In Search of Lost Books: The Forgotten Stories of Eight Mythical Volumes

by Giorgio van Straten, Simon Carnell (Translator), Erica Segre (Translator)

'Brilliant... a little masterpiece' - Guardian

The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances.

They exist as a rumour or a fading memory. They vanished from history leaving scarcely a trace, lost to fire, censorship, theft, war or deliberate destruction, yet those who seek them are convinced they will find them. This is the story of one man's quest for eight mysterious lost books.

Taking us from Florence to Regency London, the Russian Steppe to British Columbia, Giorgio van Straten unearths stories of infamy and tragedy, glimmers of hope and bitter twists of fate. There are, among others, the rediscovered masterpiece that he read but failed to save from destruction; the Hemingway novel that vanished in a suitcase at the Gare du Lyon; the memoirs of Lord Byron, burnt to avoid a scandal; the Magnum Opus of Bruno Schulz, which disappeared along with its author in wartime Poland; and the mythical Sylvia Plath novel that may one day become reality.

As gripping as a detective novel, as moving as an elegy, this is the tale of a love affair with the impossible, of the things that slip away from us but which, sometimes, live again in the stories we tell.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, History, Essays, Literature, Literary Criticism, Classics

130 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 2 out of 5]

O carte cu un conținut mai degrabă arbitrar. Autorul alege la pura întîmplare opt autori ale căror cărți / manuscrise s-au pierdut din motive foarte eterogene: unele au fost distruse de niște moștenitori puritani (cazul însemnărilor Lordului George Gordon Noel Byron) sau de soți abuzivi (sau abulici), precum Ted Hughes (un jurnal al Sylviei Plath din ultimii ei ani de viață, plus un roman neterminat), altele au ars odată cu cabana în care se retrăsese scriitorul (manuscrisul unui roman de Malcolm Lowry), altele au fost puse pe foc de însuși autorul lor, dintr-un motiv imposibil de pătruns (partea a doua din Suflete moarte de Gogol), în fine, alte cărți s-au pierdut dintr-un hazard malefic (romanul Messia al lui Bruno Schulz, o valiză cu manuscrisele lui Walter Benjamin) etc.

Mult mai interesant ar fi fost un eseu dedicat văduvelor asasine. Giorgio van Straten se referă doar la soția prozatorului italian Romano Bilenchi, dar putea evoca și văduvele lui Dostoievski, Tolstoi și Jules Renard care au masacrat (din pudoare) corespondența primilor doi și jurnalul celui de-al treilea...

Foarte interesantă e și definiția tautologică a „cărților pierdute”: cărți care au existat, dar acum nu mai există...

Titlul englez e bombastic, cel francez e prea general, Le livre des livres perdus, cel original (autorul e italian) e mai modest Storie di libri perduti. Autorul nu scrie nici bine, nici rău, dar cartea lui - din care aflăm lucruri pe care le știm de mult - e o însăilare haotică.

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Lost books are those that once existed but are no longer here.”

I’m partial to a mystery, especially if it’s a plausible one, but my interest can lead to complete preoccupation if books are part of the mix: as happened with Giorgio van Straten's perplexing collection, in which we learn once existent manuscripts have, through deception, suppression and occasional stupidity, vanished – possibly forever.

In this short but enthralling volume of literary micro-histories, we follow eight unrelated narratives, set in various parts of the world during different time periods, each one concerning a writer thought to have all-but completed their magnum opus – or at the very least, had in their possession scores of scribbled notes – before expiring for reasons including, but not limited to, disease, despair, suicide and liquidation. After which, their precious masterworks were said to have disappeared without trace.

There is, of course, some doubt all these works truly existed, the inference being legends grew from mere wishful thinking, fed by rumour, perhaps initiated by writers suffering creative block. Nevertheless, in one instance, van Straten himself claims to have read in its entirety a now missing bundle of papers, stored for decades in a drawer. Sadly, due to promises given, no copies were ever made and an opportunity was missed to save a friend’s writings from probable destruction. He now regrets his decision.

Some of these stories were familiar to me, for instance, the burning of Lord Byron's diaries because his friends and ex-wife believed personal reputations were in jeopardy. Also, the loss of Sylvia Plath's unfinished novel, Double Exposure, which, according to her estranged husband, Ted Hughes, “disappeared somewhere around 1970.” However, I knew nothing of others, such as the works of Polish Jew, Bruno Schulz going missing in the Holocaust. Yet I found this chilling account only too credible.

Giorgio van Straten asks valid questions about the ethics of disposing of unfinished manuscripts once an author is dead, even when determined by a spouse or near relative. Are they the ideal people to make this decision? Is censorship by friends and family any more acceptable than suppression by an authoritarian state? He also raises the question: should writers be trusted when they say their works have disappeared? The answer is probably no.

In Search of Lost Books: The Forgotten Stories of Eight Mythical Volumes is an enthralling literary whodunnit, but for me it was also very much a howcouldyou! The mere suggestion of deliberate libricide was almost more than I could endure. We may never know for sure if some of these manuscripts are still hidden away somewhere or if they were only ever fanciful fictions. It’s a closed book, you might say. Well, maybe.

Many thanks to Pushkin Press for providing an advance review copy of this title.

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

Os livros desaparecidos são capazes de evocar novos, de impelir outros escritores a escrever, a preencher os vazios que se criaram. Mas o ofício dos escritores, como escreveu uma vez Mario Vargas Llosa, consiste em “mentir com conhecimento de causa.”

Que têm em comum Romano Bilenchi, Sylvia Plath, Nikolai Gógol, Malcolm Lowry, Bruno Schulz, Walter Benjamin, Ernest Hemingway e Lord Byron? Algures nas suas carreiras, um manuscrito que desapareceu por vontade dos próprios ou de terceiros. Com um título extremamente apetecível, Giorgio Van Straten reúne oito ensaios sobre obras queimadas, roubadas ou extraviadas antes de serem dadas ao prelo, regressando também à polémica da publicação póstuma e de se respeitar a vontade dos herdeiros.
Gogól aborrece-me até enquanto assunto, não se fala de Sylvia Plath sem aparecer um homem a lastimar Ted Hughes e a sua má sorte com as mulheres (o meu coração sangra por ele), mas os relatos sobre Lord Byron e Walter Benjamin são contados com tanto suspense que quase se espera um desfecho menos fatídico.

Walter Benjamin não era um homem idoso, tinha apenas 48 anos, ainda que nesse momento os anos lhe pesassem mais. Mas era um homem cansado e doente – os amigos chamavam-lhe “o velho Benji”, sofria de asma, já tinha tido um enfarte -, desde sempre incapaz de qualquer atividade física, habituado a passar todo o seu tempo debruçado sobre os livros ou em doutas conversas. Cada deslocação, cada empenho físico, representavam para ele um trauma, ainda que as vicissitudes o tenham obrigado a cerca de 28 mudanças de morada ao longo dos anos.

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

G. Van Straten yaptığı araştırmaları oldukça kısa olan bu kitapta toplamış. Araştırdığı konu ise bir zamanlar yazılmış ama basılmamış, belki tamamlanmamış ama yazıldığına dair çok kuvvetli izler bırakmış ama şu anda hiçbir yerde bulunamayan kitaplar.

Sekiz örnek içinde en ilginç olanı, kayıp kitabı bu araştırmayı yapan yazar da okumuş, dolayısıyla var olduğundan çok emin, ama kitabın bilinen üç taslağı hiçbir yerde bulunamamış. İtalyan yazar Roman Bilenchi’nin “Bulvar” isimli romanıdır bu kayıp kitap.

Diğer yedi kitap içinde öyküsü en bilineni Walter Benjamin’in kayıp siyah bavulunda olduğu düşünülen kitap veya kitaplardır. Tadı kaçmasın diye kayıp olduğu düşünülen diğer altı kitaptan bahsetmeyeceğim. Toplam 65 sayfalık bu ilginç araştırma edebiyat dünyasına renk katmakta.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok tatlı bir küçük kitap "Kayıp Kitapların İzinde". Everest'in bu denemeler serisini pek seviyorum, benim gibi edebiyata dair okumayı pek de sevmeyen biri için bile çok lezzetli eserler seçiyorlar. Bu kitap da böyle sanatın içinde aşırı anlam arayan, yapısökümle eser didikleyen ve sevmediğim türde denemelerden oluşmuyor neyse ki.

Varlıklarından bir biçimde haberdar olduğumuz (bir yerde adı geçmiş, yazar bir arkadaşına söz etmiş vs.) ama artık ortada olmayan kimi kitapların / taslakların izini süren metinler bunlar. Hemingway'in trende çalınan bavulundaki romandan Sylvia Plath'ın ölümünden sonra Ted Hughes'un "kayboldu" dediği romanına, Gogol'ün ölümünden önce yaktığı Ölü Canlar'ın ikinci cildine dek edebiyat tarihinin kaybolarak mitleşmiş kitaplarının öykülerini anlatıyor Giorgio Van Straten.

Bu kitaplar iyi kitaplar mıydı, kaybolmasalar edebiyat tarihinde nasıl bir itibarları olurdu, onları sihirli yapan artık olmayışları mı? Bu soruyu da soruyor yazar: "Ya beni zapt eden tutku, bu kayıp kitaplarla karşılaştığımızda hepimizi zapt eden o tutku, Proust'un tasvir ettiği âşıkane tutkuyla aynı köklere sahipse? Peki ya, bir zamanlar var olan fakat artık elimizde tutamadığımız bir şeyin düşüncesiyle birlikte gelişen dürtü ve melankoli ile merak ve büyülenmenin birleşimi bir duyguyu haklı çıkaran bu imkansızlık ihtimalinin ta kendisiyse? Bizi büyüleyen boşluğun ta kendisi olabilir mi? Çünkü o boşluğu, noksan olan şeyin hayati, mükemmel ve benzersiz olduğu kanısıyla doldurmak mümkündür."

Eh, haklı sorular. Bildiğimiz şekliyle söyleyeyim: "kavuşamayınca aşk mı olur, acaba?" diyor aslında yazar :) Belki öyle, belki değil ama yine de benim için pek leziz bir okuma oldu bu. İz sürme hikayelerini severim, izi sürülen şey kitaplar olunca daha da çok severim.

Bonus: Bunu seven, C.D. Rose'un, kayıp kitapların izini sürerken kendi kaybolan bir yazarı anlattığı "Herkes Başka Biriyken Kim Kimdir" romanını da sever. Oradaki soru burası için de geçerli bence, onunla bitireyim: "Hakikat nerede sona erer, kurmaca nerede başlar? Kurmacanın hakikate karşı nasıl bir ahlaki sorumluluğu vardır?"

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tocou-me especialmente a história do "livro perdido" de Sylvia Plath, curiosamente o último mencionado neste conjunto de 8 livros perdidos de autores como Byron, Hemingway, Bruno Schulz, Gógol, Malcolm Lowry, Walter Benjamin e Romano Bilenchi.

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath
23-29 Outubro 1962

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short collection of essays all of which centre on lost books: books which once existed but which are no longer extant.

Van Straten writes beautifully in a tone that is accessible, sometimes intimate, informative and enthusiastic. Mingling aspects of book history, cultural history, biography and a touch of literary criticism, the essays are polished but feel a little too short to offer more than a potted history and thought-piece on the text under consideration.

Wide-ranging enough to consider lost books by Byron, Gogol, Malcolm Lowry, Hemingway and Sylvia Plath amongst others, this is ideal commute reading, or any time you want something intelligent in bite-size pieces.

Thanks to Pushkin Press for an ARC via NetGalley

[Manuel Alberto Vieira · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5, na verdade. Para quem se interessa pelos bastidores da literatura e também pelos sinais dos tempos que eles traduzem (veja-se o caso das «Memoirs» de Byron, volume nunca dado à estampa porque o «Lord» não era muito dado a comportamentos católicos).
A escrita subtil, mas precisa, confere agilidade a um conjunto de textos que, de outro modo, arriscaria o tédio.

[Dina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me ha gustado por curioso, pero no era exactamente lo que esperaba, me ha faltado más dramatismo y emoción...

[Subashini · Rating 4 out of 5]

An elegant little book about the "lost" works of literature: texts that went missing, were stolen, or deliberately destroyed. Bilenchi, Byron, Hemingway, Schulz, Gogol, Lowry, Benjamin, and Plath are the writers discussed. The author wears his learning and research lightly. He writes in an accessible, intimate voice. As readers and book lovers, it is something difficult to contemplate—mourning the art that can never be—and the book is elegiac in tone.

Talking about why the prospect of a lost work excites us or moves us, he writes, "By the end of the voyage I had realized that lost books possess something that others do not: they bequeath to those who have not read them the possibility of imagining them, of telling stories about them, of re-inventing them."

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute delight of a nonfiction read, singular in its brevity, readability and entertaining value ratios. Perfect for any book lover, this is an account of 8 tales by very famous and somewhat more obscure European authors that never saw the light of publishing press for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the stories behind the stories are wilder than the stories themselves. Sometimes tragic. Sometimes strange. It always puts me in mind of a theory that our civilization would have been much more advanced nowadays if all the knowledge encompassed by the library of Alexandria hadn’t burned. Anyway…not every story is a game changer, but it is still a treasure and the author is quite passionate about his subject. Made for an erudite and enjoyable presentation and the subject (for me, at least) is fascinating, so this was a lovely way to spend a morning. Thanks Netgalley.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to #netgalley for providing this arc for my review. This was a charming book about those stories that got away. Many of these relate to missing books from earlier in the twentieth century, before the advent of computers. Stories of both well-know. And more obscure authors are included here. The passion and knowledge of the author is clear. I only wished there was more to tell in these stories. 3.5⭐️

[Stefania · Rating 3 out of 5]

Van Straten nos cuenta las historias de ocho manuscritos perdidos, escritos por autores de renombre y varios de ellos con finales misteriosos e inciertos. Un libro lleno de curiosidades y de lectura fácil y rápida.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting look at the fragility of the written word. It is, in a way, heartbreaking to read these accounts of stories that have been lost due to fire, censorship, stupidity, and more. But the discussion of posthumously publishing (or, in these cases, destroying) an authors work is so important. Who can truly say what that person may have wished for, and who should have the right to make that call? Certainly one way to think about what “death of the author” really entails.

[Alex Sarll]

A slim book about books that the mischances of history have rendered even slimmer, which is to say, entirely nonexistent. The first chapter details one the author has in fact read, an incomplete but powerful piece from the wilderness years of an Italian author I've never heard of, and given I found it gripping despite never having read the author in question, it bodes well. But the second, on Byron's unforgivably burned memoirs, is irksome. Van Straten surmises, not unreasonably, that their homosexual content was key to the agreement of publisher and family that they should be destroyed. But from this he leaps to the most tedious strain of bisexual erasure, insisting that despite Byron's many, many heterosexual dalliances, his 'true feelings' were homosexual all along. This is particularly impressive when he suggests that the incestuous relationship in 'Manfred' was a coded way of talking about gay relationships - rather than, you know, the incestuous relationship Byron also had. Which in any case is scarcely less scandalous, even by the standards of the time! Is it really so hard to believe that, in among the many other contradictions of his character, Byron was - like so many other people - genuinely into both men and women? This is not just annoying in its own right - though it's certainly that - but wounds one's overall faith in van Straten's fitness for the wider topic. When someone is writing about such a shadowy topic, in which lost works will necessarily exist as a tapestry of smoke, what use as a guide is someone with that drab butterfly collector's urge to pin down the free-floating and ambivalent?

Thereafter, though, it picks up again. Van Straten is suitably sceptical of Hemingway's claim that his first wife lost his juvenilia on a train - though given my own feelings on Hemingway's work (those six perfect words aside), I could only wish his subsequent wives had been so helpfully forgetful. The essay on Bruno Schulz' lost novel, one more casualty of the mid-twentieth century East European bloodlands, makes me long to read it even though I've not read the shorts we do have. On the second part of Gogol's Dead Souls, van Straten does miss one obvious angle - if this was meant to be the point where a Russian Divine Comedy turned towards the light, who's to say it wouldn't have anyway languished in the same genteel obscurity as the Purgatorio and Paradiso do compared to the Inferno? But I couldn't help a certain horrified amusement at the notion that a confused and malnourished Gogol may have accidentally burned the complete draft instead of the abandoned one; it's nightmarish, but so perfectly Blackadder. Next up is Malcolm Lowry, whom I've never read; given he's known to me more for the boozing than the writing, hardly surprising that he should mislay a novel along the way. Turns out that, like Gogol's, his was intended to accompany one that survived as the second third of a Divine Comedy. An interesting coincidence - or is it? - allowed to pass with far less examination than Byron's presumed orientation.

And then, like any good crowd-pleaser, van Straten closes with the hits; Walter Benjamin's suitcase, Sylvia Plath's destroyed journal and 'lost' novel. Neither chapter adds anything to the heaps already written about each.

So what to make of it, in the end? Well, the dreadful Byron chapter aside, it's diverting enough. But had it been lost, I suspect nobody would be writing about the fact a century hence. If you want something poetic on topics around this, there's Borges; if you want hard fact, there's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books. And this falls in between in the opposite category to its subjects, of books which probably will survive in fact more than in memory.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I selected ‘In Search of Lost Books’ from a library display, having fought my way into the central library during the Edinburgh Fringe. The entrance was nearly blocked by someone handing out flyers dressed in a huge brain costume. I kid you not. Anyway, I find this sort of book hard to resist and made little effort to do so. Like Every Heart a Doorway, I would have preferred it to be longer, but very much enjoyed what was there. Van Straten briefly recounts the tales of various lost books and their fates. The only one I was previously familiar with was Bryon’s famously burned memoir, truly a tragic decision. Indeed, the only loss here I couldn’t work up much sadness about was Hemingway’s early work, as I have little time for Hemingway. Perhaps most fascinating was the account of ‘In Ballast to the White Sea’, the lost thousand-page novel by Malcolm Lowry. Given the dense gloom and incredible beauty of Under the Volcano, a thousand page tome from him would be extraordinary and probably gruelling to read. Apparently a first draft of it from 1936 has now been published, but the final (or certainly later) version burned with his cabin in 1944. It seems that Under the Volcano, his other novel Ultramarine, and the lost book were intended to form a trilogy analogous with The Divine Comedy. Under the Volcano was the Inferno; the lost novel was to be Paradise.

Likewise of great interest is the vanishing of Walter Benjamin’s suitcase, containing a manuscript of completely unknown content. Benjamin suffered from extraordinary bad luck and tragically committed suicide after failing to escape France when the Nazis invaded. The suitcase disappeared during this failed flight. Potentially still existent in embargoed papers, however, is an unpublished novel by Sylvia Plath provisionally titled ‘Double Exposure’. In the chapter on Plath, Van Straten reflects on whether readers become ghoulish in their demands for posthumous writing, ready for publication or not, whatever their heirs may think. There is definitely a compromise to be found between burning everything and ignoring the writer’s wishes in order to expose all of their work to the world. Although it’s brief, this is a thoughtful-provoking and fascinating set of literary mysteries. It convinced me to read Gogol's Dead Souls, unfortunately just in time for someone else to borrow it from my local library.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In Search of Lost Books” is a kind of sad requiem for what could of been and what has been lost to humanity. Some authors are well known (Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway), some less so to Western readers, but what they all share in common is a work that never was.
The reasons for these books being lost to us vary from such mundane things as fires, heirs wanting to prevent uncomfortable information from reaching the public, the authors sudden disappearance, and in the case of Hemingway’s first wife, a lost suitcase with all the first three years of his writings (she unbelievably also packed all the extant carbon copies as well). Von Straten writes with a profound sadness about the loss of these books and makes us care about works that perhaps would otherwise not reach our consciousness. A beautiful little book that will make you think about what could’ve been.

[La mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originale nell’idea, affascinante e interessante nella trattazione. Van Straten ci racconta otto storie brevi, otto perle con cui riesce a costruire una preziosa collana. Un libro piccolo piccolo che incanta, trasporta in luoghi e epoche diverse, fa venire voglia di leggere e studiare cose nuove. E fa riflettere sull’ossessione dello scrivere, sulla fatica e le frustrazioni, la ricerca del meglio che porta a ennesime riscritture, ad anni di lavoro sullo stesso testo. Otto libri perduti, otto storie di grandi scrittori, in comune per tutti la difficoltà di distaccarsi dalla loro creatura. Forse questo libro spiega meglio di tanti testi specialistici cosa dovrebbe essere la letteratura.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro pequeno sobre grandes obras desaparecidas ou inacabadas (Byron, Hemingway, Gógol, Benjamin, Plath, Lowry). A escrita é elegante e os casos são curiosos, mas muitos não passam de fragmentos ou especulações. Destaco Benjamin e o fecho com Plath, que deixam uma aura de mistério, mas ainda assim, sabem a pouco.

3.5/5

[Jackie Law · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Search of Lost Books: The forgotten stories of eight mythical volumes, by Giorgio van Straten (translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre), documents the author’s research into and thoughts on how allegedly missing manuscripts from renowned writers came to disappear. Some are assumed lost due to accidental fire or theft, others destroyed by their creator or at the wish of surviving family. Reasons are myriad and it is the musings on these that form the basis of this work.

How important, really, is any piece of writing? The author states this view:

“The right to protect individuals is sacrosanct, but so is the need to preserve works of literature”

Poignantly, the daughter of one of the writers featured, Sylvia Plath, wrote in a 1997 poem of the appropriation of her mother’s memory by literary commentators who speak as if they had known Plath despite never having met her. Such is the interest and affinity generated by certain literary works.

There are thoughts on ownership and control of written words, of censorship due to the culture of the time along with protection of life and legacy. A memoir written by Byron is suspected destroyed due to its reveal of his homosexuality at a time when this was regarded as more shameful than incest. It would not only have been his reputation that was affected but also those of the men he had had affairs with.

Scholars grow excited at the idea of the rediscovery of writing assumed lost forever. When pages do emerge there are concerns over authenticity.

The book sets down known facts alongside rumour and conjecture. One writer featured, Malcolm Lowry, is reported as having destroyed the manuscript of his second book when he could not achieve the desired perfection. He wished to write an incomparable masterpiece. Such was his conceit that he preferred not to publish rather than submit a lesser work. Of his first book it is stated:

“It was praised superlatively and attacked; vilified by reactionary critics and admired in the most progressive literary circles.”

How familiar this sounds. There are certain books one is supposed to revere to be considered discerning. Opinion may be subjective but will be judged by the self professed experts and their acolytes.

As a lover of literature but one without qualification I found this book fascinating yet its supposition a little frustrating. There are so many fabulous books in existence, is the loss of a few such a calamity? From an academic perspective there may be unanswered questions. Completists may mourn a possible gap in their collection. A reader can always find some other book to read.

An interesting exploration of the reasons manuscripts disappear alongside aspects of writers’ lives and their proclivities. It is succinct and engaging. The importance of the missing works is perhaps a different conversation.

[Literarischunterwegs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieses kleine Büchlein fand gestern als Geschenk zu mir und da ich eine längere Zugfahrt vor mir hatte, hatte ich beschlossen, es mitzunehmen und direkt zu lesen.
Die Idee dieses Buches ist eine sehr schöne: Wohin sind manche Manuskripte verschwunden? Warum wurden sie nie gefunden? Wurden sie vernichtet? Wenn ja, von wem? Vom Autor selbst? Warum? Wurden sie überhaupt vernichtet oder besteht die, wenn auch kleine, Möglichkeit sie doch noch zu finden?
All diesen Fragen geht der Autor Giorgio von Straten in seinem kleinen Büchlein über verlorene Bücher nach. Dabei verbindet er seine Recherchen, Gedanken zu den Biografien der Autoren mit seinen Vermutungen und Gedanken zu Hintergründen und Beweggründen.

Ich lese solche Bücher sehr gerne und mochte auch dieses Buch, da es mir den Weg zu dem einen oder anderen neuen Autor und dessen Werken eröffnet, mir andere Autoren wieder ins Gedächtnis zurückbringt oder mir bei wiederum anderen Autoren einen neuen Blickwinkel auf den Menschen und dessen Werk ermöglicht.
Ein wunderschönes Buch für jeden, der sich gerne mit Biografien, Schicksalen, Lebensumständen und den Gedanken der Autoren beschäftigt und der gerne mehr über den Menschen hinter all den bekannten Werken erfahren möchte.

[James Klagge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon seeing that I was reading "In Search of Lost Books," my wife's comment was "They are in the piles on my side of the bed."
A fun book to read with several little-known but interesting stories about books that might have been. I really knew of only one of the cases the author discusses--Gogol's unfinished sequel to "Dead Souls." But I know of several other cases (not discussed by the author), including a few that are quite personal:
-Of course there is Aristotle's lost treatise on comedy, the subject of Eco's The Name of the Rose.
-Aristotle's lost dialogues. These were supposedly lost in the fire at the Library of Alexandria. That would make a good subject for a novel.
-Some of Wittgenstein's diaries. In the mid-1990s the heirs of a friend of Wittgenstein's, Rudolf Koder, sent the Wittgenstein estate a diary that Wittgenstein's family had given to Koder as a keepsake after Wittgenstein's death. This was then published by Ilse Somavilla, and then published with English translation by Nordmann and me. It covered 1930-32 and 1936-37, both private and philosophical reflections, that are quite interesting. This diary was completely unknown and unsuspected until its appearance. An almost-lost book.
-Wittgenstein kept diaries irregularly over many years, so it is hard to be sure what originally existed. Bartley published an infamous book about Wittgenstein in which he claims to be recounting some dreams of Wittgenstein while concealing the source of his information. It would make sense that he had access to a diary from 1920. When researching his own biography of Wittgenstein, Ray Monk learned that after Wittgenstein's death a crate of his stuff was found in an apartment where he had lived, labeled "Kaufmann." Wittgenstein's executor, Rush Rhees, unaccountably had it shipped to Walter Kaufmann (presumably the only Kaufmann he could think of). After several months it was returned to Rhees, with suggestion that it was meant for Felix Kaufmann (a friend of Wittgenstein's from the Vienna Circle days). It turns out that Bartley's book was commissioned several years later by a series editor, Walter Kaufmann. It would make sense that there was a diary in that crate, but it has never been revealed. Walter's son told Monk that his father would never have taken something like that. Felix died in 1949, and had no heirs that might have saved the crate. We'll never know.
-At various times Wittgenstein burned or had burned for him notebooks in which he kept preliminary reflections that served as sources for his typescripts. As with the diaries, it is hard to know what may have originally existed. For example, Wittgenstein's wartime notebooks cover 1914-very early 1917. There may have been notebooks that covered 1917 that he had destroyed, or there may not have been ones then. Similarly for his later work. In the late 1940s Wittgenstein lived for a time in a cottage on the remote western coast of Ireland, and he had a caretaker named Tommy Mulkerins who did various chores for him. While researching his biography Monk also interviewed Tommy. He recalled that he had burned a large bunch of papers at Wittgenstein's request. Presumably these were such preliminary notebooks. Monk asked Tommy if he had ever considered saving any of these papers. Tommy's utilitarian reply was--"why would I? They were written on both sides."
-My father-in-law was a Presbyterian minister who was one of the founders of the Recreation Workshop which sponsored an annual ARW (Arts, Recreation, Worship) conference. This still is thriving. He was especially interested in the theology of play. He told me he had been working on a book about this for a long time, but that while traveling once he had lost the manuscript. And he couldn't find the time to recreate it.
So, I found this book to be fascinating, as much for the lost books I know about, as for the lost books the author knows about. It was fun to read about and reflect on this. It was a great idea for a book!

[Svetlana · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all, content warning for this book for suicide and self harm mentions.

I was very excited to start what I thought would be a fascinating adventure through some incredible and lost books. If there’s one word I would use to describe this, it would be presumptuous. Or maybe pompous. It feels like getting trapped in a conversation with some old straight white man who is intent on telling you about the “great intellectuals”, all of whom happen to be European or American straight white men. The deviations to this rule (Lord Byron, who was bisexual, and Sylvia Plath) are handled badly. Talk about bisexual erasure! And Plath’s chapter is somehow far more focused on her husband than her. Oddly enough, the author seems to be working overtime to clear Plath’s husband of playing a role in her suicide (explaining that his cheating on her with a close personal friend only three months before was hardly related, and explaining away the fact that his second wife after Plath also committed suicide by referencing his attraction to “troubled” women) and to clear Lord Byron’s life of any bisexuality (stating instead that his obvious true attraction was to men, while only a few pages earlier referencing Byron’s many sexual relationships with women).

When you’re talking about content that relates to lost or disappeared books, and where the authors are long gone and cannot speak for themselves, you have to do some assuming and some guesswork. However: this author makes extremely bold claims about the motivations and mindsets of the writers he discusses, even when they are disapproved by texts from the writers that are even included in the book! It is infuriating when an author writes down clearly exactly what they meant to say, and some “scholar” goes: here is what they REALLY meant.

The authors (with the exception of Plath) are treated almost reverentially by the author, even as he discusses their complete personal incompetence, referencing one whose wife wrote that he “couldn’t even open a window by himself”. Men who cheated on their wives and treated them badly and then wrote so many poems about how sad it was when they got fed up and left. I am tired of this kind of man being held up as a hero solely because of their writing.

Additionally, the author sort of glorifies Sylvia Plath’s untreated mental illness as a source of inspiration that was just natural to her, writing about it in a strangely positive way. Troubling.

One star because it was a quick read and easy to follow. But a very skippable book, especially because it purports to be scholarly but is overrun with personal bias, and even misinformation, particularly in relation to Lord Byron. It feels condescending; narrow in scope, and yet not in-depth or thorough. Where are the writers from South America, from Africa, Asia, anywhere but Europe, the US and Canada? Perhaps the author doesn’t feel we’ve had any “great intellectuals” from those places.

[Cliff Dolph · Rating 3 out of 5]

My son (an engineering major brave enough to pick a book for his English-teacher father) gave me this book for Christmas, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I didn't expect to dislike it, since the title promised an intriguing mystery, but I figured it would deal with obscure writers/texts and might end up being an interesting detective story with not much more to offer. What surprised me was the caliber of writers who have lost books--Hemingway, Plath, Gogol, Byron--and the weight that this search takes on.

The book is interesting because van Straten takes a storytelling approach to each mystery. He puts us in a context with deftly chosen details of time and place. His quest fills in background about the lives of the authors, but also about the historical and social circumstances that led to the disappearance of books: war, homophobia, perfectionism, jealousy, fire (common, it seems, to all places and times, and functioning almost as a symbol in this book). I learned things about writers I care about (for instance, the insights into the marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are enlightening), and discovered a book I want to read (Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry).

The book has weight because of those historical and social circumstances, and also because it highlights the fragility of literature. Books, when we read them, may seem inevitable, but in truth we are fortunate to have them. As van Straten points out, books may have been more vulnerable in the days when they only existed on paper (and, at some point, in only one copy), but cyberspace carries its own forms of vulnerability. A variety of accidents (or hostilities) may keep even great books from ever reaching us. So my takeaway from this book is that we should treasure our reading even more than we already do, feeling appropriately grateful for each literary gem that finds its way to us. And, if we ever find ourselves in the position of deciding the fate of a book, we should decide in favor of its would-be readers.

On the disappointing side, the book is so short. That worked out well for me because I had a goal to read 20 books in 2019. I started In Search of Lost Books on Dec. 28, and its brevity enabled me to make my goal. Still, at 123 pages of generously spaced text, it's barely long enough to count as a book. It left me wanting more stories. Maybe that's a good thing (better than boring), but still... Also, the book seemed to be heavy on speculation. Often, when van Straten made a claim about one of the authors or about the content of the missing text, I found myself asking, "But how do you know?" Sometimes the book answers that question, but too often it doesn't, and that makes me skeptical.

Nevertheless, because he is clearly intelligent and passionate about books, I'm inclined to trust van Straten. I'm grateful for the stories he shares, and they make me grateful for the myriad books that have not been lost, and for which I have renewed appreciation of the privilege it is to read them.

[Tracy Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books about books is on of my secret pleasures, so a literary detective story about eight books that are now lost, and may in fact never have existed, was like candy to me. Van Straten didn't disappoint, though I could have wished for more. This is one of those proverbial "slim volumes" which explores the possibility of the existence of certain books. The first actually did exist, the author read it in manuscript form, but it's about 99% certain that it was destroyed later. There were copies, they're gone as well.

Van Straten is understandably ambivalent about the rights of survivors to destroy unpublished work by any writer, a situation that he confronts more than once in this book, most notably with the destruction of Lord Byron's memoirs considered at the time to be much too scandalous ever to see the light of day. But often the manuscript in question falls prey to other perils.  The lost Hemingway novel, stolen from his wife's luggage, and the fires that may have consumed Malcolm Lowry's novel.

Most mysterious are the cases of Walter Benjamin and Sylvia Plath. I was familiar with Benjamin's lost manuscript from a book about Hannah Arendt I read earlier this year. Benjamin, who ended his life in the midst of some monumentally bad fortune, was supposed to have been carrying an important manuscript in his suitcase. It has never been found.  Plath's manuscript may or may not have existed, and may or may not have been kept back/destroyed by her husband, Ted Hughes after Plath's suicide. There is still a possibility it will see light in the not-too-distant future.

In each case van Straten gives a short history of the manuscript in question, and asks how likely it is that it ever existed to begin with. In some cases, the likelihood is quite low, in others... it's hard to say. Only one has been documented not only by van Straten but by other friends of the author.

If you love books, the idea of lost ones that might one day be found again is a romantic one, and in that sense In Search of Lost Books is a bit of a love story, perhaps a ghost story as well, a bittersweet tale of what might have been.

[Ana Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Os textos leves propõe breves viagens ao destino incerto de alguns textos de autores como Byron e Sylvia Plath. Acredito que se houvesse algum capítulo/posfácio dedicado às histórias que o autor não pode contar (ou seja, uma espécie de mea culpa pensando na história consistente que temos de livros perseguidos ou perdidos nas garras do tempo) este volume seria ainda mais interessante.
Mas ele cumpre a proposta e é uma ótima leitura para quem gosta de história e fofocas literárias - e um guia para se buscar mais sobre o tema depois.

[Kenny Leck · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bibliophile's, publisher's, bookseller's dream to discover a "lost book" or in this instance, a "lost manuscript". The lost Hemingway suitcase is a well-known incident as it was recounted in "A Moveable Feast" but the rest are relatively unheard other than the Gogol, and Walter Benjamin ones. My best bet of one of the eight being re-discovered again, i am putting the bet on the Walter Benjamin one!

[eveline williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really nice as a relaxing, interesting and well written escape from things and into the lives of the authors mentioned and I thought it was really intriguing to read :)

[Justin Labelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best read by book lovers or big readers who might have heard of the authors mentioned.
I’d heard of Lowry’s and Benjamin’s lost books but Hemingway and Plath’s lost ones were new to me.
Overall, it provides interesting insight not unlike a prolonged wiki article.

[Michaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ★