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Calamities of Exile
From the author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Calamities of Exile combines three gripping narratives that afford a sort of double CAT scan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile.
- GenresEssaysNonfiction
211 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 1996
103 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Weschler
44 books123 followersLawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 24, 2013
This book received a great deal of critical acclaim, and I suspect the problem is me. But I just couldn't get into it.
The topic is good -- three accounts of individuals resisting totalitarian regimes and ending up exiled from their native countries, with various permutations. But I think the writing style was a turnoff for me. I don't much care for the journalistic reportage style, with the fact-quote-fact-quote pattern.
I felt like the stories could have been far more gripping had they not been so frequently interrupted with lengthy info-dumps; the context and backstory should have been woven far more seamlessly into the story. Although this is technically non-fiction and meant to educate as well as entertain, I still think the point of narrative non-fiction is to tell a good story; otherwise, just write a textbook.
I'm also not a fan of paragraph-long quotes from the individual being profiled, especially if the individual doesn't seem to be saying anything of any particular profundity, or expressing themselves in a particularly eloquent way, or giving any other apparent reason that their words are superior to those of the author (who could simply summarize the point and move on, as opposed to belaboring it the way the subject might).
Smarter people than I have given this book high ratings and rave reviews, so feel free to disregard my plebeian opinion.
The topic is good -- three accounts of individuals resisting totalitarian regimes and ending up exiled from their native countries, with various permutations. But I think the writing style was a turnoff for me. I don't much care for the journalistic reportage style, with the fact-quote-fact-quote pattern.
I felt like the stories could have been far more gripping had they not been so frequently interrupted with lengthy info-dumps; the context and backstory should have been woven far more seamlessly into the story. Although this is technically non-fiction and meant to educate as well as entertain, I still think the point of narrative non-fiction is to tell a good story; otherwise, just write a textbook.
I'm also not a fan of paragraph-long quotes from the individual being profiled, especially if the individual doesn't seem to be saying anything of any particular profundity, or expressing themselves in a particularly eloquent way, or giving any other apparent reason that their words are superior to those of the author (who could simply summarize the point and move on, as opposed to belaboring it the way the subject might).
Smarter people than I have given this book high ratings and rave reviews, so feel free to disregard my plebeian opinion.
January 4, 2018
It feels like a good time to read about totalitarianism, but then again when isn’t it a good time to read about totalitarianism? Totalitarianism has been around as long as I have been around, but lately it doesn’t seem as foreign and exotic as it had. CALAMITIES OF EXILE: THREE NONFICTION NOVELLAS by Lawrence Weschler takes me back to the good old days, when totalitarians ruled faraway lands, such as Iraq, Czechoslovakia and South Africa, respectively where each of these stories take place in the early 1990s. The most interesting aspect of these three tales is how nothing is very clear. The individuals who stand up against monolithic power are expected to get crushed by it, but the biggest loser is the truth, which is trampled under misinformation, secrecy and lies. The stories become so convoluted by spin and the flawed characters, both good and bad, within, that reading this book feels like being trapped in a totalitarian state. Thank god, it can’t happen here!
January 11, 2015
Weschler continues to be a favorite.
Three challenging, thought-provoking stories of dissidents or semi-dissidents from oppressive regimes (Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Warsaw Pact-era Czechoslovakia, and apartheid South Africa).
All of them delved deeply into the maddening, disorienting world that people were trying to navigate -- the Czechoslovakia chapter on Kavan is like the world's most maddening maze full of illusions and half-truths and quarter-truths and dead ends where the actual facts of the situation are very, very hard (or impossible) to suss out.
But Weschler is a good guide, and the three lead characters all have large personalities and interesting journeys. I'm definitely glad that I continue to work my way slowly through the author's work and look forward to my next experience reading him.
Three challenging, thought-provoking stories of dissidents or semi-dissidents from oppressive regimes (Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Warsaw Pact-era Czechoslovakia, and apartheid South Africa).
All of them delved deeply into the maddening, disorienting world that people were trying to navigate -- the Czechoslovakia chapter on Kavan is like the world's most maddening maze full of illusions and half-truths and quarter-truths and dead ends where the actual facts of the situation are very, very hard (or impossible) to suss out.
But Weschler is a good guide, and the three lead characters all have large personalities and interesting journeys. I'm definitely glad that I continue to work my way slowly through the author's work and look forward to my next experience reading him.
December 11, 2007
Three profiles of individuals in exile from their countries. I've read this several times and loaned it out even more than that. A nuanced, literary, fascinating series.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews