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Boşluktakiler
"İkinci vagona atlayıp doğruca arkaya ilerliyor. Aslında en kötü yer burası, çünkü pasosu artık geçerli değil ve sivil kıyafetli kondüktörler geldikleri zaman tramvayın arkasından önüne doğru hareket ediyorlar. Ama Nick dümen suyunda yolculuğa bayılıyor. Pencerenin önündeki parmaklığa dayanarak rayların tramvayın altından, sanki bunları yerden sürüp toplayan bizzat tramvayın kendisiymiş gibi görünmesini ve tramvay ilerledikçe tepesindeki kutunun, ipleri büken bir örümcek edasıyla telleri döndürerek kendisinde toplamasını seyrediyor böylece: Dünyayı, içinden geçerek oluşturuyor."
Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasının hemen ardından dört bir yana savrulan insanlar: Mülteciler, sanat ve mafya işlerine karışmış bohemler, kimliklerini arayan Avrupalı gençler, eksantrik sanatçılar, uzayda asılı kalmış kozmonotlar... Kendi boşluklarında dolaşan tüm bu insanlar Sofya'dan kaçırılarak Prag'a getirilen bir Bizans ikonasının etrafında bilerek veya bilmeyerek kendi hikâyelerini inşa etmeye başlar. Zamanı gelince daralan, zamanı gelince genişleyen, çoğalan, eksilen ve nihayet boşlukta dağılıp giden bir elipsin içindedir hepsi.
Baş döndürücü kurgusu ve anlatımıyla son dönem İngiliz edebiyatının en iyi romanlarından olan Boşluktakiler, usta çevirmen Çiğdem Erkal’ın Türkçesiyle…
Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasının hemen ardından dört bir yana savrulan insanlar: Mülteciler, sanat ve mafya işlerine karışmış bohemler, kimliklerini arayan Avrupalı gençler, eksantrik sanatçılar, uzayda asılı kalmış kozmonotlar... Kendi boşluklarında dolaşan tüm bu insanlar Sofya'dan kaçırılarak Prag'a getirilen bir Bizans ikonasının etrafında bilerek veya bilmeyerek kendi hikâyelerini inşa etmeye başlar. Zamanı gelince daralan, zamanı gelince genişleyen, çoğalan, eksilen ve nihayet boşlukta dağılıp giden bir elipsin içindedir hepsi.
Baş döndürücü kurgusu ve anlatımıyla son dönem İngiliz edebiyatının en iyi romanlarından olan Boşluktakiler, usta çevirmen Çiğdem Erkal’ın Türkçesiyle…
312 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2007
27 people are currently reading
977 people want to read
About the author
Tom McCarthy
101 books496 followersTom McCarthy — “English fiction’s new laureate of disappointment” (Time Out, September 2007) — is a writer and artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in a tower-block in London. Tom grew up in Greenwich, south London, and studied English at New College, Oxford. After a couple of years in Prague in the early 1990s, he lived in Amsterdam as literary editor of the local Time Out, and later worked in British television as well as co-editing Mute magazine.
His debut novel Remainder was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art press Metronome. After becoming a cult hit championed first by British webzines (it was 3:AM Magazine’s Book of the Year for 2005) and then by the literary press, Remainder was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage in the US (2007). A French version is to be followed by editions in Japanese, Korean, Greek, Spanish and Croatian.
A work of literary criticism, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, was released by Granta Books in June 2006. It also came out in France and an American edition is in the offing.
Tom’s second novel, Men in Space came out in 2007.
He has published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and Contemporary Magazine, as well as in anthologies such as London from Punk to Blair (Reaktion Books), Theology and the Political (Duke University Press) and The Milgram Experiment (Jan van Eyck Press). His story, “Kool Thing, Or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst” appeared in The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth (Serpent’s Tail) in 2008.
His ongoing project the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by Untitled Magazine as ‘the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years’ and by Art Monthly as ‘a platform for fantastically mobile thinking’. In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source-code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the ICA from which more than forty ‘agents’ generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.
Tom has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Southern California Institute of Architecture. He recently taught a course on ‘Catastrophe’ with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.
His debut novel Remainder was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art press Metronome. After becoming a cult hit championed first by British webzines (it was 3:AM Magazine’s Book of the Year for 2005) and then by the literary press, Remainder was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage in the US (2007). A French version is to be followed by editions in Japanese, Korean, Greek, Spanish and Croatian.
A work of literary criticism, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, was released by Granta Books in June 2006. It also came out in France and an American edition is in the offing.
Tom’s second novel, Men in Space came out in 2007.
He has published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and Contemporary Magazine, as well as in anthologies such as London from Punk to Blair (Reaktion Books), Theology and the Political (Duke University Press) and The Milgram Experiment (Jan van Eyck Press). His story, “Kool Thing, Or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst” appeared in The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth (Serpent’s Tail) in 2008.
His ongoing project the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by Untitled Magazine as ‘the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years’ and by Art Monthly as ‘a platform for fantastically mobile thinking’. In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source-code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the ICA from which more than forty ‘agents’ generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.
Tom has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Southern California Institute of Architecture. He recently taught a course on ‘Catastrophe’ with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
February 10, 2019
"Boşluktakiler" adıyla (Çeviri: Çiğdem Erkal İpek) çok yakında!
"Tavan penceresinin altındaki borudan sallanıyor, başı hafifçe bir yana doğru bükülmüş, geriye yatmış, gözleri ötede bir noktaya odaklanmış ya da belki içeride, tavan penceresinin kirli camına. Her neye bakıyorduysa orada değil —artık değil en azından: Muhtemelen bir kaldırımda yatıyordur. Her şey dökülüyor, eninde sonunda…"
"Tavan penceresinin altındaki borudan sallanıyor, başı hafifçe bir yana doğru bükülmüş, geriye yatmış, gözleri ötede bir noktaya odaklanmış ya da belki içeride, tavan penceresinin kirli camına. Her neye bakıyorduysa orada değil —artık değil en azından: Muhtemelen bir kaldırımda yatıyordur. Her şey dökülüyor, eninde sonunda…"
August 18, 2019
iyi bir kitap, bunu anlayabiliyorum (allah razı olsun); ama pek anlaşamadık. niye böyle olduğunun adını koyamayacak kadar anlaşamadım yani. yanlış zamaaan yanlış insan... gerçekten bazen böyle oluyor. zamanlama her şey.
June 21, 2012
This is really good, especially for a first novel. McCarthy exerts a whole lot of control over both his characters and his prose, which isn't always a great thing, but works well here. One of the main characters spends a portion of the book forging a painting, and at one point McCarthy lists all the things he needs in order to do it: whiting powder, rabbit-skin glue, methylated spirits, cotton wool, ketone-resin crystals, white spirit, beeswax, jelly, wire wool, sandpaper, carbon paper, purified water, garlic, and so on. The amount of detail that went into writing it reminded me of The Recognitions, until I realized that it wasn't that that reminded me of it; it was the entire book itself.
Men in Space isn't a thick book, nor is it particularly difficult, but it shares many other characteristics with The Recognitions: multiple points of view; a large bohemian cast; its European setting; a multi-layered title; and, most importantly, its relentlessly thematic orientation. Failed transcendence is McCarthy's thing, not forgery. But like in The Recognitions, every turn of phrase, every character, and every plot point is indicative of some sort of failed transcendence. In fact, one of my main criticisms of both books is that McCarthy and Gaddis are often slaves to their respective themes.
Amazingly, this doesn't turn out to be a bad thing. McCarthy could easily be Ayn Rand, but he's not, mainly because he's less pushy and a way better writer. Here's a quote that demonstrates both that he's a capable writer and that he is a slave to his theme. Markov's involved with the police, and he's been tortured and threatened a bit, and then works out a deal, and then the deal becomes moot thanks to external developments, which I can't elaborate on without spoilers. He thinks:
"...which meant that the whole system he'd miraculously discovered crumbled into nothing. To have gone that far, right to the edge of himself and beyond, only to discover it had all been academic, meaningless: it's as though a giant train, some nuclear behemoth a thousand times bigger and louder and faster than this cheerful little local, had roared across his life, and he'd been caught right in its path, felt himself churned up by the wheels and pummeled by the spokes and then, somehow, fantastically, cast up into the driver's chair unharmed and found he could control the thing, take it where he wanted -- or so it seemed to him until the roaring and the hissing died away and he realized that he hadn't been caught up in it at all: it had passed by him, frightened him but not touched him, and then dwindled away to a dot perched on some distant vanishing point, leaving him there in the same old landscape that he couldn't quite believe was so unchanged after all that."
Once you've realized what you're looking for, the whole book is like that. Variations on failed transcendence. Artistic, religious, political, and so on. One thing I'll say is that, like with Ayn Rand, once you've read one McCarthy book you've sort of read them all, and I probably won't read C for that reason. But on the other hand, the quality of the writing in this one made it well worth it, even though I pretty much knew what was going to happen in the end.
Edit: Looks like Stephen Burn beat me to the Gaddis comparison by a few months, which probably means that many, many other people did as well. Sigh. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/boo...
Men in Space isn't a thick book, nor is it particularly difficult, but it shares many other characteristics with The Recognitions: multiple points of view; a large bohemian cast; its European setting; a multi-layered title; and, most importantly, its relentlessly thematic orientation. Failed transcendence is McCarthy's thing, not forgery. But like in The Recognitions, every turn of phrase, every character, and every plot point is indicative of some sort of failed transcendence. In fact, one of my main criticisms of both books is that McCarthy and Gaddis are often slaves to their respective themes.
Amazingly, this doesn't turn out to be a bad thing. McCarthy could easily be Ayn Rand, but he's not, mainly because he's less pushy and a way better writer. Here's a quote that demonstrates both that he's a capable writer and that he is a slave to his theme. Markov's involved with the police, and he's been tortured and threatened a bit, and then works out a deal, and then the deal becomes moot thanks to external developments, which I can't elaborate on without spoilers. He thinks:
"...which meant that the whole system he'd miraculously discovered crumbled into nothing. To have gone that far, right to the edge of himself and beyond, only to discover it had all been academic, meaningless: it's as though a giant train, some nuclear behemoth a thousand times bigger and louder and faster than this cheerful little local, had roared across his life, and he'd been caught right in its path, felt himself churned up by the wheels and pummeled by the spokes and then, somehow, fantastically, cast up into the driver's chair unharmed and found he could control the thing, take it where he wanted -- or so it seemed to him until the roaring and the hissing died away and he realized that he hadn't been caught up in it at all: it had passed by him, frightened him but not touched him, and then dwindled away to a dot perched on some distant vanishing point, leaving him there in the same old landscape that he couldn't quite believe was so unchanged after all that."
Once you've realized what you're looking for, the whole book is like that. Variations on failed transcendence. Artistic, religious, political, and so on. One thing I'll say is that, like with Ayn Rand, once you've read one McCarthy book you've sort of read them all, and I probably won't read C for that reason. But on the other hand, the quality of the writing in this one made it well worth it, even though I pretty much knew what was going to happen in the end.
Edit: Looks like Stephen Burn beat me to the Gaddis comparison by a few months, which probably means that many, many other people did as well. Sigh. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/boo...
November 11, 2018
Leggere Tom McCarthy è come stendere un tappeto prezioso e poi provare ad interpretarlo, sforzandosi di individuare i collegamenti tra le parti e il significato dei simboli; provando ad entrare nella costruzione, indugiando alla ricerca di nessi, di certezze alle quali ancorarci per procedere verso un livello più profondo.
Uomini nello spazio è la storia di un gruppo di anime alla deriva nell'Europa di fine millennio. Sullo sfondo di un'atmosfera bohèmienne, trafficanti bulgari e altri strani personaggi incrociano le loro vite a Praga nei giorni in cui la Cecoslovacchia sta per dividersi in due stati, in un momento storico in cui il mondo sembra privo di un centro, quasi destinato ad espandersi in ogni direzione.
La trama è ricca e contorta, ma in realtà è poco più di un pretesto per tessere una rete nella quale sono identificabili idee caratteristiche dei romanzi di McCarthy: l'importanza dei simboli (in questo caso l'ellisse) e poi riflessioni sulla comunicazione e sulla trasmissione, lo spazio, la copia e il suo rapporto con l'originale ma soprattutto la ricerca del senso più profondo delle cose. In questo caso centrale è un'antica icona e il tentativo di decrittare il significato delle tre parole che vi sono incise. Capire per accedere a uno stadio nascosto che ci apra le porte per una comprensione più "completa" delle cose si rivela (e sempre si rivelerà) un'illusione e il mistero che occhieggia nel buio un sistema di scatole cinesi che attirandoci verso di sé finisce per allontanarci dal vero.
Uomini nello spazio è la storia di un gruppo di anime alla deriva nell'Europa di fine millennio. Sullo sfondo di un'atmosfera bohèmienne, trafficanti bulgari e altri strani personaggi incrociano le loro vite a Praga nei giorni in cui la Cecoslovacchia sta per dividersi in due stati, in un momento storico in cui il mondo sembra privo di un centro, quasi destinato ad espandersi in ogni direzione.
La trama è ricca e contorta, ma in realtà è poco più di un pretesto per tessere una rete nella quale sono identificabili idee caratteristiche dei romanzi di McCarthy: l'importanza dei simboli (in questo caso l'ellisse) e poi riflessioni sulla comunicazione e sulla trasmissione, lo spazio, la copia e il suo rapporto con l'originale ma soprattutto la ricerca del senso più profondo delle cose. In questo caso centrale è un'antica icona e il tentativo di decrittare il significato delle tre parole che vi sono incise. Capire per accedere a uno stadio nascosto che ci apra le porte per una comprensione più "completa" delle cose si rivela (e sempre si rivelerà) un'illusione e il mistero che occhieggia nel buio un sistema di scatole cinesi che attirandoci verso di sé finisce per allontanarci dal vero.
June 20, 2024
I didn't come anywhere near to finishing this novel, I didn't even get significantly far into it, but what I read I didn't like or rather I didn't care about. I was overwhelmed ridiculously early in the novel with a sense of ennui and my own mortality and questions did I have enough time left to waste on this pretentious twaddle? Clearly I decided I didn't and I cast this novel aside with a sense of relief and without any sense of guilt. Why? because I thought it was a load of pretentious nonsense and even worse I didn't think there was any honest intent behind it. I am pushing on towards seventy and aside from the mountains of books I own to read and the many on TBR list I have resigned myself that I probably will never reread Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Balzac never mind Buddenbrooks and War and Peace. I would never forgive myself if reading McCarthy stuff prevented me from finding time to reread The Leopard.
It probably didn't help that I had recently finished Indian Nocturne by Antonio Tabucchi - he said more in 115 pages then McCarthy even began to say in his, in comparison, Brobdingnagian novel.
I am not saying this is a bad novel or that Mr. McCarthy is a meretricious hack but it is a novel I don't have to read and I make no apologies for not reading.
It probably didn't help that I had recently finished Indian Nocturne by Antonio Tabucchi - he said more in 115 pages then McCarthy even began to say in his, in comparison, Brobdingnagian novel.
I am not saying this is a bad novel or that Mr. McCarthy is a meretricious hack but it is a novel I don't have to read and I make no apologies for not reading.
July 18, 2021
“-Un cosmonauta soviético se ha quedado tirado en su nave.
- El tio se subió como soviético, en misión espacial de rutina, y mientras estaba ahí, la Unión Soviética se desintegró. Ahora, nadie quiere bajarle.”
Durante esta novela hay un par de momentos en reuniones y fiestas que se cuenta la anécdota del cosmonauta soviético flotando en el limbo dentro de su cápsula, mientras abajo los gobernantes debaten quíen debería bajarlo: si la Unión Soviética que es quién la lanzó al espacio, si Ucrania que fue de dónde despegó o si Letonia, ya que el cosmonauta procede de allí. Mientras el pobre cosmonauta sigue flotando víctima de las circunstancias, muchos de los personajes de esta novela usan su historia como una especie de broma, o de chiste para engalanar las fiestas. Y me fascina tanto el título de la novela como esta anécdota espacial porque a medida que la novela avanza hay un ecosistema de personajes que parecen flotar también en una especie de limbo, sin encontrar su lugar, dispersos, a la deriva. El mundo está cambiando, la Unión Soviética se ha desintegrado y dividido en multitud de pequeños estados, y estos personajes se encuentran con que la caída del comunismo los ha dejado desamparados, al igual que el cosmonauta flotando en un bucle.
Esta novela ha sido mi primera incursión en el universo de Tom McCarthy y la verdad es que estoy impresionada por la multitud de lecturas y de capas, que tiene la historia. Al principio me costó ubicarme por toda la cantidad de personajes, por los nombres checos y porque no parecía haber un argumento definido, pero hubo un momento determinado que sonó la campana y le pillé el punto. En esta historia hay multitud de personajes unidos por un nexo común: un icono bizantino robado . A Anton que trabaja para la mafia, se le encarga que busque a un falsificador para que haga una copia de este icono . A partir de aquí, el lector es testigo de cómo varios personajes desfilan a lo largo de la novela como testigos de esta copia, y de cómo repercute en la vida de la mayoría de personajes. La historia va cambiando de registro a medida que cambia el punto de vista de la voz narrativa: por una parte tenemos las cartas que envia Joost, el conservador de un museo de Holanda; por otra los informes de un agente de la Interpol que va siguiendo las pistas del icono bizantino; Ivan, el artista falsificador, obsesionado por el original; Anton, el mafioso o Nick, el crítico de arte que se gana además un dinero posando como modelo para pintores, entre otros…, en fin todo un universo de personajes, artistas, bohemios, funcionarios y pertenecientes al sindicato del crimen que a su vez componen un retablo de pequeñas historias, que incluso podrían funcionar independientemente de la historia central por la forma en que McCarthy transmite estas historias sin juzgarlas, sin un comienzo/nudo/ desenlace, simplemente es el mensajero de algunos momentos magistrales, guíando al lector sin usar esos canales dramáticos tan usuales que puedan llevar al lector a ser manipulado inconscientemente. Hay varios momentos maravillosos durante la novela: la detención de Anton, la escena del bosque, la conversación entre Ivan y Klara sobre la interpretación del icono, las cartas de Joost…, amalgamas de pequeñas historias por las cuales vas entendiendo perfectamente las intenciones de McCarthy: y es que el lector respire atmósfera y vaya rellenando los pequeños huecos que va dejando su narración para así completar las historias.
Quizás lo que más me ha impresionado de esta novela es la forma en que McCarthy domina y controla la elipsis, esos pequeños huecos que parecen flotar en el limbo, invisibles y aparentemente inconexos, y que sin embargo no son gratuítos porque es el lector quién tiene la clave para unirlos. En este aspecto durante la lectura de la novela no he podido dejar de pensar que visualmente me recordaba al cine de Claire Denis,una cineasta que domina la elipsis como nadie y qué podría sacarle un partido colosal a estos personajes fantasmagóricos, suspendidos en una tierra de nadie.
Puede que la estructura de la novela parezca compleja pero ya digo que el secreto está en conectar con los personajes porque una vez que lo haces, es una novela que fluye a medida que el lector va ensamblando las piezas de las diferentes historias. De la misma forma que los iconos bizantinos se reproducen una y otra vez con pequeños cambios que en si mismos los van convirtiendo en obras a su modo originales, las historias que surgen en “Hombres en el Espacio” podrían formar parte de esas pinturas bizantinas codificadas y que hay que ir descifrando. El momento que se me ha quedado ya grabado en la memoria: Nick suspendido en ese tejado de Amsterdam, al igual que el cosmonauta soviético. Una joyita de novela. La traducción es de José Luís Amores.
“-¿Sabes?, en puridad, tu copia no será una copia.
-¿Por qué no?
- Porque... -cambia el peso del cuerpo mientras se gira para ponerse de cara a él – desde siempre copiar ha formado parte de la cultura del icono. (…) Para los zógrafos, las copias no son obras derivadas. Son iteraciones del mismo acontecimiento sagrado. Cada iteración participa del acontecimiento: pertenece a él, igual que el último iterador.”
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2021...
- El tio se subió como soviético, en misión espacial de rutina, y mientras estaba ahí, la Unión Soviética se desintegró. Ahora, nadie quiere bajarle.”
Durante esta novela hay un par de momentos en reuniones y fiestas que se cuenta la anécdota del cosmonauta soviético flotando en el limbo dentro de su cápsula, mientras abajo los gobernantes debaten quíen debería bajarlo: si la Unión Soviética que es quién la lanzó al espacio, si Ucrania que fue de dónde despegó o si Letonia, ya que el cosmonauta procede de allí. Mientras el pobre cosmonauta sigue flotando víctima de las circunstancias, muchos de los personajes de esta novela usan su historia como una especie de broma, o de chiste para engalanar las fiestas. Y me fascina tanto el título de la novela como esta anécdota espacial porque a medida que la novela avanza hay un ecosistema de personajes que parecen flotar también en una especie de limbo, sin encontrar su lugar, dispersos, a la deriva. El mundo está cambiando, la Unión Soviética se ha desintegrado y dividido en multitud de pequeños estados, y estos personajes se encuentran con que la caída del comunismo los ha dejado desamparados, al igual que el cosmonauta flotando en un bucle.
Esta novela ha sido mi primera incursión en el universo de Tom McCarthy y la verdad es que estoy impresionada por la multitud de lecturas y de capas, que tiene la historia. Al principio me costó ubicarme por toda la cantidad de personajes, por los nombres checos y porque no parecía haber un argumento definido, pero hubo un momento determinado que sonó la campana y le pillé el punto. En esta historia hay multitud de personajes unidos por un nexo común: un icono bizantino robado . A Anton que trabaja para la mafia, se le encarga que busque a un falsificador para que haga una copia de este icono . A partir de aquí, el lector es testigo de cómo varios personajes desfilan a lo largo de la novela como testigos de esta copia, y de cómo repercute en la vida de la mayoría de personajes. La historia va cambiando de registro a medida que cambia el punto de vista de la voz narrativa: por una parte tenemos las cartas que envia Joost, el conservador de un museo de Holanda; por otra los informes de un agente de la Interpol que va siguiendo las pistas del icono bizantino; Ivan, el artista falsificador, obsesionado por el original; Anton, el mafioso o Nick, el crítico de arte que se gana además un dinero posando como modelo para pintores, entre otros…, en fin todo un universo de personajes, artistas, bohemios, funcionarios y pertenecientes al sindicato del crimen que a su vez componen un retablo de pequeñas historias, que incluso podrían funcionar independientemente de la historia central por la forma en que McCarthy transmite estas historias sin juzgarlas, sin un comienzo/nudo/ desenlace, simplemente es el mensajero de algunos momentos magistrales, guíando al lector sin usar esos canales dramáticos tan usuales que puedan llevar al lector a ser manipulado inconscientemente. Hay varios momentos maravillosos durante la novela: la detención de Anton, la escena del bosque, la conversación entre Ivan y Klara sobre la interpretación del icono, las cartas de Joost…, amalgamas de pequeñas historias por las cuales vas entendiendo perfectamente las intenciones de McCarthy: y es que el lector respire atmósfera y vaya rellenando los pequeños huecos que va dejando su narración para así completar las historias.
Quizás lo que más me ha impresionado de esta novela es la forma en que McCarthy domina y controla la elipsis, esos pequeños huecos que parecen flotar en el limbo, invisibles y aparentemente inconexos, y que sin embargo no son gratuítos porque es el lector quién tiene la clave para unirlos. En este aspecto durante la lectura de la novela no he podido dejar de pensar que visualmente me recordaba al cine de Claire Denis,una cineasta que domina la elipsis como nadie y qué podría sacarle un partido colosal a estos personajes fantasmagóricos, suspendidos en una tierra de nadie.
Puede que la estructura de la novela parezca compleja pero ya digo que el secreto está en conectar con los personajes porque una vez que lo haces, es una novela que fluye a medida que el lector va ensamblando las piezas de las diferentes historias. De la misma forma que los iconos bizantinos se reproducen una y otra vez con pequeños cambios que en si mismos los van convirtiendo en obras a su modo originales, las historias que surgen en “Hombres en el Espacio” podrían formar parte de esas pinturas bizantinas codificadas y que hay que ir descifrando. El momento que se me ha quedado ya grabado en la memoria: Nick suspendido en ese tejado de Amsterdam, al igual que el cosmonauta soviético. Una joyita de novela. La traducción es de José Luís Amores.
“-¿Sabes?, en puridad, tu copia no será una copia.
-¿Por qué no?
- Porque... -cambia el peso del cuerpo mientras se gira para ponerse de cara a él – desde siempre copiar ha formado parte de la cultura del icono. (…) Para los zógrafos, las copias no son obras derivadas. Son iteraciones del mismo acontecimiento sagrado. Cada iteración participa del acontecimiento: pertenece a él, igual que el último iterador.”
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2021...
May 30, 2017
Aquí en Goodreads parece que se puede escribir con más ligereza sobre los libros. Seguramente relea algunos fragmentos de la novela para una posible reseña en el blog, pero voy a dejar mis impresiones justo después de terminar la lectura.
Pongamos la temática principal de Los reconocimientos de Gaddis, el arte y la copia, y también parte de su composición coral. Pongamos también la estructura de una novela de Pynchon, El arco iris de gravedad, por ejemplo, en la que cada capítulo termina en puntos suspensivos dando una sensación de incomplenitud y fragmentación. Pongamos por último una novela de John Le Carré, de espías en países del antiguo telón de acero en proceso de reestructración con el caos que conlleva, sustituyendo espías por ladrones de obras de arte.
Agitadlo bien.
De todas formas este cóctel no llega a dar una idea de lo que es Hombres en el espacio, una novela llena de imágenes recurrentes llamándose desde distintos planos de la narración y que tiene un sorprendente desarrollo y un no menos magnífico final.
Leedla, por favor.
Pongamos la temática principal de Los reconocimientos de Gaddis, el arte y la copia, y también parte de su composición coral. Pongamos también la estructura de una novela de Pynchon, El arco iris de gravedad, por ejemplo, en la que cada capítulo termina en puntos suspensivos dando una sensación de incomplenitud y fragmentación. Pongamos por último una novela de John Le Carré, de espías en países del antiguo telón de acero en proceso de reestructración con el caos que conlleva, sustituyendo espías por ladrones de obras de arte.
Agitadlo bien.
De todas formas este cóctel no llega a dar una idea de lo que es Hombres en el espacio, una novela llena de imágenes recurrentes llamándose desde distintos planos de la narración y que tiene un sorprendente desarrollo y un no menos magnífico final.
Leedla, por favor.
March 31, 2018
1.5/5
Where to start with the many many things wrong with this book?
According to the blurb this is about a group of people chasing a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and onwards. Not technically a lie, as there is a stolen icon, but it spends about 90% of the book in Prague, and we see very little of the chasing of it 'onwards'. And the book itself wastes about 40% of its pages describing various people taking various drugs and having sex. Why the editor didn't take the first 100 pages or so to the shredder is a mystery.
I get it's supposed to be about people making journeys, but how many journeys can McCarthy try to fit into a 270 page book? Ilievski, Anton, Nick, Joost, Heidi, Ivan, the unnamed police officer... too many, and with a host of supporting characters to fill in the space as well: Roger, Barbara, Klara, Sasha, Karolina, Helena, Milachkov, Janachkov, Han, Mladen, Tyrone, Foreman, Toitov (not that we ever meet him). It's clearly too many for the poor author because they're all flat. Most of the female characters exist solely to add sex to the book, the only female character who drives any of the plot is Klara, who knows a lot about paintings, but we rarely get to see her impart this knowledge or think about it, because she too wants to bang Ivan. We do get some of Heidi's thoughts, but they're mostly about being cooler than her fellow teachers (and banging Ivan). Dull. We do also get a snapshot of Helena at the end, but that's only because she works something out the author feels is important so gets to star in 4 or 5 pages (and thankfully she is not interested in Ivan).
Yet we are inundated with male opinions on everything and anything. Painting, drugs, (pseudo) science (I say pseudo because I really hope this guy never did a science degree and thinks that's how people who have think), astronauts, the position of the moon in winter, the geometries football players make (give me a break)...
Particularly irritating are all the unnamed police officer's story parts. I think he's supposed to be writing a report, but it clearly isn't official, as he puts in his own thoughts, opinions and tangents. Constantly. He's rather arrogant, his actions and thoughts do not agree with what he thinks his level of intelligence is, and he has forgotten what a conjunction is so just makes do with commas, making many of his sentences laborious to read.
The guardian describes this as hardly containing a loose sentence, but I beg to disagree. This is one sentence:
"Here I found Lieutenant Foreman seated behind a desk beside another man whose name and exact status I was not able to ascertain, but whose demeanour indicated to me that, alongside withe Lieutenant, he was in charge of a body to which I was answerable: part of Interpol, perhaps, or perhaps a new body of the CCP created by the merging of several other bodies, divisions and departments, either on a permanent basis or temporarily, for the purpose of this particular investigation, or perhaps also of other ones connected to this investigation, or at least connected to investigations to which this one is connected."
(Followed by "It is not my place to question" at which point I may have verbally asked him why he effing brought it up then)
I don't know what the Guardian has been reading lately which has looser sentences, but I hope to God that I never go near it. This is not even a one off example, the whole book is littered with these, so I started to skim read to get through it.
It's full of other gems too.
Describing the entrance hall of the National Laboratory of Space and Air Travel (or similar): "The lobby's tall; it has walkways round the top that leads off into hangar like halls with factory piping hanging from the ceiling and those black-and-yellow radiation warning signs [ ]. Men in overalls are walking about carrying lathes." I sent this to my friend who works in engineering who found this hilarious. A lathe is a pretty heavy machine, which usually stays in one place, and would require multiple men and a lot of effort to move. Much like office workers don't routinely carry their desktops through the entrance hall for the benefit of visitors, engineers don't just carry their lathes with them.
Talking about seeing the moon during the daytime in seasons other than winter: " "The moon vacillates round the horizon line a lot. This is what Eudoxes of Cyzicus grappled with. He had to add a third concentric sphere to his geometrical model to explain variations in its altitude - and a fourth one for retrograde motion."
"And those are epicycles?"
"No that's Apollonius."" Yes that is supposed to be completely spontaneous speech. I have a Masters in Physics and my Mum a Bachelors (same as the character who's supposedly saying this), and we'd never say this. It's complete rubbish. We'd say something like "Uh well I've seen the moon in summer not at night so clearly it can be seen during the day outside of winter." because we are normal human beings. Or even what the character eventually does go on to say, which is that when the moon is low on the horizon the Sun's light will illuminate it enough for it to be visible to us and this can happen in any season.
"Fire escapes spiral, DNA-like, from the roofs of schools and office buildings." Now unless they have different fire escapes on the Continent, those are just spirals not double helices. If you want to be smart, say they are RNA-like, as RNA has just one of the helices of DNA.
There's another bit where a deaf character complains that nobody is calling him. On the telephone.
This book is just written by someone who seems to think they're a lot better than they are. The grammar is questionable, if not outright wrong (you may be allowed to split infinitives now but it was grammatically incorrect back in 2008), and even where sentences are grammatically correct they're often so convoluted as to convey no meaning or just make you feel pain. The characters are terrible: most of them are completely flat, defined only by their drug use or sexual appetites. And the ones from a 'scientific' background spew so much rubbish it will make people think you have something wrong with your eyes because you can't stop rolling them. Do not this book on public transport is all I'm saying.
Where to start with the many many things wrong with this book?
According to the blurb this is about a group of people chasing a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and onwards. Not technically a lie, as there is a stolen icon, but it spends about 90% of the book in Prague, and we see very little of the chasing of it 'onwards'. And the book itself wastes about 40% of its pages describing various people taking various drugs and having sex. Why the editor didn't take the first 100 pages or so to the shredder is a mystery.
I get it's supposed to be about people making journeys, but how many journeys can McCarthy try to fit into a 270 page book? Ilievski, Anton, Nick, Joost, Heidi, Ivan, the unnamed police officer... too many, and with a host of supporting characters to fill in the space as well: Roger, Barbara, Klara, Sasha, Karolina, Helena, Milachkov, Janachkov, Han, Mladen, Tyrone, Foreman, Toitov (not that we ever meet him). It's clearly too many for the poor author because they're all flat. Most of the female characters exist solely to add sex to the book, the only female character who drives any of the plot is Klara, who knows a lot about paintings, but we rarely get to see her impart this knowledge or think about it, because she too wants to bang Ivan. We do get some of Heidi's thoughts, but they're mostly about being cooler than her fellow teachers (and banging Ivan). Dull. We do also get a snapshot of Helena at the end, but that's only because she works something out the author feels is important so gets to star in 4 or 5 pages (and thankfully she is not interested in Ivan).
Yet we are inundated with male opinions on everything and anything. Painting, drugs, (pseudo) science (I say pseudo because I really hope this guy never did a science degree and thinks that's how people who have think), astronauts, the position of the moon in winter, the geometries football players make (give me a break)...
Particularly irritating are all the unnamed police officer's story parts. I think he's supposed to be writing a report, but it clearly isn't official, as he puts in his own thoughts, opinions and tangents. Constantly. He's rather arrogant, his actions and thoughts do not agree with what he thinks his level of intelligence is, and he has forgotten what a conjunction is so just makes do with commas, making many of his sentences laborious to read.
The guardian describes this as hardly containing a loose sentence, but I beg to disagree. This is one sentence:
"Here I found Lieutenant Foreman seated behind a desk beside another man whose name and exact status I was not able to ascertain, but whose demeanour indicated to me that, alongside withe Lieutenant, he was in charge of a body to which I was answerable: part of Interpol, perhaps, or perhaps a new body of the CCP created by the merging of several other bodies, divisions and departments, either on a permanent basis or temporarily, for the purpose of this particular investigation, or perhaps also of other ones connected to this investigation, or at least connected to investigations to which this one is connected."
(Followed by "It is not my place to question" at which point I may have verbally asked him why he effing brought it up then)
I don't know what the Guardian has been reading lately which has looser sentences, but I hope to God that I never go near it. This is not even a one off example, the whole book is littered with these, so I started to skim read to get through it.
It's full of other gems too.
Describing the entrance hall of the National Laboratory of Space and Air Travel (or similar): "The lobby's tall; it has walkways round the top that leads off into hangar like halls with factory piping hanging from the ceiling and those black-and-yellow radiation warning signs [ ]. Men in overalls are walking about carrying lathes." I sent this to my friend who works in engineering who found this hilarious. A lathe is a pretty heavy machine, which usually stays in one place, and would require multiple men and a lot of effort to move. Much like office workers don't routinely carry their desktops through the entrance hall for the benefit of visitors, engineers don't just carry their lathes with them.
Talking about seeing the moon during the daytime in seasons other than winter: " "The moon vacillates round the horizon line a lot. This is what Eudoxes of Cyzicus grappled with. He had to add a third concentric sphere to his geometrical model to explain variations in its altitude - and a fourth one for retrograde motion."
"And those are epicycles?"
"No that's Apollonius."" Yes that is supposed to be completely spontaneous speech. I have a Masters in Physics and my Mum a Bachelors (same as the character who's supposedly saying this), and we'd never say this. It's complete rubbish. We'd say something like "Uh well I've seen the moon in summer not at night so clearly it can be seen during the day outside of winter." because we are normal human beings. Or even what the character eventually does go on to say, which is that when the moon is low on the horizon the Sun's light will illuminate it enough for it to be visible to us and this can happen in any season.
"Fire escapes spiral, DNA-like, from the roofs of schools and office buildings." Now unless they have different fire escapes on the Continent, those are just spirals not double helices. If you want to be smart, say they are RNA-like, as RNA has just one of the helices of DNA.
There's another bit where a deaf character complains that nobody is calling him. On the telephone.
This book is just written by someone who seems to think they're a lot better than they are. The grammar is questionable, if not outright wrong (you may be allowed to split infinitives now but it was grammatically incorrect back in 2008), and even where sentences are grammatically correct they're often so convoluted as to convey no meaning or just make you feel pain. The characters are terrible: most of them are completely flat, defined only by their drug use or sexual appetites. And the ones from a 'scientific' background spew so much rubbish it will make people think you have something wrong with your eyes because you can't stop rolling them. Do not this book on public transport is all I'm saying.
March 24, 2023
Puede que haga casi seis años desde que me propuse leer Hombres en el espacio. Satin Island me gustó mucho. Residuos la leí en 2011 pero todavía recuerdo algunos pasajes, ese extraño momento final de ponerse en la boca del metro a pedir unas monedas... nada de lo anterior me preparó para ese tránsito por el aburrimiento. La sensación que mayormente me ha provocado es como cuando conduces en un atasco, el avance lento, irritantemente lento, sentirse bloqueado, que no avanzas, y que el final parece inasequible.
Pero el atasco se acabó.
Esta historia entorno a un cuadro religioso que es falsificado y objeto de chanchullos entre mafiosos búlgaros, visto desde diferentes líneas narrativas, está escrito en 98% en tercera persona, labor en la que McCarthy se defiende como un diestro escribiendo con la izquierda. Su intención es atenuar los hechos, reducirlos a la mínima expresión, las escenas son mayormente descriptivas, muy detalladas, porque la narrativa busca imitar las dinámicas de la pintura. Esto, si has leído por ejemplo a Robbe-Grillet o Juan Goytisolo, no te sonará a innovación. El caso es que tan minimizado están los hechos que minimizado quedó mi disfrute, quedando una narración descolorida y anodina, con una serie de personajes que no se distinguen demasiado entre sí y en fin, que no le encontré grandes cualidades dignas de alabar más allá del rigor formal y lo bien que se adecua a la receta académica de la narrativa posmoderna.
Siendo amable se podría leer como si John Hawkes reescribiera Los reconocimientos, la pulcritud puntillosa de Tom McCcarthy está ahí, su sentido del humor, su toque de cultura popular, lástima que todos los hechos deban ser amoldados a martillazos a un esquema estético y no al revés, cuando la forma ayuda a comprender algo del fondo.
Pero ya acabó. Ahora que salí del atasco, como siempre, apretaré al pedal del gas como si fuese Dominic Toretto.
August 30, 2012
The Lit major in me wants to give McCarthy's MEN IN SPACE five stars for its detailed symbolism, its highly intricate analogies, and its artistic complexity. The lover of stories in me, however, wants to give it two stars for its almost aggressively dense plotting, its alienating cartography, and its oh-so-palpable disdain for anything even approaching entertainment. Let's call it an even 3.5 and round up.
This is the third McCarthy book I've read. As a more overt puzzle novel, [[ASIN:0307388212 C]] exhausted me, and although its opaqueness kept me at a distance, its overall shape and weft was obviously the work of genius. Even more accessible, [[ASIN:0307278352 Remainder]] did get repetitive and tiresome, but the writing flowed so quickly and with such sumptuous detail that every other page seemed to give me a second and third (and so on) wind. This novel -- about failed transcendence, about isolation and human detritus, and about the existential inevitability of ignorance (or just misunderstanding) -- seemed, however, to belabor its message to the point of abstraction. I could not wait to be done with it long before I was halfway through.
The novel follows a large cast of characters who enter and leave each other's lives obliquely. If it can be said to be about anything, it centers around the reproduction of a stolen piece of artwork -- the novel's biggest symbol and MacGuffin Deluxe. Depicting a saint (?) falling or descending from an ellipsis of nothing, the painting represents different things to different people, but the end result for all is essentially the same. Everyone is hovering between knowing and not, between learning and forgetting, and between being and dying. It is, as I've said, a truly dizzying allegory about the shifts that take place when people try to understand or simply move forward.
As a theme, this is pretty much par for the course for McCarthy, I'm learning. All of his novels, it appears, are about essentially the same thing. The problem with this book, though -- and maybe this is a flaw only because it is actually his first book -- is that it has no interest in being accessible, interesting, or enlightening. Not really. In fact, anti-enlightenment is the underpinning theme, and as such, the book is almost like an intellectually billy club. While I admire (hell, envy and respect) the technical prowess and the erudite attention to detail, it is disappointing that McCarthy doesn't try harder to make his point in a way that can capture the imagination as well as the intelligence. After all, Literature may be a serious affair, but you must tantalize audiences if you also want to engage them, and this book treats its readers with as much solipsistic disdain as most of its characters treat each other.
All in all, like the dew-dappled and intricate web of some horrifically poisonous spider, this book is just as beautifully complex as it is off-putting and alien, and although I feel richer for having read it, I didn't really enjoy the process. For highly cerebral readers only.
This is the third McCarthy book I've read. As a more overt puzzle novel, [[ASIN:0307388212 C]] exhausted me, and although its opaqueness kept me at a distance, its overall shape and weft was obviously the work of genius. Even more accessible, [[ASIN:0307278352 Remainder]] did get repetitive and tiresome, but the writing flowed so quickly and with such sumptuous detail that every other page seemed to give me a second and third (and so on) wind. This novel -- about failed transcendence, about isolation and human detritus, and about the existential inevitability of ignorance (or just misunderstanding) -- seemed, however, to belabor its message to the point of abstraction. I could not wait to be done with it long before I was halfway through.
The novel follows a large cast of characters who enter and leave each other's lives obliquely. If it can be said to be about anything, it centers around the reproduction of a stolen piece of artwork -- the novel's biggest symbol and MacGuffin Deluxe. Depicting a saint (?) falling or descending from an ellipsis of nothing, the painting represents different things to different people, but the end result for all is essentially the same. Everyone is hovering between knowing and not, between learning and forgetting, and between being and dying. It is, as I've said, a truly dizzying allegory about the shifts that take place when people try to understand or simply move forward.
As a theme, this is pretty much par for the course for McCarthy, I'm learning. All of his novels, it appears, are about essentially the same thing. The problem with this book, though -- and maybe this is a flaw only because it is actually his first book -- is that it has no interest in being accessible, interesting, or enlightening. Not really. In fact, anti-enlightenment is the underpinning theme, and as such, the book is almost like an intellectually billy club. While I admire (hell, envy and respect) the technical prowess and the erudite attention to detail, it is disappointing that McCarthy doesn't try harder to make his point in a way that can capture the imagination as well as the intelligence. After all, Literature may be a serious affair, but you must tantalize audiences if you also want to engage them, and this book treats its readers with as much solipsistic disdain as most of its characters treat each other.
All in all, like the dew-dappled and intricate web of some horrifically poisonous spider, this book is just as beautifully complex as it is off-putting and alien, and although I feel richer for having read it, I didn't really enjoy the process. For highly cerebral readers only.
February 12, 2020
McCarthynin oldukça zor bir anlatım kullanmasına değinmeyecek olursak oldukça fazla ve birbirinden farklı Bohem karakterlerin politik,inanç,sanat ve daha bir çok konuda çırpınışlarına yer vermiş olması.Okuduktan sonra eşsi benzeri yok dedirtiyor. JaguarYayinlari farkı herzaman!
October 12, 2011
I loved Tom McCarthy's Remainder, and his Tintin and the Secret of Literature, so I was looking forward to this, and wasn't disappointed. It's an often disjointed story set in Prague, featuring British and American expats, a rather self-conscious group of Czech artists and (literal) Bohemians, and local and Bulgarian gangsters. A stolen icon forms the focus for this disparate group of people. So far so thriller-ish, from my description here, but Tom McCarthy raises his work above genre; he shows that all characters don't have to interract for events to impact on them. Some characters seem to peter out, but they are still there in the background, going obliviously about their lives, or, you have to assume, seeing them fall to pieces, or change for the better. It helped, maybe, that I know the Prague of the early-to-mid-1990s, as I used to go there often, and Men in Space really does capture the atmosphere. I think McCarthy does atmosphere extremely well, which is one of the things that sets his work apart from what could have been (lazily) described as a thriller, and it is made as much by the characters as by the background, the way they speak, the choices they make, and the things they do, in a country and society that was at a point of dramatic change. One of the themes at its heart is that of surveillance, a tool used by the pre-1989 regime to great effect, but the story demonstrates its failure in an environment no longer so easily controlled. I am really looking forward to reading Tom McCarthy's C, despite all the horrible things I've heard about it.
August 26, 2010
Expat artists partying in Prague, on the verge of Czechoslovakia splitting in two, get in over their heads when one of them is asked to reproduce a strange painting. But the book is about forgery and crime as much as Gaddis' The Recognitions was: the writing is dense and detailed and unfolds non-linearly. There are letters, notebook excerpts from a cop going mad, geographical jumps, loose ends, debauchery aplenty. In short, all the ingredients I look for in fiction! (Plus, the nice-looking hardcover was on the 80% off table at a local bookstore, along with copies of McCarthy's first book, Remainder, allegedly about a headwound victim reliving the same moment over and over and over. Sounds equally good!)
February 11, 2009
A bit of disappointment after the brilliant "Remainder" by the same author. Apparently, he wrote this book long before "The Remainder", while living in Czech Republic in the early 1990s. Detective story framed against the fall of communism - it would have been a hit back then, in the sagging 90's. Today it feels out-of-time, certainly not timeless.
August 17, 2018
“Ante la escena triplicada, Anton recuerda su época de árbitro en Bulgaria: el truco estaba en ver las camisetas casi idénticas, las constantes carreras, las salidas repentinas, los cambios y cruces como un solo movimiento, partes de un sistema modulado que había que observar como desde afuera, desde arriba, o desde cualquier otro sitio distinto”.
Qué envidia de primera novela, ¿no? Una trama compleja, profunda, de espejos por triplicado, musical y geométrica, rebotando como una piedra en el lago (NOTA 1) sobre el manido tema de la falsificación de cuadros, las mafias, los interrogatorios policiales y los paseos en el b… (esto no se puede decir). En fin, qué disfrute de entrañables tarambanas entrando y saliendo al proscenio como si los conociéramos de toda la vida (de esa manera TAN Pynchon), paseándose por las calles de una Praga de gaviotas durmiendo sobre el Vlatva que de repente es nuestro propio barrio… Pueden decirse tantas cosas de “Hombres en el espacio” que apenas tendría tiempo de dedicarme a otra cosa. Y además diría muchas tonterías. Leed el libro, y después lo que dicen de él Javier Avilés y Jfmarhuenda. O al revés, una cosa lleva a la otra (NOTA 2).
NOTA 1: De la Wikipedia: “[…] cualquiera que haya intentado practicar este juego habrá notado que para realizar una buena ejecución el lanzamiento tiene que reunir unas condiciones físicas determinadas. No basta con que la piedra tenga la forma de un ELIPSOIDE o disco plano, además debe ser lanzada de forma que la parte plana quede aproximadamente paralela a la superficie del agua”.
NOTA 2: Debo leer, pues, “Los reconocimientos”
March 31, 2020
Tom McCarthy tarafından kaleme alınan Boşluktakiler aslında yazarın ikinci kitabı. Yazarın asıl patlama yaptığı kitabı ise Kalan. Onu da en kısa zamanda alıp okuyacağım. Boşluktakiler kitabı ile yazar bizi 90'lı yıllara Sovyetler Birliğinin yeni dağıldığı döneme götürüyor. Mültecilere, ajanlara, mafyaya, kaçakçılara, sanatçılara ve hatta Sovyetler Birliğinin dağılmasından dolayı kimsenin sahiplenmediği uzayda mahsur kalan bir kozmonota kadar değiniyor yazar. Tüm bu karakterleri Sofya’dan çalınan ve Prag’a getirilen bir Bizans tablosunun sahtesinin yapılması süreci ile çok güzel harmanlamış. Hikayede tekrarlanan kurgu ve karakterlerin çokluğu kitaba bağlanmayı zorlaştırsa da bir süre sonra sizi tamamen içine çekiyor. İlk 50-60 sayfayı okumak zor olabilir. Fakat sonrasında karakterleri tanıdıkça ve yazarın kalemine alıştıkça sayfalar gayet güzel akıp gidiyor.
September 9, 2015
I chose this one based on McCarthy's Remainder, which I really enjoyed, odd as it was. Had I read Men in Space first, I don't think I'd want to explore any more books by the author. Mind you, McCarthy's literary talent isn't in question here, he can write and well, but he chooses to forgo convention in favor of...the heavily stylized, studiedly flat, disjointed narratives of it, the all but ignored basic plot (which has something to do with a copying and redistribution of a stolen icon and the European art world in general set around the separation of Czechoslovakia), the general lack of coherency/cohesiveness...the deliberation behind it all reminds one of cubism or something like that, taking something of substance and tossing it into unrecognition for style's sake. It occasionally works for art, for fiction, which requires hours of readers' time, not so much. I've long disliked style over substance approach in books. Love abstract art for the most part, except for Cy Twombly. This is definitely a literary Twombly. In the extensive afterword, Men in Space gets dissected into meaning in an admiring (fawning even) academese to add up to something like a genius study of human isolation, alienation, etc. If one reads books for the pleasure of deconstructing them down to some sort of profundity, this would do nicely. This was a disconnected study of disconnectedness, which works conceptually at least as a solid metaphor for Europe (particularly Eastern Europe) of the time and to an extent now. Thing is zeitgeist, however well reflected) isn't enough to sustain an entire book. This was for the most part flat out tedious. McCarthy's novel is an experiment, one that didn't work for me, maybe precisely because of my appreciation of a more traditional approach to literature. Remainder set me up to expect odd, unconventional, quirky, strange yes, but coherent interesting original work of fiction, not an elaborate existential exhausting experimental exercise this book turned out to be. Oh well, at least I managed an alliteration there. What was meant to be food for thought, turned out to be a very unsatisfying meal indeed.
September 14, 2017
Conocía a Tom McCarthy por haber leído Resíduos y Satin Island el año pasado. Siguiendo en Goodreads a Javier Avilés me encontré con su reseña de Hombres en el espacio. Pensé, en un primer momento, que era una obra nueva, pero con posterioridad pude comprobar que era la traducción de su primera novela. Y vaya primera novela.
Como señala Avilés en su comentario de Goodreads y en su blog (ellamentodeportnoy) en la obra encontramos una temática abordada por Gaddis (la falsificación del arte) y los personajes aparecen de forma desbocada como en Pynchon, dejando además los capítulos inconclusos, como si nos encontrásemos con fragmentos de una novela destrozada por un huracán y tratásemos de reconstruir la historia completa. O como la historia de los iraníes revolucionarios que reconstruían los documentos de la Embajada norteamericana después de que los hubieran pasado por destructoras de papel.
A pesar de ello, la mayor parte del tiempo el relato es lineal (es decir, no hay muchos saltos temporales hacia atrás o hacia adelante), pero ello se explica por el hecho de que la historia sigue una línea, como bien ilustra Javier Avilés en su blog con el fantástico paint que ha creado para ejemplificar la forma en que se ha creado Hombres en el espacio (http://ellamentodeportnoy.blogspot.co...)
Personalmente me ha gustado menos que el mundo imaginario y recreativo de Resíduos, pero ha sido una lectura apasionante, amena, con toques de humor y, en mi opinión, muy bien ambientada en el momento histórico que trata de reflejar, y del que se sirve para desarrollar el argumento de la obra.
Como señala Avilés en su comentario de Goodreads y en su blog (ellamentodeportnoy) en la obra encontramos una temática abordada por Gaddis (la falsificación del arte) y los personajes aparecen de forma desbocada como en Pynchon, dejando además los capítulos inconclusos, como si nos encontrásemos con fragmentos de una novela destrozada por un huracán y tratásemos de reconstruir la historia completa. O como la historia de los iraníes revolucionarios que reconstruían los documentos de la Embajada norteamericana después de que los hubieran pasado por destructoras de papel.
A pesar de ello, la mayor parte del tiempo el relato es lineal (es decir, no hay muchos saltos temporales hacia atrás o hacia adelante), pero ello se explica por el hecho de que la historia sigue una línea, como bien ilustra Javier Avilés en su blog con el fantástico paint que ha creado para ejemplificar la forma en que se ha creado Hombres en el espacio (http://ellamentodeportnoy.blogspot.co...)
Personalmente me ha gustado menos que el mundo imaginario y recreativo de Resíduos, pero ha sido una lectura apasionante, amena, con toques de humor y, en mi opinión, muy bien ambientada en el momento histórico que trata de reflejar, y del que se sirve para desarrollar el argumento de la obra.
September 20, 2016
McCarthy is unquestionably a genius. The problem is he is the type of genius who speaks too fast for other people to listen. He's so filled with knowledge and details and facts and apocrypha and anecdotes and jokes and stories within stories that it can make your head spin. But that's not so much McCarthy's problem as it is *my* problem.
If the disjointed narratives and voices in this book, I especially loved the segments about the art world, and, in particular, the meticulously researched section on the forging of a particular painting. I loved the bohemian plot lines. I was less charmed by the Delillo-esque crime caper plot lines. I couldn't keep track of the Bulgarians, never really felt like I was "with them," didn't really care what happened to them.
This books I crammed with such mind-boggling detail that it's hard to believe it all physically fits into a book less than 300 pages. At some parts I wished McCarthy would have just included figures as visual aids, rather than, for instance, dedicate 5 pages to the mathematical descriptions of a particular rope-and-pulley system.
I also appreciate the afterward at the end of the copy I read—thanks Simon Critchley! Helped to sort of wrangle and organize all these things that, as I read it, were difficult to keep track of.
If the disjointed narratives and voices in this book, I especially loved the segments about the art world, and, in particular, the meticulously researched section on the forging of a particular painting. I loved the bohemian plot lines. I was less charmed by the Delillo-esque crime caper plot lines. I couldn't keep track of the Bulgarians, never really felt like I was "with them," didn't really care what happened to them.
This books I crammed with such mind-boggling detail that it's hard to believe it all physically fits into a book less than 300 pages. At some parts I wished McCarthy would have just included figures as visual aids, rather than, for instance, dedicate 5 pages to the mathematical descriptions of a particular rope-and-pulley system.
I also appreciate the afterward at the end of the copy I read—thanks Simon Critchley! Helped to sort of wrangle and organize all these things that, as I read it, were difficult to keep track of.
June 14, 2014
Two mentions. First, this is more of a three and half rating than a three rating but closer to three than four, hence the rating. Second, I am a fan of McCarthy. There is an ease to McCarthy's writing, like smooth jazz. Unlike his other works it lacked both poetry and ingenuity. This is a collection of stories tied together with some cohesion, but little. The author admits to such at the end. In any event, I enjoyed the book. I wanted more, more writing, more depth. But, I'll take what I can get.
February 27, 2024
My third reading of this as I now systematically and concentratedly re-read McCarthy's oeuvre for a literary criticism monograph on which I'm working. Amazing--his novels absorb me and then haunt me until I get re-absorbed again...
Read
October 1, 2014Didn't finish
July 14, 2017
The fact that I have little to say about this novel has induced an irrational compulsion to justify such a tepid response. Perhaps expectations were too high going in (I've been on a solid string of great new authors—thanks, Goodreaders!) but I come away from this rather underwhelmed. Not that anything was wrong with it per se; it simply remained flat, nothing stood out during the read and nothing (aside from the aforementioned compulsion) lingered afterwards. I understand that that could be interpreted as McCarthy’s attempt to literally—if laboriously—demonstrate the theme of "failed transcendence" and that one could deem this melding of style and theme commendable, yet too much of the book was merely episodic, thrown together, blasé vignettes stitched up as an afterthought. "Like life, innit!" Maybe, but hopefully just the forgivable demerits of a debut novel, a talent not yet honed with discipline. And again, the appearance of Nothing Much that conceals the unfolding of Something Big may be a clever technique, but it does little for the experience of reading. The permutations of the title were fun to follow; that’s likely the highest praise I can give. The book seems to hesitate between the temptation to devolve into a whizzy bang Ritchie-esque crime caper and an artfully restrained commentary on the protean dislocations of postmodernity. In the end I think it was simply too easy of a read, no challenging ideas or language, nothing except my own mild antipathy to pose enough of an obstacle on which to dwell. Still, I see the effusive praise for this or that aspect and I can certainly agree with it, but only in that detached tone one adopts in conversation to proffer a polite “yeah…” so as not to crush another's enthusiasm.
May 31, 2017
Romanzo corale ricco, pieno di personaggi e situazioni e dipinti e luoghi e oro.
Sempre ottime pagine sull'arte.
C'è però un problema ed è il fantasma del genio do Tom McCarthy, uno spettro che aleggia e si attende in ogni pagina e dietro ogni capitolo.
E tu attendi che si mostri, appaia anche di sfuggita, brevemente ma niente, proprio non si vede o intravede. Ti aspettavi il fantasma di un genio ma niente, non c'è, era solo una leggenda dagli altri libri che dello stesso autore hai amato follemente e apprezzato in ogni pagina.
Una stella in più d'autorità, questo è in realtà un romanzo da due stelle forse e davvero non ve lo consiglio.
Sempre ottime pagine sull'arte.
C'è però un problema ed è il fantasma del genio do Tom McCarthy, uno spettro che aleggia e si attende in ogni pagina e dietro ogni capitolo.
E tu attendi che si mostri, appaia anche di sfuggita, brevemente ma niente, proprio non si vede o intravede. Ti aspettavi il fantasma di un genio ma niente, non c'è, era solo una leggenda dagli altri libri che dello stesso autore hai amato follemente e apprezzato in ogni pagina.
Una stella in più d'autorità, questo è in realtà un romanzo da due stelle forse e davvero non ve lo consiglio.
January 25, 2020
I definitely enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. The Prague sections of the novel are the strongest, full of tiny interesting details that make me want to visit immediately and feel an inevitable nostalgia since it most definitely does not exist in its 1991 form today. The final fifth? of the novel in Amsterdam is appropriately ambiguous but feels utterly drained of life, just a series of grids and canals where the characters from earlier on washed up. There are A LOT of characters and I forgot who was who most of the time and just persisted in figuring it out as McCarthy gave me clues about them.
July 11, 2023
4/5 stars
I did like slightly better than Remainder. I liked seeing the different perspectives from each of the characters that are introduced throughout the story and how they are connected to the stolen painting that is the main focus of the story.
Overall, I did enjoy a little better than McCarthy’s previous novel.
I did like slightly better than Remainder. I liked seeing the different perspectives from each of the characters that are introduced throughout the story and how they are connected to the stolen painting that is the main focus of the story.
Overall, I did enjoy a little better than McCarthy’s previous novel.
February 27, 2020
L'ho letto qualche anno fa e non ricordo esattamente tutto, ma gli metto 4 stelle perché mi era piaciuto e perché bisogna controbilanciare le recensioni di gente che mette una stella solo perché non è in grado di capire la trama di un libro.
April 20, 2022
Beautiful writing, but incomplete. Plot weaves and bobs, but doesn’t resolve. Great descriptions of art and artists. The backdrop plot is compelling, but somehow gets forgotten by the author, and the book just ends. Still, an enjoyable read.
February 5, 2019
After the first -almost unbearable- 100 pages, you can actually start enjoying the party life of the artistic circles of Prague.
June 28, 2021
I think more like 3.75 stars. I really liked, but I read it cuz I’m such a big fan of his already. Would still recommend others by him before this to someone who hasn’t read him
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