Bitácora del S.S. El señora Unguentin

by Stanley Crawford

Traducida por primera vez al espanol, y famosa entre los conocedores como la preferida entre los libros editados por el legendario Gordon Lish, esta pequena obra maestra logra la deslumbrante hazana de inventar una voz nunca antes escuchada para relatar una poderosa alegoria de la domesticidad. La bitacora se llena con los pensamientos, vivencias y memorias de la Senora Unguentin, esposa del capitan de una barcaza, y su unico otro pasajero. En ella comparten cuatro decadas de matrimonio entre los misterios inextricables de la pareja, la incomunicacion y la soledad compartida. Vagan por los mares juntos pero siempre incomodos, sin desembarcar nunca en ningun puerto, a bordo de una isla en la que siembran arboles, reciben visitas, y crian un hijo. Luego de muchos anos, Ungentin desaparecera por la borda del navio. La Senora Unguentin, sin comprender bien que hacer ni como actuar, se apodera de la bitacora en la que narrara lo que fue, es y sera la travesia mas extrana: su vida"

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Novels, American, 20th Century, Literature, Literary Fiction

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Crawford is the author of "Gascoyne," "Petroleum Man," "Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine," "A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm," "Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico," "The River in Winter," and "Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to my Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of their Childhood." He lives in new Mexico with his wife, RoseMary, where they own and run a garlic farm.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder what the log of Noah’s Ark could be like. Probably it would’ve read like this:

The view, when I had time, exhilarating and grand. There might even seem, as I would lift a sail and peep through the glass at the garden three stories below, the goat grazing at a pile of brush, ducks waddling from one pond to another, nothing else I could possibly desire.

Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine is a book of maritime adventures, well, of sorts.
Actually it is an account of the woman’s life and the slow deterioration of happiness, love, hopes and youth.
What is our life if not a long voyage – a sailing across the troubled ocean of existance?

I remember that midnight on the bow, anchors dropped, a moon casting a strange simulacrum of daylight over the water through some haze in the sky, a tone of light almost identical to that of a foggy day; and we stood at the railing which glistened under the slightest application of dew, the sea being waveless and graced only by lazy swells that passed us like the undulations of a great caterpillar’s back; and it was then, spontaneously, that we both broke into song, into a lilting sort of aria, but unsyllabled and smooth and which trailed off into a low hum, charging the night sea until the horizon bubbled with sheet-lightning and the waters glowed with the pulsations of electronic plankton, and we fell silent.

I absolutely enjoyed the atmosphere of this floating nuthouse… And an amazingly poetic language of the novel… And its elaborately veiled profound sadness.
Be it dead calm or stormy weather ship sails on…

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science fiction without science, magical realism without magic, surrealism shorn of its major concerns and retuned to human emotion. Somewhere triangulating but outside all of these concerns, lies a certain sort of writing that I tend to find terribly involving. This example of this strange territory is a compressed chronicle of 40+ years of marriage on a kind of floating garden, its two occupants falling into their (lack of) relationship just as the outside world recedes beyond the horizon (or maybe beneath the waves), all rendered with poetic economy and continuously fascinating reconfigurations of both characters and setting.

[Jaguar Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suat Kemal Angı çevirisiyle eylül ayında Türkçede...

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bay ve Bayan Unguentine’nin sıradışı aşk öyküsü. Bu çiftin dünyaları “Bayan Unguentine” adını verdikleri bir mavna üzerinde geçer. Mavna sanki denizde değil, karanın bir parçası gibidir. Huysuz yakışıklı ve alkolik adam ve ona aşık kadının mavnada yaşadıkları, hayatın ve kadın-erkek ilişkilerinin düşsel ve şiirsel bir dille anlatılmasıdır bütün hikaye. Büyülü gerçekçiliğin tipik bir örneği.

Çok akıcı, mükemmel betimlemeler ve denize, denizciliğe hakim bir anlatım. 1972’de yazılmış modern bir roman ve yazarı bir çiftçi. Kolay okunan ama zor anlaşılan sert bir metin olarak gördüm. Büyülü gerçekçilik veya fantaziye kaçmayan düşsel okumaları sevmiyorsanız sıkılabilirsiniz diye düşünüyorum. Denemekte yarar var.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben ne okudum ya? Okuduğum en tuhaf metinlerden biri desem abartmış olmam Bayan Unguentine'nin Seyir Defteri için, ki epeyce tuhaf metinler okumuşumdur bugüne dek. Amerikalı yazar Stanley Crawford'un bu çok hayalsi metni hakikaten epey acayip, özgün ve garipti.

Senelerce karaya hiç uğramayan, botanik bahçesine dönüştürülmüş bir mavna Bayan Unguentine. Bu mavnanın üstünde Bay ve Bayan Unguentine yaşıyor; anlatı kadının ağzından bir monolog gibi kurulmuş. Epey karanlık ve kederli bir öykü bu, sıklıkla deliliğe yakınsıyor anlatıcımız, anlattıklarını okurken neresi düş, neresi gerçek anlamakta zorlanıyoruz. Büyülü gerçekçilik midir bu peki, bence değil, hayır, burada başka, daha tuhaf bir şey var; bence ondan daha post-modern bir yere koymalı 1972 tarihli bu kitabı.

Epeyce şiirsel bir dille yazılmış bu metin; evliliğin ve kadın-erkek ilişkisinin en saklı yerlerine bakıyor. Bu iki insanı dünyadan tamamen yalıtarak kendi bozuk gerçekliklerinin içinden anlatıyor ki aslında her ilişkinin kendi bozuk gerçekliğini ürettiğini düşündüğümüzde, yaptığı tercihin ne kadar işlevsel olduğunu anlamak mümkün diye düşünüyorum.

Erkeklerin "sevgi"lerini gösterirken tercih ettikleri performatif yöntemlere dair de çok şey söylüyor kitap. Bay Unguentine'in karısını mutsuz edip etmeyişine aldırmaksızın ona kendi bildiği yöntemle sunduğu görkemli makineler, icatlar... Son sözde Ben Marcus ne güzel söylemiş: "Temel isteklerinden karısını mahrum ederken bile, ona karada umabileceğinden çok daha büyüleyici bir dünya inşa edecektir. Bu; gösteri, boş performans ve ego dolu sevgiyi göstermenin karmaşık bir yoludur. Bayan Unguentine'yi ezecek olan, içinde asla tamamen kaybolmayan bu ironidir."

Küçük ama ağır ağır okunabilen, yoğun, kafa karıştırıcı bir kitap. Anlatının ne kadar değişik formlar alabileceğine dair de cesur bir deney bence. Belirtmeden geçmeyeyim, Suat Kemal Angı’nın çevirisi kusursuz.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Mrs. Caliban, this strange and charming tale served up one of my ideal reading experiences: a completely surreal situation rendered entirely believable through its uniquely nonchalant narrative style. The two eccentric characters in the unusual setting that Crawford has conjured up complete projects of epic proportions conceivable only in the extreme circumstances borne of endless time at sea. It is a work of sublime imagination spelled out in mellifluous prose. My only complaint is directed towards its brevity, though perhaps to extend its delicate framework any further would have caused it to collapse in on itself. It may indeed be just the perfect length.

Sometimes I fell upon a traffic of ants or a cluster of bees drinking from a puddle, or a spider come down to ground for some furtive transaction there, my pet populations, true and ultimate heirs: but would they let me join them? Their peace, the soothing silence of things that were only a few inches away, enough distance, too much even by the impossible span of a hand's worth, so impossible to bridge, fling oneself across, little gap, to look.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I welcome the commitment to building a common, shared universe between two individuals. I am also aware of power dynamics springing forth, where the vicious cycles of behaviour and time make change seem impossible. Persistence and continuing to move forward does not always lead to a better life! Thank you Mrs. Unguentine for confirming that.

[Neli Krasimirova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yıl sonunda denk gelen hacmi küçük hazzı büyük metinleri ayrı seviyorum. Büyülü gerçekçilik frekansında iletişim kuran bir evlilik hikayesine ait geminin dalgasına erişim sağladık.
Müthişti.
Teşekkürler Jaguar 🥰

[A. Raca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Yine de ölmeden önce, arada sırada bir kara, sadece bir hurdalık, herhangi bir eski çöl adası, ama eğer mümkünse gerçek bir kıta parçası görebilmek için uzun süre bekledim."

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An utterly beguiling book with the feel of a loosely executed allegory, which allows the meaning(s) to roam and float from domestic portrait to the fall of man to a holistic gaia epic, but though there is a suggested formula within the structure I suspect Crawford stuck to his aesthetic guns and worked without a formulaic net, hence the utterly beguiling nature of it, offering open-ended rewards and the draw to read and reread it. Some have said that this is a probing portrait of a marriage but I read it more as a probing portrait of a lifestyle of self-sufficiency that happens to include a marriage as a subset; and as attractive as the conceit is - a gardened barge with wanderlust ornamented with wild yet practical inventions, that slowly creates its own ecosystem extending into the surrounding sea itself: a floating insular earth (which keys into one of my oldest fantasies) - nearly all the good times are in the past as the book begins; the narrative a detailing of its ultimate failure (the inventions becoming less and less practical), though even in failure and death there is a kind of apotheosis, a completion of a grand and mythic task, which like nature subsumes failure as it continues with proliferating continuance: a victory of sorts.

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A curiously clever book told first in short logs from aboard the titular S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine, and then increasingly longer "logs" that become more stream-of-consciousness in nature, all from the point of view of Mrs. Unguentine regarding life with her husband on the high seas.

It is to Crawford's credit that his linguistic wordplay and astute psychological portrait of his narrator cause even pages upon pages of catalogues of mundane and often petty chores aboard an ever-adrift barge and in-depth accounts of the animals and plant life living in the gardens on said barge to never grow tiring for the reader. Instead, we understand that life on the sea is their world:

For whatever happened, it would never end. We were out of time. On and on. Forever. That man. These seas...

The barge, magnificent barge, a jewel cresting upon the high seas those thirty to forty years when the weather was still a true marvel, when one could see stars at noon, when the rare clouds were so fine and gauze-like and so much more transparent to moons, when rains were frank and without whining drizzle and cleared without lingering—such was the bright and empty space we sailed across seemingly to no end...

Even their marriage is consecrated by telephone:

Some high priest on a party line made us man and wife or at least did consecrate the phone line, the electrodes, or whatever. And made me drop all my names, maiden, first and middle, the result being Mrs. Unguentine.

Although there are some mentions of dances and teases that Mrs. Unguentine gives to customs officers they meet along the way while sailing the high seas, there are no other characters encountered—as such, it is telling that their marriage begins with no physical party present to pronounce them man and wife, because the increasingly claustrophobic and insular relationship that is presented to us in her narrative is really the tale of how Mrs. Unguentine's identity has become subsumed beneath her husband's, "the silent stranger I now so selflessly serve ... not even wondering why anymore, that being the way things happen to have worked out, God knows how." For forty-plus years, she has catered to his dream of living aboard a barge always on the sea, never in sight of land; and, of course, it is a life of which Mrs. Unguentine is becoming increasingly resentful:

Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars, and all the rest.

Crawford's use of the barge as both a microcosm of the larger world—again, a world which we (and because of this, the two main characters) never see—and also as a metaphor for the constrained lives the two Unguentines lead after they are married is very skillfully done here. Their work on the barge is their attempt to keep their life together intact. And, in spite of Mrs. Ungeuntine's silent seething with regard to her husband and the control he has over her life, it is with an understanding of his own loneliness that she has, in the forty years of drifting on the seas with him, come to terms with his flaws and also come to realize that the two of them are interdependent: two shared lonelinesses comprising one singular relationship, again one that emphasizes loneliness.

But there is also a bitter comedy in Crawford's precious prose, too, that revels in how marriage—and all relationships of such a duration and in such solitude—builds strong ties of intimacy just as it does enmity. Indeed, the extremes of love and hate, of empathy and psychical violence, are all at play here, with the background a tragicomic barge that is as much a commentary on sustainable living as it is on marriage, interpersonal relationships, and the work that is required (and the sacrifices necessary) to keep the barge afloat, drifting calmly, toward nowhere.

[George]

"Back in the late 1960s a lot of us thought the world was coming to an end and it was time to head for the hills."

My interview with Stan can be read for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2022/06/2...

[sunrise, sunset · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yanlışım yoksa, "sarımsak üreticisi" de olan Amerikalı yazar. Netflix'in Rotten belgeselinde, Sarımsak bölümünde kendisini görmüştüm ve orada "A Garlic Testament" kitabından da bahsediliyordu. İlginç bir kitaba benziyordu, bulursam okuma niyetindeydim ama ilk Bayan Unguentine'nin Seyir Defteri geldi. Belgeselde küçük çaplı sarımsak üreticileri kendisini pek sevmiyordu, büyük firmalardan rüşvet vb. aldığını iddia ediyorlardı. Eğer okudularsa eminim romancılığını sevmişlerdir...

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

last night i dreamt that unguentine wouldn't let me pee. i kept wanting to go, i kept begging him to please let me relieve my bladder but he wouldn't let me. when i woke up i went to the bathroom, and thought about how odd but appropriate it was that my subconscious should decide that unguentine was the one preventing me from relief, that this character took on the form of my sleeping control of my body.

the language is very beautiful but this book made me blue. i give it five stars despite this because it also made me think. there is gorgeous creation and re-creation on this barge but also a desperate loneliness in the marriage of the two unguentines aboard it. i thought about them along the lines of adam and eve for a while, and it's easy to think about them as brian did, two suburban harpies, destroying each other. there is so little in love to trust, that even as mrs. unguentine faces her death, she is struggling in her marriage. and that makes me despair. love in itself does not seem enough. the distance and the destruction, the loneliness and the lies make me sad.

[Elcin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adem ile Havva, Nuh’un Gemisinde seyahat ediyormuş hissi uyandıran bir kitap oldu benim için. Evlilik içerisindeki rollerin vurgularını modern dünya ile denkleştiremedim kafamda bir türlü. Kitabın güzel bir dilinin olması tek başına yeterli olmadı.

[Baris Ozyurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Yine de, örneğin katamaranda ve ıssız denizlerde, ya da şişedeki o ilk ve ölümcül yudumda ve benzeri birçok durumda ona eş’lik ederken, Unguentine'yle yaşadığım mutsuzlukların kendimden kaynaklanmış olabileceği düşüncesi. O, dişlerinin arasına piposunu ya da purosunu, ya da bebeğin çıngırağını sıkıştırmış halde dümen yekesine yaslanmış otururken, ve ben rüzgârda ona doğru bağırırken, ya da bana eşlik etmesi veya eski ve çok uzun zamandır görmediğim sevgili arkadaşlarım için ağlarken, onun tek istediği denizdi, enginlerdi; ben ona bir içki daha dolduruyordum, o ise erkeklerin kirletmediği, kadınlarınsa yelkenleri, ağları ya da elbiseleri onardığı, şarkı söylediği, konuşmadığı, pruva sulara çarpıp deniz mavisi cilayla sırlanırken rüzgârla birlikte şarkı söylediği okyanuslarda sonsuza dek yelken açmanın hayaliyle demleniyordu. Unguentine karada midesi bulanan bir adamdı, her şeyin çatlayıp un ufak olabileceği ve dövülmüş şiltelerin tozuna karışıp kocaman bir deliğe düşebileceği düşüncesiyle, katı ve hareketsiz bir yüzeyde titremeden yürüyemezdi. Onun şu karasal nefes darlığı.

O zamanlar adına kara denen o hengâmenin, sinir bozucu bir trafik dışında hiçbir şeye uygun olmayan kasvetli bir yüzey olmasında şaşılacak bir şey yok. Ama ben onu karada tuttum, ip atlamaya zorladım. O da yaptı. Son gemimiz bir mavnaydı, açık denize çöp taşımak gibi işlerde kullanılan bir mavna. Tekrar denize açılmanın tek yolu buydu diye düşündüm. Bir şarkıya, çöpe ve de her şeye, çürümeye, kötü kokuya, kavga eden bir martı sürüsüne uygun bir şeye sahiptik. Çöpün üstüne toprak döktürdük, ağaçlar diktik, çiçekler ektik ve onları rüzgârdan ve dalgalardan korumak için bağlantı yerleri pirinçten, büyük bir brandayla örttük, ve böylece, bitkilerimin hatırına, bizi ılıman bölgelere götürecek bir rota belirleyip denize açıldık. Hayatlarında ilk kez böyle bir manzarayla karşılaşan düşman donanmaları tarafından birçok kez durdurulduk; bir seferinde ise, ucuz bir ada arayan yoksul bir hükümet, kamulaştırma bahanesiyle mavnamıza el koydu. Ben bitkilerimi sularken Unguentine içiyordu. Ekvator bölgesinde da başka bir yerde, gemiye balık yiyen ve bahçem için gübre sağlayan birkaç köpek ve bir kedi aldım; bahçe o kadar gelişti ki bazı yerleri geçit vermez oldu; asmalara tutunup büyüyen yapraklarla kaplı büyük dallar neredeyse tüm mavnanın üzerinden sarkıyordu ve biz günlerce birbirimizi görmeden yürüyebiliyorduk; her birimiz ayrı bir tarafta, tekinsiz kuşların ziyaretleriyle kendi başımıza eğleniyorduk. Onun mutlu olduğunu düşünerek kendimi kandırdım. Ne de olsa o yıl, onun o Şaka'yı yaptığı yıl değil miydi? Hatta o yıl, çok konuşmamayı tercih ettiğini söylediği yıldı. Unutmayın, kedi ve köpeklerim vardı. Çok dikkatli dinlemiyordum. Bu nedenle iki gün sonraki talihsiz sonu beni çok şaşırttı ve o dalıştan hemen sonra, yani suya düşer düşmez, ki şişe aynı şişeydi, gri dudaklar, köpüklü denizler aynıydı, kederime ve gemiyi batırabilecek olma ihtimalime karşın, mavnayı rotasında tutabilmek için kaptan köşküne koştum. Daha önce kaptan köşküne hiç çıkmamıştım. Kapıyı açışımı, tökezleyerek içeri girişimi, dümeni kavrayışımı, önümdeki ya da pupayı ve pruvayı -ya da her ne haltsa, kıç ve baş tarafı- gören pencerelerden bakışımı ve o aptal denizcilik terimleriyle sonsuza dek kafası karışmış ve onları sırıtarak kullanan kıllı adamlardan nefret eden halimi görmeden, yaşadığım şoku ve şaşkınlığı hayal edemezsiniz. Ama elbette pencerelerden bakınca bahçenin yoğun bitki örtüsünden başka bir şey görünmüyordu; yani bunca yıl Unguentine nereye doğru gittiği hakkında hiçbir fikri olmadan dümen tutmuştu, tıpkı şimdi benim yaptığım gibi. Dümenin önündeki pencerenin camı ile çerçevesi arasına sıkıştırılmış kartvizitin üstünde yazdığı gibi, ölümü için seçtiği motto basitti: ‘Temel Gemi ve Tekne Onarımları Yapılır.’ Bu tam da ona, Unguentine'ye göre bir davranıştı: tedbirli, düşünceli ve yıkıcı. Bunu biliyordum. O kartviziti yıllardır o an için saklamıştı. Ancak mavnamızın kesinlikle onarıma ihtiyacı yoktu. Hem de hiç.”(s. 12)

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A myth? An allegory? A fariy-less fairy tale? An improbably intricate and most fabulous dream? All of the above? Who knows. Who cares! Such a sumptuous little treat of a book! If you like words, if you love language, if you enjoy mini-novels that have been painstakingly detailed and read like urgent transmissions from some other, far more fantastical (yet somehow completely and compellingly convincing) realm, then dive right in. A woman, Mrs. Unguentine, tells the story of her time on a barge--once a ship used to ferry trash, then transformed, thanks to a layering of rich humus, to an overly fertile boat-garden of vegetables, fruits, shrubs and trees--with her husband, the elusive, monomaniacal, sweet, terrifying, and inventive Mr. Unguentine. The ship is a story in itself, evolving into a dazzling vessel where earth and machinery are wondrously yoked: Unguentine builds a glass dome over the barge (the windows "chatter" in the wind), he disappears into hatches he's built beneath the earth to hide and smoke, he fashions lakes, launches homemade fireworks, descends into the barge-bowels to tend to the gargantuan motor, then commissions Mrs. U. to build sails when said motor gives out. But even better than this boat--a metaphor, I suppose, for something, maybe marriage, maybe art, novel-making, who knows--is the writing: "my oiled body lathered in veils," "a floodbath of light," "that peculiar effect of vegetal nudity that comes from brightness playing on the underside of leaves," "rains were frank and without whining drizzle and cleared without lingering," are but a taste of the language-banquet upon which to be feasted here. Mrs. Unguentine, the narrator, tells the story in a fashion that is both intimate and remote, and is every bit as imaginative as her husband. I'll end with one of my favorite (and characteristically transformative) images: "Outside the storm still raged. Moments like this I imagined, for comfort, that through those walls all the good and smiling people I had ever known were throwing buckets of water against the side of the barge." An utterly singular work of fiction.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amazing invention of a short novel, most impressive for the details that are required for the imagined world of a barge-cum-island to take root in the reader's mind. Fantastic in its Daumaul-ian logic, its Roussel-ish sense of spectacle. I would not go as far as Ben Marcus does in his afterword, in which he praises it for its examination of a marriage--this aspect of the book I found not fully satisfying, existing only in the most allegorically surface sense. We never get a feel for who these characters are except through a fog of whimsy. Certainly I would not (as Marcus does) compare this to the brilliant Bergman film Scenes from a Marriage, a film that plunges deep into the psyche. Instead, we have a book where there is no plunging, only the barest outward remnants of two people's madnesses. Still, quite enjoyable: I especially loved the many parts that strained the boundaries of real possibility, you could see it stretching like the marks from childbirth, but how far? When does reality break through into fantasy?

[Nathanimal · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars with a good likelihood of 5 stars upon rereading)

The word that comes to mind is lush. I loved getting lost in the dense foliage of Crawford’s sentences. The SS Unguentine is a Garden of Eden, only it's not bestowed on its inhabitants, but made by them. And I found that inspiring. I wanted to get lost in my own making, too.

This kind of allegorical realism isn’t something I associate with writing from the US in the last part of the 20th Century, so it feels like something very peculiar to itself, which is always the best thing to find.

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy addition to the "metaphorical broken marriage" genre, which includes such cinema classics as the amazing Possession, the average Don't Look Now, the awful Antichrist, and the exemplary mother!.

"Yet these things, however fulfilling they may be, scarcely add up to tell me what you refuse to speak, and if you could possibly see fit to spare a moment now and then to take me into your confidence, discuss something, anything in fact, then I might venture to suggest—brazen hypothesis, I know—that we could start working our way towards the heart of the matter, on the way to engaging in many a colourful argument... Such facts, trivial even, I would love to hear more of, or simply of, and would willingly dote on to pass the time of day and to know somewhat more fully the silent stranger I now so selflessly serve and not even wondering why any more, that being the way things happen to have worked out, God knows how."

Do be open and vulnerable with your partner—or a friend, or someone you can trust—and try not to keep it all inside.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the time it would take for me to compose and for you to read a befitting review, we could both read this little thing again. So we should. Though brief, it feels epic; through the uncanny it reveals the all-too-familiar. It is to the drivel of domestic drama what modernist chamber music is to a one string banjo. Countless pen-pushers continue to sully reams with the claustrophobic confusions of love and marriage--rest assured this is nothing like that. Whereas embittered spouses isolate each other in an irredeemably dyadic discourse of accusation, assumption, retribution, feint and parry and on and on and on, Crawford creates a singular, vivid, precise narrative in whose language all the right questions can surface.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a singular work that makes the impossible feel almost normal, like science fiction, but it isn’t science fiction at all, or even surrealism. It’s a first-person, past-tense narrative that contains almost no dialogue, because the narrator’s husband hardly says a word (a new sort of strong-and-silent type). It’s a love story like no other. There is no reason to doubt the narrator, no matter how impossible things may be. The style is all over the place, from lists to erotica to long descriptions to the lyrical, and all of it works. A modern classic.

[Melda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hayalle gerçek arasında yaşanan çok garip bir aşk hikayesi ve aslında aynı zamanda sıra dışı bi maceraydı. Zaman zaman kitabın dünyasını gözümde canlandırmakta ve dinamiklerini anlamakta zorlanmama rağmen çok kolay adapte olabildiğim için (çeviri çok iyi) epey keyif aldım.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book, but by no means a quick read. After every chapter, I had to stop, take a break, breathe some fresh air, have a walk, enjoy some sunshine, reflect deeply on my relationship with my family, on our personal and shared identities, on what we are building and where we are heading. Only then could I dive back into this brilliant poetical nautical fantastical allegorical yarn of an old dysfunctional couple sailing through life.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tantalising, absurd, metafictional story of the type that flourished during its era (1970s): a nearly wordless couple live on a giant barge, on which they've planted trees, flowers, vegetables – an entire ecosystem, in fact – all under a giant glass dome, built out of scrap materials trawled from the ocean floor in a diving bell. Strange, inexplicable things occur; the marriage itself, between the narrator and the near-wordless, abusive, Unguentine, never quite comes into focus.

This interview sheds some more light on the ideas of the author, a prodigy turned garlic farmer in the Southwest: puzzlement at the unravelling of America's social fabric, environmentalism, survivalism, and an interest in his wife's mother, the widow of a surly German chemist not unlike the title character? The lack of emotional resonance bothered me, but this is an alienated book about a near post-human life. The writer, like Beckett, is a fluent French speaker, and ice-cold, crisp prose abounds. I'll close with a fairly representative quote (about the narrator's son):

But no name. Unguentine refused. To name, he said, would be to grasp the near and present end of the chain called history, and thus to forge another link, and how sad! I agreed. He remained namless. Child, baby, son. Quite enough terms to cover his condition.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me awhile to warm up to this, then it was magic. And the ending! Wow.

[Buse Halac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gerçekten de yokluktan var edilen bir anlatının ürünü Bayan Unguentine'nin Seyir Defteri. Daha giriş kısmından daha farklı bir anlatı, ilgi çekici bir iç dünya okuyacağınız hissini veriyor.

İkili ilişkiler kadar çok anlatılan bir konu yoktur herhalde. Ama bir su parçasının üzerine yerleştirilmiş, dış dünyadan yalıtılmış bir ilişki bu. Ve kadın da adamın iç dünyasından yalıtılmış halde.

Suların gel gitleriyle yaklaşan ve uzaklaşan ama aslında gittikçe uzaklaşan bir ilişki bu. Kadını orada tutan ne? Aşk mı, alışkanlık mı? Geride bıraktığı hayatından artık çok uzaklaşmış olması ya da yeni bir hayatı göze alamıyor olması mı?
Zihnimde dolaşan keyifli sorular bunlar. Bazen hayat olduğu gibidir, böyle soruların bir yanıtı yoktur. Onu güzel yapan da yanıtsız olmasıdır zaten. Böyle bir his verdi bana bu anlatı, hayata benzer bir şey okuduğum hissi.

"Yedi buçuk yıl önceki bir sabah ışığında denizin rengini" hatırlıyor mesela adam. Büyüleyici. İnanılmaz. Ama o gün kadının gözlerinin içi gülüyor muydu, bilmiyor. Bilemez. Belli ki bilmeyi istemiyor ve kaçıyor da. Kalırken de kaçmıştı aslında...

Bu kadar sıradan konuyu, kendince anlatmasına hayran kaldım Crawford'un. Özellikle de okurken kendinizi denizde ya da deniz kenarında hayal etmeyi seviyorsanız, zihninizde yaratacağı hissi de seveceğinizi düşünüyorum.

Jaguar'a da bu kadar özenle kitap seçtiği için ve aynı özeni çeviri konusunda da gösterdiği için çok teşekkürler.

[Pinar Celebi · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5/5

[Berk Çetin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saçma sapan bir edebiyat olayı. Eldeki malzeme doğrultusunda modern edebiyatta yaratıcılığın en uç noktası sayılabilir. Kaufman'ın veya Aronofsky'nin bu kitabı keşfedip filmleştirmesini çok isterdim.

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Crawford has managed the seemingly impossible in this novella; he has mastered a prose style that is dense yet evanescent. In the past week I have read this book five times, and at each reading I have come across images which I would swear I hadn't come across in previous readings. How dense? Consider this passage:
"We fueled by night in obscure, foetid ports where I strip-teased on the prow, ringed by candles, to mollify thin-lipped customs officials, while Unguentine whispered assignations for contraband into lapping darkness over the stern; one week it was a case of crown jewels, another a cargo of slave babies who sang sweet songs in the depths of the hold while I leaned against the partitions and wept, childless, penniless; another time, bananas."
And then, after Unguentine, in a fit of Industrial Revolutionary madness, takes an axe to all the trees on his floating arboreal Eden, replacing them with gimcrack mechanical ones:
"After a day of rest in the sticky sun, I began to help him. Something to do. Gave me a little box of paints. Brushes. A pot of glue. A hamper of unpainted leaves the colour of skimmed milk, and slowly they began to pass through my fingers for their spatterings of green, then to be fastened to twigs of molybdenium wire and into drooping sprays along the lines indicated by his rough sketches, only a few dozen leaves a day at first, then with practice over two hundred, from one basket to another through my increasingly deft fingers, leaving small callouses and arid memories."
The whole book evokes so much: the Book of Genesis, ROBINSON CRUSOE, and TRISTRAM SHANDY; above all else, Unguentine feels like what Prospero might have become, had he not broken his staff and drowned his books, with poor Mrs. Unguentine a perverse conflation of Ariel, Miranda, and Caliban. All that being said, I still have no idea of what this story is about; to quote Werner Herzog, regarding the ending of STROSZEK, it is "perhaps a great metaphor...though for what I could not say".