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A review by jjupille
All the Names by José Saramago
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I had only read _Blindness_, which blew me away, before reading this. I can't locate my copy of Blindess, whichs is a bummer because sometimes something like having it around and seeing which I made note of can help me process another one by the same author. I will check for notes on B here.
JS's writing is so delicious, so light and lyrical, lots of nicely flowing streams of consciousness which don't meander too much - just lots of well paced inner monologues. I also like how he does dialogue, rendering it into the same style, not so much what the characters speak to each other as to how the interaction flows, like a nice flat stone skipping along the surface of one person's perception.
The story, ideas? I am still processing. Defiitely, as all of the summaries say, about how we --in modern, bureaucratic society-- construct the living and the dead. The "modern bureaucratic society" angle is key for me, given that I work on human institutions in my day job. I do think institutions -- here, the state-- construct us to a great extent, certainly try to. How the state officializes us becomes who we are and who we were, after we are gone. But of course there's so much more to it than that. The state is so limited (absurdly so, in some cases) in which it can capture about us, how the methods it uses in trying to do so are just iimpossibly ill-suited to the task. The state here tries to reduce us to some basic census chracteristics, but of course we --not least as shown by the lives of Senhor José, the unnamed woman, the Registrar and, in fact, every person in the story-- are so much more complicated than that.
So we can have a name, but we remain fundamentally unknowable. Senhor J's hidden life certainly speaks to this. The shepherd's activities with the graves of the dead-by-suicide, which Senhor J thinks to expand to all denizens of the cemetery near the end, speaks to the fundamental futiility of trying to impose spare bureaucratic order on such things. And it sounds like the tail end of his career will afford Senhor J opportunity to follow that logic even further, from within the walls of the Central Ministry.
These are all just some initial ramblings. This is an absolutely delicious read. I love Saramagao so much, and now I wnat to get all of this stuff and continue having this lovely voice in my own head.
~~ random snippets of text follow ~~
"not a day passes without new pieces of paper entering the Central Registry ... but the smell never changes, in the first place, becaues the fate of all paper, from the moment it leaves the factor, is to begin to grow old, but often on the new paper too, not a day passes without someone's inscribing it with the causes of death and the respective places and dates, each contribting its own particular smells, not always offensive to the olfactory mucuous membrane, a case in point being the aromatic effluvia which, from time to time, waft lightly through the Central Registry, and which the more discriminating noses identify as a perfume that is half rose and half chrysatnthemum" (1).
"There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angles, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of somethat that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because they the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos" (11).
"you should know better than anyone that the dead people here aren't really dead, if the papers you have in your hand are those of the unknown woman, they are just paper, not bones, they're paper, not putrefying flesh, that was the miracle worked by your Central Registry, transforming life and death into mere paper" (149).
"memory, which is very sensitive and hates to be found lacking, tends to fill in any gaps with its own spurious creations of reality, but more or less in line with the facts of which it has only a vague recollection, like what remains after the passing of a shadow" (170).
"The human spirit ... is the favorite home of contradictions, indeed they do not seem to prosper or even find viable living conditions outside it" (228).
JS's writing is so delicious, so light and lyrical, lots of nicely flowing streams of consciousness which don't meander too much - just lots of well paced inner monologues. I also like how he does dialogue, rendering it into the same style, not so much what the characters speak to each other as to how the interaction flows, like a nice flat stone skipping along the surface of one person's perception.
The story, ideas? I am still processing. Defiitely, as all of the summaries say, about how we --in modern, bureaucratic society-- construct the living and the dead. The "modern bureaucratic society" angle is key for me, given that I work on human institutions in my day job. I do think institutions -- here, the state-- construct us to a great extent, certainly try to. How the state officializes us becomes who we are and who we were, after we are gone. But of course there's so much more to it than that. The state is so limited (absurdly so, in some cases) in which it can capture about us, how the methods it uses in trying to do so are just iimpossibly ill-suited to the task. The state here tries to reduce us to some basic census chracteristics, but of course we --not least as shown by the lives of Senhor José, the unnamed woman, the Registrar and, in fact, every person in the story-- are so much more complicated than that.
So we can have a name, but we remain fundamentally unknowable. Senhor J's hidden life certainly speaks to this. The shepherd's activities with the graves of the dead-by-suicide, which Senhor J thinks to expand to all denizens of the cemetery near the end, speaks to the fundamental futiility of trying to impose spare bureaucratic order on such things. And it sounds like the tail end of his career will afford Senhor J opportunity to follow that logic even further, from within the walls of the Central Ministry.
These are all just some initial ramblings. This is an absolutely delicious read. I love Saramagao so much, and now I wnat to get all of this stuff and continue having this lovely voice in my own head.
~~ random snippets of text follow ~~
"not a day passes without new pieces of paper entering the Central Registry ... but the smell never changes, in the first place, becaues the fate of all paper, from the moment it leaves the factor, is to begin to grow old, but often on the new paper too, not a day passes without someone's inscribing it with the causes of death and the respective places and dates, each contribting its own particular smells, not always offensive to the olfactory mucuous membrane, a case in point being the aromatic effluvia which, from time to time, waft lightly through the Central Registry, and which the more discriminating noses identify as a perfume that is half rose and half chrysatnthemum" (1).
"There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angles, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of somethat that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because they the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos" (11).
"you should know better than anyone that the dead people here aren't really dead, if the papers you have in your hand are those of the unknown woman, they are just paper, not bones, they're paper, not putrefying flesh, that was the miracle worked by your Central Registry, transforming life and death into mere paper" (149).
"memory, which is very sensitive and hates to be found lacking, tends to fill in any gaps with its own spurious creations of reality, but more or less in line with the facts of which it has only a vague recollection, like what remains after the passing of a shadow" (170).
"The human spirit ... is the favorite home of contradictions, indeed they do not seem to prosper or even find viable living conditions outside it" (228).