Moo Pak

by Gabriel Josipovici

 'This is the istry of Moo Pak,' writes a schoolboy, struggling with his assignment as he sits in the Great Hall of Moor Park, now a secondary school. Once the home of Sir William Temple, here Swift wrote the Tale of the Tub and tutored the nine-year-old Stella. Later the building was a lunatic asylum, a college of theology, a code-breaking centre (during World War II), and an institute for the study of primate behaviour.

So Jack Toledano, a Sephardic Jew from Egypt and ex-University lecturer in English, tells his friend Damien Anderson in the course of innumerable walks through the parks and waterways of London during the 1980s. Toledano is writing a history of Moor Park which is also a history of himself and his times, of the Jews and the English. Moo Pak unfolds that history in an eloquent and breathless sweep, as Anderson strives to record what Toledano says and what he knows of his friend, a sweep that takes in man's relation to the great apes, the nature of language, Classicism and Romanticism, Swift, Pope, madness, despair and death.

Moo Pak is a palimpsest not only of themes that have preoccupied Gabriel Josipovici in the past twenty-five years but of our civilisation itself, its dreams, achievements and repressions. And it is a simple, moving tale of friendship and its aftermath.

Genres: Literature, Fiction, British Literature, Contemporary, Social Commentary, Novels

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of seventeen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published A Life, a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are Two Novels: 'After' and 'Making Mistakes' (Carcanet), What Ever Happened to Modernism? (Yale University Press), Heart's Wings (Carcanet, 2010) and Infinity (Carcanet, 2012).

Reviews

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

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What are the possibilities in literature? I am sure the very question would have troubled quite a few other readers too, for what is more there to be written or read, what are future prospects in literature? We see that there is progress towards unification or merger of different genres or more appropriately there is the development of amalgamated flux of literature which is hard to be categorized. Does it mean that we are moving towards harmony in literature, which essentially means that this age-long tendency to categorize the literature is futile? I have read a few books in the recent past which surely redefine some of the genres with new possibilities and inimitable air- such as biography, autobiography, or surge of autofiction. Is it the acceptance of universal truth that literature is the expression of oneself, no matter whatever form it may take, this whole exercise of classifying it into different genres denies the unbound possibilities in literature? So, what are the possibilities in this new universal form of literature? We have authors such as Borges, Beckett, Kafka who changed the literature the way it was perceived to be. Is it really fusion or blending of many genres or creation of just another genre that imbibes characteristics from all traditional genres? We know that categories formally recognized in theory get dissolved in practice.


There are some other questions that trouble our cognitive abilities, such as what is the role of literature in our life? Why do we read we read literature? And first and foremost, what is literature, what do we consider literature? Of course, we know that literature has evolved over the years so its definition too. What literature teaches us, if at all it can (post-modernists may not agree to it), perhaps it teaches us gymnastics of spirit. And do we have such authors who could tinkle such effect? Well, Gabriel Josipovici is definitely one of those authors who help to break up the solid and arid ground of our imagination and prepare it for planting and subsequent growth of the seeds of our imaginings. Moo Park is one such book that challenges our definition of literature. Those who find an ulterior pleasure, in associating books with various genres, will be checkmated by this outrageous creation in literature since it won’t be an exaggeration to call it a genre-bending book.



The author starts this ingenious piece of literature with the narrator of the book receiving a note from his friend, Jack Toledano to meet him for walking alongside him through various gardens of London since what Paris is for flaneur, London is for the walker. Jack tells him about his progress in writing a novel about the stately mansion- Moor Park- in Surrey which has been home to various entities in various time frames of history, namely- home of Jonathan Swift, a study and research center on Chimpanzees, a cipher decoding center during World War II, a secondary school, a theology college, and a lunatic asylum. What transpires is a smooth series of the uncomplicated outbursts of views of Jack, shifting across various themes of life and literature without any chapter or paragraph breaks, effortlessly as if like a river of knowledge and wisdom upon our civilization, life, literature, and culture. The reader once gets picked up by the strong currents of such a river, is left ashore only after finishing the book. The author maintains that adjectives are the death of narrative as they break its flow so what we see is a simple, clear, easy-paced text. The richness and idiosyncrasy of Moo Park make you forget all the inferior notions about genres, forms of literature, and its breathless momentum provides you a delightful ride.


The narrator of the book takes a back seat right from the start of the book as we see with authors such as Nabokov and we see the typical third-person narrative of the author with Jack expressing through embedded first-person voice in it, as we have seen in The Cemetery of Barnes. The book starts with Jack’s views on the writing process itself, moving forward to reflect upon various aspects of literature with taking a cue from authors of the past. The book talks about the current insecurity of English intelligentsia as people do not let any thought or idea to disturb their certainties- convenience, patterns, fixations. However, the book hits hard at the insecurities of people, it also presents a balanced critique of the Americanization of the world, as America the big dream has its flaws. It further takes on France too as it is no better than its British counterpart. The element of surprise has gone from life, what we see nowadays are cliché and fashionable posturings. The author particularly criticizes the dehumanization of intellectual life due to video games and factory repetition and suggests that this tide of polluted water must be avoided. The protagonist of the book says modern cities are places where decorum, tradition, and courtesy no longer have a hold, these are places of the dispossessed and the alienated, of directionless crowds and slums where old taboos are broken daily and sex haunts the streets, the palaces and bars. He criticizes the fact that no part of the world is free of the city and no part of the world can exist in the old ways. While parks and cemeteries are sorts of an oasis of peace in the middle of the frenzy. To him, gardens are sort of expressions of human beings with nature, they are breathing space for humanity inside the crazy cities.


Writing remains central to it as it's about writing the novel Jack has been working on last ten years. We see references to various authors with Dante, Swift, Kafka, Beckett, and Bernhard standing out of the lot. It discusses the very need to write at all, Orwell said that he wrote due to his inner demons who troubled his soul, our protagonist, Jack says he writes to clean out his head and to stop him from going mad. You don’t know why you write or why you start it in the first place but you feel worse when you don’t write. Writing itself is a process that demands the blood and sweat of the author, as an author works at it, sand drains from him into the work and he himself gets replenished due to it. One may be having innumerable ideas before writing something, once one begins to write everything changes and everything depends on instinct, confidence, and depth of understanding of the author. Writing is like a meditation in which you have to conduct yourself in a disciplined manner and have to sacrifice in the short run to gain in the long run. It is like playing a sport, you have to focus upon yourself without worrying about others and once the work is created it may be forgotten for something to take the focus of your passion since once something is created it has a being of its own and can stand alone.

My words have been clumsy and every sentence I wrote, instead of standing there like a stone, has only carried the echoes of my own querulous and sometimes petulant voice. One always hopes to arrive at a voice that has nothing to do with oneself, which is, somehow, radically other than the one which one uses every day for the simple transactions of the day.

The protagonist also raises his objections about humongous books, Jack conveys his point here in an ironically humorous way when he says that an author should take responsibility to plant as many trees as being cut down in the process of publication of his books, and in this way, those who write voluminous books do more damage to the environment. He takes a cue from literary history to quote authors such as Borges and Beckett who could amazingly write about the entire universe in just a few pages. One may understand that the author seems to support here short books as one may make out that all his books are quite slim. Whether the short books should be promoted in contemporary literature, well it may be a question of contention as there may be different views about it, and also a book can't really be judged upon its length alone. But there has been a certain shift towards minimalistic prose in contemporary literature.




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Jack says that there are six major themes of the book he has been working upon, which are- Swift, ciphers, monkeys, gardens, madness, and language. As one can guess, the book extensively talks about the life of Swift, his Tale of the tub, and his relationship with Stella. It also reflects upon the role of language in the human world and animal worlds. Human beings have been crazy about the idea of speech development in various animals, for which we also see many experiments on animals regarding it. But what we innately forget is that language has developed out of need and it can’t be directly associated with being civilized. Besides, the language of animals would be different from that of human beings, and most importantly, animals do not feel any need to develop such language at all and we know evolution takes place out of need. In the way, Jack quotes Chomsky, according to whom, human beings have a blueprint of language in their brain. The book also discusses the need to developing one’s own voice, own language when one is in the field of writing. The great tension, that exists between the feeling that our works may fly apart but surprisingly they do not, gives rise to the greatest pieces of literature. As we know human beings are by nature vulnerable so we find ourselves when we accept our contradictions and the literature which may convey our contradictions is true to humanity.


The book touches upon various themes and subjects with erudition and finesse. It could be classified under many genres be it- literary criticism, cultural history, memoir, or autofiction but ultimately it comes across as a modernist novel with many underlying themes and emotions. Gabriel Jospvici raises some very basic and profound questions throughout the book, questions which leave quavering about the possibilities in literature, questions that inquire about the very existence of humanity, questions that test the basis and growth of our civilization, questions that force you to crib about the decay of our culture, questions which shred apart our fallacious notions about speech and communication, in a nutshell, the questions which put the entire humanity in doubt but nonetheless very relevant questions we should ask from ourselves. It is my second read of the author and it is completely different from the previous book but the impact it creates certainly matches that of the other book by him. A delightful ride that is essential for everyone.

But what do we do when we write? Or paint? Or compose music? We look at the world and we listen to ourselves and we put down the signs we have learned.


5/5

[Fionnuala]

I'm not often stuck for something to say about a book but today, I'm stuck, nothing seems suitable, and it's not as if I hadn't thought of many things to say as I was reading, I did, and criss-crossed the margins with notes, and made little marks at the top of certain pages, and put curly brackets around particular sections and straight brackets around others, though I know many of you dislike such desecration of the printed page, but when you think about it, the printed page was once a virgin page until someone started making marks on it, and who's to say my marks aren't as valuable as the author's, and this author especially wouldn't say it because he gives a major role to the reader in the book-writing process, viewing the writing of a book as something organic, ongoing, something akin to living a life, which reminds me, apropos the pencil marks I make on pages, that life has left plenty of criss-crossings on what was once the perfect alabaster of my childhood skin, marks I value now as much as I'd value a written history of my life, and they are a history, though written rather in ogham than in roman alphabet, but still I can read them as easily as I read this novel about Jack Toledano and Damien Anderson criss-crossing the parks and gardens of London while Jack discourses about reading and writing, referencing authors I've read and admired such as Proust, Beckett and Bernhard, but discussing especially, as he walks, the book he's trying to write about Jonathan Swift and the history of Moor Park, the house where Swift first met the child Esther, she of The Journal to Stella which I read sections of some years ago, and also where Swift wrote A Tale of a Tub which I read at about the same time, so that following Jack and Damien as they walked and talked was a pleasure because of the way it evoked my own recollections of London and of those books, just as when I touch the irregular scar on my left arm from when I fell of a wall, aged very young, I immediately picture the child I was then, and, coincidently, the Me cry there epigraph to this book echoes that child perfectly though the epigraph actually refers to a chimpanzee called Bertrand who was taught how to use sign language when Moor Park was used as an animal research centre in the 1970s so that when poor Bertrand was shown a picture of a chimp being reluctantly scrubbed, he signed what the researchers interpreted as 'Me cry there', though their interpretation didn't put them off their research, money running out was more likely the cause of the closing of the research unit which makes me think lack of money is sometimes a useful thing, though I don't personally want to run out of money or else how would I buy books that I can scribble in in order to note stray thoughts for the reviews I like to write on goodreads and which have become my way of recording the history of my life or at least the reading part of my life, and, another coincidence, this struggle I've had today to find what to say chimes perfectly with Jack Toledano's, or maybe Damien Anderson's, or perhaps Gabriel Josipovici's conclusion about writing: sometimes it just happens while you're talking about it.

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, the joy of building a collection: the challenge of finding a rare piece, the expectation awaiting delivery, then being wary of unwrapping it, lest it not live up to one’s hopes. Josipovici’s books can be hard to find, so I kept this as a holiday treat.

Walking with Jack and Damien

On the plane, full of excitement, I opened the novel. It’s Damien Anderson’s account of his conversations with Jack Toledano, as they walk round London parks. Jack is a grandiloquent, intellectual author who is opinionated, mysterious, and remarkably well-read. He has lived in various countries, speaks several languages, and doesn’t belong anywhere. He likes expounding his thoughts on writing, literature, language, history, art, and more. He bemoans the decline of cultural life and the rise of herd mentality and ephemeral trivial fashion in books.

Damien is his eager acolyte, whose own thoughts we learn little of. It’s not quite a friendship according to Jack’s description:
“Friendship is the most precious possession… because friendship asks for nothing, makes no claims.”


Image: Hampstead Heath, one of the places they walk (Source)

I’ve met plenty of people like Jack, including my own father. I was confident I would enjoy this.

I learned why Jack preferred a typewriter to a pen or word processor (you can only go forwards), that his writing philosophy was the opposite of Flaubert's (there is no mot juste), that London parks are perfect for deep conversation (they’re large enough for a longish walk, but there’s no need to bring a map or refreshments), that since the Walkman, silence has all but disappeared (people fear and avoid it), and that Rome was the first modern city (people were free of traditional taboos).

By page 20, I’d lost count of the number of authors, artists, and philosophers who’d been mentioned - and it was still the first paragraph. The only paragraph, as it turned out, in 150 pages. That’s OK: Kafka and others did likewise.

By page 50 I was beginning to feel overloaded and underwhelmed. Half way through, I put it down. When I picked it up again, it was with a sigh. I read to the end, but without enthusiasm, and paying less attention than usual. There was a twist, but by then I didn’t really care.

I can’t focus on audiobooks, but if there were an audio version, and I listened to it on a country walk, it might work better for me.

My rating is for my experience, not an attempt to score the book objectively.


Image: Moor Park, Farnham, today(ish) - the subject of Jack’s book (Source)

Animal language

Jack hates zoos and donates to save the African elephant (but not to help starving African children). He compares people to animals in mythology, science, and real life. He’s fascinated by human and animal language - as was, so he says, Jonathan Swift when he was at Moor Park. This is an increasingly dominant theme.
“We all only develop the kind of language we need.”
He discusses attempts to teach language (spoken and sign) to primates, and the ethics and purpose of trying to do so. And so it reflects questions about the purpose of existence in general and writing in particular.

Moo(r) Pa(r)k

Part of the appeal of this specific Josipovici is that Jack has spent the last ten years writing a history of Moor Park, which is near where I live, NW of London. However, it turns out to be a different Moor Park - in Farnham, Surrey, which is SW of London. It’s where Jonathan Swift lived for a while, when working for Sir William Temple: see Wikipedia. Its history is far more varied and interesting than the Hertfordshire country house that is now a golf club. Swift’s one included spells as a school, Victorian hydrotherapy retreat, lunatic asylum, WW2 code-breaking centre, and a Christian retreat.


Image: Jonathan Swift’s room at Moor Park (Source)

Quotes

• “Writing… is a means of escape from the self as well as a means of discovery.”

• “England is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from America.”
“The fear of authority and authoritarianism which has swept through America and then Britain is quite frightening.” [this was published 1994]

• “Certain authors are so precious to us… I can walk with them whenever I want… they always have the time to accompany me… and they expect nothing in return.”
[reminiscent of a famous Stephen King quote: Books are a uniquely portable magic]

• “Creative work… can bring us in touch with our hunger if not assuage it.”

• “Art was not about beauty or sadness but about truth.”

See also

• I’ve been entranced by the five Josipovicis I’ve read since I first encountered him a couple of years ago: two 5*, two 4*, and one 3* (see my reviews HERE). They differ in many ways, but there are recurring themes and literary tics and tricks that make his work unmistakable. His books are layered, cryptic, erudite, clever, and between 100 and 150 pages. All that is true of this book, except that I didn’t enjoy this one.

• After this, I picked up Jay Parini’s Borges and Me. More conversations on the move with a fiercely intelligent and well-read writer, but it’s a joy to read and wears its erudition lightly. See my review HERE.

• For a more readable take on talking primates, see Kafka’s Report to the Academy, which I reviewed HERE, and Colin Teevan’s adaptation, Kafka’s Monkey, which I reviewed HERE.

[Nick Grammos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moo Pak is all talk. A talking narrative; and a walking narrative. Jack Toledaro (perhaps all of us) simply can't help talking. And walking. Talking and walking holds the whole book together. And all this talking business can at times keep us from hearing the detail of what is going on. We talk, but do we connect? And connecting is all we want.

After finishing Moo Pak, I picked up an essay and found this quote:
We are trapped in our own thoughts, except for the hope that someone else already had them; we can tell each other nothing.
Those words come from a review of Ludwig Wittgenstein's personal diaries. It basically paraphrases his thoughts from the preface to his Tractacus but a little more elegantly. As much as anything else Wittgenstein reminds us that we are all locked away from each other, there can be no other reality and even language cannot bridge this difference from each other - though it could if it was clearer which it should always be. Wittgenstein rates a mention in the book too, btw.

The quote from Wittgenstein nicely fits the ideas of the book. This is a novel in two voices. One narrates, the other speaks. Jack Toledaro and Damien Anderson take walks all over London’s parks and gardens. Jack does all the talking, it is Jack’s storytelling, opinions and allusions to history and his readings that makes up the bulk of the telling. The two could be said to ‘amble’ and ‘ramble’ through the book. But Damien, barely mentioned, tells us what jack said. It's a curious and interesting form.

Damien (the barely mentioned and passive teller of the tale) reminds us occasionally that the walks exist in time and space, not just an ether created out of Jack Toledaro’s words: we went into the café and joined the queue

Jack Toledaro tells us repeatedly that he can only really talk to a few people of a certain sensitivity (Damien is one of them) he connects with here in England. He is outside all of it, a Sephardic Jew, unsettled, not fitting, but existing in a place where freedom for him is assured as an essential element of the fabric of British society, so he can accept the individualistic mind of the English and exist among them in a city like London. He is writing the book called Moor Park. All his conversations relate to his research and reading. A book that is ten years in the making (which he says will renew him by its completion). But until then he is harried by his thoughts about it, his place in the world, the circumstances of humanity, pushing him towards walking and talking.

Jack Toledaro talks about writing a great deal, both around it and about it. He talks about just about everything related to the achievements of civilisation, writers, philosophers, liberal values. Kafka, French Revolution, Nietzsche, Milton, Dante etc etc. He speaks so much about so many matters that I wonder if he can manage all these thoughts and if some misadventure might befall him. I am reminded of someone I knew for a while many years ago who thought so much about so many matters that by the time he got to speaking about it he fell into incoherence. That was partly because he wanted to bring everything together into a coherent system of thought, but had not read enough or deeply to understand the parts he tried to fuse together. But Toledaro understands the connections well, but there’s a problem. Where is all this heading, this talk of the civilizing elements of the world Toledaro inhabits? Then there's the failures to bring the civilising authors into the consciousness of everyone around him except for a few.

But there's surely going to be a catch? Isn't there?

Is there more possible between the two voices, something more connected? Perhaps I am sensitive enough to be talked to as well. And go on the London park rambles. I found myself strangely agreeing with almost everything Jack says. He got me early on when talking about writing and readers

People who cannot write and cannot think and yet believe that they adore literature are in love with adjectives

When religion dies, morality is waiting to step into its shoes.

we feel that everything is possible but there is no way of knowing what to do and how to do it.

when a politician invokes collective memory, it is time to beware. Nationalism. Patriotism. All those are monsters.

If you notice the tone, it’s reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard’s characteristic ranting narrator.
Having read books by Josipovici before, I was pretty sure that this agreement with the ranting of the narrator is a kind of trap. Could I actually read 150 pages of relentless ‘truth-telling‘ and just agree? Well, it keeps up. I still agree with everything. I feel set up to agree with another consciousness. Perhaps even break through Wittgenstein's misgivings. But I know from experience that Wittgenstein is correct, we each exist in our own world and nothing will breach it.

I wrote all over this book in pencil. I’ve given up my little yellow fluro plastic tabs. It’s liberating. But I had to stop to use the pencil all the time. To be fair, I do this with tabs, too. But I’m not entirely clear why I agree with so much of Toledaro’s rantings. Perhaps I’ve been tuned into the rant as a contemporary phenomenon. All the world’s a rant these days, an opinion counts more than a fact, you just have to tune into your own favourite rant subject and off you go, like finding a radio station you like. Rants are mediated, curated for us now. But this was copyrighted in 1994, written earlier, yet the subjects of society rang true to me about the loss of ritual, the lack of effort, the superficiality of the times.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent novel from the French-born literary critic and proud modernist has put Josipovici on my radar of respect. Written in one breakless paragraph à la Bernhard (who is namedropped several times), the novel is narrated by a man called Damien who quotes at length long pieces of conversations he’s had with the loquacious Jack Tolenado, an Egyptian immigrant and Sephardic Jew supposedly writing a history of Moor Park in Hertfordshire. Tolenado’s conversation is written in the form of a literary essay or dérive, drifting from philosophy to peevish contemporary commentary to longer musings on the late life of Jonathan Swift (a big star of this novel), Proust, encompassing a breathtaking range of literary history. The digressive rhythms of this ramble are completely enchanting and the novel succeeds in capturing the feeling of a dérive around the city and its surroundings in the company of a mysterious and wonderfully erudite man (Josipovici?) As a form, this work also balances the essay-cum-fiction-cum-autobio technique as capably as any of the other (not too numerous) attempts in this category. Tremendous. Thanks to Jeff for the tip.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

We were walking through the old cemetery with its creeper-covered tombstones and monuments and its derelict paths.  I began to write, he said, to clean out my head.  Not because I had ‘anything to say’ and not because I wanted to make beautiful objects or tell beautiful stories but quite simply to clean out my head and stop myself going mad.  

Gabriel Josipovici's The Cemetery in Barnes (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) was one of my highlights of 2018 and has compelled me to visit other of his works, starting with the short-story collection Heart's Wings: & Other Stories and now his 1994 novel Moo Pak.

Whereas the 104 page The Cemetery in Barnes felt like (and indeed was - see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) an expanded short story, the 144 page Moo Pak feels more like a condensed version of a much longer novel. And indeed, in the novel's fictional setting that is, in many respects, what it is.

The novel is ostensibly narrated by Damien Anderson, but consists almost entirely of dense, unparagraphed, reported speech from his friend, Jack Toledano, a Sephardic Jew born in Egypt but now living in England and a retired ex-University lecturer in literature but now a novelist (with obvious similarities to Josipovici's own biography), comments relayed in a series of wide-ranging monologues from Toledano as the two friends walk around London, including locations later to reappear in the 2018 novel, such as Putney, the Harrods Depository, Hammersmith bridge and indeed the Cemetery at Barnes itself (see the quote that opens by review).

Toledano's monologues covers many subjects and this is an eminently quotable novel, for example (bear in mind the 1990s setting) his views on word-processors and why, he prefers typewriters:

Pens are for Victorian novelists, he said, and word-processors are for playful post modernists. But if I am anything, he said, it is a modernist, neither a sentimental Victorian who pours out his fantasies wrapped up in absurd and melodramatic plots nor a sentimental and cynical post-modernist who tries to give the impression that he has no feelings but wishes only to toy with all traditions and impress his peers ... but for my purposes, he said, the typewriter, the old-fashioned manual typewriter, is the only tool.

In part this is because he needs to avoid the constant temptation to revise and perfect, and drive his narrative forward:

if I stayed with the first paragraph, he said, it wouldn't get better and I would never discover how it could get better. Only the last paragraph can tell you whether you've got the first paragraph right, he said, only the last word can make sense of the first. There is no mot juste, he said, at least not till the whole book is more or less juste. The search for the mot juste, he said, leads to overwriting and dullness and the dreadful proliferation of adjectives.

Just as - if not more - relevant in 2018, his comments on collective memory as invoked by opportunistic politicians:

There is no such thing as collective memory, he said, there are only a multitude of of individual memories.  When a politician engines collective memory, he said, then it is time to beware.  Nationalism, he said. Patriotism.  All the old monsters. You can see today how quick they are to resurface.  Our memories are personal or they are nothing.  They are not uniform. They are not consistent.  They flicker into life and then subside again into the dark.  As Proust understood, and had the patience and clarity of mind and the literary skill to convey.

Or his views on writers who are overkeen on media attention, and those who do not:

Beckett did not succumb, Bernhard did not succumb, Pinget has not succumbed.  I can go on reading and rereading their work with the profound sense that they are close friends.  

Thomas Bernhard's influence - with the reported speech from long walks and, at times, rather irascible views - seems fairly strong, and indeed comments on authors Toledano loves (and some he doesn't) feature throughout including Proust, Dante, Homer, Wallace Stevens, Kafka, Eliot, Milton, Shakespeare, Beckett, Swift, Dostoevsky but also less well known writers such as J R Ackerley.

It is gradually revealed that - like Musil, Joyce and Proust before him - Toledano is near completion of his magnum opus, a 700-800 page work entitled Moor Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor_Pa...), former home of William Temple and where, in his employ, Jonathan Swift wrote A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. The rich and varied history of the house gives Toledano the themes for his novel - and which also dominate his discourse - including the use of language by primates:

Moor Park is, at different times, as I have explained to you, the home of Sir William Temple and his widowed sister, Swift’s inveterate enemy, Lady Giffard, a school, a lunatic asylum, a college of theology, a centre for the decipherment of codes during the Second World War, a centre for the study of primates and again a school.  The problem has been to hold all this together, he said, not through plot, for I have always been suspicious of plot, but through form. I have used a variation of the Fibonacci sequence to control the number of parts in the book, he said, and the number of sections in each part, and I have used palindromes, broken here and there according to further rules, to determine the relative length of each section.   The themes, of which there are six - Swift, cyphers, monkeys, gardens, madness and languages- make their appearance in accordance with the principles of the sestina. 

Indeed the short novel we are reading essentially functions as an abstract of the longer novel Toledano is in the process of completing, but which is as yet unread by Anderson.

Toledano's views switch from the highly artistic to the rather curmudgeonly, and are at times rather contradictory - castigates the English for always moaning about England and how they want to emigrate to other, better countries, by pointing out that people in other countries don’t do that. 

And indeed this contradiction (another feature of The Cemetery in Barnes) is key to Toledano's novelistic approach:

Why I thought of Moor Park as a title, he said, is that, like Animal Languages, it is a contradiction in terms, and I like titles like that. A park is precisely what is not a moor, he said, what has ceased to be moor, nature, and has become park, civilisation. A moor, he said that day in Epping Forest, is nature without boundaries. A park, on the other hand, is precisely the imposition of boundaries, it makes human what was once natural. All books, he said, are moor parks, whether they realise it or not.

And, in the novel's closing pages, Josipovici pulls out a couple of reservations that also serve to make us reassess what we have been reading.

Fascinating, especially when set alongside The Cemetery in Barnes. 4.5 stars - almost 5 but I've given that to the 2018 work.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The basic scenario here is that a retired literature lecturer, Jack Toledano, goes out walking with the narrator and talks to him about literature, music and the visual arts. Inter alia, he reveals his disdain for the modern world and its lack of culture, his estrangement from his former wife and his children, and his struggles with composition among other ruminations.

Little by little, Toledano tells the narrator about the magnum opus upon which he has been working, some thirty years in the making. It is to be called 'Moor Park' after the country house at which Jonathan Swift was personal secretary to Sir William Temple and where he met Temple's ward, Esther, whom he would mentor and rename Stella. Along the way, it facilitates discussion of what it means to be human and generates an array of quotable sentences. The paradox that authentic writing must reflect lived experience, for example, is described thus: 'the murder of millions and an individual's joy at the play of sunlight on leaves, the utter pointless of life and thanksgiving for being alive'.

The technique by which this novel has been written is unashamedly Bernhardian. A monologue by an opinionated and world-weary protagonist, reported by a colourless narrator, delivered without chapter or paragraph breaks. The interpolation of background events and dialogue attribution is pure Bernhard:

Why is Webern less real than rock? he said, and darted through the tombstones away from the main path.

Incidentally, the narrator in Bernhard's 'Woodcutters' describes his host as a "composer in the wake of Webern". Here, the protagonist references Bernhard among the writers he admires. The great Austrian's ghost haunts these pages, then. This is surely the book upon which his reputation as the 'English Bernhard' lies (and that verb has at least two meanings).

Since their 'conversations' take place in London's parks and heaths, the background provides us with a tour of those places. By pure chance, I read part of this novel sitting on a bench in Regent's Park. It actually makes me want to write about Ipswich's parks, which are the town's principal glory (its churches run them a close second), placing London's green spaces somewhat in the shade.

Each of Josipovici's books is different from the last. If I've learnt anything else about them, it's that they're usually not what they seem at first. And so it is with this one. Ostensibly, we seem to have a work of autofiction for which the writer has adopted Bernhard's narrative technique. Toledano shares much of Josipovici's personal history. He is a Jew who spent much of his childhood in Egypt, raised by his mother in wartime France, somehow avoiding capture by the National Socialists/collaborationists. His forebears even share Josipovici's precise international heritage - Italian, Russian, Romanian. As noted, he's a former academic and writer. As the novel progresses, though, he reveals increasingly reactionary views that one wouldn't associate with the author from reading his other works. Toledano is a disappointed man, politically incorrect and somewhat elitist. Needless to say, it would be a mistake to conflate writer and protagonist.

We learn about the writers and artists whom Toledano values most highly - Swift, of course, Kafka, Homer, Dante, Proust, Shakespeare, and for style alone, Chandler and Wodehouse, Mozart and Stravinsky, Bonnard and van Eyck... We suspect these are Josipovici's tastes. As the narrative unfolds, it focuses more and more on 'Moor Park' (not for nothing, then, do the duo wander through London's parks). Toledano likes this contradiction in terms - the wild and the civilised, comparing it to the concept of 'animal language'. The novel's themes will reflect the house's incarnations - lunatic asylum, school, WW2 code-breaking centre, centre for the study of primate behaviour (the epigraph is taken from an ape called Bertrand: 'Me cry there')... He is deploying Oulipian methods to determine its structure - Finobacci numbers, sestinas, palindromes... It sounds as though it would have been fabulous.

This book-within-a-book allows Josipovici to employ the Borgesian narrative technique, the novel in précis (earlier, Toledano rails against the maximalist book, praising Borges). And Josipovici himself has never written a long book. Takest heed, o thou writer/would-be writer of the GAN. Toledano is a man who talks non-stop - how has he ever found time to write a novel 700 pages long? To employ an Americanism, can he 'walk the walk'? The ending arrives abruptly and reinforces this idea. I have to say, I saw it coming. Was this because I was expecting Josipovici to subvert his narrative? Think of the punch line to McCartney's tale, 'Drive My Car'.

All in all, this was a highly engrossing work, perhaps the most enjoyable of Josipovici's that I've read to date.

Footnote on a peculiarity: I read about Josipovici on the Brittanica website. The entry referred to him in the past tense, as though he were dead.

Footnote to future reviewers: Please note my restraint. I haven't written up my thoughts as a single paragraph. Ask yourselves: what would Toledano have to say about your postmodern 'irony'?

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

London is a walkers paradise, but you have to know where to go. p9
One has to make the city work for one...or one will be crushed by it. One has to know where to walk and when to stay at home. p77

Even if the readers thoughts do not immediately jump to Socrates, taking the above advice it would be natural then for a newcomer to seek out someone compatible who is familiar with the city, a wise companion, to act as a guide. Walking really is the ideal way to get to know any city. A London walk will necessarily pass through layers of time as well as space, and could very well, by its rhythm and the play of light and and shadow and an infusion of oxygen, be conducive to a trance like state fertile to the creative imagination.

Moo Pak is a hymn to the creative imagination. It has more in common with Riddley Walker than with Plato. This reader had to push hard to get the momentum. Nothing much happens. The brilliant writing propels the pace. It was this that kept me going in the beginning, when I was struck with lassitude each time I picked it up. In the end found I have 9+1/2 pages of notes. Yet I cannot quite pinpoint the transition from reluctant interest to obsession. This is not a book for everyone. My own son could not bother to finish it. But for me, it opened a conversation I have been waiting to have.

DJ is not a particularly flamboyant writer and the story that lurks beneath all of the details is not revealed until the very end. Ten years of fairly regular walking together allows the opportunity for certain themes to embellish. Conversations about gardens of course, and art and architecture and about history and the nature of reality, the possible meaning or lack of it in our daily acts; the futility of necessity and the fate of civilization. Our guide is a writer, and there is a focus on the process of reading and writing, and on the tendencies encouraged by mass media to drift and to undermine critical thinking.

Why does unrelieved banality reign everywhere, even and perhaps especially in the cleverest and most learned? p30

The most terrible thing that has happened to people today...is that they have grown frightened of silence. p20

If we are prepared to live properly...which means to read patiently, to allow the silence to surround our reading, then we will...discover that there are potent realities there within us of which we had never dreamt....But who nowadays is prepared to read the writers of the past as they should be read? p32

I would add Josipovici to the growing list of contemporary writers who work demands and justifies the efforts of the reader. He explores here the commodification of reality and the further urbanization of experience; gentrification and homelessness and how that all impacts on identity formation and life in captivity to science. He acknowledges the pervasive hopelessness that blights our best intentions and affirms cultivation of hope and cooperation that is necessary if we want our species to survive

Civilization as we know it is dying of sentimentality and self pity. p117
I feel uneasy wherever I am....I find the values of all countries and societies depressing and degrading. Only with a few individuals, like you, do I feel reasonably comfortable, do I feel I am not a lonely crank but what I do is worthwhile and appreciated. p118

There was a time... when I thought that one could write about these things and teach people the truth about them, but there comes a moment when you realize that no one is listening and that all you can do is live according to your beliefs and let the world go hang. p60

We must live and write as if there are people out there ready to read us as we need to be read...to listen to us as we need to be listened to. It is vital not to succumb to the values of society at large, not to be swayed by the siren voices that preach truth and reality to us....We must not be put off by the thought that we might appear foolish or prissy or out of touch. p62

An idea without form...is worse than useless, and so is form without content. p99
Once you begin to worry about what you are going to achieve or what people are going to say, you lose your instinctive rhythms, you lose your ability to pick up the vibrations...and your ability to surge forward. p100

Thinking ourselves to be fighting puritanism and repression in the name of freedom, they demonstrate in the way they do it that they cannot tolerate what does not fit in with their rigid systems. These people...are so confused... that they cannot bear not to be in total control, dispensing judgments and and laying down the law instead of acknowledging mystery and complexity. p35

The trouble with morality...is that because it is founded on distrust of the self it lacks a sense of humour. You cannot have a sense of humour if you are constantly checking to see if you are thinking and acting as you should be. p113

[Emily]

I will try to write about Moo Pak without descending into one long, uninterrupted stream of block-quotes, but let me tell you, it will be a challenge. Because if there's one word to describe Gabriel Josipovici's critical-essay-cum-novella, it's "quotable." A bit surprising, really, seeing as this story of friendship between two men—Jack Toledano and Damien Anderson, talker and listener, writer/philosophizer and chronicler—takes the form of a single 151-page paragraph, with not a chapter heading or line break to be found. Jack's speech, or his different speeches, pieced together by Damien from memories of over ten years of walks and conversation with Jack, flows with seeming effortlessness from one subject to the next and back again, from Kew Gardens to Hampstead Heath, and the reader is swept along in its wake. (The style, which presents Jack's thoughts as seamlessly integrated with his actions and the sights he sees, reminded me incredibly strongly of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own—although, interestingly, Woolf was one author Jack never mentions.) And yet, despite its all-of-a-piece nature, the text has a surprisingly excerpt-able quality about it, to wit:

The trouble with me, he said, is that I have classical aspirations but a romantic temperament. I not only like but believe in the notion of regular daily work, of there being no question without an answer, no problem without a solution. But when it comes to it I cannot work unless I am fired by a belief in what I am doing, and there are many questions to which I have not been able to find the answer, many works I have started with high hopes and then been forced to abandon because I was unable to find the right solutions or even to decide what such solutions might be like if I should find them. But that is what we have to live with, he said, and got up abruptly and we left the lake and plunged once more into the birchwoods.

[On a personal note, I'll just say Oh! how I relate to this passage.:]

In their ten-plus years together, the dueling legacies of Classicism and Romanticism is just one of Jack's many subjects; he discourses, too, on the religious remnants in a secular society; on the role of art in life; on the relative eccentricities of literature, music, and visual art; on the lives and work of Kafka, Swift, Proust, Eliot and Eliot, Stravinsky, Wodehouse, Mozart, Klee, Beckett, and many others; on the perceived degeneration ("Americanisation") of modern society; on gardens as symbols of continuity; on what it means to be a Sephardic Jew from Egypt living in England; and, perhaps most intriguingly, on his magnum-opus-in-progress, the epic work he calls, at different times, Animal Languages, or Moor Park.

[Swift's:] anger and despair, he said, lay in this contradiction, that he could only speak with ease when he donned a mask and yet he hated the thought of hypocrisy and cowardice and wanted to tear the mask off as soon as it was on. Why I thought of Moor Park as a title, he said, is that, like Animal Languages, it is a contradiction in terms, and I like titles like that. A park is precisely what is not a moor, he said, what has ceased to be moor, nature, and has become park, civilisation. A moor, he said that day in Epping Forest, is nature without boundaries. A park, on the other hand, is precisely the imposition of boundaries, it makes human what was once natural. All books, he said, are moor parks, whether they realise it or not.

There is so much to discuss here, so many different directions in which to go, but I think the above quote expresses one of my favorite elements of Moo Pak, which is Josipovici's treatment of contradiction. I'm a huge fan of the idea that contradiction, even paradox, is a defining trait of the human experience, and that the only thing to do is find a way to accept that fact, even if we can't always celebrate it. Whitman's "I contain multitudes," and all that. But most expressions I've come across of this notion merely say it in words; Moo Pak manages to illustrate it structurally as well. As an example of what I mean: in the first twenty or so pages of the book, I was completely enamored of Jack's voice (as edited by Damien); he seemed smart and wise and interesting, and was talking about so many things that are important to me as well. I was underlining like mad, passages such as:

A decent conversation, he says, should consist of winged words, words that fly out of the mouth of one speaker and land in the chest of the other, but words that are so light that they soon fly on again and disappear for ever. We don't formulate a thought first and then polish it and finally release it, he said. If we did that we would never get to speak at all. We let it fly, he says, and sometimes it draws something valuable in its wake and sometimes nothing.

Then, for the next sixty pages or so, I started to get the sneaking suspicion that Jack might be a bit of a blowhard. He spends an awful lot of time kvetching about The Kids These Days, and how England is nothing like it once was, and how everyone has lost touch with what's important. Readers don't read in the "proper" way anymore (fatally, he implies that there is One Right Way), and the populace worships false gods. He starts to sound like some combination of crotchety Harold Bloom and someone's querulous, passive-aggressive great-aunt:

Forster and Greene were bad enough, he said, but if their art is not up to much at least it has integrity. Today in the majority of cases our writers have substituted self-righteousness for integrity, they flow with the filthy tide and talk of subversion and risk. It is laughable, he said, to hear them talk on television and in newspaper interviews about how they are vilified and silenced and how the authorities deny them a voice.

This kind of talk is sort of ridiculous to me. I don't believe for a minute that Shakespeare, for example, would have failed to take advantage of the modern publicity machine had it been available to him, or that Beckett is necessarily a better writer because he was a recluse. Nor do I believe that the level of greed, cupidity, banality, or selfishness of "the young" or "humankind" is significantly higher or lower now than it ever has been. I was disappointed in old Jack, I must say, and in his author. Why would someone with capacity for such brilliant passages spend so much time on mediocre complaining? Jack seemed more or less a simple mouthpiece for Josipovici, and I wasn't digging what was being trumpeted through him.

Then I started to notice certain details. Certain contradictions, cracks in the joint between Josipovici and Toledano. I didn't begin to catch them until about two-thirds of the way into the book, but then they started piling on. Jack complains, for example, about all his English friends who moan about how much they hate England and fantasize about moving elsewhere; yet later on, he himself goes on about how "London is indeed becoming a most horrible place," and how he has considered moving to the country. Little things. He criticizes those who use other people as an excuse to monologue, and yet the reader's entire experience of Jack himself is as one long mediated monologue via Damien. I began to have hope of more distance between Josipovici and Jack than I had at first realized, hope that Jack was sometimes supposed to seem irritating or less-than-inspired.

Shortly thereafter, Jack himself acknowledges the importance of acknowledging contradictions, in passages like the one about moor parks above, or like this gorgeous snippet:

But what we have to do, he said as we fled from the Park and the cries of the caged animals and birds, is to live out the contradictions and to see what can be done with them. What I am after, he said as we waited at the bus-stop, is a work which tries to be generous to all contradictions, to place them against each other and let the reader decide. Even that, he said, is the wrong way of putting it. The reader too can only live out those contradictions, cannot adjudicate between them.

Ah, I thought. Maybe I'm starting to get what Josipovici is doing here. I as the reader must put Jack's annoying side next to his inspiring side, what he said last week next to the contradictory argument he made today, and accustom myself to the dissonance. Live through the contradictions, just as Jack himself talks of doing with all the different manifestations of the Moor Park estate in his epic history-in-progress.

But THEN! I don't quite know how to put this (and it's odd that such a plot-less book would have a spoiler), but the last few pages really took this whole dialectic of living through contradictions to a whole new level for me. It's as if Josipovici is saying to the reader "You think you're accommodating contradiction now—just you wait." What are we to make of the final pages, my friends? To what extent to they change our perception of what came before? Do they invalidate the rest of the monologue, or not at all? And what do we do with the fact that, in the last few pages, the usual interjection changes from "he said" (referring to Jack) to "he wrote" (referring to Damien)? Who is the real author here, and what is the real art?

I don't have answers to these questions yet, but I'm very much enjoying thinking about them. Moo Pak (despite the parts of it that contradict this statement) was a beautiful, thought-provoking read.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/7753707...

There was only one bit of text from this book that I deemed worthy of snatching, clipping for posterity, and it wasn't that there was a lack of words from which to find a sampling of a nugget here and there which carried meaning as well as enough weight in which to share their additional importance as sentences go on and on my page. But anyone reading this review to the end will have read the segment lifted from this very fine book.

Between the covers there are enough references to Thomas Bernhard and Samuel Beckett to pique the interests of the most discerning reader who holds the above-mentioned artists in as much high esteem as does the author Gabriel Josipovici. But there are numerous other literary mentionables present such as Swift, Shakespeare, Stevens, and Keats among other writers whose names do not begin begin or end with the letter S. I found in my brief critical research that the fault some critics have of Josipovici centered on his presumed pretentiousness and use of this novel as a vehicle in which to prove how smart he is and obviously well-read. I did not take this digressive work of Josipovici as anything but what it was. His main character Jack Tolenado is no doubt a brilliant man, an ex-University lecturer who became disenchanted with his work as do so many of us victimized and faced with a long drawn-out career. Things change. When we get older it becomes uncomfortably obvious that we are no longer in step with the younger generations and in fact we are loathe to change our own ways enough to climb again on board this swiftly moving train. Most of us who stubbornly persist in these unhappy situations turn into the sniveling crybaby bitches and mean curmudgeons older people too easily get branded as, guilty or not. I found Jack Tolenado quite enjoyable and I attempted to learn as much from him as possible on the many leisurely walks I shared in my reading of this wonderful little novel.

One paragraph was all it took Josipovici to get his message across. But the paragraph lasted for a hundred and fifty-one pages. Thomas Bernhard might even have been glad that for once another writer actually pulled the same stunt off successfully, much as Bernhard did so often himself. It is not an easy thing to do. Quite the contrary. For one, your character indeed better have a personality that can carry the bulk of the many words on every page. And of course, the writing must also be good. I found the entire experience a delight to read, though I have never been to England and had literally no frame of reference for the many parks and paths and zoos in which they were meandering through, or the many anecdotal memories Jack put forth as segments of his ongoing research of the last twenty-five years and his current ten-year attempt at finally finishing his magnum opus.

For lovers of digression and those given to enlivened activities such as listening-as-hostage to a brilliant man speak on a bevy of subjects, then this book is for you. Of course, if you already know it all, or think you know better, than this book just might not be your cup of tea. But I personally enjoyed reading this book deluged with dialogue and instruction, and I confidently knew that at any time I could shut this talking head off and return instead to that incessant egoistic monologue pressing inside my very own head.

… Most artists do not help us, he said, they hinder us, they lead us astray, they bludgeon us with noise and then leave us with nothing and less than nothing. Only a fews artists, he said, and we soon discover which ones for ourselves, have the ability to lead us inward and forward and to make us look with the eye of hope and anticipation at the world and ourselves. Left to our own devices, he said, we grow small and hard and get to hate this small hard thing and end in lethargy and despair. We need the artists who matter to remind us constantly that there are possibilities there, in the world and in ourselves, and that hard work and the deployment of energy do have their rewards.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

For 151 pages, this book sure is huge even though its first-person narrator never actually says anything. The single, ongoing paragraph is made up entirely of the musings of retired English professor Jack Toledano. Over the course of several walks around London, Toledano will expound on everything from typewriters v. word processors, friendship, postmodernism, the ancient Greeks' laments to the gods, the Holocaust, the gradual disintegration of authentic Britishness, kids these days, the soulless literary PR machine, liberal activism as the new Puritanism, his favorite writers, and finally, the novel he has been working on for the past decade, a 700-page fictionalized account of the history of Moor Park, where Jonathan Swift once lived, and which has been, at various times, a college of theology, a lunatic asylum, the code-breakers' headquarters during WWII, and a chimp research facility.

Moo Pak initially comes across as merely a catalog of scholarly digressions. There is a psychological base to it, however, one that shapes Toledano's thoughts regardless of where they end up. Moo Pak is more than a collection of ideas; it is a portrait as well, a sort of memoir as monologue. Gabriel Josipovici takes a diverse collection of subjects and unifies them in a very subtle manner that allows his book to flow seamlessly from one point to another without turning into a motley grab-bag of arguments, ideas, speculations, and so forth. Definitely an intriguing read. (The single-paragraph format isn't nearly as annoying as you'd think.)

Original Review

[Sonali V · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very rewarding read. Many ideas thrown to the wind which is why it cannot be read straight through. You have to pause and look up references to books, other great writers, events in the literary world. That of course enhanced the reading experience. A book to be re-read because there are contrary view points presented too.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I was reading, the book’s peculiar ambulatory structure brought to mind Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, in this case a series of ideas (rather than paintings) interwoven with a recurring promenade. Considered from that perspective, Josipovici’s creation of one continuous paragraph actually makes sense.
Like a ventriloquist with his dummy, Josipovici has conjured up Jack Toledano, a fellow writer who, like Josipovici himself, hails from afar and, being unencumbered by academic, political, cultural or doctrinal restrictions, is set loose to express whatever views cross his mind. In succession, he censures post-modernism, adjectives, Sartre, romantic-era composers, urbanites, psychoanalysis and so on — while celebrating manual typewriters, an entire panoply of writers, historians, poets and the pleasures of walking in and around London.
Scattered throughout Toledano’s unbroken stream of commentary, arresting insights on topics as diverse as literature, tourism and human nature pop up like jewels sparkling in a stream-bed:
Literature …. Does not teach us politics, it does not teach us linguistics, It teaches us gymnastics. I do not mean that it teaches us rhetoric. The gymnastics of the Spirit has little to do with rhetoric, though rhetoric, properly understood, can help train us for such gymnastics.
He muses on the purpose and motivation of being a writer: whether it be in hope of being understood and applauded; or as justification for his earlier survival and current existence — or as Swift suggested, simply to keep from going mad. His account of the creation of a writer’s magnum opus is especially cogent:
It’s a bit like an hourglass, the sand seeps slowly from one part of the glass to the other, and as the one fills up so the other empties. It is the same with the making of a work of art. The life passes from the maker who has so far not been able to put it to any use, into the work, which grows and become strong and goes on growing, if all goes well, until all the life that was in the creator has gone into the work. But the paradox of creative work is that when the work is finished it is the life of the maker which is renewed. As though only by giving birth in this way could you replenish yourself.
Toledano, a man of high intellectual standards, faced with the task of denouncing what he sees as cultural decay all around him without becoming pompous, querulous and simply tiresome, seeks a vehicle within which to express his insights and his criticism. He seizes upon the history of Moor Park and the varied uses into which the original estate of Sir William Temple was transformed, along with a recollection of Jonathan Swift’s sojourn there as Temple’s secretary — Swift being a writer he greatly admires.
He identifies in stark clarity the moral dilemma of the artist:
To give in to chaos is to give up any idea of art and knowledge altogether; to deny confusion and chaos is to produce something which bears no relation at all to what we are. That is the paradox and the challenge. The barking of dogs and the communal praise of God, the murder of millions and the individual’s joy at the play of sunlight on leaves, the utter pointlessness of life and thanksgiving for being alive. Our art must reflect both or it is worthless, a hindrance to joy and understanding.

[Amari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've ever read.

Josipovici's prose is spare; it communicates deep warmth and vulnerability.

At first, I thought the book gave insight into how it might have felt to read Bernhard had Bernhard had a gentler side; after a few hours with this soul, though, I had become aware of qualities that I have never noted in the work of any other writer.

Moo Pak touches on all aspects of the human experience in a way that is grounded but never heavy. That is not to say that it radiates optimism.

Yesterday I read an article in The Guardian called "The novel is dead (this time it's for real)". It addressed some of the same points discussed in Josipovici's novel and made some strikingly similar arguments. But had Will Self, the article's author, read Moo Pak, I am certain that he would not have written the article he did. Moo Pak -- and the novel in general -- is as alive as the cat at my side and the pea plants in my garden, and it will outlive us all.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers the kind of philosophical exploration (couched in totally absorbing prose) that English majors and wannabes will love. Although the story is ostensibly told in first-person narrative style, it consists almost entirely of the narrator's account of the many walks and conversations he shared with his philosophical interlocutor, Jack Toledano. The conversations consist of Toledano thinking through the theories of art and language he is ostensibly writing into his magnum opus. Although modeled on Socratic dialogues, the conversations are not as dry and or as pedantic as that might suggest. Rather, they ensure the plot hinges on the big questions that drive artists, writer, and thinkers. The ending accordingly offers fewer answers than questions, and this may be the point: it prompted me to not only reflect on the story that preceded it but to return to the story's beginning.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

That, he said, is worthy of Donne, though a little more daring. Nietzsche maintained, he said, that there were only two German books worth preserving, Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann and Lichtenberg's Fragments.

Jack Toledano does not wear his learning lightly, said William, and in this book I came to feel, he said, neither does Gabriel Josipovici.

Moo Pak is an odd book, asking questions of form and structure in the Modernist fashion. Like other Josipovici books - Infinity, for instance - it concerns creative types and the creative process, this time a writer and his confidante. Writers and writing, readers and reading, talkers and talking fill these dense 151 pages, and my confidence in all of these ebbed as I read on.

It was a chore to read, at times, but getting into the "rhythm" of this paragraphless prose, sometimes I found it highly entertaining. When I wasn't nodding off, I was nodding along and murmuring my agreement with the central character, Jack, the apparently wise and learned writer, and much that he said.

The final twist in the central conceit, however, concerning Jack's writing career, shatters the reader's confidence in everything that's gone before. Is it really best to write on a typewriter? Are teachers really wasting their time in a broken system? Are Swift, Kafka et al. all they're cracked up to be? And am I a fool for having nodded along to so much Jack asserted?

Literature isn't meant to be comforting, someone said, in which case this book deserves more than the three stars I'm giving it, but after reading Moo Pak I'm not sure I should trust anything anyone says ... he said.

[Nacho Mg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un tipo la goza con su grandeza moral y su visión estética suprema, y va y lo cuenta. Y como su altura de miras es tan de vergüenza, pues en realidad ni él mismo nos lo cuenta, sino un andoba desamparado con el que pasea durante diez años Londres arriba, Londres abajo. Y es tan profunda y verdadera su relación que la confesión final es de ascopena.
El caso es que pese a ello hay ideas interesantes o puntos de vista divertidos. Tampoco es que sumen más de cuatro, pero ya es algo.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moo Pak is a immediately striking novel. The title, the cover, the format. You are immediately aware that you are dealing with a voice apart from the mainstream. This short novel sucks you in quickly with its unstoppable flow and breathless rhythm - it doesn't let you pause until the end of the book. In hindsight Moo Pak would perhaps benefit from being read in one, exhausting sitting. The absence of paragraphs reminds you of Bernhard or Goytisolo and Josipovici imitates some of their hypnotic tone. But the book isn't difficult to read. Essentially it is a monologue, related by the narrator who is strolling the parks and scenes of London listening to his friend discuss life, the universe and everything. These three big themes, for the speaker, incorporate literature, walking and talking, writing, the depressing state of the modern world, friendship, teaching and the history of Moor Park together with various characters and buildings that have populated it during its history. He tells of Jonathan Swift and the young girl he tutored, he tells of animal research, of Sir William Temple, code breakers. Throughout it all the park (and by extension all parks and gardens) becomes a metaphor for the creative process and the construction of imaginary worlds through human endeavour.

Jack Toledano speaks incessantly for 150 pages. The narrator, the listener, does not dare to interrupt except to say "he said" or to point out where they stop to sit down, order a drink or take in a view. When, at one point, the narrator braves a few words about himself he quickly and modestly points out that he wants to relate Toledano's voice and should return to his friend's words. Importantly, Toledano is a charismatic and intelligent speaker. The book wouldn't work otherwise. He is also full of hard opinions and disparaging remarks about other people, other writers and elements of modern culture. He is prone to name dropping and to waxing lyrical about who he considers to be worthwhile writers/painters/thinkers. Most of his idols are academic, canonical writers. He has very little time for mainstream culture and certainly no time for sentimentality or fantastical imagination in literature. He misses the point of art being a thing of beauty, something that bring subjective joy. He believes, ironically, in an economy of language, claiming at some point that writers should be restricted to a few great sentences a year, an antidote to the constant noise of modern society (art and literature included).

Yet Toledano's strong opinions bely a fragility that becomes more and more apparent as the monologue continues and he approaches the delicate subject of his own writing - his own masterpiece called 'Moo Pak'. He builds this up with some lovely, meandering thoughts on parks, nature, urban life and gardens. This he interwines with a beseeching defense of his walks with the narrator and how important they are to human piece of mind. Luckily, Josipovici can endow his character with a few of those brilliant sentences that Toledano ascribes to his idols and wishes of today's writers. Some of the thought processes and ideas are beautifully expressed. The anger, the frustrations, the passion and the preocupation with human themes makes Toledano a sympathetic man, despite his irritating insecurities and narrow minded opinions. Josipovici doesn't manage to remove entirely the sense of academic pretentiousness that pervades this book but he succeeds in making the book enjoying despite, or because of, this identity.

And while Moo Pak has no plot as such, there is a development in the character. Initially we are given clues to his personality and his cultural identity. He speaks openly about his place in the world as a Jew who grew up in Egypt and moved to London. He discusses his sense of Englishness and throws out careless stereotypes of the English, the French, the Germans and the Americans (sometimes through their famous writers and sometimes through their political and cultural influences). It reveals more of his insecurities and his inability to find a place in the modern world. He talks romantically of the pre-war world of his grandparents, almost longs for a life of poverty to escape modernity's dullness and decries the loss of the world's mysteries and hidden places. With nothing more to discover, Toledano looks for beauty in the past, in the dryness of Swift's quiet irony or in the genuis of Kafka. Bernhard is mentioned once or twice and his influence is felt in the suffocating monotony of tone and the darkness of the humour, as well as the strict black and white splattering of opinions. Toledano's personality builds effectively throughout the book, culminating in a refreshingly suprising plot element at the end which lends Moo Pak an emotional punch, as well as layering cleverly his monologue with the passive identity of the quiet narrator.

Overall I really enjoyed Moo Pak, at times surprising myself with my engagement. It is a suprising book - tough, pretentious, ironic and academic on the surface but sentimental and fragile in its soft centre. If what Josipovici aimed to emulate the writers he admires and write the occasional sentence of poignant beauty and meaningfullness he can walk on satisfied: when Moo Pak gets it right its words are memorable in their meaningful clarity. 8

[Nandes]

Un llibre sense punts apart, sense capítols...Un paràgraf de 170 pàgines... El definiria com un experiment literari, un joc que ens proposa l'autor, que a través de reflexions contradictòries ens va passejant pels límits de la literatura i de la intel·lectualitat. Potser no és res d'això que dic. Potser l'autor/personatge principal només s'està rient dels lectors a la seva cara... No ho sé...

El què sé segur és que llegir-lo ha estat una experiència única i que, evidentment, no crec que sigui apte per a lectors poc entrenats o acostumats a llegir narrativa comercial.

M'ha agradat, però no m'ha entusiasmat... potser perquè és un llibre que ens posa a prova com a lectors i va més enllà d'agradar o no? No puc puntuar-lo... un llibre que es surt dels clixés, no em dóna la gana de classificar-lo.

[Hobbes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Josipovici ha publicado varias novelas y libros de crítica literaria, lo cual se refleja en esta obra, una especie de monólogo en el que nos dice sus reflexiones sobre la creación literaria, comenta sus fobias respecto de algunos escritores contemporáneos; recomienda libros y autores; comparte su filosofía de la vida; y narra algunos pasajes de la vida de Swift. Su lectura es fácil e interesante y nos deja un grato sabor y muchas cosas de que platicar en paseos en parques como los que se cuentan en el libro.