Diary of the Fall

by Michel Laub, Margaret Jull Costa (Translation)

From one of  Granta ’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists, a literary masterpiece that will break your heart

At the narrator’s elite Jewish school in a posh suburb of Porte Alegre, a cruel prank leaves the only Catholic student there terribly injured. Years later, he relives the episode as he examines the mistakes of his past and struggles for forgiveness. His father, who has Alzheimer’s, obsessively records every memory that comes to mind, and his grandfather, who survived Auschwitz, fills notebook after notebook with the false memories of someone desperate to forget.

This powerful novel centered on guilt and the complicated legacy of history asks provocative questions about what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century.

Genres: Fiction, Brazil, Holocaust, Novels, Romance, Jewish, Contemporary

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Michel Laub was born in Porto Alegre, in 1973, and lives in São Paulo. He is a writer and journalist, he was editor-in-chief of Bravo magazine and coordinator of publications and internet at Instituto Moreira Salles. Today he is a columnist for Folha de S.Paulo, in addition to collaborating with several publishers and vehicles. He published six novels, all published by Companhia das Letras: Música Anterior (2001), Longe da água (2004), O segundo tempo (2006), O gato diz adeus (2009), Diário da queda (2011, with rights sold to the cinema)) and A maçã envenenada (2013). His books have been released in 12 countries and 9 languages. He is one of the members of the edition The best young Brazilian writers, of the English magazine Granta. He received the JQ - Winagte (England, 2015), Transfuge (France, 2014), Jabuti (second place, 2014), Copa de Literatura Brasileira (2013), Bravo Prime (2011), Bienal de Brasília (2012) and Erico Verissimo awards (2001), in addition to being a finalist in the Correntes de Escrita (Portugal, 2014), São Paulo de Literatura (2012 e 2014), Portugal Telecom (2005, 2007 e 2012) e Zaffari&Bourbon (2005 and 2011) awards.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal --powerful --heartbreaking --written in spare beautiful prose!!!
My body was shaking --I managed to choke back tears --but I was 'choked' for almost the entire amount of time it took to read this slim novel (in one sitting) --

I knew 'nothing' --I mean 'nothing' about this book until I started it early this morning. Truth be told --I only bought it yesterday-- (kindle download)--when I realized I had forgotten about our Jewish book-club discussion this coming Sunday.
I haven't read any reviews --or seen anything written about this book yet.
Its written by a Brazilian author.

Author Michal Laub was named one of Granta's twenty Best Young Brazilian Novelists in 2012. -- His writing is personal, emotional, thought provoking, and highly absorbing.....a reader won't be 'drifting-off'.

I can't say enough about my experience reading this. --I'm filled with emotions for one thing. A good cry is on hold. I need a walk the minute I'm done typing this little book report.
There are a zillion things I want to say -- but what I wish to say most is....
"JUST READ IT"............ Its VERY engaging!!!
It knocked the wind out of me at times......and I feel confident to recommend it to everyone.

The narrator writes about his grandfather: an Auschwitz survivor--his father -himself -his Jewish private school -his close friend who is not Jewish -- a horrific prank -- the cost of that prank --anti-semitism -alcoholism - marriages --Alzheimer's --
Plus ....
We get information about the author Primo Levi ---(I haven't read any of Levi's books --so this was a side plus 'opening' for me). I went to google to read more about Primo Levi --(I needed to --others might not)

This novel is very intimate and huge --globally --at the same time. Given how much many of us have read about the Holocaust -- I'm sure many think its impossible to read anything 'fresh', 'eye-opening', and 'fundamentally essential' when it comes to the Holocaust, (and from a 'new' author- --some young punk from Brazil under the age of 20?) You've got to be kidding........
Yet --Michal Laub did something brilliant with this small novel.
Readers will see it --and feel what I'm talking about --when they read it.
This is an easy read --and an important book!! --- I highly suggest it to Jews and non-Jews!

I went in blind -- I wish others would too -- It you are a reader who can 'trust' in picking a book --without reading many or any reviews --this is a great risk!!
There are many powerful quotes I could leave....
but I'm going to only leave one 'teaser' --- because its after this 'teaser' --when things change --the result is excruciating and complicated.
"It isn't the same thing as saying out loud that you hate someone and wish them dead, but anyone who has a relative who spent time in Auschwitz can confirm the rule that, from childhood on, you know that you can speak lightly about anything but that, and so my father's reaction to my remark was predictable enough, repeat what you just said, go on if you're brave enough, and I looked him straight in the eye and said, very slowly this time, that he could stick Auschwitz and Nazism and my grandfather up his arse".

To see what happens next --- you must read this book............... its EYE OPENING!!!!!!!

Absolutely --absolutely-- one of the top 5 --if not top 3 best books I've read this year!!!!!!!!

Also --I'm so proud of this book!!!!!!!!!!! Kudos to the author, Michal Laub....What a terrific contribution to Jewish Literature!!!!

[Brina · Rating 3 out of 5]

My dear goodreads friend Elyse recommended that I read Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub because she knows that I am always up for reading both Jewish content books as well as novels that take place in South America. Intrigued by reading another Portuguese language author in translation, I decided to try this slim novel in diary form. As Rosh Hashanah is approaching and I take stock in what blessings I have in my life, Laub's novel reminds me to be thankful for the life I lead in a multicultural society.

Michel Laub is the author of five novels and Diary of the Fall is his first to be translated into English. A coming of age novel in diary form, the book's narrator, most likely meant to be Laub himself, harkens back to his seventh grade year at a Jewish school in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In Brazil, unfortunately there is a degree of anti-Semitism because prior to and after the Holocaust, the country did not turn back potential Jewish immigrants. However, the country also did not turn its back on former Nazis either. Jews kept to themselves, had their own clubs, schools, and way of life. Laub's grandfather survived Auschwitz and fled to the first country that would take him, in his case Brazil. After a convalescence at a boarding house, he set out in life and fell for the first girl that caught his eye. This girl was a gentile, but, she agreed to undergo a conversion so that the couple could raise any potential children, in this case Laub's father, as Jews. This resulted in a rift between Laub's grandmother and his great grandparents who did not understand why their daughter would want to marry a Holocaust survivor in the first place.

The premise of this novel is that when Laub was thirteen his entire class pulled a prank on the one non Jewish boy in their class. The prank resulted in the boy being severely injured and Laub showing remorse to this student who eventually became his best friend. As teenagers can act cruelly and unforgiving, the student body did not allow Joao to forget his injury, forcing him to switch schools mid year. Sticking up for his new friend, Laub begged his parents to allow him to switch to the same new school as well. With the generation gap being what it was, Laub's father lashes out at him because ideally he should remain at a Jewish school where there is no anti Semitism, where the Holocaust is taught in depth rather than as a footnote, and where Jewish culture thrives rather than is oppressed by others who are either ignorant or are inherently anti-Semitism by birthright.

Laub notes in his diary that both his grandfather and father chose to keep journals. He highlights some of their entries in italics in his own diary, especially entries where the grandfather's survivor guilt leads to rifts between the three generations of men. I thought that the grandfather's and father's journal entries were the most interesting portions of the novel. As Holocaust survivors continue to pass on, there are fewer and fewer to tell their story to the world. Unfortunately, Laub resented his grandfather as an Auschwitz survivor and attempted to turn his back on his Jewish heritage if at all possible. It was not until his own father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and began his own journals that Laub reconnected with his grandfather's journals as a means of comparing and contrasting the two generations before him.

For a coming of age novel, I thought that Diary of the Fall had a lot of potential, especially as the focus is anti-Semitism in an area of the world that has interest to me. Yet, after reading the premise of the fall and fall out from it, the characters' actions turned me off to the overall story. After the first quarter of the book, I was more interested in Laub's grandfather and father than I was in the narrator of the diaries. Perhaps as my children approach adolescence, I find myself relating more to adults than children in coming of age stories, which is why I generally steer away from them. Yet, Diary of the Fall brings a lot of issues to the table, especially anti-Semitism which unfortunately is never going to go away. With Rosh Hashanah taking place this week, I feel as fortunate as ever to be able to celebrate the holiday as I do.

3 stars

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michel Laub is a Brazilian lawyer-turned writer, and Diary of the Fall is his first novel published in English.

This is a short book, composed mostly of numbered, short paragraphs, each containing just a few sentences. As the title suggest, the novel is written in the form of a diary - the main protagonist is a struggling alcoholic who reminisces about his childhood, and tries to understand his grandfather and his father. His grandfather was an Auschwitz survivor, who emigrated to Brazil to start a new life, only to end it when his son was very young; the narrator's father never grew over the tragedy, and imprinted in him a sense of persecution and guilt which continues to plague him. By consulting his own memories and at the diaries both men have kept, the narrator aims to write his own - and understand how their past has shaped his own.

Perhaps it's the translation - and its sparse, but adequate language - which made me unable to connect with the narrator and care for him and his ancestors; what's more likely is that this is a deliberate decision by the author: similar to the one used by Jerzy Kosinski decades earlier in his famous The Painted Bird. The success of The Painted Bird, however, lied in its immediacy - although it was also narrated by an older person remembering his past, these memories were the horror of war which he experienced personally as a young boy. The narrator in Laub's book is more than twice removed from the Holocaust, and the book simply doesn't have the same impact - it might have if it was written from the perspective of his grandfather, but it obviously isn't. Beside that, I think that it simply doesn't have anything new to say about the Holocaust and its survivors, which is not entirely mr. Laub's fault - years after the tragic even, thousands of studies and memoirs later, what else can there be said?

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it possible to hate an Auschwitz survivor? Or worse, to feel indifferent to his sufferings? These are a couple of the questions that are posed in Brazilian writer Michael Laub’s spare and shimmering new book, Diary of the Fall.

The narrator is two generations removed from Auschwitz, a privileged boy who is attending a nearly all-Jewish school. His grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor, kept multiple notebooks filled with the most banal and Pollyanna-ish descriptions of his life after leaving the concentration camp…only to end his life while the narrator’s father was at a tender young age. The narrator’s father – in struggling to make sense of this tragedy – inundates his son with persecution tales that shape his thinking.

And then there’s the fall: literally and figuratively. The narrator spearheads a cruel practical joke, severely injuring his non-Jewish classmate Joao who is tossed into the air 13 times during his manhood year and deliberately dropped on the final count.. The narrator reflects, “My father – with his stories about the Holocaust and the Jewish renaissance and the obligation of every Jew in the world to defend himself using whatever means he had – was in some way responsible for Joao, making him the enemy that will always be there before you…”

The narrator, like his grandfather (and his father) writes his own text through this book, which consists of numbered paragraphs and frequent repetition of key events. The questions raised in this book are highly introspective: what role does memory serve, what do we recall and forget, and how do we deal with guilt, forgiveness and redemption.

Translated beautifully by Margaret Jull Costa (and through time, I’ve learned that translation is so important in the appreciation of international literature), this book focuses on three generations affected by the long shadow of Auschwitz: the grandfather, whose memoir is about “how the world should be”, the father, whose own memoir is about “how things really were” and the son, who is struggling with the question, “is human experience really viable.” It’s a fine book. 4.5 stars.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unto the Fourth Generation

Physically small and compact, this is a bullet of a book that hits you in the small of the back, and keeps hitting until your moral spine has been shattered and then painfully reassembled. Although not dealing with the subject directly, it makes the first genuinely new contribution to Holocaust literature that I have read in a long time. It does this by concentrating, not on the nineteen-forties themselves, but the effect of that legacy upon the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the survivors. Indeed, the author, Brazilian Michel Laub, knows he is treading on well-trampled ground, and is almost embarrassed to bring it up again:

Eyewitnesses have already recounted the story detail by detail, and there are sixty years of reports and essays and analyses, generations of historians and philosophers and artists who devoted their lives to adding footnotes to all that material in an effort to refresh again the world's view on the matter, the reflex reaction everyone has to the word AUSCHWITZ, so not for a second would it occur to me to repeat those ideas if they were not, in some way, essential if I am to talk about my grandfather and, therefore, about my father and, therefore, about myself.

It is difficult to know how much of the story is true. It is labeled a novel, yet the first-person narrator is a Brazilian writer of Laub's age, born where he was born (Porto Allegre) and living where he is now living (São Paulo). It is written in the form of a memoir, in short sections of numbered paragraphs entitled "A Few Things I Know About My Grandfather," "A Few Things I Know About My Father," "A Few Things I Know About Myself," and so on. In fact, though, each section includes all three generations; that is the point. The history of one affects the history of the next, and the one after. Even the form of the book is a family legacy. After being freed and emigrating to Brazil, the grandfather began obsessively compiling a sort of encyclopedia defining the world as it ought to be, where for instance the seedy pension where he collapsed with typhoid is described with all the attributes of a luxury sanatorium. Late in his life, the father compiles a similar set of paragraphs describing the world as it actually was. And now the book being written by Laub's protagonist takes the very same form, the wreck he has almost made of his own life meticulously notated for the benefit of yet another generation.

Like one of those puzzles where wooden shapes must interlock in one particular way, Laub takes a very small number of facts, rotating them obsessively, looking at them from all angles, before slowly adding another and another. The controlled manner in which he adds new information is the closest this book comes to having a plot, so I will only mention the first couple of blocks here. One is the fact of his grandfather's ordeal. The other, which gives the novel its title, is about a malicious prank that he and his friends played on a classmate called João at his thirteenth birthday party, a boy they persecuted simply because he was the only Gentile in their synagogue school class. Though totally different in scale and consequence, this act of cruelty and the Holocaust are moral mirrors of one another. The writer recoils from the image of himself that he sees, but it does not end there; bit by bit, more pieces get added to the growing tragedy. I won't say that there are not moments when this obsessive recycling of material does not get a little tedious, but at the end one final piece is added that suddenly locks the whole puzzle into a new and even hopeful form.

Small though it is, this is a masterpiece and I think an important one. By this time, it should go without saying that the translation by Margaret Jull Costa reads like the thing itself. Highly recommended.

[Leylak Dalı · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auschwitz'i doğrudan konu etmeden Auschwitz'in üç kuşak insanın hayatını nasıl etkileyebileceğini anlatan, üzerinde çok düşünülesi bir okuma idi.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://amulherqueamalivros.blogs.sapo...

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 5 out of 5]

okuduğum en etkileyici baba-oğul romanlarından biri. otobiyografik ögeler de taşıyan roman 2. dünya savaşı'nda auschwitz'den sağ kurtulabilen çok az kişiden biri olan dedenin brezilya'ya gelip bir yaşam kurmasıyla başlıyor. acaba kurabiliyor mu? auschwitz hemen hemen tüm satırlarda kendini hissettiriyor, dedenin yaşamında da...
bu nedenle intihar eden, alzheimer olan ve alkolik olan üç erkeğin hikayesine bir yandan çocukluk anıları, bir yandan çocukluk zalimliğiyle oradan oraya zıplayan zamanlarda dalıyoruz.
primo levi'nin "bunlar da mı insan"ından yapılmış alıntılar kitabın en acı yerleri. ama dediğim gibi 2. dünya savaşı ve çekilenler, yahudilik hep kendini hissettirse de asıl olarak baba-oğul romanı.
yayımlandığı sırada kaçırmışım, iyi ki okudum.
uzun cümleler ve maddelerle yazılan paragraflarla kurulan bu romanın çevirisi de çok başarılı.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ta cudowna okładka na pewno przyciągnęłaby mój wzrok w księgarni. Jako skazana na ebooki, doceniam ją dopiero teraz. Książka Brazylijczyka o Auschwitz - może się zdziwicie jak ja, czytając to zdanie, a może od razu pomyślicie o masowej emigracji wojennej i powojennej. Tak zrobił dziadek narratora - uciekł z piekła Auschwitz, dopłynął do Porto Alegre, wykaraskał się z tyfusu, nie znalazł pracy jako nauczyciel matematyki, został domokrążcą, dorobił się, dobrze się ożenił, spłodził syna. Uczynił to wszystko w cieniu Auschwitz. W tym cieniu, u schyłku życia zapisał maczkiem wiele zeszytów. Stworzył w nich swoją własną encyklopedię życia, nie napisał ani słowa o Auschwitz, nie zdradził, jak się wydostał z piekła i jak dotarł do Brazylii. Przez całe życie nie wypowiedział na ten temat ani słowa, mimo to przeniósł traumę i na syna, i na wnuka.

Ciąg dalszy: http://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.c...

[Joanna Slow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jak miło, gdy moje odczucia dokonują takiej wolty i z trybu „dlaczego ja właściwie to czytam?”, przechodzę w tryb poruszenia i poczucia, że na każdy, nawet bardzo wyeksploatowany temat, można czasem spojrzeć z całkiem świeżej perspektywy.
No i wzruszyłam się bardzo, a o to tez u mnie coraz trudniej. Tak, że nawet w emocjach to bym piątą gwiazdkę przyznała 😉

[Michał Michalski · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 nawet.

[spillingthematcha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wielowymiarowa i ciekawie napisana powieść o bólu, wspomnieniach i relacjach. Szkoda, że jest tak krótka, chociaż rozumiem, dlaczego tak jest.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

a ruminative and rueful reflection on the past and its power to tether us to it, diary of the fall (diário da queda) is the first of michel laub's five books to be translated into english. laub, a porto alegre-born former lawyer-turned-writer, was named one of the best young brazilian novelists in 2012 by granta. diary of the fall is the fictional first-person account of an unnamed narrator as he reflects on his participation in a sadistic prank (as an adolescent), his failed marriages and alcoholism (as an adult), his strained relationship with a father who developed alzheimer's, and the memories of his grandfather who survived the concentration camp at auschwitz.

laub's narrator, as his father and grandfather before him, seeks to record his memories in a journal - perhaps to make sense of his past, perhaps to lay its legacy to rest. the novel takes the form of diary entries, a fluid style that shifts between the past and present. diary of the fall, though steeped in one of the darker episodes of human history, offers a personal account of the struggles to transcend, forgive, understand, and reconcile - as seen through three generations of a family's men. laub, as his narrator makes plain in the text, doesn't seek to recapitulate the horrors of the third reich, but instead to explore that which binds us inexorably to the past.

...an accumulation of corpses, a pile reaching up to the sky, the history of the world as nothing but an accumulation of massacres that lie behind every speech, every gesture, every memory, and if auschwitz is the tragedy that contains in its essence all those other tragdies, it's also in a way proof of the nonviability of human experience at all times and in all places - in the face of which there is nothing one can do or think, no possible deviation from the path my grandfather followed during those years, the same period in which my father was born and grew up, unable ever to change that certain fate.

*translated from the portuguese by margaret jull costa (saramago, marías, pessoa, eça de queirós, et al.)

[Bookygirls Magda · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
Bardzo podobał mi się zabieg nieustannego powtarzania pewnych rzeczy (np. Auschwitz 10 razy w jednym zdaniu) i wracania do tych samych wspomnień. W pewnym sensie pokazywało to jak ciężko pozbyć się traumy pokoleniowej, jak osoby, które nie doświadczyły bezpośrednio tragedii mimo wszystko są nią naznaczone, definiowane. Symbolizm przemiany z oprawcy do ofiary i z powrotem w drugą stronę (chociaż to może być moja nadinterpretacja) - nieudolne starania przełamania cyklu, przytłoczenie historią świata i rodziny, Żyd w niezydowskim środowisku oraz nieustanny ból istnienia.
Nie daje wyższej oceny, bo mimo że mi się podobało, to nie poczułam tej książki tak, jakbym mogła.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wśród tylu zachwytów nad książką, moje trzy gwiazdki.
Zapowiadało się super, jednak później tak mnie zmęczyła i znużyła ta książka, mimo że to krótka forma, raptem 190 stron. Jak odłożyłam ja w pewnym momencie to trudno mi było do niej wrócić.
Porusza bardzo dobrze znany nam temat w bardzo specyficzny sposób. Jak widać tematykę traumy poobozowej można pokazać z zupełnie innej strony.

[Kati Heng · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate handing out a title like “Best of 2014” so early in the year. I hate handing it out, in general, because now it seems like any of the other books I’ve written about from January to this point are explicitly not the best, but there is no getting around it: Diary of the Fall struck me like no other book has this year. In a just world, it will be studied in schools alongside Elie Wiesel’s Night and Camus. It will be brought up in philosophical debates, when questioning the meaning of human suffering and humanity’s existence. This is not hyperbole.

It’s easy to underestimate. The book is literally the same length as my hand, from wrist to fingertips, and about as wide as my fingers naturally sit. It is easy to mistake for a tabletop book. Please do not make this mistake. The way the story is divided with chapters only paragraphs in length, numbered in the middle of pages, may make you think this is flash, pieces unrelated to each other. Do not make this mistake, either – every piece of the entire story connects together, forming a whole.

The story starts with the story of João’s fall. A Catholic boy in a class filled with 13 to 14 year old Jewish boys, João is teased, told to eat sand, criticized and mocked as the other. His father works as hard as he can as a bus conductor, overtime selling cotton candy in the park to pay for his son’s tuitions, adamant that his son get the best education possible. The young boys do not connect the blue-collar father to the hatred of the son; they are simply, childishly filled with contempt for the boy.

It’s a popular tradition of the boys that, on a young man’s birthday, friends gather around, hoist the boy in the air and toss one two three, and catch him safely. But on João’s birthday, they let him drop.

The fall sets off a chain of events that forever change not just the life of João, but of one of the Jewish boys who was there, who let him fall, who years later, still struggles to make peace with the injustices he committed as a child.

Soon enough, the novel is no longer about this isolated case of prejudice, this case of spite and hate and pain. It evolves into a tale of the most horrifying pains in the world, the unhealing wounds, the cuts that refuse to scab over so easily.

The narrator of the story, an unnamed journalist now in his 40s, decided to switch schools at the end of the year, to join João at his new school, even though it means he will now be the only one who is Jewish. A catalyst is started, with the narrator learning more, becoming more aware of his heritage and what it means to be Jewish in modern times.

Digging into his past, the narrator learns about the obsessive writings of his grandfather, a man who unlike so many, survived the horrors of Auschwitz, who later in life, poured hours alone in his room writing in journals false memories about the way life should be rather than the truth. His family, all of whom died in concentration camps, the horrors of war, are never mentioned. Later, his own father succumbs to Alzheimer’s, his mind failing slowly. His father uses the time he has to record the copious details of his life, the truth he is desperate to pass onto his son, one section sent at a time.

Sorting through his forefather’s works, the narrator comes to terms with his own weaknesses, his own desires to hide the pain, his own need to record the truth, hurt as it may.

I couldn’t believe how knocked away and emotional this all was. It’s like 200 pages, and I feel like a meet an entire family, learned their secrets, cried for each as he suffered from war, from Alzheimer’s, from, as we learn later about the narrator, battles with alcoholism.

I can’t help you if you think World War II stories are overused at this point. It is a subject I will never be able to ‘get over,’ despite never having lost more than maybe a great-uncle to that war. Yet, even the narrator recognizes the exhaustion most people have to these narratives, to the accounts of atrocities suffered at camps, to the horrors humans were put through, worse than any horror film could imagine:

“Would it make any difference if the things I’m describing are still true more than half a century after Auschwitz, when no one can bear to hear about it anymore, when even to me it seems old-fashioned to write about it, or are those things only of importance to me because of the implications they had for the lives of all those around me?”

I understand the holocaust does not represent my pain. I lost no one to the camps. It’s larger, though. It’s a pain that shows just how god-awful humans can be to each other, how long the body can suffer before collapsing into dust, how cruel the world can be and how soon we can stop caring to you talk of your pain.

You might never connect the story of one little boy being dropped by his classmates to the horrors of Auschwitz. These are incomparable in terms of human suffering. Yet, in Michel Laub’s prose, all pain connects, feeds, and tries to understand each other.

This is one of the best books you can read this year, for many years, maybe.

[Wojciech Szot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rodzinna trauma na niedzielę? Zawsze możecie na mnie liczyć (i na rodziny, ale to już nie moja wina). “Dziennik upadku” byłby jedną z wielu opowieści o rodzinie, która żyje w cieniu Zagłady z - w tym przypadku - dziedziczonej raczej po mieczu niż po kądzieli, gdyby nie to, że Michel Laub napisał książkę z niezwykłą - czas na słowo, które niezbyt lubię, a które robi ostatnio gigantyczną karierę - czułością.

Pierwsze słowo książki Lauba to “dziadek”. Żyd, który przypłynął do Brazylii myśląc, że “historia najwyraźniej dobiegła kresu”. Pozostały po nim zeszyty zapisane wspomnieniami, w których “próźno szukać wzmianki o tej podróży”. Ale nie tylko dziadek miał dość życia wspomnieniami, narrator i jednocześnie główny bohater “Dziennika upadku” też zastrzega, że wcale nie podoba mu się “rozmawianie o tych sprawach”, a literatura i kino przetrawiły temat tak, że może się wydawać iż nic nowego powiedzieć już nie można. A jednak gdy zaczyna myśleć o swoim życiu odkrywa jak wielki wpływ miał na niego dziadek i jego traumy. O tym będzie ta opowieść.

“Dziennik upadku” to książka o dzieciakach chodzących do żydowskiej szkoły, w której bycie biednym i nie-Żydem było powodem do szykan, o wspólnocie zła, którą wytwarza postholokaustowa trauma, o dzieciaku, który wykrzyczy ojcu w twarz, że w dupie ma już ten Holokaust, o dziadku który “czekał, aż drzwi zostaną wyważone, i nie było możliwości żeby głuchy huk (Auschwitz) dochodzący z gabinetu (Auschwitz), dokąd ojciec w końcu wszedł (Auschwitz) po użyciu łomu (Auschwitz), nie był dokładnie tym, co sobie wyobrażał (Auschwitz)...”. Tytułowy upadek to oczywiście osuwanie się narratora w alkoholizm, który - i to jest podstawowe pytanie całej książki - ma albo nie ma swojej przyczyny w Holokauście? Czy o wszystko winić przeszłość i rodzinną, historyczną, zbiorową traumę, czy jednak jesteśmy odpowiedzialni za samych siebie? Opowiadanie życia, jak pisze Laub, jest zbieraniem wymykających się czasem logice faktów w jeden spójny system i poddawanie ich ujednolicającej interpretacji. Może właśnie w kontrze wobec tego Laub swoją książkę pisze jakby składała się z kolejnych zeszytów, zapisków na marginesach, wyrwanych kartkach, niejednolicie, choć chronologicznie wyjątkowo poprawnie.

Laub porusza się na kilku płaszczyznach literackich - opowiada losy swojej rodziny jak całkiem trzeźwy kronikarz, a jednocześnie bywa bardzo poetycki, zwłaszcza w zakończeniu, gdy analizuje własne postępowanie i opowiada o odchodzeniu od nałogu. Jego język staje się wtedy zrytmizowany, skandujący, wyczulony na brzmienie i mocne puenty. Całość to próba zrozumienia własnego życia, spowiedź i autoterapeutyczny monolog, który czyta się z zapartym tchem i raczej “na raz”. Tłumaczył Wojciech Charchalis i efekt jest świetny.

Dodam tylko nieskromnie, że czuję się ojcem chrzestnym… nie, nie - jest taki czas, że pewne związki frazeologiczne też mam ochotę wykorzenić ze swojego języka. Nigdy nie byłem i nie będę niczyim ojcem chrzestnym, a tłumaczenie, że to metafora bez znaczenia, oderwana od pierwotnych konotacji, mnie nie przekonuje. Zatem - czuję się akuszerem polskiego wydania, bo gdy planowaliśmy “Z niejednej półki” Michała Nogasia szukałem ciekawych rozmówców w Brazylii, do której się Michał wybierał. I tak trafiłem na Bernardo Kucinskiego, którego - nie boje się tego słowa - wstrząsająca powieść “K. Relacja z pewnych poszukiwań” w przekładzie Zofii Stanisławskiej i nakładem Claroscuro ukazała się w 2019 roku i właśnie Lauba. A potem to poszło już szybko - Michał zrobił wywiad, Anita Musioł z Pauzy zdecydowała się wydać książkę, no i jest. I jest to jedna z tych książek o Zagładzie, które naprawdę warto znać, bo sporo w niej wątpliwości, sporo pytań niewygodnych, a jednocześnie jest w niej wciągająca opowieść o życiu w dziwacznej sytuacji rodzinno-geograficzno-historycznej. Napisana czule wobec bohatera i czytelnika.

Ps. Ale piękną okładkę zrobił Tomasz Majewski!

[Arthur Dal Ponte Santana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mas bah, guri, essa tal de Michel Laub até que sabe escrever

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a Brazilian novelist, a profound novella about all the traumatic memories we aim to forget. In a digressive diary addressed to his unborn child, the narrator chronicles his regret over his alcoholism and his part in injuring a classmate at age 13, but also curates the written memoirs of his father and grandfather. His father is desperate to document as much as he can before Alzheimer’s takes his memory; on the other hand, his grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor whose life parallels Primo Levi’s in some ways, is eager to forget everything he endured before he immigrated to Brazil. Instead of personal recollections, his diary is a mock-encyclopedia, a bit like Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary or Gustave Flaubert’s The Dictionary of Received Ideas: “Family – group of people who share the house with the man and...take care that their ideas or attitudes are never incompatible with his,” and so on.

The interplay between these three very different sets of memories is fairly interesting. I like how the narrator classes his grandfather’s trivial memoir as “how the world should be” and his father’s more realistic account as “how things really were.” However, the book is repetitive, even when it’s for the very good reason of showing how inescapable tragedy is for its victims: “My grandfather went out to buy bread and the newspaper: Auschwitz. My grandfather said good morning to my grandmother: Auschwitz.” And yes, even at only 100 pages, this meant that it felt too long. I will add, though, that the translation from the Portuguese is excellent: the language never feels awkward or strained.

[Chris Angelis · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Read a more in-depth analysis on my literature blog)

[...]
When all is said and done, Michel Laub’s Diary of the Fall is an example of what a lost opportunity looks like.

All the ingredients are there: a dark, horrific past; a rags-to-riches story; teenage rebellion; disease; re-appreciation; social and relationship problems.

But these elements are all scattered throughout the novel without a convincing cohesive link to keep them glued together. The novel feels less like a novel and more like a collection of narrative workshop drafts.

That the narrative feels fragmented is, to an extent, a result of the narrative choice to present the text as a collection of diaries and memories. But it’s the author’s responsibility to overcome the inherent limitations of such a format, and this author has not succeeded very well.

Perhaps the single most damaging aspect in Laub’s narrative is his insistence on repeating feelings and thoughts, trying to force a point across instead of actually convincing the reader.

Ultimately, a literary-fiction novel that doesn’t inspire its readers to identify with the characters, that doesn’t make them think “what if”, has failed. That this can occur despite the darkness of its themes tells of a fundamental error in narrative planning, and I’m afraid this is what has occurred here.

[Roberto Fruchtengarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

O Michel Laub tem um padrão de livros curtos e de leitura fácil e cativante. Em geral, fica aquela sensação de que poderia ter um pouco a mais. Não foi bem o caso desse livro.
Quando comecei, achei que o assunto principal seria o bullyng ou a influência do tal episódio na vida do protagonista. Pouco a pouco, a temática principal se mostra bem diferente, com foco nas relações entre pais e filhos e no holocausto. Concordo com a análise do Jairo Fruchtengaten que o livro perde no final e acho que principalmente porque, mesmo com os capítulos curtos e poucas páginas no total, pouca informação é acrescentada, ficando uma ou outra coisa digna de nota bem no fim do livro.
Fica a sensação de um paciente no divã, repetindo a mesma história ...

[Rafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Será por que yo tampoco creo en el ser humano, o por coincidir en que la tradición y la familia, en ocasiones, transportan pesos capaces de aplastarnos.

[Letícia R · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️

Uma boa leitura, bem escrita e interessante.
O que me fez gostar mais foi o fato de o livro ser separado em “partes”, uma para apresentar o avô, outra para o pai, outra para o personagem principal... mas todas as partes falam dos 3 e como a história influenciou cada um. Como a vida do avô mudou a do pai e como a deles mudou a do filho. Essa ideia (realidade) de que está tudo ligado é uma das mais bonitas e interessantes de se perceber, na minha opinião.
Outro fator que me fez gostar bastante foram as informações sobre os judeus na segunda guerra mundial e acontecimentos em Auschwitz... É um assunto pesado e triste, e o jeito que foi abordado... Sem ser o foco do livro, mas, ao mesmo tempo, sendo exatamente o que mudou a vida de todos os envolvidos. Foi bem original e senti uma seriedade diferente no assunto.
O motivo da minha avaliação não ter sido maior é basicamente por gosto, em relação ao gênero do livro. Além disso, senti que algumas vezes estava sendo bem repetitivo (mesmo sendo proposital) e isso me cansava para voltar a ler. E, também, por último, fanfiquei toda uma história com o principal e o João de quem ele tanto falou. Me decepcionei (não tinha nada a ver o que eu tava pensando) mas tudo bem, foi uma boa leitura 🥰

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short novel comprising, mostly, of brief, numbered paragraphs made up of long sentences which sometimes encompass an entire paragraph. You feel like you want to hold your breath before each section and then take a few moments to regulate your breathing after you’ve finished before diving in again. Sometimes the pressure forces you back and you feel like you’re covering the same ground—not sure what would be an appropriate aquatic metaphor here—again and again. And you are. In his review in The Wall Street Journal Boris Fishman describes the book as “foggy and fugue-like … catalogue of abstract, circular ruminations” and I see where he’s coming from. It deals with three generations and how they’ve all been affected by the Holocaust. The grandfather was there, one of the few to survive Auschwitz. His son, who was born in Brazil and, at the age of fourteen, walks into his father’s study to learn that he’s committed suicide. The grandson, the man who is writing this account, started drinking when he was thirteen and ends up an alcoholic whose third marriage is just about to go down the toilet pan when he learns that his father has Alzheimer’s.

The first three sections are entitled ‘A Few Things I Know About my Grandfather’, ‘A Few Things I Know About my Father’ and ‘A Few Things I Know About Myself’ but the divisions aren’t as neat as that and from the off Laub jumps between all three storyline so I’m not sure that he was doing here. The same goes for the notes sections. Really the whole book is one long, disjointed text which gradually fills in the blanks and makes most sense towards the end once you realise who the book was written for. The grandfather wrote—“my grandfather’s memoir can be summed up in the phrase the world as it should be” (he spends his final years filling notebooks with an account of his life in which the Holocaust never happened)—and the father wrote—“the world as it really is” (he talks incessantly about the Holocaust and frets constantly about his son’s lack of interest in Judaism and once he realises his memory is going begins to obsessively write down everything he can remember)—and now the son is writing too:

11.

In thirty years’ time it will be almost impossible to find anyone who was imprisoned in Auschwitz.

12.

In sixty years’ time it will be very hard to find the son of anyone who was imprisoned in Auschwitz.

13.

In three or four generations the name Auschwitz will have about as much importance as the names Majdanek, Sobibor and Belzec have today.

The fall in the title is a literal fall. Or rather a drop. Our narrator goes to a school where most of the students are Jews. One, João, who is not Jewish is persecuted mercilessly by the other boys—“son-of-a-bitch goy”—and yet the boy, stoically, takes it. This isn’t so much a reacion to the Holocaust. It’s just boys being boys and if you’re different then you’re going to be picked on. The culmination of the bullying happens during João’s birthday party:

Almost all my schoolfriends were bar mitzvahed. The ceremony always took place on a Saturday morning. The birthday boy would wear the tallit and be called upon to pray along with the adults. Then there would be a lunch or a dinner, usually held in some posh hotel, and one of my schoolfriends’ favourite tricks was to put shoe polish on the door handles of the rooms. Another favourite trick was to pee in the boxes of hand towels provided in the gentlemen’s toilets. There was another trick too, although it only happened once, when it was time to sing “Happy Birthday,” and because that particular year it had become the custom to give the birthday boy the bumps, tossing him into the air thirteen times, with a group of boys catching him as he fell, like a fireman’s safety net — except that on the day in question the net disappeared on the thirteenth fall and the birthday boy crashed to the floor.

João is not Jewish but he is still making an effort to fit in and so he invites his classmate over and they decide to drop him:

When he fell he bruised a vertebra, had to stay in bed for two months, wear an orthopaedic corset for a further few months and go to a physiotherapist during the whole of that time, on top of being taken to hospital and having his party end in a general atmosphere of perplexity, at least among the adults present…

In time João gets better and returns to school where surprisingly a friendship develops between him and our narrator only to go sour sometime later once João regains his strength.

Ultimately this is a book about memories and, I suppose, our responsibilities to those memories, the ones that made us who we are and the ones that made the people who made us who we are. My feeling is that Laub loses his way a bit towards the end of the book—the sections taking about the “nonviability of human experience” I struggled with—but I think by then his point had been made and he was just repeating himself which is a shame because there’re some interesting ideas here: Jews who don’t believe their identities should be shaped by the Holocaust and Jew as persecutors.

[BukowyCzytajnik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historia bardzo ciekawa i dobrze że poruszona ale styl sprawił, że temat nie wybrzmiał tak mocno jak by mógł. Chociaż jak przy wszystkich przeczytanych przeze mnie książkach tego wydawnictwa jest to wydaje mi się bardzo subiektywna opinia.

[Solange Cunha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Gosto mais dos outros romances do Laub. Talvez a nota reflita esse critério comparativo que não consigo evitar de pensar.

Diário da queda correlaciona traumas e fatos de três gerações para explicar a inviabilidade da experiência humana em todos os tempos e lugares. Algumas partes são bem interessantes; em alguns momentos achei que as escolhas dos caminhos da narrativa foram exageradas.

[hopeforbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

„Dziennik upadku” Michela Lauba to z pewnością ważna i wartościowa książka. Poznajemy w niej historię dziadka, ojca i syna. Dziadek przeżył Auschwitz i wyemigrował do Brazylii, gdzie urodził się jego syn. Mężczyzna unikał rozmów o Auschwitz jak tylko mógł. Mimo to przekazał traumę na syna.

„Nawet nie wiem, jak udało mu się przeżyć, nie wiem, w jakim stanie wyszedł stamtąd i czy wracał do zdrowia w Polsce, czy w Niemczech, czy gdziekolwiek indziej, i jak zakombinował, żeby wsiąść w statek płynący do Brazylii, przezwyciężając, nawet nie wiem, jakiego rodzaju, problemy (…)”

Bardzo doceniam „Dziennik upadku” za rozważania na temat pamięci oraz przekazywania traum z pokolenia na pokolenia. Mimo to mam wrażenie, że nie wybrzmiało to tak dobrze jak by mogło, a forma zdominowała treść. Mamy tu do czynienia z bardzo długimi, wielokrotnie złożonymi zdaniami (często na pół strony), które wybijały mnie z rytmu i utrudniały czytanie.

Książka podzielona jest na kilka części, ale autor właściwie bardzo luźno trzyma się tego podziału i przeplata swoją historię z historią taty i dziadka, skacząc między jedną a drugą. Często się powtarza, wraca do tematu, dodając parę nowych myśli, co wprowadza niepotrzebny chaos i sprawia, że łatwo się tu pogubić.

To bardzo dobra, przejmująca i trafna książka, która nie do końca mnie usatysfakcjonowała, jednak mimo wszystko uważam, że warto po nią sięgnąć.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure if it was the writing style, the translation, or something else. But I just couldn't get emotionally attached to any of the characters in this book. There was a glimmer of hope that I would get involved emotionally towards the beginning when the narrator was talking about the bullying of João, because I did get a bit involved then, but then it went away.

The writing was good, but I didn't actively like it. Towards the end of the book I was getting bored.

All that sounds really negative, but it wasn't a bad book. It was just fine. I'll probably forget about it pretty quickly and it won't stay with me. It was just so-so.

[Tiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Culpa e redenção. Como as coisas deveriam ser. Como as coisas foram. Como as coisas são. E a constante inviabilidade da experiência humana em todos os tempos e lugares. Tudo isto forma uma espiral reincidente em um livro sobre o peso da existência, do conflito entre e da possibilidade de construção conjunta entre diversas gerações. "A queda" são várias, como são os diários. E todos fazem parte do mesmo. Um conjunto de vidas, situações, memórias e relatos arrancados da sombra de um trauma passado como legado. Belíssimo e real, por mais que seja e porque é, como somos, desestruturado.

[Aviendha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Otuz yıl içerisinde, Auschwitz’de tutuklu kalmış birini bulmak neredeyse imkansız olacak.
Altmış yıl içerisinde, Auschwitz’de tutuklu kalmış birinin oğluyla tanışmaksa çok zor olacak.

Kitap travmatik olayların gölgesinde kalan üç kuşağı, hesaplaşmalarını yalın bir şekilde sunmuş. Geçmişini hatırlamak istemeyen bir adam, geçmişini unutmak istemeyen bir adam ve hatalarıyla yüzleşmek istemeyen geçmişiyle sürekli mücadele eden başka bir adam. Bunların ekseninde oluşan metaforik bir kuşak döngüsü...