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The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany
Nobody writes travelogues about Germany. The country spurs many anxious volumes of investigative reporting--books that worry away at the German problem, World War II, the legacy of the Holocaust, the Wall, reunification, and the connections between them. But not travel books, not the free-ranging and impressionistic works of literary nonfiction we associate with V. S. Naipaul and Bruce Chatwin. What is it about Germany and the travel book that puts them seemingly at odds? With one foot in the library and one on the street, Michael Gorra offers both an answer to this question and his own traveler's tale of Germany.
Gorra uses Goethe's account of his Italian journey as a model for testing the traveler's response to Germany today, and he subjects the shopping arcades of contemporary German cities to the terms of Benjamin's Arcades project. He reads post-Wende Berlin through the novels of Theodor Fontane, examines the role of figurative language, and enlists W. G. Sebald as a guide to the place of fragments and digressions in travel writing.
Replete with the flaneur's chance discoveries--and rich in the delights of the enduring and the ephemeral, of architecture and flood--The Bells in Their Silence offers that rare traveler's tale of Germany while testing the very limits of the travel narrative as a literary form.
Gorra uses Goethe's account of his Italian journey as a model for testing the traveler's response to Germany today, and he subjects the shopping arcades of contemporary German cities to the terms of Benjamin's Arcades project. He reads post-Wende Berlin through the novels of Theodor Fontane, examines the role of figurative language, and enlists W. G. Sebald as a guide to the place of fragments and digressions in travel writing.
Replete with the flaneur's chance discoveries--and rich in the delights of the enduring and the ephemeral, of architecture and flood--The Bells in Their Silence offers that rare traveler's tale of Germany while testing the very limits of the travel narrative as a literary form.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published March 29, 2004
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90 people want to read
About the author
Michael Gorra
22 books24 followersMichael Gorra is an American professor of English and literature, currently serving as the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, where he has taught since 1985.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 6, 2009
Early on in this book, the author states that no travelogues are written about Germany. Unfortunately, he doesn't really solve that problem even though the book's subtitle is Travels Through Germany.
He is an academic and large parts of the book are written like a textbook on the logistics of writing a travelogue. He also spends a lot of time dissecting German novels especially Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. Not that much of the book is actually spent discussing the year he spent in Germany or the travelling that he did during that year.
He is an academic and large parts of the book are written like a textbook on the logistics of writing a travelogue. He also spends a lot of time dissecting German novels especially Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. Not that much of the book is actually spent discussing the year he spent in Germany or the travelling that he did during that year.
October 17, 2011
A truly moving book and one I enjoyed very much as I toured around Germany. Gorra's book is bit like "Reading Mann in Hamburg" but I loved the literature references and it helped keep reminding the readers of how vibrant Germany was in those inter-war years.
Gorra gets to the core of the thing - how can one write a travel essay about country with such a horrid past? The specter of Nazism and World War II are still there, along with the reminders of the country's division until the 1990s. This is a country that was shattered by a physical war and even more shattered by the emotion one that followed. I think Gorra is trying to see beyond the history to a possible future for the country.
It's an excellent book and Gorra shows us a country struggling with its identity - one that differs from city to city.
Gorra gets to the core of the thing - how can one write a travel essay about country with such a horrid past? The specter of Nazism and World War II are still there, along with the reminders of the country's division until the 1990s. This is a country that was shattered by a physical war and even more shattered by the emotion one that followed. I think Gorra is trying to see beyond the history to a possible future for the country.
It's an excellent book and Gorra shows us a country struggling with its identity - one that differs from city to city.
June 11, 2013
Good if you want to read the rambling musings of an author's mind. Very bad, indeed, if you're actually hoping for a travel writing about Germany.
February 13, 2014
This is a bit of an unusual travel book. It is an analysis on how hard it is to write a common travel book about Germany due to it's history of Nazism. I appreciated the different approach, analysis and reading his view.
The author has an amazing writing style that is a pleasure to read and makes one think.
Now, to the negative. I disagree with the author when he says that while there was cruelty in history of every culture the Holocaust is particularly German which makes it hard to disassociate the two. This is not true, genocides happened and happen through the world. Besides, there are forms of cruelty to people that can be associated with particular cultures but don't stop us from seeing beyond it. When I was in Rome and visited Colosseum, I stopped to think about horrible things that happened there when people were thrown into arena to kill each other or be killed by wild animals for the amusement of the rich. But it didn't stop me from enjoying Italy of today, their rich culture and beauty. And it doesn't stop people from writing decent travel books about it. Or how about America where the author is from? Slavery was a horrible part of American history, but while people remember it and see the negative effects of it in the today's life it never stops them from appreciating America of today or other parts of it's history. I think the reasons for the "German Problem" are the time, the author mentions it himself in the book, not enough time has passed, it can irk some that this crime against humanity happened less than a century ago and many of us still have memories of relatives that were part of it. But another issue would be the way the country is presented to the common citizen.
When we learn about other countries we don't avoid the ugly parts of their history but other things are presented as well. When it comes to Germany a common person usually doesn't go beyond learning about Nazism and is oblivious to the centuries that formed the beautiful place with an amazing culture that Germany is, instead all the focus is on these approximately two decades. This is why the stamp of "evil" is on Germany. I noticed that in writer's discussion about people. He is an intellectual, but he seems to link every cultural difference even such a small one as how you pay in a bar to Nazism. And to me it is a flaw.
I enjoyed reading the book, liked the chapter on Berlin, some of his thoughts and analyses as well as the discussion on East/West differences. But as someone who loves Germany I felt disappointed that there wasn't enough credit given to the rest of German history and a bit faulty portrayal of German population (in my opinion) as well as finding the actual roots of the "German Problem".
The author has an amazing writing style that is a pleasure to read and makes one think.
Now, to the negative. I disagree with the author when he says that while there was cruelty in history of every culture the Holocaust is particularly German which makes it hard to disassociate the two. This is not true, genocides happened and happen through the world. Besides, there are forms of cruelty to people that can be associated with particular cultures but don't stop us from seeing beyond it. When I was in Rome and visited Colosseum, I stopped to think about horrible things that happened there when people were thrown into arena to kill each other or be killed by wild animals for the amusement of the rich. But it didn't stop me from enjoying Italy of today, their rich culture and beauty. And it doesn't stop people from writing decent travel books about it. Or how about America where the author is from? Slavery was a horrible part of American history, but while people remember it and see the negative effects of it in the today's life it never stops them from appreciating America of today or other parts of it's history. I think the reasons for the "German Problem" are the time, the author mentions it himself in the book, not enough time has passed, it can irk some that this crime against humanity happened less than a century ago and many of us still have memories of relatives that were part of it. But another issue would be the way the country is presented to the common citizen.
When we learn about other countries we don't avoid the ugly parts of their history but other things are presented as well. When it comes to Germany a common person usually doesn't go beyond learning about Nazism and is oblivious to the centuries that formed the beautiful place with an amazing culture that Germany is, instead all the focus is on these approximately two decades. This is why the stamp of "evil" is on Germany. I noticed that in writer's discussion about people. He is an intellectual, but he seems to link every cultural difference even such a small one as how you pay in a bar to Nazism. And to me it is a flaw.
I enjoyed reading the book, liked the chapter on Berlin, some of his thoughts and analyses as well as the discussion on East/West differences. But as someone who loves Germany I felt disappointed that there wasn't enough credit given to the rest of German history and a bit faulty portrayal of German population (in my opinion) as well as finding the actual roots of the "German Problem".
November 4, 2010
I thought this would be a good book to read on the plane on my way over to England, but I didn't get to it until several days later. I was looking for some light reading on traveling in Germany, something like Bill Bryson's books. This author wrote well, and the flashes of his own doings were very interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately, the author is also an academic. I don't mind the occasional well placed quotations, but half a page at a time is a little much. And then there was the waxing lyrical on paintings.
If you are studying German culture at college level, than this is the book for you, otherwise leave it be!
If you are studying German culture at college level, than this is the book for you, otherwise leave it be!
February 1, 2018
3.5 stars. Very erratic and a bit meandering. Some chapters were really good, and others were weak (such as Ch7, which held a very disjointed comparison of the author’s family to Mann’s Buddenbrooks family ?! — and then we randomly find out that the author is having a child, which absolutely interrupts the book’s focus on Germany coming to terms with WW2.) The idea behind this book is great, and there were some solid chapters, like Ch1 on Weimar and Ch6 on Berlin. And the annotated bibliography is quite interesting. There is some stuff on Fontane. Ultimately, though, I think this guy was trying a bit too hard to write insightfully, and his editor doesn’t seem to have helped him stay on track. It’s a low 3.5, but I’m rounding up to 4 because I like that books like this exist. This is really a C version of Paul Scraton’s A+ book, Ghosts On the Shore.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2008
This book is dry, filled mainly with critiques and quotes from many other books and contemplating how difficult it is to write a travel book about Germany. The little information or anecdotes the author does give usually only leads into 10 more pages of quotes and contemplating how difficult it is to write a travel book about Germany. The author lived in Hamburg, and that's what he mainly writes about. I don't get the feel he visited many other places.
May 31, 2013
A travel book but without the joy of Peter Mayle, Paul Theroux or Bill Bryton. Lots of references to history or authors of books set in Germany, but I wouldn't want to go there after reading this book if I hadn't already been there.
May 27, 2010
great and beautiful meditations on germans, germany, and germaness,
August 13, 2022
This is a strange albeit erudite book. If you are interested in a lot of literary criticism and critical theory with some travel tales of Germany thrown in, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for a travelogue about Germany you will be disappointed, for while there are some interesting observations about Hamburg, Berlin, Lubeck, and a few other places, for the most part Germany is glimpsed through a fog of literary references and asides. My suggestion is for the interested reader to begin with the final chapter, "Family Chronicles", and move from there back to the beginning if the book still holds your interest. On the other hand, if you are really interested in the likes of Goethe, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, and other literary and philosophical lights of German letters, then dive right in at the beginning and enjoy yourself.
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April 19, 2021εκλεκτό χαρμάνι οδοιπορικού, λογοτεχνικής κριτικής, κριτικής της ταξιδιωτική λογοτεχνίας και ιστορίας.
January 20, 2012
Didn't quite get into it, but he raises a great question: Why aren't their travel books about Germany, only books about "the German problem"?
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews