Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again

by Giedra Radvilavičiūtė, Elizabeth Novickas (Translation)

Ten stories on the border of fiction and essay, in which the experiences of life "are unrecognizably transformed, like the flour, eggs, nuts, and apples in a cake."In ten of her best essay-stories, Giedra Radvilavi?i?t? travels between the ridiculous and the sublime, the everyday and the extraordinary. In the place of plot, which the author claims to have had "shot and buried with the proper honors," the reader finds a dense, subtly interwoven structure of memory and reality, banalities and fantasy, all served up with a good dollop of absurdity and humor. We travel from the old town of Vilnius to Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood, from the seaside to a local delicatessen, all in a narrative collage as exquisitely detailed as a bouquet of flowers. As in all of her work, Radvilavi?i?t? plays with the genres of fiction and nonfiction, essay and short story, in which the experiences of life "are unrecognizably transformed, like the flour, eggs, nuts, and apples in a cake."

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Essays

156 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 2, 2013

About the author

Giedra Radvilavičiūtė (g. 1960 m. Panevėžyje) – Lietuvos prozininkė, eseistė.

1983 m. baigė lituanistiką Vilniaus universitete ir mokytojavo provincijoje. 1986 m. persikėlė į Vilnių, ilgą laiką dirbo redakcijose. 1994–1997 m. su šeima gyveno Čikagoje, ten būdama, kartu su vyru kalbininku Giedriu Subačiumi išleido Čikagos Newberry bibliotekos lituanistinių ir prūsistinių knygų iki 1882 m. katalogą.
Debiutavo kaip apsakymų rašytoja 1986 m., tačiau tikrasis žingsnis į lietuvių literatūrą prasidėjo 1999 m., kai kultūrinėje spaudoje pradėjo skelbti esė. 2002 m. penkios esė paskelbtos kolektyviniame esė rinkinyje „Siužetą siūlau nušauti“. 2004 m. išėjo atskira esė rinktinė „Suplanuotos akimirkos“.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Lithuanian author writes sneaky essays that spiral into anecdotes and stories, while refuting their status as fictions. Some pieces are political while others discuss literature, each moving into a range of social observations, excellent satirical comment, or more serious personal family-centred musings. Offering a wide insight into Lithuanian culture and society, as well as the neuroses of a female Lithuanian author, the essays here embrace digression as an aesthetic, and might irritate the more conventional imbiber of traditional belles-lettres. My personal favourites were ‘Required Texts’ and the long ‘Essential Changes,’ which push the essay-cum-story autobiographical form in new directions, taking healthy pops at the lit establishment and the pains of not-writing. For those who embrace the devilish and brilliant Dubravka Ugrešić, this collection will fit snugly into your affections (and/or bookshelves).

[Guttersnipe Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giedra Radvilavičiūtė isn't well-known in English and that's a shame because this is a marvelous book and I can imagine many people loving it, if only they could discover it. These are stories in the form of essays, or fictional essays - it doesn't much matter what you call them, you'll catch the drift at once, I promise. (The people who used to be obsessed with classifying genre appear to have finally exhausted themselves, thank God.)

The suppleness of stream of consciousness shapes these stories - and a sense of precision suitable for a legal secretary. What sort of reader will be fond of this book? Off the top of my head: fans of W.G. Sebald or Julio Cortazar or Lydia Davis. Actually, I predict that there are fans of Lydia Davis who will like Radvilavičiūtė even better. She has what I think of as "the Jane Bowles gift" - there's no guessing what sentence will come next. These essays are a cure for literary claustrophobia.

Although the longer essays are impressive, I confess that I was especially fond of the shorter ones, which are still plenty complex. For example "Awakenings", which begins with the narrator chatting with her dead mother, whom she discovers standing beside her bed. When she says she wants to talk, her mother says, "Well, be quick about it. Just until I've finished my cigarette."

She tells her mother, "This past fall I went to Kaunas. Your granddaughter, looking out the window of the bus, saw a cow and asked, Does that cow belong to anyone, or is it Nobody's? I said, Cows always belong to someone, only people can be Nobody's. Mom. . . Now, when I wake up in a pool of sweat, most often at daybreak, I start to feel quite clearly that I myself belong to Nobody. My eyes are Nobody's. My arms are Nobody's. My legs, skin, nails, lungs, breath, and hair - Nobody's. It makes me feel terrible."

Her mother responds, "How did your daughter's semester go?" (40)

Radvilavičiūtė is a master of the aside, the parenthetical. When the doctor asks, "By the way, how are your relations with men?", here's the response:

"'Very good,' I said, thinking of men generally, as a sort of aggregate. (As half of humanity. Or like penguins in a snowstorm, huddled in a pile in distant Antarctica.)" (43).

This must have been a difficult book to translate, but it doesn't read that way - it is engaging, clear and smooth. Perhaps Novickas took the advice of the narrator in the final essay: "I think you can really only translate good prose smoothly when you're a bit drunk. And during a full moon."

This book needs to be discovered! Please read it, enjoy it, then spread the word around.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Around the World Reading Challenge: LITHUANIA
===
Can't say I was a big fan of this short story collections. None of them stayed with me or made any particular impact, and I'm not entirely sure what the point was...

[Benino · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Those Whom I Would Like To Meet Again’, is a punchy selection of 10 short stories from Lithuania, by Giedra Radvilavičiūte. The collection takes you from mundane detail to wry satire, all from the comfort of your kitchen table, over breakfast, feeding the cat freshly skinned sardines, whilst sat on an old TV bagged in a pillow case, and making candles out of your own ear wax like Shrek.

The stories require a little patience to sit down with, to muse and reflect on relationships, imagery, the corporeal aspects of everyday. There are quite a few references to other authors to get to grips with - Nabokov, Hrabal, Proust, Faulkner, and several Lithuanian writers - which all suggest a richness to the stories that might benefit from a glossary at times. But once you trust Radvilavičiūte’s imagery you can enter the small apartments and spaces that hold her characters to this world, listen to the suitcases which tell narratives of their owners indiscretions, and then escape into history and memory in her coffins that are swapped to bury her past in the cemetery.

This is a fascinating little collection of stories from Lithuania, and easily demonstrates why Radvilavičiūte won the EU Prize for Literature in 2012. I wish there were translations of both her short story collections, or even that she could bring herself to write the novel that she can’t bring herself to in one of her autobiographical stories. And yet, in the meantime, I am happy to meander with these stories, for “the streets are crooked. But in the spring, who knows, something could always happen. I could meet someone. I could meet spring itself.”

[Tom Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book taught me about Scottish Fold cats

[Sanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Radvilaviciute writes essays that jump just out of reach the moment you think you know what is going on. They consist of asides, asides from asides, and some besides on top of that. I'm not sure I understood them all, but I did really enjoy reading them. She has a lovely sense of humor!

[Nuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baltic literature cannot be underrated.

Terrific writing — every next line is a surprise. It's philosphical, sentimental, meditative and humourous.

The writing blurs the lines between memoir, essay and fiction, or blends them all very well. Who can tell? I feel it's a book of memories, at best.

The author reminisces her past and ruminates over her present, retelling the takes of her people - those whom she'd like to meet again — old lovers, grandparents, mother, friends, native connections.

Love and solitude, domestic and political life, double identity as an immigrant are the main themes explored in this beautiful book.

My favorite part was Chapter 2 : Resurrection of Rainy Days at A Tourist Resort — it included several spiritual reflections by the author.

You always find God in the details, but only when you have time.

The other one was Chapter 7, "Hello" where the author writes about Scottish Fold cat, who had cryptorchidism. You're going to have a good laugh reading this.

Overall, this is a book that won't disappoint anyone, or so I feel.

In Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again, the author presents stories with such subtle beauty, that the reader will too want to think about those whom they'd like to meet again. The author's journey would have certainly been transformative and embracing, in undertaking this work of writing.

In the last chapter titled the same as the book, there's a passage she recollects about the unconditional lover of her daughter who sends her thoughtful birthday gifts — it's dreamy, and then comes the following paragraph. It is beyond beautiful.

"On the subject of unconditional lovers, I should also mention a particular man from my own biography. I was attracted to him in the same way a patient can get attracted to a psychiatrist—and vice versa.. I think that, while he was with me, the world seemed brighter to him, more open, a series of discrete, colorful images, as though seen from the cars of a train traveling at great speed. We had no future as a couple: we both lived in other worlds, whereas a happy couple should live in this one."

[Nallasivan V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that left me with mixed feelings. I really liked Giedra's idea of throwing away the plot and writing where fact and fiction mix seamlessly like a stream of dream consciousness. But the results are mixed. I liked the essay-stories where she writes about other people and places. But when these stories turn inwards - towards her own life - they are not as engaging as the others.

Her writing, however, is poetic and surreal! A unique writer nevertheless!

[Thibault Jacquot-Paratte · Rating 1 out of 5]

Life is too short for books like these.

I got about half way through this book before quitting. Couldn't finish.

No originality whatsoever in either content, form or style. Most of everything written about left me thinking "yes, and?...". Some of it might seem slightly comical on the very surface, but it is so ultimately void of any palpable content or reflexion that there was a definite "in one ear, out the other" effect.

From a personal point of view, I really didn't like the choppy, very contemporary "all sentences short even if some have to be randomly cut in half" prose wasn't my jam. I read Elizabeth Novicas's translation, though as I've read other of her translations, I really don't think the translation is a stakes- I think it was just unremarkable writing to start with.

I've read so many similar books, that it's not even funny. Is it more original just because it comes from Lithuania? Not really. This is the kind of boring book that can turn people off from reading.

[David Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again ** Read in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania (May 2022)

[Maria do Socorro Baptista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contos / Crônicas que relatam a vida de imigrantes lituanos nos Estados Unidos, sempre de alguma forma ligados à vida no país natal. São pequenas narrativas de perdas, buscas identitárias, saudades, sempre envolvendo o ser estrangeiro em terra estranha, o ser imigrante. Muito bom.

[Doris Raines · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LIKE THIS BOOK.

[Jeremy Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cool
Style. But also referenced oddly.

[Viet · Rating 4 out of 5]

from Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again by Giedra Radvilavičūitė (translated from the Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas):

Now I go to the movies more often. Usually on Fridays. I pick a late show, and go on foot. I like it when all that’s left of your contact with the city is the wind on your face and the sound of the shoes of passersby. When all that’s left of the choices the city offers you is solitude; all that’s left of its light is the luminescence reflected off of the snow; and all that’s left of its noise is the distant rumble of automobiles. Incidental phrases heard on the street arrange themselves effortlessly into coherent stories without endings. The theater smells like popcorn, perfume, and the plastic carpeting. Once upon a time, it smelled of sunflower seeds, wet umbrellas, and wine. Occasionally, you hear lines in the movies that some people feel accurately represent contemporary relationships, like: “Men love women as much as the women let them.” Not long ago I read in a magazine that as many as twenty-eight percent of modern couples prefer to make love on the dining-room table; twelve percent at work, in the boss’s office (when he’s not there); three percent at work, in the boss’s office (when he is there); thirty-five percent in the bathtub, amid floating candles; and sixty-four percent in the bedroom. Adding up all these percents, however, I got 142. Perhaps the magazine had taken into account the likely predilections of all the offspring that might be produced by these encounters? By the way, Italian researchers at Pavia University recently invented a tomographic test that can determine whether a person is really in love or just faking it—they arrived at this procedure when it was discovered that the feelings of “legitimate” love increase the number of NGF molecules in a subject. Of course, this makes little difference, in the long run; even when love is “true,” it only lasts about a year, they say, and when it comes time for couples to separate, their feelings don’t even enter into the conversation—they leave it all up to their therapists. Speaking of marriage, I read that a woman in Israel married a dolphin. She wore a silk dress to the ceremony, and a pink diadem. When the dolphin swam up to the side of the pool, she kissed him, said, “I love you,” and then dived into the water with her clothes on.

[Drew Rosensweig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recall enjoying this very much when I read it, but for the life of me, I can't remember anything about it just five months later. At only 130 pages, I'll probably give this another whirl and report back to you (you being me, the person writing this ever-so-insightful review.)

[Skaitančios katės · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nuostabi knyga, buvo smagu svarstyti ir stebėti, kaip lietuviški tekstai su jų kultūriniais fenomenais vertėjos pateikiami anglakalbiams skaitytojams.