an idle contemplation

[Guest]

I just read a review of Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz who won the Nobel for lit. in 2002. Here's just a bit of it:

"I have to say that over time one can become accustomed even to miracles, " says Georg Koves, the teenage narrator of Imre Kertesz's novel "Fatelessness. " That Koves is speaking about the last days of Buchenwald, where he is a prisoner, might surprise you. But then, he feels the same way about pain, fear and sorrow. Experience the extraordinary enough, and the extraordinary becomes normal; even a place as terrifying as the concentration camps can after a while begin to feel like home.

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian writer and survivor of the camps himself, published "Fatelessness," his first novel, in 1975, and won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2002. Vintage is reissuing his works in new translations. The matter-of-fact tone and candor of "Fatelessness," as well as its dry wit, make it the Holocaust novel that will never be filmed by Hollywood.

And that is very much the point. The Holocaust didn't happen to extraordinary people but to ordinary ones, with ordinary concerns, living in ordinary places. Not heroes. Not people in any way different from us. "I didn't go to school today," Georg tells us in the first sentence, and then proceeds to tell us why...

To those, including his family, who want to 'forget', he rebels.

"It's about the steps," he tries to explain to his family, meaning the tiny ways we build our fates. "I could no longer be satisfied with the notion that it had all been a mistake, blind fortune, some kind of blunder, let alone that it had not even happened." In order to live he must embrace the strangeness and seeming senselessness of fate, and go on.

The book ends with a remarkable meditation on his days in the concentration camps that is daring in its poetry and beauty. Even there, he suggests, he was able to carve out "something that resembled happiness." It is how people survive. This almost shocking statement enables him, finally, to embrace the paradox of existence, and he goes off "to continue my uncontinuable life."

I'm not sure why I'm posting this thread except that the phrase "something that resembled happiness" touched me deeply. At the beginning of my late years I don't expect as much of life as I used to desire. I can settle for so much less now. And I think I may even be satisfied to finally settle for something that resembles happiness. It seems a great deal to me now.

Does anyone understand what I mean? (It's a simple question, I am fine.)

Perdita

full review

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I have to get this book now.

I think because the depressive part of you...and I for that matter, can understand that even in the worst of something, there is still that slight bit of hope.

Happiness is more simple than we suspect.

 

[cloudy]

I just read a review of Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz who won the Nobel for lit. in 2002. Here's just a bit of it:

"I have to say that over time one can become accustomed even to miracles, " says Georg Koves, the teenage narrator of Imre Kertesz's novel "Fatelessness. " That Koves is speaking about the last days of Buchenwald, where he is a prisoner, might surprise you. But then, he feels the same way about pain, fear and sorrow. Experience the extraordinary enough, and the extraordinary becomes normal; even a place as terrifying as the concentration camps can after a while begin to feel like home.

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian writer and survivor of the camps himself, published "Fatelessness," his first novel, in 1975, and won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2002. Vintage is reissuing his works in new translations. The matter-of-fact tone and candor of "Fatelessness," as well as its dry wit, make it the Holocaust novel that will never be filmed by Hollywood.

And that is very much the point. The Holocaust didn't happen to extraordinary people but to ordinary ones, with ordinary concerns, living in ordinary places. Not heroes. Not people in any way different from us. "I didn't go to school today," Georg tells us in the first sentence, and then proceeds to tell us why...

To those, including his family, who want to 'forget', he rebels.

"It's about the steps," he tries to explain to his family, meaning the tiny ways we build our fates. "I could no longer be satisfied with the notion that it had all been a mistake, blind fortune, some kind of blunder, let alone that it had not even happened." In order to live he must embrace the strangeness and seeming senselessness of fate, and go on.

The book ends with a remarkable meditation on his days in the concentration camps that is daring in its poetry and beauty. Even there, he suggests, he was able to carve out "something that resembled happiness." It is how people survive. This almost shocking statement enables him, finally, to embrace the paradox of existence, and he goes off "to continue my uncontinuable life."

I'm not sure why I'm posting this thread except that the phrase "something that resembled happiness" touched me deeply. At the beginning of my late years I don't expect as much of life as I used to desire. I can settle for so much less now. And I think I may even be satisfied to finally settle for something that resembles happiness. It seems a great deal to me now.

Does anyone understand what I mean? (It's a simple question, I am fine.)

Perdita

full review

I understand completely.

I used to think that I needed so much more to be happy. Now, I would be happy with contentment, that's all.

 

[Poussin]

.....

.....

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the comments, Abby, Cloudy and Poussin. They mean something to me . Yes, Abs, I will read the book too.

Perdita

 

[gauchecritic]

It's very sad to say "settle for less" and it's not really true.

As we get older and our senses more replete, then this means that there is little more that can make us whole.

We've learned the 'value' of money, we've exerted ourselves as much as we wished, we've known love (and hate), we've been both poor and rich in many areas. We are becoming sated with experience and with life.

We do not settle for less, our riches are immense and we are mindful of surfeit.

 

[rgraham666]

I don't think it's 'settling for less'. It's needing less.

Often, when people ask me how I am I reply, "Breathing." And that's a damn fine starting point.

Everything after that is gravy.

 

[Guest]

Happiness is more simple than we suspect.

It's very sad to say "settle for less" and it's not really true.

As we get older and our senses more replete, then this means that there is little more that can make us whole.

We've learned the 'value' of money, we've exerted ourselves as much as we wished, we've known love (and hate), we've been both poor and rich in many areas. We are becoming sated with experience and with life.

We do not settle for less, our riches are immense and we are mindful of surfeit.

I don't think it's 'settling for less'. It's needing less.

I’ve had to reread myself to understand what I was getting at. Abby, your line above is simply profound. It calls to mind Joy for me, how difficult we make it to receive.

Gauche, you’re right. “Settle for” is not really what I meant, but rather more what Rg means about “needing” less. As for what makes us whole, I suppose that is what confronts me now. I know that when I die I will be “finished”, but I want to be able to accept that—that I truly am finished with myself here. That is why I can feel rich or poor of self from day to day, or moment to moment. I’m more conscious of the measuring now is all. It is why I think about things like who will 'touch' me next, or have I been touched for the last time and did not realized it?

I know this also has to do with my recent holiday and time in a place that caught me unawares of my self, what I need, what I see, what I want.

Still contemplating, Perdita

 

[nushu2]

Happiness creeps up on us. When we search for it, it's elusive and when we hunger for satisfaction, we overlook that.

Slap me.

 

[Boota]

I would imagine that living in a concentration camp would only be survivable if you found a semblance of happiness somehow. For all of us, though, happiness only comes in small doses. I think as we get older we learn more how to get the most out of the small doses, along with the knowledge that we don't really want everything we used to desire.

Something I used to do back when I was suicidal was to list one thing a day on a calendar that was worth living for. If I couldn't think of anything I'd put a big red X. On New Years Eve, if I had more X's than reasons to live I figured that was a good sign to go ahead and blow my brains out. I was close the first year I did it. What saved me was the little things. Sometimes I would just write, "The Tick" or "fresh coffee". At the end of all that I learned that the things that made me the happiest were the smallest things. Enjoying the little things saved my life.

The strange thing is now that I have come to terms with the little things and learned to enjoy life, I see that the big things I thought were so important don't really matter. But now they're just falling into my lap. I guess that's what I get for trying all those years.

 

[minsue]

Re: Re: an idle contemplation

Just a thought: How about something that resembles what happiness was supposed to be?

Well put.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

P, I checked into this book and found a few others by this author I would love to read as well as a few more like..."Those who save us" by Jenna Blum. It's about a Holocaust survivors search to find out the truth about her mother's life.

Thanks again.

 

[Belegon]

In my job I have a few clients who are holocaust survivors. It is always amazing to me how they have managed to not desolve into helplessness, as I fear I would.

I agree with Rob on the "what we need" point, but there is more than that. As I have gone through my life, my definition of what brings me happiness has changed dramatically.

The one constant is my family and friends. The names may have changed, with a few exceptions, but they are still my main source of happiness.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Happiness is an attainable place to strive to reach, it's just a bitch to get there when you don't have a map.

 

[Guest]

Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.

Or something like that.

Happiness is relative. Some days just one little word can make my heart swell. Other days, just a smile from a loved one. Right now? It's knowing that I got through it, and am smiling again. Smiling wider than before.

We have to go through the bad stuff to appreciate the good, and the more bad we go through, the more we learn to appreciate the good. If I'd never known true sadness, I could never understand true happiness.

Lou