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March 28, 2024, 05:50:05 PM

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Olga Tokarczuk wins the Nobel prize for literature

Started by græskar, October 10, 2019, 05:10:00 PM

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græskar

I just wanted to say that I am so happy and proud of Olga Tokarczuk. She's a brilliant writer as well as a prominent left-wing and feminist figure here in Poland. Couldn't have happened to a better person, from my admittedly biased point of view.

Her win also has great political resonance in Poland. Whether that's deliberate or not is a moot point, but it won't have escaped the attention of Swedish academics that we're having a general election here this Sunday. If the ruling Law and Justice party wins, as seems likely, democracy in Poland will be in direct and imminent danger. So this is a ray of light and particularly uplifiting for the Polish left (it hasn't been the best 30 years for us), especially since we're about to retake some mandates after four years of complete absence from Sejm. Tokarczuk has been a hate figure for the Polish right for some time, so it's also pleasing that they're going to be confronted with such a dilemma. Our right wing always goes on about how unappreciated and ignored we are by the rotten, decadent, multicultural, homosexual West. So now that she has won such an international acclaim, it's a case of "we wanted this, but not like that" for them. Already our chief cunting officer of nationalist indoctrination Minister of Culture had to row back on his words from a few days ago, when he smugly claimed that he "could never finish any of her books".

After the Guardian:
Quote"She's such a special writer – she has an incredible range," he said. "She's also a political activist and dissident, and a figurehead for a more progressive, feminist, environmental politics. She's a public intellectual and doesn't shy away from that."

In 2014, her Polish publisher had to hire bodyguards to protect her after she outraged right-wing patriots by saying Poland had committed "horrendous acts" of colonisation in the past, leading to her being described as "targowiczanin" – an ancient term for traitor.

bgmnts

Never heard of her but googled her and if she is 57 I am Elvis Presley.


græskar

I know some of her books have been published in the UK recently because she won the Man Booker International prize last year. Definitely worth it to check them out, if you're interested.

græskar


Inspector Norse

Quote from: græskar on October 10, 2019, 05:20:11 PM
I know some of her books have been published in the UK recently because she won the Man Booker International prize last year. Definitely worth it to check them out, if you're interested.

Yeah, she's had a couple out through the intellectual indie Fitzcarraldo Editions. I have Flights on the shelf but not yet read it; the more recent one also got rave reviews.

buttgammon

I've only read Flights, which is excellent - her new one is one of those I always pick up in bookshops but have never got round to buying. This should spur me on to read some more of her stuff. Glad to hear about the positive feeling in Poland too!

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: buttgammon on October 10, 2019, 08:10:37 PM
her new one is one of those I always pick up in bookshops but have never got round to buying.

I do that with "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead". Must have picked it up 5 times in the last couple of months. May get it now.

bgmnts

Just read a piece about her titled "Olga Tokarczuk: the dreadlocked feminist winner the Nobel needed".

I didn't think white people were allowed dreadlocks because its cultural appropriation?

græskar

This particular Discourse hasn't had much currency in Poland.

touchingcloth

Quote from: bgmnts on October 10, 2019, 09:43:13 PM
Just read a piece about her titled "Olga Tokarczuk: the dreadlocked feminist winner the Nobel needed".

I didn't think white people were allowed dreadlocks because its cultural appropriation?

Cultural appropriation is a big load of bollocks. Every culture ever has borrowed dress, cuisine, art from other cultures, so no one culture can really be said to own any one thing.

Dreadlocks are a particularly good example of why they're not a non-white thing, because they've been worn for thousands of years by thousands of different people. Hindu mystics, ancient Greek warriors, Native Americans. It's cultural appropriation for anyone to wear that hairstyle, and cultural blindness to see them as being only "allowed" for some races.

Inspector Norse


Mobbd

I've just started reading Flights. "Time Enough at Last" and all that.

I almost gave up after 40 pages but let me tell you why.

The blurb on the back cover gave me a bum steer. It outlines in quick succession the novel's various characters: a slave in the 18th Century, some guy in the 19th century, some chick in the present day, etc. So I'm thinking "Oh, okay. Highbrow Cloud Atlas. Alrighty." So I'm semi-consciously expecting to see chapter headings along the lines of "Mr Premise, 1842" and "Mrs. Conclusion, 2019". But no!

The chapter headings (well, vignette headings) do not explain where we are in space or time; and the voice in every vignette (to begin with) is first-person singular with no obvious sense of variation. I'm left thinking, "who the hell is talking? where are we?"

The very first vignette is in a big townhouse so I'm thinking "well, maybe this is the 19th century one" but then the third vignette refers to commercial air travel and seems to be in the same voice as the first.

In despair, I reach for my phone to see what the hell is going on. Wikipedia clears it up:

QuoteThese vignettes are all narrated by the same "nameless female traveller".

Oh! By the time we reach the first instance of a second-person vignette (a tense story about a guy becoming separated from his wife and child while travelling in Croatia), one understands that it's simply a story being told by the same narrator who was addressing us directly in the early vignettes.

I was left feeling like a real fucking moron.

But I honestly think that if I'd gone into the book cold (i.e. without reading that pisser of a blurb) I wouldn't have been confused.

Just so you know then: it's not a challenging or boring read despite its association with the Man Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize, Fitzcarraldo Editions. It's a perfectly readable novel and not at all like Cloud Atlas either. It categorically does not jump around in time and/or space. Just imagine your nice old grandma telling you some stories about her own life and then other stories about some other people she's heard about.

Bloody Hell. Maybe I am a moron, but I do feel fucked over by that useless blurb.