Customer Reviews

Schopenhauer's Telescope

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gerard Donvan's novel "Schopenhauer's Telescope" take as it's focal point an act that was carried out all too often during Europe's tortured twentieth century: the digging of a mass grave. One would expect that such a setting would provide for a rather limited narrative, but as it turns out, the opposite is true. "Schopenhauer's Telescope" sprawls in every direction, touching upon a host of topics and exploring so many themes that it is sometimes to its detriment. Nonetheless, this is a powerful novel, that succeeds far more often than it fails.

The central characters are Baker and Teacher; they share a conversation in an unknown field in an unknown European country as the Baker digs what is clearly intended to be a grave. As I mentioned above, their conversation meanders across a host of topics, but one recurrent theme repeats itself, or perhaps two that intertwine. The theme is history, but the two men have drastically different feelings about what it means and how it should be studied.

The Baker views history as an inexorable tide, something to be survived rather than engaged, because survival is the core purpose of his existence. The Teacher, on the other hand, views history as a living, breathing thing; something that cannot be understood in its entirety, but which can be embraced and learned from.

While this conversation is fascinating, the most intriguing element of this book is the dichotomy it sets up between the two men. What are their roles? How have they each found their way to this snowy field? The reader is left uncertain as to who holds the power in the relationship until well into the narrative, and even then, one is left to question which man really understands the world, and more importantly, his place in it.

Unfortunately, the novel is at times horribly over-written. Donovan enjoys playing with various approaches to his narrative, and generally speaking he is successful. However, there are times when form trumps substance and this can make for tedious reading. Moreover, over the course of two ill-advised segments, he reveals one of the characters (saying which one would be a major spoiler) to be somewhat insane, which significantly curbed any sympathy or compassion I might have felt for him. Moreover, it is difficult to judge the mentally ill for their actions, and the book's endgame suffers somewhat as a result.

That said, the positives in "Schopenhauer's Telescope" more than outweigh the negatives. At its best, Donovan's writing borders on poetry, and his style represents a genuinely original voice. This is a novel rich in ideas and philosophy, but it is also a novel that raises more questions than it answers. What is a life well lived? What makes life worth living? Is evil absolute, or does it need to be taken in context? These questions just scratch the surface, and I suspect that additional readings would reveal additional questions, and that furthermore, other readers will take away completely different questions. "Schopenhauer's Telescope" is just one of those books that can be interpreted a dozen different ways by a dozen different people without any of them being wrong. While far from perfect, Donovan's work is among the best I have read this year, and will, I am certain, stay with me for some time to come.

Jake Mohlman

I leave it to critics and novelists to comment on the merits or shortcomings of a first novel? I can only say that I was attracted to "Schopenhauer's Telescope" by its title. Written by a poet, this first novel is presented in beautifully cadenced poetry like prose, though burdened at times by wearied transitions. Drafted in short chapters, the work resembles the form of Schopenhauer's, "Essays and Aphorisms."
At the precise center, marked by a curious screenplay on the Great Kahn, Mr. Donovan reveals the theme of his novel - strength through indifference. Focusing his inverted telescope on the past, Donovan comments on historical atrocities, interpreted like modern events, thus suggesting that nothing has changed. The result is a pessimistic (or for some) perhaps realistic view of history. There are possibly many metaphors and symbols to be mined by astute reviewers, but references to philosophers such as Hume, Locke, to me seemed more contrived and artificial than substantive. In terms of the title, the prevailing mood of pessimism, often associated with Schopenhauer is appropriate.
Surprisingly, the novel ends with the protagonist, an "indifferent" survivor placing a "love" letter on a table next to his bed, before he simply disappears. Like the announcement of a coming attraction, this ending suggests that a more differentiated view of life resides in the soul of this thought provoking and creative poet/novelist. I look forward to his next work.

When I first read this book in autumn of 2003, I was struck by how relevant it seemed to the issues of the time. As months and finally a year passed, its passages came back to me again and again, with greater force each time. It was as though the real world outside this novel was warping to meet the dark setting of the fiction.

Read this book, and go back and read again the accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib. Read this book, and seek out the stories of those who lived through the torments of Saddam's Iraq. Or just turn on CNN (better yet, Fox News), mute the sound, and read this book. This novel could be the critical comment to any real-time story of power and cruelty. There is no shortage of such stories now.

I gave this book only four out of five stars because I've shared it with friends who are less interested in poetry than I am, and they have found it a fairly slow read. That was not my experience, but it might be yours.

Above its obvious parallels to a world at war, this book's more lasting value is its presentation of two characters who are at odds with each other, and at each other's mercy. I didn't see a protagonist and an antagonist in this story: I saw two central characters (and a surrounding world) with nothing left to win. When our differences are the only things that define us, all that was once of value is lost to us. The battle against one another is all we have left, and even that is worthless.

Read this book, red staters and blue staters, and try to figure out which side of the ditch you're on. Try to figure out who's right and who's wrong, and about what, and why any of it matters. I won't guarantee that you'll see yourself or anyone you know in these pages; chances are that you won't. But there may be a time when a scene from this book will come back to you, throwing its odd light on a world that few of us have looked at clearly in a long time.

Happy New Year to Amazonians everywhere. Let's be kinder to each other in 2005.

Gerard Donovan's debut novel "Schopenhauer's Telescope (ST)" is an impressive literary work of fiction that was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Set somewhere unidentified in Eastern Europe, the smell of death, destruction and ethnic cleansing permeates the air from its opening pages. You know something evil is about to happen and shortly - the chapters are structured by the hours of a day - but you don't know why and to whom. Donovan keeps you guessing till the very end.

The novel pans out as a stagy two man dialogue about the history of evil in world civilisation. Throughout the ages, evil has been perpetrated and justified in the name of religion, trade, even progress, but what remains are the ashes of human suffering and destruction that gets lost in the annals of recorded history. The telescope of the book's title, a metaphor of great power and resonance, peered into from back to front gives a totally different view of the living truth of history.

The baker and the schoolteacher. One commands the other to dig a trench in the icy winds out in the wintry open. Who's doing what to whom. We can only guess. The baker's knowledge of life is defined and circumscribed by his craft and his instinct to survive . He has no soul. The schoolteacher is a learned man but he has experienced love and suffers for it. As the hours lapse and time inevitably runs out, something does happen and we will know why.

ST is an incredibly moving piece of work of surprising depth and maturity. It is a thinking man's novel that raises many thought provoking issues about evil, life and love. One of best new novels I have read this year.

I bought this book over a year ago and didn't get around to reading it until this Thanksgiving. I'm glad I did! What a great novel! Donovan draws you in from the first page and doesn't let go. The story is so much more than a tale of a war-stricken country. It dives deep into the complex nature of humans. The concept of Schopenhauer's Telescope is new to me (you dont' find out what Schopenhauer's Telescope is until 2/3 into the book), but is something that will not escape me anytime soon. This book will make you think about, reflect upon, and thoughtfullly consider many topics that don't come up in day to day conversation. The book itself is like a diary, with the author revealing a dark secret every few pages. Highly recommended to all.

Donovan's first novel easily lives up to the promise of his three award-winning books of poetry. The novel is supremely intelligent, funny, surreal, and a first-rate page-turner. It's not full of huge action set-pieces, but the mystery at the heart of the story is so fraught with tension and dread that I couldn't wait to find out what happens. The constant philosophical banterings between the two main charcters are cleverly presented and never wear out their welcome. This book reminded me of a more readable, meanly humorous Umberto Eco. Donovan is a brainy writer, no doubt, but he knows just when to pull back and let the story flow. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this book deserves to be on anyone's summer reading list.

First of all, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Donovan at an Irish Studies conference five weeks ago. He explained that the novel tackles the question of betrayal and loyalty when faced suddenly with life or death. What would you do, he wondered, if a brutal army invaded your town and, in the course of a few hours, took control? If they offered you the chance to survive if you collaborated, and pointed out your neighbors to the enemy, would you do it? The novel that explores this conflict had just been optioned for a screenplay. I told him that this very novel happened to be on my list of novels "to read next." He asked me, when I read it, to think about how it could be transferred from print to screen. My observations, therefore, issue from a different vantage point than the previous ten reviews posted here.

Samples of the prose, a précis of the plot, and reactions to the philosophically ruminative and historically enriched dialogue between the Baker and the Schoolteacher are all noted by fellow reviews. How inert, or how lively, is this snowy afternoon's exchange of ideas, emotions, and tension? Donovan's book reminds me-- as with stories from many modern and contemporary Irish writers-- more of Central European than, say British or American, fiction. (I have also reviewed on Amazon a novel that I read immediately prior: Donovan's newest novel, "Julius Winsor," that shares with "Schopenhauer's Telescope" a wintry climate, flinty characters, and a reduction of emotion and ideas to a life-and-death struggle as grief battles with revenge.) Donovan delves on intellectual pursuits, existential meditations, and spiritual longing. The wishes of the protagonist and antagonist-- and without revealing the end of the narrative's arc it can still be admitted that these positions fluctuate-- may not be fulfilled over the space of this November 25th. In this, realism provides a bleak slab of a frozen foundation, a terrible fate in flight from which aspirations roam and towards which horrors are impelled to return. So, how dramatically promising is this novel of ideas?

Potentially, the digressions into the Baker's playful defense of his goods from the assaults of Mrs. Policeman, the re-creation of the Shoemaker's testimony, and the mock screenplay and acting-out of the "You Are There" scenarios of the Mongol invasions by Genghis Khan seem, if digressive from the core plot on the page, most theatrically adaptable. The chilling fairy tale of Mathilde and Torson, the discourse on the epistemology of "holes," or the re-telling of the battle at Wounded Knee, however, may simply remain distractions. The brutal rendering of the WW2 bombing of Dresden graphically darkens earlier chapters of this intentionally somewhat disjointed and fragmented narrative. "The people prayed to God and the Devil answered." The torments of thousands of Germans serve as an epitaph for this novel's own pawns caught up in a war between neighbors and nationalities that individuals cannot resist-- at least if they wish to remain alive.

Their testimonies, as victims educated from their own readings of accounts from centuries of barbarity, may work better for a monologue, as that which perhaps the author himself (as he notes in closing) had heard from a survivor of the German firestorm, but within a cinematic dramatization I assume fewer of such raw memories will be included.

The book shifts in its illustration of the nightmare of history which traps those who cannot awaken. But, such intelligent speculation rarely lasts long within a conventional film that rejects documentary for at least the appearance of drama. "My Dinner with Andre," "Decalogue" (the original!) "Mindwalk," "Swept Away": few movies succeed and few viewers prefer those that dare to enter the realm of the mind, or reenact the verbal (as opposed to the military or diplomatic or superhero) showdown of opposing ideologies. Contrary to some of the blurbs on the jacket, I find little of the despairing wit of Flann O'Brien here, but I do agree that Kafkaesque shadows loom. Sun Tzu, David Hume, Matthew Paris, John Locke, and King Leopold's minions provide credited context. Beckett, Bernhard, Danilo Kis, Klima, Camus offer subtler comparisons: after these formidable line-ups, Donovan follows with his ambitious tale. In his novel, there is nearly no action, rather a staged set-piece: digger and interrogator, the captive and the coerced, in the hole and on its rim.

There are two brief chapters that, each in two pages, forcefully present evidence that the author's three books of poetry that preceded Donovan's debut novel endured in the language he uses. His fiction and his verse distill varied and arcane learning. While this penchant in Donovan's novels allows him arguably too much room at times for his expositions, amid the frequent digressions, he creates here a couple of passages of a couple of paragraphs each that merit particular acclaim. One reduces all that Molly Bloom articulated in the long closing of "Ulysses" to a powerful expression of what women really want but what men cannot give. The other passage, and this perhaps may entice Hollywood's special effects, sums up neatly and messily what would be the final thoughts and demands from we earthlings if an asteroid was about to pulverize our planet. The compression in these sections I think works better than what in other chapters takes many digressive (albeit often informative and lively for the kind of reader who will choose ST) pages to reveal about the frailty and the boasts of humans trapped within impassive forces.

Ultimately, perhaps better to ponder here such long evocations of pedagogical futility and personal fidelity, and the challenges that survival vs. friendship present those faced with sudden necessity to choose their life over their loyalties, their self-preservation rather than their presumed patriotism or assumed allegiance. As with "Julius Winsor," the core of Donovan's tale could have generated a longish short story rather than a short novel. For both his novels, this formal distinction is crucial. Some readers will welcome the extended forays into reenactments and recollections. Others will impatiently await a return to the central conflict. On screen, perhaps more bombs, more guns, more noise, more shenanigans, more playfulness in the self-consciously awkward "characters" that the two interlocutors take on. This role-playing aspect, in the novel, works sporadically. It may, however, succeed better if fleshed out by competent actors!

The two main characters deepen and their interior selves emerge as the novel progresses over the course of the afternoon, but it remains difficult for me, as a reader, to fully believe in their frequent lapses into dutiful student and hectoring teacher, eager lecturer and skeptical matriculator. Donovan's tone shifts about, and while this uneasiness may be versimilitude for the disturbance both characters feel-- as the reader learns may be for different reasons than were earlier suggested-- it does jar the placement of weighty ultimatums and recurring dangers that, as the novel ponders, threaten our fragile bodies and deluded souls. It appears as if the comic element, in the existentialist tradition of many of his influences, grapples uncertainly-- given the latitude offered a novelist rather than an essayist-- with the conventionally saturnine ideologues who inform Donovan's speculations. Again, this narrative displacement may be pro forma for serious European-inspired fiction, but in transferring this to characters that tumble, leap, and hiss rather than dig, chat, and shiver, the screenplay may have to sacrifice the depth that Donovan strives to excavate as he digs into the shattered European past.

It would be a shame if "Schopenhauer's Telescope" is retracted on screen into distortion of Donovan's grave intentions-- or ground down for a shallower, more superficial in both senses of the word, presentation. I applaud the potential exposure of ST by a film and trust that it will do justice to its source. This novel, while it remains ultimately and perhaps intentionally unstable, deserves attention for the erudition, energy, and emotion it extracts from a cold, isolated, and bitter scenario.

While never leaving the field, the snow and the ever growing hole, we the reader are taken on a journey through time and minds. Using the words of the Teacher and the Baker, we are transported to different times and different settings. Not just narratives of days gone by, but 'scenes' generated by a combination of facts from history and imaginative deliveries. From acted out documentaries, to plays, to a trial where the the the judge, plaintiff, witnesses and defendant are all wonderfully portrayed by the baker and the Teacher. Different ways of presenting the philosophies and events that have lead to the discussion of why the history of civilization is inseparable from the history of mass violence. The novel is spoken through the eyes of the Baker. We see the tensions and philosophical differences between himself and the Teacher. We experience each others struggles to enlighten the other on the ways of life as they see it.

The stylization of Donovan's writing is simply beautiful. While reading this book I wanted to post numerous excerpts for all to see. I refrained from doing so simply because I would have recreated the novel and by breaking up the passages, would have done a great injustice to the prose that is found within these pages. Ok, so I will post one passage here:
Hardly a day for momentous events, and anything written in the book of history about today would be erased by fat grey clouds that shed cold crystals everywhere and anywhere, on the pine trees, on the lights and spires of the town visible a mile away in the dim morning light. This was a day to hide things in. The gusty wind found every footprint and filled it in, along with its direction, and our presence in the field would leave little impression and even less evidence. In fact, that November 25th offered nothing to the senses to distinguish it from any other winter day in earth's rotation and the rotation of air through every pair of lungs or under every pair of wings. But it's well known that all events have to occur in a day of some kind.

I dare not give any hints on the ending of such a novel for it would ruin the excitement of turning each page while in your hands. Because of this I will stop my discussion here.

There are no hero's in this brilliant and inciteful debut novel, only survivors. But who survives - the living or the dead? That is just one of the many thought-provoking issues raised in the course of one day in a remote snowbound village, in a fictional country too real to be discounted.
How strong is the instinct for survival? Can a random moment ignite absolute love? What is knowledge? Is wisdom accrued? How does the unimaginable occur? Who participates? What do we live for? What forms us? Informs us? When they come and knock on your door, how will you answer? Do we ever really know?
I completely understand the American Publishing Industry's need to stand back, once again, and allow an important piece of writing to grow on its own. After all, the last thing this culture needs is a lot of people standing around indulging in spontaneous bouts of deep-thinking! Who has the time? Still, taking that into consideration, I respectfully request that this novel be read, processed and discussed by as many people as possible. Just for the hell of it.

When war comes to a small European town, the aftermath of the invasion and the town's occupation finds two men in a field on a cold and snowing day with soldiers and citizens milling about in the distance waiting for something to happen. That something seems to a grave being dug by "the baker" (and narrator) while the "the teacher" stands around watching. Throughout the narrative the two men discuss philosophy and the nature of human cruelty throughout human history from Genghis Kahn to Nazi Germany - all while "the baker" digs his hole. Eventually, the discussion comes around to the role that each man has played in the recent violence.

At times, this book is brilliant. To begin a brief chapter titled *Winter*, Donovan writes: "One thing you learn about deep cold, it has a cousin called silence that follows it in the door whenever it comes to visit. Even the strike of a shovel against stone doesn't long survive cold. Nothing does. Your breath is caught and frozen in flight, your speech splits open a second out of the throat, your words break in the cocoon of your sentences." But, at other times, the story looses focus and the narrator goes off on tangents a bit too far afield to fully fit with the story at hand.

Even with its faults, this book is worth the energy invested in its reading and there are real insights to be gleamed from its pages.

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A Guide to my Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.