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Un uomo sulla soglia
Samson Greene, trentaseienne felice e realizzato, all’improvviso si ritrova in un letto d’ospedale. Un tumore gli ha cancellato la memoria. Affetti, abitudini, piccole manie: tutto svanito. Dimenticato. Anzi, mai esistito.
Chi è adesso Samson Greene? È un uomo solo, dopo l’inevitabile separazione dalla moglie Anna, che non riconosce più e sente estranea nonostante i tentativi di lei di farlo tornare la persona che era – o forse proprio a causa di tali tentativi. È un uomo rassegnato a vivere in una distesa desolata dove ogni cosa è sconosciuta e irreale, senza nemmeno il conforto di poter rimpiangere la vita di prima, poiché non ha consapevolezza di ciò che ha perduto. Ansioso di reinventarsi un passato e di riempire di nuovo il contenitore dell’esperienza, Samson si lascia convincere a sottoporsi a un innovativo esperimento sulla mente condotto da un medico carismatico, un profeta che sembra vendere sogni e speranze ma che, invece, lo costringerà a un doloroso percorso di riscoperta e rinascita.
Chi è adesso Samson Greene? È un uomo solo, dopo l’inevitabile separazione dalla moglie Anna, che non riconosce più e sente estranea nonostante i tentativi di lei di farlo tornare la persona che era – o forse proprio a causa di tali tentativi. È un uomo rassegnato a vivere in una distesa desolata dove ogni cosa è sconosciuta e irreale, senza nemmeno il conforto di poter rimpiangere la vita di prima, poiché non ha consapevolezza di ciò che ha perduto. Ansioso di reinventarsi un passato e di riempire di nuovo il contenitore dell’esperienza, Samson si lascia convincere a sottoporsi a un innovativo esperimento sulla mente condotto da un medico carismatico, un profeta che sembra vendere sogni e speranze ma che, invece, lo costringerà a un doloroso percorso di riscoperta e rinascita.
294 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Nicole Krauss
26 books3,434 followersNicole Krauss is an American author best known for her four novels Man Walks into a Room (2002), The History of Love (2005), Great House (2010) and Forest Dark (2017), which have been translated into 35 languages. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Granta's Best American Novelists Under 40, and has been collected in The Best American Short Stories 2003, The Best American Short Stories 2008, and The Best American Short Stories 2019. In 2011, Nicole Krauss won an award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards for Great House. A collection of her short stories, To Be a Man, was published in 2020 and won the Wingate Literary Prize in 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 720 reviews
January 27, 2019
Debut novel by Nicole Krauss in 2002, who has become one of my favorite authors. Regarded by many as the best Jewish writer since Kafka, Krauss’ prose is multi faceted and engages the reader with thought provoking ideas. In this first effort, one can sense that Krauss is a leading talent of this generation. The overarching theme of the novel is memory loss and the human capacity to create new memories. I read this on the eve of my vacation knowing that it would be fast reading. Full review to come time permitting.
September 26, 2014
A Reader Walks into a Room
I bought "Man" after loving "The History of Love".
I don't think I realised until I started reading it that "Man" was her first novel.
There were times when I could understand why other readers might be tempted to give it up.
I persisted out of loyalty to "History" and out of a sense of anticipation for "Great House".
Little did I realise that it would (almost) have me in tears at the end.
Where Did My Character Go?
"Man" is not a novel of action.
Yet I don't think it's quite right to call it a novel of character either.
When we first meet Samson (Sam), he is devoid of character.
Sam's character isn't tested in the novel, it's reconstructed.
At age 36, he has lost 24 years of memory as a result of having a brain tumour removed.
I never understood how he could retain the memory of his first 12 years, but I assume that it's medically possible.
Ten of the lost years comprise the length of his relationship with his wife, Anna.
We know from the beginning that, by losing his memory, Sam will lose the wife he cannot remember.
In a sense, Man is about Sam's quest to regain his memory, his character, his humanity and his wife.
The action is the bare minimum required to dramatise this quest.
A Portrait by the Artist of a Young Man
The prose is dry and unadorned, yet it is so word perfect for its task that I can understand why some reviewers have called it poetic.
It's certainly not poetic in any flowery sense.
The best word I can think of to describe Nicole Krauss' achievement and writing style is "painterly".
She starts off with a blank canvas for Sam and creates a person we care dearly about, brush stroke by brush stroke.
To read every word is to witness every move of an artist.
For some, it would be tedious, for me, from about half-way through, it started to build towards a crescendo.
The more she painted, the more she joined the dots, the more we understood and appreciated Sam, the more we began to hope for him.
The more we hoped he could complete his biggest project, himself.
How Do You Know When You've Finished the Painting?
Different readers will predict different endings. I don't want to spoil the fun.
The rank sentimentalist in me would have been content (happy?) with any of the predictable endings.
And I was.
Could You Please Just Refresh My Memory, Please?
Memory is a powerful subject matter and metaphor in the novel.
Without it, we are nothing.
Without it, paradoxically, we can't even say we are lonely.
We can't really say we are lonely, if we don't know what we are and what we are not.
Memory is our way of storing perceptions and details about others.
By defining others, we define our selves.
Then as we grow and change, memory becomes a repository of former selves, our past, our history.
Memory constitutes our humanity, our civilisation.
Without it, we would just be unconscious components of nature, just one of the elements, what Krauss frequently describes as the "weather".
By losing his memory and forgetting, Sam becomes alienated from others.
He loses his marriage because he has literally forgotten Anna.
The rest of us lose our relationships because we forget to love each other.
A Remembrance of Things Past
The most pivotal action in the novel revolves around an idealistic scientist's experiment with Sam.
He hopes to prove that he can immunise people against alienation by creating a vast library of human memory.
Ultimately, Krauss makes us realise that happiness doesn't come from scientific endeavours like this.
It comes only from something intensely personal, slower and more painstaking.
"Man Walks Into a Room" requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader, but so in a way does life.
I bought "Man" after loving "The History of Love".
I don't think I realised until I started reading it that "Man" was her first novel.
There were times when I could understand why other readers might be tempted to give it up.
I persisted out of loyalty to "History" and out of a sense of anticipation for "Great House".
Little did I realise that it would (almost) have me in tears at the end.
Where Did My Character Go?
"Man" is not a novel of action.
Yet I don't think it's quite right to call it a novel of character either.
When we first meet Samson (Sam), he is devoid of character.
Sam's character isn't tested in the novel, it's reconstructed.
At age 36, he has lost 24 years of memory as a result of having a brain tumour removed.
I never understood how he could retain the memory of his first 12 years, but I assume that it's medically possible.
Ten of the lost years comprise the length of his relationship with his wife, Anna.
We know from the beginning that, by losing his memory, Sam will lose the wife he cannot remember.
In a sense, Man is about Sam's quest to regain his memory, his character, his humanity and his wife.
The action is the bare minimum required to dramatise this quest.
A Portrait by the Artist of a Young Man
The prose is dry and unadorned, yet it is so word perfect for its task that I can understand why some reviewers have called it poetic.
It's certainly not poetic in any flowery sense.
The best word I can think of to describe Nicole Krauss' achievement and writing style is "painterly".
She starts off with a blank canvas for Sam and creates a person we care dearly about, brush stroke by brush stroke.
To read every word is to witness every move of an artist.
For some, it would be tedious, for me, from about half-way through, it started to build towards a crescendo.
The more she painted, the more she joined the dots, the more we understood and appreciated Sam, the more we began to hope for him.
The more we hoped he could complete his biggest project, himself.
How Do You Know When You've Finished the Painting?
Different readers will predict different endings. I don't want to spoil the fun.
The rank sentimentalist in me would have been content (happy?) with any of the predictable endings.
And I was.
Could You Please Just Refresh My Memory, Please?
Memory is a powerful subject matter and metaphor in the novel.
Without it, we are nothing.
Without it, paradoxically, we can't even say we are lonely.
We can't really say we are lonely, if we don't know what we are and what we are not.
Memory is our way of storing perceptions and details about others.
By defining others, we define our selves.
Then as we grow and change, memory becomes a repository of former selves, our past, our history.
Memory constitutes our humanity, our civilisation.
Without it, we would just be unconscious components of nature, just one of the elements, what Krauss frequently describes as the "weather".
By losing his memory and forgetting, Sam becomes alienated from others.
He loses his marriage because he has literally forgotten Anna.
The rest of us lose our relationships because we forget to love each other.
A Remembrance of Things Past
The most pivotal action in the novel revolves around an idealistic scientist's experiment with Sam.
He hopes to prove that he can immunise people against alienation by creating a vast library of human memory.
Ultimately, Krauss makes us realise that happiness doesn't come from scientific endeavours like this.
It comes only from something intensely personal, slower and more painstaking.
"Man Walks Into a Room" requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader, but so in a way does life.
February 13, 2020
Painful Memories
Man loses memory entirely: nothing to write about; man loses all but the last ten minutes of memory: almost nothing to write about; man loses 24 years of memory from the age of twelve: an interesting premise for literary investigation, particularly about the relationship between memory and feeling. How much is feeling invested memory? What happens to feeling when memory disappears? What happens to memory when it becomes more concentrated in some personal epoch? Krauss's explorations are sensitive and perceptive. They are also highly emotional. The last two pages will make you gasp...unless of course you have already lost too many memories.
For a much fuller appreciation 0f this book both in terms of its content and its contextual import, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Man loses memory entirely: nothing to write about; man loses all but the last ten minutes of memory: almost nothing to write about; man loses 24 years of memory from the age of twelve: an interesting premise for literary investigation, particularly about the relationship between memory and feeling. How much is feeling invested memory? What happens to feeling when memory disappears? What happens to memory when it becomes more concentrated in some personal epoch? Krauss's explorations are sensitive and perceptive. They are also highly emotional. The last two pages will make you gasp...unless of course you have already lost too many memories.
For a much fuller appreciation 0f this book both in terms of its content and its contextual import, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
March 7, 2016
Samson Greene, an English professor at Columbia, is found wandering alone in Nevada desert. Turns out he has suffered severe memory loss because of a brain tumour. He can remember nothing but his childhood. After an operation he returns to his wife who is a complete stranger to him. Soon he finds he can relate much better to one of his former young female students as if without memory of experience, experience is utterly erased and he is again a boy attracted, not to women, but to girls. This return of immaturity is also evidenced later in his need to find a father figure and to create a temporary but intense bond with a boy half his age. There’s a sense here that Krauss is having some fun with male menopause, that Samson’s memory loss is, on one level, a metaphor for the male mid-life crisis – another condition that perhaps obliterates memory and returns a male to his reckless boyhood yearnings.
Samson eventually leaves his wife when he falls under the influence of a neurosurgeon, Dr Ray Malcolm who Samson feels understands him. Samson returns to the Nevada desert where Ray is carrying out ground-breaking memory transference experiments. Thus Samson has implanted into his mind the memory of someone else – the harrowing recollection of a 1957 A-bomb test in Nevada. This is probably the least successful part of the novel, a kind of B movie foray into science fiction. Why anyone would choose to transplant a horrific memory from one consciousness to another is neither addressed nor credible. Having an unrecognisable hostile voice in your head amounts basically to schizophrenia and it makes no sense why anyone could conceive of the transference of such a memory as a healing procedure. It’s sinister for sinister’s sake.
It’s very ambitious for a debut novel and not always successful. Brilliant sections are followed by rather less brilliant ones. And as I said the memory transference section comes across as thematically gimmicky. Also the huge influence Delillo had on Krauss is laid bare in this novel - the desert setting, the bomb tests, the alienated existential angst-ridden central male character, the stylised dialogue – all these elements could be outtakes from Underworld. There are also echoes of Wenders’ film Paris Texas.
But it does have a lot to say about the relationship of identity and memory – most eloquently when Samson visits his uncle Max who has dementia. Samson, who still has his childhood, possesses all the necessary building blocks to achieve identity and fulfil himself; Max however has been stripped of all but his outlines and is little more than what Krauss refers to as weather. In many ways Krauss’s vision of identity is not dissimilar to Woolf’s in The Waves when the matrix of identity is established in childhood and adulthood is largely the gradual unfurling of shoots from this matrix. Samson has lost his strength but in Krauss’ vision it’s well within the bounds of possibility that he can regain it.
One of my favourite and very central passages: “To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.
Samson eventually leaves his wife when he falls under the influence of a neurosurgeon, Dr Ray Malcolm who Samson feels understands him. Samson returns to the Nevada desert where Ray is carrying out ground-breaking memory transference experiments. Thus Samson has implanted into his mind the memory of someone else – the harrowing recollection of a 1957 A-bomb test in Nevada. This is probably the least successful part of the novel, a kind of B movie foray into science fiction. Why anyone would choose to transplant a horrific memory from one consciousness to another is neither addressed nor credible. Having an unrecognisable hostile voice in your head amounts basically to schizophrenia and it makes no sense why anyone could conceive of the transference of such a memory as a healing procedure. It’s sinister for sinister’s sake.
It’s very ambitious for a debut novel and not always successful. Brilliant sections are followed by rather less brilliant ones. And as I said the memory transference section comes across as thematically gimmicky. Also the huge influence Delillo had on Krauss is laid bare in this novel - the desert setting, the bomb tests, the alienated existential angst-ridden central male character, the stylised dialogue – all these elements could be outtakes from Underworld. There are also echoes of Wenders’ film Paris Texas.
But it does have a lot to say about the relationship of identity and memory – most eloquently when Samson visits his uncle Max who has dementia. Samson, who still has his childhood, possesses all the necessary building blocks to achieve identity and fulfil himself; Max however has been stripped of all but his outlines and is little more than what Krauss refers to as weather. In many ways Krauss’s vision of identity is not dissimilar to Woolf’s in The Waves when the matrix of identity is established in childhood and adulthood is largely the gradual unfurling of shoots from this matrix. Samson has lost his strength but in Krauss’ vision it’s well within the bounds of possibility that he can regain it.
One of my favourite and very central passages: “To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.
January 17, 2021
This was different from The History of Love & The Great House, the other two I have read from her. More science fiction/fantasy. Intriguing, actually. About a man whom enters into a psychology experiment in which he essentially borrows another person's mind....
Krauss illuminates quite ingeniously the idea that we are merely a collection of our memories. Minus them, can one really say whom we are? Delete our history, our memory, we have very little. The protagonist Samson Greene is discovered in the Nevada desert lost, alone, deserted, having lost twenty four years of his life to amnesia. He is returned to his wife, but remembers only his childhood years; not her, not how they met, not her nuances, not where they love, their favorite places, the way they like to talk, their wedding night.
Is it a shock that without his memories, his experience, he soon falls for a younger girl? Maybe not. He no longer knows his wife. He also begins to drink more, his friends are much younger, among other things similar to regression.
In his position, then, Samson does what I believe most would not. He completely embraces it. He loves his emptiness, the loneliness. To the point that I would say it is unbelievable. He has lost almost his entire memory, yet he goes so far as to have a neurosurgeon implant another person's mind into his!!!!!.... Even worse, it was part of a larger experiment on empathy. The author explores medical ethics, which has always been of interest to me.
As always, Krauss writes with that masterful demonstration of her understanding of the English language, such melodious passages, prose that can illustrate things so easily, sentences that can somehow explain emotions in ways one could not imagine otherwise.
The only really flaw was there may have been a little less character development than I would have liked, especially with Samson's wife, whom I empathized with most of all. I also felt an imbalance when the science fiction theme was introduced into the psychology/neurosciences literature which is what Krauss has always been best at. This was her debut novel, though. An amazing one at that.
Krauss illuminates quite ingeniously the idea that we are merely a collection of our memories. Minus them, can one really say whom we are? Delete our history, our memory, we have very little. The protagonist Samson Greene is discovered in the Nevada desert lost, alone, deserted, having lost twenty four years of his life to amnesia. He is returned to his wife, but remembers only his childhood years; not her, not how they met, not her nuances, not where they love, their favorite places, the way they like to talk, their wedding night.
Is it a shock that without his memories, his experience, he soon falls for a younger girl? Maybe not. He no longer knows his wife. He also begins to drink more, his friends are much younger, among other things similar to regression.
In his position, then, Samson does what I believe most would not. He completely embraces it. He loves his emptiness, the loneliness. To the point that I would say it is unbelievable. He has lost almost his entire memory, yet he goes so far as to have a neurosurgeon implant another person's mind into his!!!!!.... Even worse, it was part of a larger experiment on empathy. The author explores medical ethics, which has always been of interest to me.
As always, Krauss writes with that masterful demonstration of her understanding of the English language, such melodious passages, prose that can illustrate things so easily, sentences that can somehow explain emotions in ways one could not imagine otherwise.
The only really flaw was there may have been a little less character development than I would have liked, especially with Samson's wife, whom I empathized with most of all. I also felt an imbalance when the science fiction theme was introduced into the psychology/neurosciences literature which is what Krauss has always been best at. This was her debut novel, though. An amazing one at that.
December 8, 2016
I was so intrigued by the premise of Krauss’s 2002 debut novel: Samson Greene, a Columbia University English professor in his mid-thirties, is found wandering in the Nevada desert. He’s lost all memory of the past 24 years of his life due to a brain tumor, and after surgery has to try to rebuild a life with his wife, Anna, in New York City. I loved Part One (about the first 80 pages), but then things turn strange. Samson is invited to take part in a neurological experiment back in the Nevada desert whereby he will have a memory implanted to fill the blank space. This whole middle swathe felt far-fetched and too close to science fiction for a novel that otherwise sticks close to realism. I would have preferred if Krauss had just stuck with Samson and Anna in New York for the whole thing. However, she wrote well enough even then to keep me reading through to the end (and it’s not a very long book).
Favorite lines:
Favorite lines:
“despite the beauty of Anna, the charming photographs, the loveliness of his apartment full of the souvenirs of a life well lived, Samson could dredge up no feeling for his own life but that of vague admiration.”
“He thought: You come, you find a life ready-made, you just have to slip it on.”
“he hadn’t lost his mind. To the contrary, he’d lost everything but. His memory, his wife, his job, his friends, twenty-four years of his life—but not his mind.”
May 3, 2008
The book starts off very promising. A man loses 24 years of his memory due to a brain tumor. As the book says, we’re nothing but a collection of habits and accumulation of memories. If we lose those memories and habits, we lose our self and start over with a blank slate. That should make a good concept for a very interesting novel. Instead, the story meanders through a series of irrelevant events and characters and doesn’t offer much in the end.
From the few places where Krauss discusses things like memory and vision and brain, I could tell that she’d read Oliver Sacks and his case studies of neurological patients as part of her research for writing this novel. Disappointingly, and even with the free reign of imagination that she had as a fiction writer, she couldn't make the story to be as fascinating as Sacks’s real case studies.
From the few places where Krauss discusses things like memory and vision and brain, I could tell that she’d read Oliver Sacks and his case studies of neurological patients as part of her research for writing this novel. Disappointingly, and even with the free reign of imagination that she had as a fiction writer, she couldn't make the story to be as fascinating as Sacks’s real case studies.
September 17, 2016
(1.5) After loving Krauss's "The History of Love", I thought this book would at least be enjoyed half as much, but alas at a little bit over the 100 page mark, I leave this abandoned. Skimming a book for awhile and half-ass remembering what you've read doesn't equate to enjoyment and/or leisure for me. I guess sometimes an author only has one good book in them and it seems Krauss is going in that direction (for now).
This will be taken back to the library, left to sit for awhile among the KRA's until the next person decides to try her debut novel to see what it's about. I'm bumping this up to a 2 star rating because I was enthralled with the imagery and content of the prologue/introduction to the book: The writing was amazing and then the book started.
This will be taken back to the library, left to sit for awhile among the KRA's until the next person decides to try her debut novel to see what it's about. I'm bumping this up to a 2 star rating because I was enthralled with the imagery and content of the prologue/introduction to the book: The writing was amazing and then the book started.
June 4, 2008
A fresh, fascinating investigation of classic themes of loneliness and isolation. Her prose is so lyrical and poetic that it takes awhile before you realize that Krauss has broken your heart.
January 24, 2009
Krauss’s second novel (The History of Love) was one of my top books from 2008, so despite a critical review of this novel (Krauss’s first) by a friend, I decided to read it anyway. I should have listened to my friend’s critical review – this book is nowhere near as good as The History of Love. The plot of this book revolves around a man named Samson Greene, a Columbia Lit professor who is found wandering the Nevada desert with no recollection of who he is or what he is doing in the desert. He is taken to a hospital where doctors find a tumor in his brain likely causing this aberrant behavior. After the tumor’s removal, Samson wakens to find himself with the mind and body of a 36-yr-old man, but having no memories of anything that has happened in his life past the age of 12. The first half of the book is spent describing Samson’s reactions to this condition, and it is a superb examination of memory and the part it plays in shaping who we are. For instance, Samson struggles connecting with his wife – the person overjoyed to see him when he wakes up in the hospital, and the person who takes him back to their life in NYC to care for him – only he has no idea who she is, and he feels no love for her having no recollection of how they fell in love and married, nor any of the memories comprising those feelings. In another example, Samson recalls events from his childhood and remembers his mother, but having no memory of her death, he reacts in utter grief at finding out that she had passed away five years earlier. Moments like this or the awkwardness with his wife – these feel true-to-form and real, and Krauss’s prose sparkles throughout. But about two-thirds of the way through, the plot spins out of control: Samson participates in a bizarre military-funded science experiment on memory; he spends time in Vegas meeting a random character who assists him in returning to the hospital he was taken to at the beginning of the book so that the pair can steal back the tumor he had lost; he has an intimate dialogue with a stranger on a bus; he visits his great uncle in a nursing home and breaks him out – just a bizarre series of events one after the other. And throughout these events, Samson is completely unlikable. As much as you have sympathy for his plight having lost his memory and wife and 24 years of his life, for the last third of the book his behavior turns you off so much that the ending leaves you frustrated. And while Krauss’s prose is brilliant in many places, in other places the book feels more like a meditative essay on memory than it does a novel. This was a huge letdown for me after loving her other book so much. Not quite recommended.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2009
I was going to give this 4 stars but changed my mind at the last few pages. Not that it ended poorly, but I just can't put my finger on it. I loved the writing and the poetic one-liners that Krauss is so good at. But I got the "first novel" vibe from this for sure ... in that she seemed to have SO many good things to write/ideas to share that she just inserted gratuitous paragraphs/plotlines that really did nothing for the story. Nice to read those parts since she writes so beautifully, but unnecessary too. Made me think a lot though about relationships, memory, and love without memory, nostalgia, or habits. Worth reading if you liked her second novel, A History of Love.
April 8, 2013
The entire premise of this books is that a man wakes up, and has lost the memory of twenty years of his life (he only remembers up to being 12 years old). In itself, not a new concept. However, this book distinguishes itself as a truly unique work of art.
Moments of this book terrified me. Krauss makes this book unique by presenting a man who, after the loss of so much, enjoys the emptiness he’s left with. He allows himself to experience every moment beyond what someone burdened with memories can. He has no frame of reference, or context for what goes on around him. Instead he absorbs everything in a way that only an infant completely new to the world can. He doesn’t curse the loss of himself, he lives in spite of it.
The book also asks if you could truly empathize with someone else, take the worst moment of their life and make it your own, would you? If it would comfort them but destroy you, could you do that? It’s one of the hardest questions I’ve ever asked myself, and I think is central to the message of the entire book, which is what it means to truly be human.
Krauss is a beautiful writer. She has this way of making each sentence powerful, and yet not overwhelming. The characters are so truthful; there is no bad guy or good guy or hopelessly romantic woman. There’s a man trying to make a difference, and a woman afraid of being hurt anymore, and a man trying to understand how to be a person in a world he doesn’t understand. Each new character introduced provides the reader with a new perspective on life, and the different ways to lead it. You identify so much with every character that by the end, you almost don’t know who YOU are.
This book is stunning in its simplicity, and its ability to convey some of the most difficult themes we are faced with in life in a way that is completely new. I think Krauss is one of the best authors of the 21st century.
Moments of this book terrified me. Krauss makes this book unique by presenting a man who, after the loss of so much, enjoys the emptiness he’s left with. He allows himself to experience every moment beyond what someone burdened with memories can. He has no frame of reference, or context for what goes on around him. Instead he absorbs everything in a way that only an infant completely new to the world can. He doesn’t curse the loss of himself, he lives in spite of it.
The book also asks if you could truly empathize with someone else, take the worst moment of their life and make it your own, would you? If it would comfort them but destroy you, could you do that? It’s one of the hardest questions I’ve ever asked myself, and I think is central to the message of the entire book, which is what it means to truly be human.
Krauss is a beautiful writer. She has this way of making each sentence powerful, and yet not overwhelming. The characters are so truthful; there is no bad guy or good guy or hopelessly romantic woman. There’s a man trying to make a difference, and a woman afraid of being hurt anymore, and a man trying to understand how to be a person in a world he doesn’t understand. Each new character introduced provides the reader with a new perspective on life, and the different ways to lead it. You identify so much with every character that by the end, you almost don’t know who YOU are.
This book is stunning in its simplicity, and its ability to convey some of the most difficult themes we are faced with in life in a way that is completely new. I think Krauss is one of the best authors of the 21st century.
March 9, 2022
Nicole Krauss’s first novel, showing the same mastery of language as The History of Love … absolutely beautiful, perceptive and observant - and also annoying as hell.
Krauss uses this story about Samson, a man found wandering in the desert who loses his memory after an operation to remove a tumour, to explore how humanity is intricately linked to remembering, and what identity means if you have no habits. Samson can remember everything since his operation but is left with only his childhood memories up to age 12. He doesn’t feel like a child however, (although he is ingenuous and overly trusting, and gravitates towards friendships with much younger people) but 24 years of his life are missing.
Maybe this isn’t medically plausible but Krauss is brilliant at making his life and difficulties believable: he’s married to Anna but doesn’t remember anything about her or why he even loved her; his old friends no longer interest him; he can no longer be the college professor he once was; but most of all he’s devastated to find that his mother had died five years earlier. All this is excruciating for Anna – the man she still wants to love is no longer there - and they decide they can’t live together.
The problem is the story isn’t about this – or at least not entirely. In the middle third Samson is persuaded to volunteer at a mysterious memory lab in Nevada, where he becomes a guinea pig in an experiment to implant a specific memory into his “empty” mind from an older man. This SF-like stuff is not Krauss’s strong point: it’s simply a word salad of tech-y, science-y phrases like “stored in gigabytes”, “modelling consciousness using game theory and Boolean logic”; and Ray, the doctor in charge is thoroughly unbelievable. The transferred incident itself isn’t a shock as it’s in the prologue (an atomic bomb test gone wrong, back in the fifties).
Worse, the anguish and trauma that Samson experiences as a result of this memory doesn’t occur until about 2/3 of the way into the book after a long build-up, and then is more or less just dropped after a chapter or two. Though later I came to suspect that this entire long-drawn-out section was just another episode in Samson’s search for his identity, and perhaps not central to the story after all. In which case it really sucked.
Samson’s quest finally turns to locating his sole surviving relative, his aging great-uncle Max, who he hopes will be able to help him find his mother’s burial place. Although Max is losing his memory too, Samson manages to determine her ashes are buried under a tree at his childhood home. With that comes a sense of closure, and in time Samson becomes “reborn” as a man with a memory – a different man - but he and Anna can remain friends.
Beautiful. But there is something else bothering me (not counting a farcical drunken episode to retrieve his tumour specimens from the hospital where his operation was performed - oh please, Ms. Krauss, not the Hollywood Chase scene!) ... Yes, I understand Samson is searching for human connections in all the wrong places, but he storms on to a near-empty Greyhound bus, sits at the back beside a young woman whom he befriends - he even holds her hand! - and she isn’t at all creeped-out?
Hmm, was Nicole Krauss channelling a middle-aged man when she wrote that?
4 stars for the writing and 2 for the plot is - barely- 3 stars.
Krauss uses this story about Samson, a man found wandering in the desert who loses his memory after an operation to remove a tumour, to explore how humanity is intricately linked to remembering, and what identity means if you have no habits. Samson can remember everything since his operation but is left with only his childhood memories up to age 12. He doesn’t feel like a child however, (although he is ingenuous and overly trusting, and gravitates towards friendships with much younger people) but 24 years of his life are missing.
Maybe this isn’t medically plausible but Krauss is brilliant at making his life and difficulties believable: he’s married to Anna but doesn’t remember anything about her or why he even loved her; his old friends no longer interest him; he can no longer be the college professor he once was; but most of all he’s devastated to find that his mother had died five years earlier. All this is excruciating for Anna – the man she still wants to love is no longer there - and they decide they can’t live together.
The problem is the story isn’t about this – or at least not entirely. In the middle third Samson is persuaded to volunteer at a mysterious memory lab in Nevada, where he becomes a guinea pig in an experiment to implant a specific memory into his “empty” mind from an older man. This SF-like stuff is not Krauss’s strong point: it’s simply a word salad of tech-y, science-y phrases like “stored in gigabytes”, “modelling consciousness using game theory and Boolean logic”; and Ray, the doctor in charge is thoroughly unbelievable. The transferred incident itself isn’t a shock as it’s in the prologue (an atomic bomb test gone wrong, back in the fifties).
Worse, the anguish and trauma that Samson experiences as a result of this memory doesn’t occur until about 2/3 of the way into the book after a long build-up, and then is more or less just dropped after a chapter or two. Though later I came to suspect that this entire long-drawn-out section was just another episode in Samson’s search for his identity, and perhaps not central to the story after all. In which case it really sucked.
Samson’s quest finally turns to locating his sole surviving relative, his aging great-uncle Max, who he hopes will be able to help him find his mother’s burial place. Although Max is losing his memory too, Samson manages to determine her ashes are buried under a tree at his childhood home. With that comes a sense of closure, and in time Samson becomes “reborn” as a man with a memory – a different man - but he and Anna can remain friends.
Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it had begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways. Only the end was always the same: he had emptied himself of the ballast of memory and lunged weightless into the future. Alone and astonished, attempting to take with him not even a trace. In the end he had betrayed the woman he loved, and who was there who would not judge him for that?
Beautiful. But there is something else bothering me (not counting a farcical drunken episode to retrieve his tumour specimens from the hospital where his operation was performed - oh please, Ms. Krauss, not the Hollywood Chase scene!) ... Yes, I understand Samson is searching for human connections in all the wrong places, but he storms on to a near-empty Greyhound bus, sits at the back beside a young woman whom he befriends - he even holds her hand! - and she isn’t at all creeped-out?
Hmm, was Nicole Krauss channelling a middle-aged man when she wrote that?
4 stars for the writing and 2 for the plot is - barely- 3 stars.
August 29, 2012
This book ranks in my list of favorite books of all time. The story is about a young man, Samson Greene, who seems to have everything -- a beautiful wife, a professorship at Columbia University, a home in NYC, good friends... a near-perfect life. But a strange tumor on his brain causes him to lose his memory -- all except the first 12 of his life. So the book starts with him wandering the desert near Las Vegas, mistaken for a homeless man, discovered by the police. His wife is called and by that time, Samson is just recovering in the hospital, still unknown whether he will survive. Starting from this crescendo, the story changes pace, elaborating on Samson's journey in Self-Discovery. The story has other plots, but I think I appreciated the themes exploring memory/mind/concept of Self: how much of a person's identity is related to their past experiences? Are past memories traps -- is a person more free if they relinquish their past life? How do the memories of others shape our own minds?
Within this personal story, there's a broader theme. Samson becomes part of an experiment that studies empathy. Ray, the scientist, uses Samson's memory-void mind to plant a powerful memory from someone else's life. Even though this seems an important cause -- making it possible for others to fee empathy, from the perspective of Samson, we feel more the violation and frustration of having the mind played with. This introduces the theme of how medical science may be helping others for a greater good, while potentially hurting and harming one vulnerable individual deeply as the guinea pig. What I found especially artful was that by this point in the story, I felt more sympathy for Samson's wife, Anna, than I did for him. It seemed that with his memory, he lost some ability to empathize, making his decisions rather selfishly and almost mechanically. It was surprising how this experiment affected him, like a personal assault. I think he was almost chosen for the experiment because of his aloofness, yet his reaction was passionate.
Also, I LOVED the ending. It is tempting to have everything neatly tied up at the end, but... the author rather chooses to end describing a simple, everyday scene in the future. Things are not resolved, but mirroring life, slowly being worked out... with hope, but perhaps some baggage too.
The language is Nicole Krauss poetry. I love how she is able to show, almost visually describe a scene, how the characters feel and think. Her description of what it means to be a lover, or how hurtful it is to have your mind violated... these are so beautiful and the reason I look forward to more books by this author! I am adding some of my favorite excerpts here:
"Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point out certain constellations, standing behind you so you had the advantage of leaning and looking up?" (page 140)
"What Ray had refused to see was that no matter how great the desire to be understood, the mind cannot abide any presence but its own. To enter another's consciousness and stake a flag there was to break the law of absolute solitude on which that consciousness depends. It was to threaten, and perhaps irrevocably damage, the essential remoteness of the Self. this transgression was unforgivable." (page 206)
"Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways. Only the end was always the same: he had emptied himself of the ballast of memory and lunged weightless into the future." (page 208)
"What is life without a witness?" (page 209)
Within this personal story, there's a broader theme. Samson becomes part of an experiment that studies empathy. Ray, the scientist, uses Samson's memory-void mind to plant a powerful memory from someone else's life. Even though this seems an important cause -- making it possible for others to fee empathy, from the perspective of Samson, we feel more the violation and frustration of having the mind played with. This introduces the theme of how medical science may be helping others for a greater good, while potentially hurting and harming one vulnerable individual deeply as the guinea pig. What I found especially artful was that by this point in the story, I felt more sympathy for Samson's wife, Anna, than I did for him. It seemed that with his memory, he lost some ability to empathize, making his decisions rather selfishly and almost mechanically. It was surprising how this experiment affected him, like a personal assault. I think he was almost chosen for the experiment because of his aloofness, yet his reaction was passionate.
Also, I LOVED the ending. It is tempting to have everything neatly tied up at the end, but... the author rather chooses to end describing a simple, everyday scene in the future. Things are not resolved, but mirroring life, slowly being worked out... with hope, but perhaps some baggage too.
The language is Nicole Krauss poetry. I love how she is able to show, almost visually describe a scene, how the characters feel and think. Her description of what it means to be a lover, or how hurtful it is to have your mind violated... these are so beautiful and the reason I look forward to more books by this author! I am adding some of my favorite excerpts here:
"Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point out certain constellations, standing behind you so you had the advantage of leaning and looking up?" (page 140)
"What Ray had refused to see was that no matter how great the desire to be understood, the mind cannot abide any presence but its own. To enter another's consciousness and stake a flag there was to break the law of absolute solitude on which that consciousness depends. It was to threaten, and perhaps irrevocably damage, the essential remoteness of the Self. this transgression was unforgivable." (page 206)
"Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways. Only the end was always the same: he had emptied himself of the ballast of memory and lunged weightless into the future." (page 208)
"What is life without a witness?" (page 209)
February 21, 2009
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book, now that I am through with it. I am convinced that Nicole Krauss is a marvelous writer. Of that, there is no doubt. But I never fully engaged in the story here. Part of that is Samson's fault, though. I don't think he fully engaged in his story either. The ending came abruptly -- a rapid change of pace, with the epilogue in a different character voice which left me disorientated. (Ha! Just a note to add that I, too, find the use of this word distracting. It appeared in two books I was reading on the same day, and startled me both times. It led to a flurry of emails to my grammar goddess, Antof9, with the query "Two separate books within 12 hours. Is it a real word? What happened to disoriented? And how do they differ?" She told me "File it under 'those crazy Brits'. Here's a very entertaining bulletin board on the topic:
We don't use it. We say disoriented. Or "confused", as one poster on that bulletin board noted :)") And on p 144, when Donald says "Palmolive, take me away", I also was distracted. Was it Palmolive rather than Calgon, because of his character, or because of poor editing? Sometimes, I think too much.
Anyhow, the premise of the story both captured and scared me. One of my biggest fears is the loss of my beloved. (I have told him that if he dies before me, I'll kill him.) To think about totally losing your loved one, but to have him physically still on the earth, lost to you by loss of memory, is shattering. I almost think that divorce would be easier, because your past together still exists in more than your own mind. There is a shared history.
One passage made me very sad, mostly because I am a parent and hope this hasn't happened for my son. Pip is talking about her experiences in India, watching the scattering of ashes in the Ganges, while downstream people collect drinking water, and she thought "...is that safe? Aren't they going to catch some awful disease? And then you go back to the room you share with like ten other people and you get into your dirty bed and cry, because you realize your probably never going to be that spiritually enlightened that you stop caring about germs and disease and just trust the power of Brahman. Because you grew up in America in a nice clean house with parents that tried to shelter you but ended up fucking you up, and you'll always be branded with that."
Is it so bad to want to provide protection for a child? To know about disease prevention and staying healthy? Surely if we are temples to God, and if God, however you chose to define the concept, lives within us, then keeping that home clean and safe isn't a bad thing, is it?
I will ponder this book a bit more. Again, I thought the writing quite fine, and overall the book was good. It just left me with more questions than answers. Sometimes that's a good thing, though. One should read to expand the mind, not just for entertainment.
We don't use it. We say disoriented. Or "confused", as one poster on that bulletin board noted :)") And on p 144, when Donald says "Palmolive, take me away", I also was distracted. Was it Palmolive rather than Calgon, because of his character, or because of poor editing? Sometimes, I think too much.
Anyhow, the premise of the story both captured and scared me. One of my biggest fears is the loss of my beloved. (I have told him that if he dies before me, I'll kill him.) To think about totally losing your loved one, but to have him physically still on the earth, lost to you by loss of memory, is shattering. I almost think that divorce would be easier, because your past together still exists in more than your own mind. There is a shared history.
One passage made me very sad, mostly because I am a parent and hope this hasn't happened for my son. Pip is talking about her experiences in India, watching the scattering of ashes in the Ganges, while downstream people collect drinking water, and she thought "...is that safe? Aren't they going to catch some awful disease? And then you go back to the room you share with like ten other people and you get into your dirty bed and cry, because you realize your probably never going to be that spiritually enlightened that you stop caring about germs and disease and just trust the power of Brahman. Because you grew up in America in a nice clean house with parents that tried to shelter you but ended up fucking you up, and you'll always be branded with that."
Is it so bad to want to provide protection for a child? To know about disease prevention and staying healthy? Surely if we are temples to God, and if God, however you chose to define the concept, lives within us, then keeping that home clean and safe isn't a bad thing, is it?
I will ponder this book a bit more. Again, I thought the writing quite fine, and overall the book was good. It just left me with more questions than answers. Sometimes that's a good thing, though. One should read to expand the mind, not just for entertainment.
February 7, 2024
I’ve now read the first two Nicole Krauss novels, although in reverse order from when they were written, and I have to say that while I respect the opinions of all those who find her brilliant, she’s had bad luck with me - or me with her? – because she just doesn’t get any traction when I’m reading her. “The History of Love”, about a young girl trying to track down the mysterious author of a book, came to me on the heels of two other books I’0d just read with a similar theme – Pascal Mercier’s “Night Train to Lisbon”, which I detested, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s “The Shadow of the Wind”, which was a little light and fluffy for my tastes but okay just the same. Her book also had an Eastern European Jew, relocated in Chile (a country she has a fondness for) but the accent she wrote for him just didn’t sound authentic; no doubt, like me, she grew up listening to it in her family but she didn’t capture it, in my opinion.
“Man Walks into a Room” has similarly annoying character, Samson Greene, as a protagonist, and while I could sympathize with his problem, his anger and frustration began to grate on me. In the first of three parts, he’s found wandering in the Nevada desert with no memory of how he’s gotten there. A small tumor is discovered in his brain which has caused him to lose all personal memories after age 8, although his functional memory still exists. This means that although he still has all his knowledge as a university professor, he doesn’t recognize his wife nor remember any events from their life together, nor anything of his family, school years or anything else between age 8 and his 30’s, when he was found. This brought up an interesting point for me, although one that’s been raised many times: how much of who we are is just a summary of our experiences? Samson’s relationship with his wife is difficult when they reunite because he doesn’t have those memories of meeting, courting, falling in love and all the other things that make up a marriage; he’s a stranger to her as much as she is to him. (I think of it like having your partner replaced by a clone or artificial intelligence.) He goes to psychologist who tries to help him get over these feelings of alienation but he’s more a lab rat than anything else. In the second part, he’s part of an experiment in the Nevada desert, which eventually enters well-tread areas of speculative fiction when the purpose of the experiment is revealed. The third part is where it all fell apart for me because Samson went from annoying to insufferable for me as he pursued a particular part of his past. More than this I won’t say but I found the ending ridiculously burlesque.
Where this book particularly suffered for me on a personal level was that it reminded me of another book of a man and family looking for a solution to an unsolvable medical problem, “The Unnamed” by Joshua Ferris, a book which annoyed many people to no end with its repetitiveness but came to me during a crisis in my life which matched the frustration of dealing with a strange disease. (On the other hand, one of my friends in Good Reads liked the Krauss book but couldn’t stand the Ferris novel – not all that uncommon on Good Reads!) So again, my reading of this Nicole Krauss book was negatively affected by a book I’d read earlier. Still, it’s interesting from the point of neuroscience and how much of what we are is constructed of memories and experiences, as well as these being the foundations of our relationships. In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Milan Kundera touches on the number of things which must coincide for you to fall in love with someone – or to put it another way, if you’d met at another time in another place under other conditions, would you still have fallen in love? I just felt this novel got out of hand but it was her first and also, maybe it wasn’t the time and place for me and her.
“Man Walks into a Room” has similarly annoying character, Samson Greene, as a protagonist, and while I could sympathize with his problem, his anger and frustration began to grate on me. In the first of three parts, he’s found wandering in the Nevada desert with no memory of how he’s gotten there. A small tumor is discovered in his brain which has caused him to lose all personal memories after age 8, although his functional memory still exists. This means that although he still has all his knowledge as a university professor, he doesn’t recognize his wife nor remember any events from their life together, nor anything of his family, school years or anything else between age 8 and his 30’s, when he was found. This brought up an interesting point for me, although one that’s been raised many times: how much of who we are is just a summary of our experiences? Samson’s relationship with his wife is difficult when they reunite because he doesn’t have those memories of meeting, courting, falling in love and all the other things that make up a marriage; he’s a stranger to her as much as she is to him. (I think of it like having your partner replaced by a clone or artificial intelligence.) He goes to psychologist who tries to help him get over these feelings of alienation but he’s more a lab rat than anything else. In the second part, he’s part of an experiment in the Nevada desert, which eventually enters well-tread areas of speculative fiction when the purpose of the experiment is revealed. The third part is where it all fell apart for me because Samson went from annoying to insufferable for me as he pursued a particular part of his past. More than this I won’t say but I found the ending ridiculously burlesque.
Where this book particularly suffered for me on a personal level was that it reminded me of another book of a man and family looking for a solution to an unsolvable medical problem, “The Unnamed” by Joshua Ferris, a book which annoyed many people to no end with its repetitiveness but came to me during a crisis in my life which matched the frustration of dealing with a strange disease. (On the other hand, one of my friends in Good Reads liked the Krauss book but couldn’t stand the Ferris novel – not all that uncommon on Good Reads!) So again, my reading of this Nicole Krauss book was negatively affected by a book I’d read earlier. Still, it’s interesting from the point of neuroscience and how much of what we are is constructed of memories and experiences, as well as these being the foundations of our relationships. In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, Milan Kundera touches on the number of things which must coincide for you to fall in love with someone – or to put it another way, if you’d met at another time in another place under other conditions, would you still have fallen in love? I just felt this novel got out of hand but it was her first and also, maybe it wasn’t the time and place for me and her.
November 7, 2014
I had to wait a couple days before I tried to write a review for this one. Sometimes I find it really difficult to explain why I loved something so much.
Nicole Krauss has been one of my absolute favorite authors since I first read The History of Love. I quickly thereafter picked up Great House and then just sort of put her on hold for a while I suppose, because I knew she didn't have any new work out and for whatever reason didn't come back to this one, her first novel. I'm wondering if I couldn't find it at my library and maybe that's why I waited so long to read it. Anyway, I shouldn't have.
Samson is found walking in the Mojave Desert and he doesn't know who he is. He barely looks like the photo on his driver's license, and the police take him into custody in order to figure out who this person is. They soon discover that he is, indeed, the man on the license and he's been walking from New York. He doesn't remember anything from the past twenty-four years. What follows is an incredibly inventive, deep, and insightful story.
I found Samson to not be all that sympathetic, really. I identified more with his wife, Anna, and wondered about all the things she must be thinking and feeling. She just lost her husband for goodness' sake, and it must be impossible for both of them.
Krauss' writing is like no other (except her husband, Jonathan Safran Foer :P ). I hadn't read a well-written book in way too long, as reading this made me realize I'm a little starved for good, insightful literature. I so wish and hope she writes again soon.
Nicole Krauss has been one of my absolute favorite authors since I first read The History of Love. I quickly thereafter picked up Great House and then just sort of put her on hold for a while I suppose, because I knew she didn't have any new work out and for whatever reason didn't come back to this one, her first novel. I'm wondering if I couldn't find it at my library and maybe that's why I waited so long to read it. Anyway, I shouldn't have.
Samson is found walking in the Mojave Desert and he doesn't know who he is. He barely looks like the photo on his driver's license, and the police take him into custody in order to figure out who this person is. They soon discover that he is, indeed, the man on the license and he's been walking from New York. He doesn't remember anything from the past twenty-four years. What follows is an incredibly inventive, deep, and insightful story.
I found Samson to not be all that sympathetic, really. I identified more with his wife, Anna, and wondered about all the things she must be thinking and feeling. She just lost her husband for goodness' sake, and it must be impossible for both of them.
Krauss' writing is like no other (except her husband, Jonathan Safran Foer :P ). I hadn't read a well-written book in way too long, as reading this made me realize I'm a little starved for good, insightful literature. I so wish and hope she writes again soon.
April 7, 2008
So, my reading group virtually voted to kick me out of the group whenever they decided to move our monthly meetings from Thursday to Wednesday. It's okay that I couldn't make it to the most recent meeting because I seem to like this book much less than the other reading group members here on Goodreads.com
It starts out with a thirty-something year-old man who has no memories since the age of 12. He has all these years and years of people who remember him and things that happened in his life but he doesn't remember any of it. Then he becomes a subject in a scientific experiment and has one memory from someone else's mind implanted in his mind and is deeply disturbed by that because he's basically Tom Hanks in the movie Big. Hilarity ensues.
That one paragraph is basically all that happens in the entire book, but the book is longer than that because the writing style is very poetic -- and by "poetic" I mean pretentious. I just don't believe any of the characters and therefore don't sympathize with their struggles.
(My reading group's March 2008 book selection.)
August 26, 2016
Achingly poignant and sad. (why do I love books like this...?)
I was going to go with 4 or 4.5 stars, but I know already this will be one that will not leave my mind. Samson will live in there a long, long time.
I was going to go with 4 or 4.5 stars, but I know already this will be one that will not leave my mind. Samson will live in there a long, long time.
July 24, 2007
Having read this after History of Love, I suppose I expected more.... something. It's an okay, if strange, story, with writing that never begins to approach anything like History of Love.
February 21, 2008
This book had a very interesting premise: a middle-aged man loses all his memory since he was 12 but still has the sophisticated mind of an adult: how does he cope?
Parts of the novel are very poignant-- mostly the scenes between Samson and his wife and Samson and his great uncle. Other parts really drag and seem caught up in vague ruminations on memory.
All in all, I don't think the book hung together too well and I much prefer her other novel, _A Brief History of Love_. Maybe since I loved that book so much I found this one lacking.
Doug and I read this one together and he liked it better than me. I will say it generated several really interesting coversations: If you woke up tomorrow and couldn't remember falling in love with your spouse or anything about them, would you want to try to regain that knowledge or walk away? Is the ultimate desire of love to be completely united with the other? Is love therefore frustrated/killed by the inability to ever completely become one, or is love the constant drive to continue that journey to unity all the while knowing it will never be complete? It even made us discuss who between us is the more adventurous and why, as well as the relative advantadges/disadvantages of adventurousness and familiarity.
So it's thought provoking, but it doesn't seem to get anywhere. Hence, the two stars.
Parts of the novel are very poignant-- mostly the scenes between Samson and his wife and Samson and his great uncle. Other parts really drag and seem caught up in vague ruminations on memory.
All in all, I don't think the book hung together too well and I much prefer her other novel, _A Brief History of Love_. Maybe since I loved that book so much I found this one lacking.
Doug and I read this one together and he liked it better than me. I will say it generated several really interesting coversations: If you woke up tomorrow and couldn't remember falling in love with your spouse or anything about them, would you want to try to regain that knowledge or walk away? Is the ultimate desire of love to be completely united with the other? Is love therefore frustrated/killed by the inability to ever completely become one, or is love the constant drive to continue that journey to unity all the while knowing it will never be complete? It even made us discuss who between us is the more adventurous and why, as well as the relative advantadges/disadvantages of adventurousness and familiarity.
So it's thought provoking, but it doesn't seem to get anywhere. Hence, the two stars.
August 11, 2024
Six trillion stars. The best book I’ve read this year, and it’s now on my favorites ever list. Just stunning.
December 24, 2007
"She's lovely. Beautiful and kind and what's not to like? but why her and not someone else?"
"That place just beyond everything she knows for sure."
"Who was I? What did I care about? What did I find funny, sad, stupid, painful? Was I happy? All of those memories I accumulated, gone. Which one, if there could have been only one, would I have kept?"
"He knew she liked him but couldn't say why, and now he wondered whether she became so quickly intimate with everyone she stumbled across."
" 'And for a minute it seemed clear to me the reason why I'd fallen in love with her.'
'Sure, the minute she no longer belongs to you.'
'She just seemed so much herself.'
Lana groaned and blew out a cloud of smoke. 'Men. You want a woman just when she doesn't want you.'"
"The emptiness an infant possesses in the very first moments, when consciousness begins like the answer to a question never asked."
"As if she had taught him everything she could and this was the final lesson, the one that all the others had prepared him for. To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to posess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been."
"Begin again with nothing, or almost nothing, and still one must begin."
"It was as if a match had been struck, throwing light on just how dark it was."
"How was it possible to wake up everyday and be recognizable to another when so often one was barely recognizable to oneself?"
"Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it had begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways."
"And what is a life, Samson wondered now, without a witness?"
"Conversation came slowly, the things they had planned to say replaced by the things they said."
"He had imagined telling her that he loved her, but now he realized the declaration would sound flat, a wrong note struck in a simple song."
"That place just beyond everything she knows for sure."
"Who was I? What did I care about? What did I find funny, sad, stupid, painful? Was I happy? All of those memories I accumulated, gone. Which one, if there could have been only one, would I have kept?"
"He knew she liked him but couldn't say why, and now he wondered whether she became so quickly intimate with everyone she stumbled across."
" 'And for a minute it seemed clear to me the reason why I'd fallen in love with her.'
'Sure, the minute she no longer belongs to you.'
'She just seemed so much herself.'
Lana groaned and blew out a cloud of smoke. 'Men. You want a woman just when she doesn't want you.'"
"The emptiness an infant possesses in the very first moments, when consciousness begins like the answer to a question never asked."
"As if she had taught him everything she could and this was the final lesson, the one that all the others had prepared him for. To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to posess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been."
"Begin again with nothing, or almost nothing, and still one must begin."
"It was as if a match had been struck, throwing light on just how dark it was."
"How was it possible to wake up everyday and be recognizable to another when so often one was barely recognizable to oneself?"
"Once there was a woman he loved. That was how it had begun. But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways."
"And what is a life, Samson wondered now, without a witness?"
"Conversation came slowly, the things they had planned to say replaced by the things they said."
"He had imagined telling her that he loved her, but now he realized the declaration would sound flat, a wrong note struck in a simple song."
February 25, 2010
I love Nicole Krauss. I read The History of Love mid 2006. I loved it, but for some reason did not hunt for other books the author had written. Perhaps I had a long enough To Read list as it was. Earlier this summer I stumbled upon this book, and after recalling how much I loved the first book of hers I’d read, decided to give her debut a go.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it almost start to finish without putting it down. I put it down just the once, and because I had to. I loved Samson, I love Krauss’ writing, I sympathized heavily with Anna. Maybe this book meant even more to me because Samson was the last name of a boy I once loved and lost, despite the fact that he and the character are not in any way similar.
The story is about a man, who has lived a good life, who loses his memory from the age of 12 onwards due to a benign tumour in his brain. The novel follows the aftermath, how he views the world, his interactions and thoughts, and how he feels about the people who were once very important to him. Memory loss has become a fixture in modern entertainment, from books to films, but Krauss touched upon it so beautifully and with originality, much in the same way I feel Niffenegger did with Time Traveler’s Wife with respect to time travel. That’s not to say that their styles are similar, just that they both understand that when writing about a subject so broad and so often realised, they must find a new angle in which to project from.
I definitely loved the book, and if it weren’t for the fact that I have 35 other books waiting on my shelf to be read, I honestly think that once I’d reached the end, I would just started all over again.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it almost start to finish without putting it down. I put it down just the once, and because I had to. I loved Samson, I love Krauss’ writing, I sympathized heavily with Anna. Maybe this book meant even more to me because Samson was the last name of a boy I once loved and lost, despite the fact that he and the character are not in any way similar.
The story is about a man, who has lived a good life, who loses his memory from the age of 12 onwards due to a benign tumour in his brain. The novel follows the aftermath, how he views the world, his interactions and thoughts, and how he feels about the people who were once very important to him. Memory loss has become a fixture in modern entertainment, from books to films, but Krauss touched upon it so beautifully and with originality, much in the same way I feel Niffenegger did with Time Traveler’s Wife with respect to time travel. That’s not to say that their styles are similar, just that they both understand that when writing about a subject so broad and so often realised, they must find a new angle in which to project from.
I definitely loved the book, and if it weren’t for the fact that I have 35 other books waiting on my shelf to be read, I honestly think that once I’d reached the end, I would just started all over again.
March 30, 2009
Favorite excerpt:
"He inched towards her until their sides were touching, arm to arm, leg to bare leg. Sam? she whispered. Do you think--- This was Jollie Lambird, whom he had been in love with since the second grade, and he was ready to answer any question she might have for him. But he didn't hear the rest of it because just then he kissed her, a kiss that may have lasted for hours while porch lights shuddered and went out across the neighborhood. While stars themselves lit up or went out, stars that had not yet been given names by which to remember them. It was the last week of summer before the seventh grade, and afterward he walked her back to her house. He kissed her again, shyly and gently, now with the thrill of knowing that he had a small claim on her affections. He ran the rest of the way home, leaping over toys left lying in yards, over rosebushes and garden chairs, running through countless dark yards, his heart pounding in his chest, each step an exercise of joy, and that, really, was the very last he remembered, running through the dark before the world stopped, and in the empty silence all he could hear was the sound of his pulse."
"He inched towards her until their sides were touching, arm to arm, leg to bare leg. Sam? she whispered. Do you think--- This was Jollie Lambird, whom he had been in love with since the second grade, and he was ready to answer any question she might have for him. But he didn't hear the rest of it because just then he kissed her, a kiss that may have lasted for hours while porch lights shuddered and went out across the neighborhood. While stars themselves lit up or went out, stars that had not yet been given names by which to remember them. It was the last week of summer before the seventh grade, and afterward he walked her back to her house. He kissed her again, shyly and gently, now with the thrill of knowing that he had a small claim on her affections. He ran the rest of the way home, leaping over toys left lying in yards, over rosebushes and garden chairs, running through countless dark yards, his heart pounding in his chest, each step an exercise of joy, and that, really, was the very last he remembered, running through the dark before the world stopped, and in the empty silence all he could hear was the sound of his pulse."
Read
March 22, 2012What if a brain tumor causes you to lose all memories of your life after the age of 12? That's what happened to Samson Greene. One day he's an English professor at Columbia University and the next, he's found wandering in the Nevada desert, with no memory of his name, what he's doing in the desert, that he's married, who his friends are, and that his mother's dead.
After the tumor has been removed, Samson has to deal with living in a house he doesn't remember, a wife he doesn't recognize and a life he doesn't want. But he adjusts, makes a new friend in an ex-student and a doctor, and finds he is actually comfortable with the lapse in his memory. He feels no need to try and get those memories back.
He decides to participate in a cutting edge research conducted by a neurological scientist out in Nevada, and at the center, he meets Donald, an elderly eccentric, with whom he builds a bond. But his complacency takes him into unchartered waters at the research facility and he is finally jolted into taking steps to get some control over his life back again.
After the tumor has been removed, Samson has to deal with living in a house he doesn't remember, a wife he doesn't recognize and a life he doesn't want. But he adjusts, makes a new friend in an ex-student and a doctor, and finds he is actually comfortable with the lapse in his memory. He feels no need to try and get those memories back.
He decides to participate in a cutting edge research conducted by a neurological scientist out in Nevada, and at the center, he meets Donald, an elderly eccentric, with whom he builds a bond. But his complacency takes him into unchartered waters at the research facility and he is finally jolted into taking steps to get some control over his life back again.
January 3, 2022
absolutely g o r g e o u s definitely in my top 3 of the past year and maybe… of all time :o
December 3, 2018
Mocht het middenstuk van het boek (een woestijnverhaal dat doet denken aan DeLillo en Faber) er uit mogen gaf ik dit zonder enige twijfel 5 sterren. Krauss kan haar fenomenale talent niet verloochenen, ook al geeft ze toe aan de zucht naar een filmisch ongetwijfeld spectaculaire maar overbodige zijsprong.
February 10, 2010
This is the story of Samson Greene, a man who wakes up in a hospital, thousands of miles from home, after being found disoriented and alone in the desert. Initally Samson cannot remember his own name, and as memories slowly creep into his consciousness, he gets hit with the cruel reality that he has lost the past 24 years of his life due to a benign brain tumor in his temporal lobe. Samson's last memory is taken from a 12 year old's perspective and he suddenly finds himself being thrown into an adult life that he knows nothing about. After trying to reconnect with the person that he can only assume he once was, Samson concludes that the vast emptiness of his past is never going to be filled with truth, and new memories are all he has hope to attain. Nicole Krauss's beautiful and poetic writing style pokes it's head out occassionaly in this novel but fails to live up to the standards of her other novel, The History of Love. Still a worthwhile, interesting story that invites readers to explore how ultimately we'd be nothing without the memory of our past.
Favorite quotes:
"It had always been the two fo them; he was old and she was gone. As if she had taught him everything in the wrold, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recongnized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to posess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been." (Samson upon rediscovering his mother's death.)
"Maybe he had loved her too much, feeling he was unable to get her close enough; that so long as she remained a separate person, he could get to know her only so well. And because the core of her would always remain elusive, threatening to slip away, he'd switched course and faded away to protect himself from the loss, his voice breaking up, over and out, like a pilot's adrift in space." (Samson contemplating his lost love for his wife.)
"A couple with years of conversation between them so that now a single word stood in for vast themes, and small noises were sufficient to communicate subtleties of mood, and after all the talking they could lapse again into the mutual silence that was the foundation of their life together, at ease, the only sound being the clink of silverware against the plates."
Favorite quotes:
"It had always been the two fo them; he was old and she was gone. As if she had taught him everything in the wrold, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recongnized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to posess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been." (Samson upon rediscovering his mother's death.)
"Maybe he had loved her too much, feeling he was unable to get her close enough; that so long as she remained a separate person, he could get to know her only so well. And because the core of her would always remain elusive, threatening to slip away, he'd switched course and faded away to protect himself from the loss, his voice breaking up, over and out, like a pilot's adrift in space." (Samson contemplating his lost love for his wife.)
"A couple with years of conversation between them so that now a single word stood in for vast themes, and small noises were sufficient to communicate subtleties of mood, and after all the talking they could lapse again into the mutual silence that was the foundation of their life together, at ease, the only sound being the clink of silverware against the plates."
September 21, 2013
Gripping. Touching. Thought provoking.
What if you wake up one day with no memories of the years that have passed? Will you embrace the emptiness, start anew or go searching for answers of those echoes of the past that have shaped you to who you are at the present? Will you hold on to the people around you, who remember you as you have been, or cut them from your life, turn over a new leaf?
Krauss, a very talented writer, capable of stirring into her readers such thoughts and lead them into introspection through the voice of her creations, has once again managed to paint such a vivid scenery of a man struggling with losing his memories. He has lost everything, except his mind. Samson, a professor with a brilliant mind, a husband to a devoted wife, recovers from a brain surgery with no memories of the past 24 years, not recognizing his wife, his own life a stranger to him and yet managed to retain his highly functioning mind.
The book is narrated through the eyes of this man, how he struggled to not reclaim who he was, but better understand who he is now. In this self exploration, he isolates himself, meets new people, and finds meaning.
It's a painful journey, as the reader sympathizes with the wife. At the end of the book, I can't help thinking that how the novel would have been more beautiful, if the story was told on both perspectives (Not to say that the book was anything less but).
Regardless, I loved the novel as it is. I liked Samson. Loved Anna. I wished for a longer ending, fast forward into the farther future.
Let me just quote one of my favorite lines from the book:
“To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.”
What if you wake up one day with no memories of the years that have passed? Will you embrace the emptiness, start anew or go searching for answers of those echoes of the past that have shaped you to who you are at the present? Will you hold on to the people around you, who remember you as you have been, or cut them from your life, turn over a new leaf?
Krauss, a very talented writer, capable of stirring into her readers such thoughts and lead them into introspection through the voice of her creations, has once again managed to paint such a vivid scenery of a man struggling with losing his memories. He has lost everything, except his mind. Samson, a professor with a brilliant mind, a husband to a devoted wife, recovers from a brain surgery with no memories of the past 24 years, not recognizing his wife, his own life a stranger to him and yet managed to retain his highly functioning mind.
The book is narrated through the eyes of this man, how he struggled to not reclaim who he was, but better understand who he is now. In this self exploration, he isolates himself, meets new people, and finds meaning.
It's a painful journey, as the reader sympathizes with the wife. At the end of the book, I can't help thinking that how the novel would have been more beautiful, if the story was told on both perspectives (Not to say that the book was anything less but).
Regardless, I loved the novel as it is. I liked Samson. Loved Anna. I wished for a longer ending, fast forward into the farther future.
Let me just quote one of my favorite lines from the book:
“To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.”
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