for the reader to ruminate on rather than an idea well-articulated to seriously consider. This, I think, also lends itself extremely well to the elements of fable dispersed throughout. Lying, chronic lying is presented in one way as a mental illness and the complex is designed according to the strictures of a Swiss psychologist who has ideas about how liars are more dependent upon identity than non-liars, and so putting them in an environment with arbitrary rules but the freedom to lie as much as they want (hello absurdism) is a clever way of summoning the fundamentals of Kafka but in intelligible words rather than anxiety-inducing events (don't worry there are those too). And at one point, another character mentions that, no the application of the treatment doesn't cure chronic liars, but it does make their lives happier because they aren't constantly having their identities broken down by the bombardment of truth. Again, a clever comment on the lies we all tell ourselves to support the narratives of our lives. But you don't have to read it that way-it could just be a rather peculiar explanation of an absurdist tale. I'm sure you never lie to yourself about anything (*whispers* I don't either).

There's a love story. It's cute in a Kafkaesque way (and yes of course I mean that in a good way). I liked the protagonist well enough to get involved in his story. On the other hand I did get tired of him at certain points as being a little boring. He's more interesting to me as a symbolic character, really. At first I was charmed by the Kafka in the book, but later I found I was, unexpectedly, absorbed by the mystery of it all which by the end had turned a little to sour dissatisfaction. I'm not sure how the book could have ended that would have bowled me over, though. It was a clever ending. Coupled with the theme of lying is the protagonist's occupation as a mnemonist. It isn't explained much more than he remembers things-none of his “jobs” are ever detailed-but he does have a eidetic memory. This comes into play at the end-which I'm still a little confused about-because they (Samedi, and the conspirators) reveal that James was selected to memorize important texts for after their cataclysmic terrorist event when they go about remolding society. They leave him out of the bunker, however, and so that seems to be the great lie of the mystery. Anyway, I like the play of a remembrancer fighting against a bunch of chronic liars trying to rebuild society but I think it could have been written more coherently? There is a coherence to the book because of the lying and the fables, yet there's something left wanting beyond that for me. And this is where also I think the idea I mentioned earlier about it being almost philosophical comes into play. It toys with the idea of making a point, but really it's more of an exercise in creative writing that just abuts what I'm detailing as “interesting.”

So I would recommend this to...people who are into what I described in the first paragraph about contemporary genres of American fiction and Kafka and such. Ultimately I think this is a pretty skipable book, but (and this is a big but) it's not bad at all and its an easy read. Ball is a good writer. And it makes Kafkaesque absurdity accessible in a way I hadn't considered. It also diminishes it because of its accessibility but hey who's keeping track here? We're talking about enjoying books not the rigorous examination of ideas right? The last thing I'll say is that I bet some of Ball's other books are better-I'm also imagining they're written in quite different styles (maybe?)-and so if you, you dashing potential reader you, are looking to get into Ball you might try one of those rather than this one, his first, but I can't say much more than that until I've read the others! But yeah this was an enjoyable read, hurray.

Miscellania: He apparently got most of the names from gravestones in a nearby cemetery. Spooky!

3 stars might be a little unfair, but I thought 4 would be too charitable.

Here are some quotes:
“He gave James a certain knowing look. He was severe as McHale had described, severe in the way that one expects from someone who devotes himself to an unrewarded discipline, a discipline not unrewarding in itself, but unrewarded by the world in general. The strangeness of meeting the world’s greatest botanist in the late twentieth century; the strangeness of a tailor who makes clothing only for puppets. These people are severe on themselves because no on else will be severe on them, and if they are not, then their art will no longer exist in its fullness.”
*
“She decided that the difficulty with chronic lying is that at some point it begins to efface identity. The reason for this is that the liar’s lies are constantly being approached and rebutted by truth. Then they are destroyed and the liar is left with nothing, not even with the original truth, because the original truth has been forgotten, and in any case cannot be accepted once it is the destroyer of his/her own arrived-at fact.”
*
“I know, said James, that the world is complicated. I know there are problems. I just...I’ve never tried to think, How can they be solved? I feel instinctively that they can’t be. I don’t believe we are moving towards any eventual philosophical end. I don’t think anything will be perfected. The world has always been chaotic. Suffering is a fact. I don’t see a perfect future anywhere. I can’t. People like your father, they act out of some enormous stock of hope. I was never given this. I feel only...
He tried to think of how to say it.
You live your life, you try to live compassionately, and that’s the end of it. You do a little more than you should have to in order to be a good person, but you don’t go making big changed in the world, trying to fix things. It presumes too much to do so. There's only this: if everyone acts quietly, compassionately, things will go a little better than they would have otherwise. But people will still suffer.”

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok, so Ive read a bunch of reviews on this novel, and i have to agree, the last page needs to be torn out of every copy and ripped into a million pcs. The second to last chapter would have made a much better ending. Hence the two stars instead of three.

I liked the book, it reads quite easily, the words were sewn together beautifully. I believe that is due to the fact that the author is also a poet.

Throughout most of the entire novel I felt just as confused as the main character James, if not more so. There is a bunch of double crossing and lying and game playing for the sake of playing....

If you like not knowing where the story is going until you get there, then you will enjoy this book!

[Jenny Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comes out in September. Full disclosure, I edited it. But it's a great psychologcal spy novel.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fastest I've read a book since Angels & Demons. Completely engrossing and thought-provoking. And weird too. Really weird.

The only flaw was maybe the ending.

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toss Alice in Wonderland and Kafka into a blender, with a bit of Hitchcock, Bond, and Orwell thrown in. A witty and perceptive meditation on truth, lies, and perception.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good...but there were moments when i was, like, ok, cut it out...yes, I'm impressed by how completely disjointed and insane you can be. Or maybe that was me...

[Brian Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going back this year and re-reading a bunch of books that have been on my bookshelf for a decade or more that I read so long ago I don't remember them well enough to know whether they should still be in my collection or not. First up, this book, which I remember as being odd but enjoyable.

James Sim is walking through the park one day in an unnamed American city when he comes upon a man who's been repeatedly stabbed and is breathing his last. His dying words are a confession to James that he's been involved in a dire plot that threatens the safety of the nation. He tells James he has seven days to avert this disaster, mutters the names of his co-conspirators and how to track them down, and expires.

Torn about what to do, James sets out the next day to investigate one of the leads he's been given, and shortly thereafter is kidnapped and taken to a mansion in the surrounding countryside that seems to double as the headquarters of the accused evildoers and a hospital set up to treat pathological liars. He spends the rest of the week as some combination of guest and prisoner, exploring this truly bizarre house and having a series of conversations that all seem to bend the truth in some strange new direction. The question is who can he trust, and the answer seems to be absolutely no one, other than possibly a young woman he falls in love with named Lily Violet, who may be the daughter of the ringleader, and is definitely a compulsive liar.

This books reminds me of a book called Icelander by Dustin Long. The plot has holes, the writing is uneven, but the sense of place it creates is so strong, and so enticing, that I loved it anyway. I dreamed about this house while I was reading the book, and I wanted to be there exploring it myself. I'm still thinking about it right now as I type this. I read this with some trepidation, and when I finished I realized how much I liked it. A definite keeper.