A Mind @ Play

At heart, the book deals with one couple’s private campaign of resistance to the Nazi regime. As Fallada wrote in an article about the novel, “Über den doch vorhandenen Widerstand der Deutschen gegen den Hitlerterror”, his writings were dedicated to their sacrifice that it not be in vain. The core of the book centres on the Quangels, a couple who lose their son during Hitler’s invasion of France, and who strive to offer a token of resistance, by way of writing postcards and letters denouncing the Nazi acts. These political flyers almost unswervingly end in the arms of the Gestapo, who catalogue this defiance and use their ruthless methods in pursuit of the perpetrators, destroying lives as they do so. This, in my opinion, is one of the book’s greatest strengths, its depth of living characters, almost reminiscent to me of a Dickensian world, each role played by a figure of flesh and blood, and not merely props for the main actors to play up against. Thus the novel details episodes in the lives of thieves and prostitutes, Jews and Gestapo inspectors, youth and the permanently unemployed.

Ever wondered what it would be like to give in to your mid-life crisis, stick two fingers up to the world and start a fresh life? Well, Peter “Pitschi” Greulich does just that: shortly before he and his girlfriend and their other coupled friends are to depart for the umpteenth time for a holiday on Mallorca, he has a rash change of heart and perfidiously jets off instead to Buenos Aires armed with little more than the clothes on his back and his broken words of holiday Spanish.

Wundert man sich, wie das Leben wäre, wenn man sich seiner Midlifecrisis ergeben, der Welt den Stinkefinger zeigen und ein neues Leben anfangen würde? Genau das macht Peter „Pitschi“ Greulich: Kurz bevor er mit seiner Freundin und deren gepaarten Freunden in den üblichen Urlaub nach Mallorca fliegt, bekommt er plötzlich kalte Füße und in einem Sinneswandel düst stattdessen nach Buenos Aires davon, ausgestattet mit wenig mehr als seiner Kleidung und ein paar Brocken Urlaubsspanisch.

Giving this book a three-star rating seems unjust. When reading it, I found much I liked about the work, yet having had a few days to digest it, find myself struggling to justify just exactly what I found so appealing.

To deal first of all with the good, Kafka on the Shore is on a basic level a decent page-turner. Two related stories are interwoven, chapter for chapter, and while they don’t necessarily come together in the end, the narrative is nicely paced and suitably eventful to keep the reader engaged. There are various themes on display, from the Oedipal tragedy and the journey to adulthood, together with more complex issues dealing with time and reality, and plenty of the metaphorical and surreal elements to spice things up. If you aren’t enamoured by ‘magic realism’ this will no doubt be an instant turn-off.

Despite the advancing years I had up until receiving this book for Christmas never read any Wodehouse, though I had been read excerpts in my younger years. Of course, the problem with Wodehouse is that being such a prolific author, it’s difficult to know where to start. And since most Wodehouse readers have their favourites, asking for advice on what to read is a bit like asking which football team you should support.

As someone only just playing around with digital photography, I picked up this book as a complement to Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure to get me started and provide some inspiration. Neither book disappointed. Where Peterson’s book is an excellent starting manual for people new to the world of photography, Freeman’s goes into much greater depth about composition techniques.

The book is divided into 6 chapters, with each chapter further divided into sections dealing with a certain aspect of photographic design. Whilst some sections make reference to others, and in particular to photographs on other pages, in general it is possible to read this book piecemeal, skipping over bits that are of no interest, or returning and dipping into others. Each section abounds with example photographs, many also exploiting instances of photographs that didn’t quite work to further highlight a point.

In titling his book (or having his book titled?) “Is that a fish in your ear?”, David Bellos has certainly made categorising this work a difficult task. It looks and feels like it should belong firmly in the ‘popular science’ section, yet as other reviewers have pointed out, the writing sits it firmly in a half-way academic category. Still, the material covered should be of interest to a wide range of readers, with the book split into fairly short and relatively self-contained chapters, that one can really dip and choose or skip out the parts that are of little interest. The book covers a very wide range of topics, and skitters over numerous areas such as philosophy, biology, religion and of course linguistics.

Der Klappentext behauptet, dieses Buch sei „Der stumme Frühling“ des literarischen Geistes. Zwar vergleicht man hier Äpfel mit Birnen, aber im Kern gibt es in diesem Buch eine provozierende Erörterung der Auswirkung verschiedener Techniken auf die Funktionsweise des Geistes. Carrs Hauptthese, die er in seinem Artikel „Is Google making us stupid?“ schon ausführlich erklärt, ist, dass das Internet Veränderungen in unseren Hirnen auslöst, die unsere Denk- und Erinnerungsvermögen nicht unbedingt positiv verändern. Grundsätzlich spielt das Internet die Rolle eines Universums der Ablenkung, das eine unendliche Vielfalt an leichter Unterhaltung und sinnlosen Unterbrechungen einführt, wodurch wir unsere Gehirne nach einem süchtig-machenden Muster von ineffektivem Multitasking trainieren. Wir heben die neue Technik auf ein Podest, als Eingang zu einer neuen Welt des Wissens und der Kommunikation, die viele Vorteile im Rahmen von sozialer Wechselwirkung, persönlicher Freiheit und wissenschaftlicher Bemühung mit sich bringt. Carr ist jedoch der Meinung, dieses Portal sei beileibe nicht ohne Nachteile, dass diese Technik unsere Fähigkeit des tiefen Denkens und das effektive Nutzen des Gedächtnisses beeinträchtigt.

The blurb claims this book to be a “Silent Spring” for the literary mind. That is certainly comparing apples to oranges, but at the core to this book there is a thought-provoking argument about the impact of various technologies on the workings of the mind. Carr’s main thesis (to be found almost in its entirety in his article “Is Google making us stupid?”) is that the Internet is changing our minds, our ability to think and the way we use our memories, and all this not necessarily for the better. Essentially, the Internet is a universe of distractions, offering endless light entertainments and pointless interruptions that train our brains into an addictive shallow pattern of ineffectual multitasking. We hold up the new technology on a pedestal as a doorway to a new world of knowledge and communication, bringing with it benefits for social interaction, personal liberty and scientific endeavour, but Carr claims that this portal is not without its drawbacks vitiating our ability to think deeply, or use our memories effectively.