Customer Reviews

Utz

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This sparsely told, yet powerful, novel chronicles one man's obsession with porcelain objet d'art with the backdrop of Communist Czechoslovakia and the mystical city of Prague, home of Kafka, the Golem, Jan Hus, and other passive aggressive resisters. The tale weaves the history of the city, Utz's attempt to hide his art collection from the Communists, and the very mystery which binds all collector's together in their minute passion for particular artifacts. Chatwin, who was a kid prodigy at Sotheby's appraising fine art at the precocious age of 20, know the obssessivess which plagues and elevates the collector's heart, and this knowledge is plainly and lucidly displayed in his tale. To put it bluntly, this book is a small gem and quite worth collecting, as well as being the author's masterpiece.

The plot is set in the bleak atmosphere of the communist Czechoslovakia, and is with apparent enjoyment larded with little details of everyday life in as well as some phenomena of the totalitarian country: Tatras 603 and orange garbage trucks with revolving orange lights cruise through the street of Prague; the reluctant and muscular cleaning women dominate the public space, feared and obeyed by everyone; the dining-rooms of Prague hotels smell of disinfectant and accommodate either East German and Soviet computer experts or English intellectual `dissident watchers'; funerals, as a kind of a Christian ritual, have to be over by 8:30; photos of Comrade Novotný hang in all public places and microphones are installed in the walls of private apartments by the secret police. Although those details are used to illustrate the bleakness of the life in the communist Czechoslovakia, I could not help feeling that they are actually enjoyed by the outsider, not unsimilar to the enjoyment of a tourist in a backward country, although different. The narrator is frankly fascinated by the paradoxes of the regime and the lives of the people. Utz's statement that "luxury can only be enjoyed under adverse conditions" echoes throughout the book. The people are actually immune to the communist doctrines and live intellectually rich lives in company of their friends. "Where else would one find a tram-ticket salesman who was a scholar of the Elizabethan stage? Or a street sweeper who had written a philosophical commentary on the Anaximander Fragment?" "...the true heroes of this impossible situation were people who wouldn't raise a murmur against the Party or State - yet who seemed to carry the sum of Western Civilisation in their heads. With their silence they inflict a final insult on the State, by pretending it does not exist" This exactly seems to be the case of Utz. ...

In 'Utz' Chatwin has created an object that tempts yet resists definitive analysis. It resembles, in effect, a piece of the Meissen porcelain which is central to its concerns. At once exquisitely wrought, yet appealing to coarser interests, it is a paradoxical synthesis of the refined and the grotesque.
*
It is, in a sense, a piece of travel writing - the travel is not merely geographical, but also through time and through the life of the eponymous protagonist. The minor characters are sparkling caricatures, Chatwin's gleaming words fashioning figures as charming, and as repulsive, as the variously described Meissen figurines. The narrator asks himself, and implicitly asks us too, how much and how little we see and learn of all of this, and how much we invent in our need to make the narrative, and perhaps the world with its baffling cast of beings, coherent and meaningful.
*
Chatwin's prose possesses grace and clarity. It supports a multitude of learned references effortlessly. The tone has hints of the great European classics, even 'The Magic Mountain' (this being Utz's intended reading on his first venture away from Communist Czechoslovakia), but remains light and readable. Yet this supple style allows Chatwin to speculate over the length of Utz's virile member, and over his fetish for gargantuan divas. It ranges easily from the personal to the political. The style itself is a worthy object for a fetishist, and in its precision and erudition suggests that the author himself finds words his fetish.
*
The book entertains a feast of ideas - the role of art in at once defeating and heightening fears of death and aging; the sublimation of the desire for physical beauty; the tension between the private and political (was Utz, after all, a spy, or, at the least, a conduit for stolen works of art to be sold in the West for the profit of the Czech state); the fragility and tenacity of acquaintance and friendship; the role of fantasy in lives constantly moulded by hard realities.
*
All of this is layered within 150 odd pages. What might be said to be missing is the overt portrayal of a complex character - we see Utz, and his offsiders, and indeed Chatwin himself, glancingly. But such glimpses only help to inspire a wonder for the world and all its inexplicable variety - and, for me, for a book to foster such inspiration is a great achievement.
*
A truly beautiful work of art.

UTZ has much going for it. Chatwin packs a lot into a short novel: portraits of a Communist state in its waning years and a man caught in material obsession. Chatwin has a winning way with storytelling, well drawn images just fall off his pen and what might seem a boring concept moves swiftly and holds interest. It is the story of Kaspar Utz who through most of the violent world-changing events of Europe in the 20th century, builds an extraordinary collection of porcelain figurines, a collection he improves on even while living in Prague where personal property is prohibited. Allowed yearly visits to Vichy ostensibly for his health, Utz makes purchases on the sly and smuggles them back. The aforementioned ambiguities are opened like a can of worms in these trips to Vichy: Utz could defect but does not. It is there, in a place of freedom and plenty, he makes the key observation that luxury is only luxurious under adverse conditions. The mysteries swirl up around him: why does he give up the opportunity to escape Communism, what happens to the collection, and what is the nature of his relationship with a woman who lives as a servant in his apartment? In the mid - late 80's, Chatwin's unnamed narrator returns to Prague to sort out the questions long after Utz's death, coming to some unpredictable conclusions.

UTZ was a tad problematic for me. It is different from the other of Chatwin's books I've read; it does not compare to THE SONGLINES, which I adored. It is intentionally fraught with so many ambiguities that I'm not sure I really "got" it all.

Bruce Chatwin was dying in the late 1980s of a mystery disease, he claimed originating from a rare Chinese fungus. It was subsequently confirmed to be AIDS. Utz emerged out of these inauspicious circumstances. Chatwin explained the thinking behind Utz in a letter to his friend, Cary Welch, whilst confined to his bed due to ill health: 'I had thought I'd use the time to read and re-read all the great Russian novels. Instead, hardly able to hold a pen, I launched forth on my story: A tale of Marxist Czechoslovakia conceived in the spirit and style or the Rococo'.

As ever, Chatwin could sum up the spirit of his own novels in a few words better than anyone else. But while Utz is certainly ornate, it is not florid and insubstantial like much of the art that the term Rococo is applied to. Utz is a porcelain collector who collects under the shadow of Communist repression which prohibits private ownership of property. The story is said to be based on Chatwin's encounter with Dr Rudolph Just, a businessman and passionate collecter of glass, silver and Meissen who married his housekeeper.

The story is ostentiably about the collection of porcelain as an escape from political repression. But within its few pages, the novel explores a great many more themes. Great art as a beacon of hope, the survival of the characters of Old Europe - resolutely immune to political indoctrination, as manifested in the character of Marta, Utz'z housekeeper whom he marries towareds the end of the novel, the Jewish dimension (Utz is partly Jewish) - the notion of collecting as a subversive activity, worshipping idols over God. The pretty little figurines in Utz seem to take over a life of their own as they become imbued with the worries and burdens of the characters. And as a backdrop to all of this, Chatwin penetrates deep into the spirit of Communist Prague better than almost any other novelist who has tried.

A gem of a novel.

Based on Bruce Chatwin's novel, this movie is set in Prague and recounts the story of a passionate collector of 18th century Meissen porcelain. The central mystery is the fate of this magnificent collection; the story of the collector's efforts to preserve it during the war, and the subsequent efforts of the Czechoslovakian communist authorities to confiscate it.

The story is a fascinating psychological profile of a passionate collector, whose collection becomes a refuge from the problems, everyday and emotional, of the real world. The story is skillfully interwoven with myths and legends associated with Prague, as well as its more recent history.

The central character is a complex, melancholic figure, but the story also has very funny moments, as well as being a compelling mystery, with especially fine perfomances by Armin Mueller-Stahl as Utz, and Paul Schofield, as his long time fly-obsessed friend.

This was for me the first Chatwin, and a great surprise.
Not just a novel, not just a travel story in the last years of the soviet regime in the Czech Republic, but also a delicate essay of some marginal aspects of XVIII century life: the art of white Meissen ceramics.... With many delicious detours in the labyrinths of mittleeuropean culture and in the psychology of the collector (be him of books, of stamps or whatever).
A book of enormous erudition almost concealed in small details and witty remarks.
And not just learning, but also humanity and a mild observation on the cases of human life under despotism - the meaning freedom, the many faces of opportunism (the one in the oppressed citizen, the one of the intellectual who "freely" criticizes from his warm "western" deck the grey dull soviet regime).
No one get salvation, but Baron Von Utz, who seems able in the mediocrity of ordinary life, of prevarications, of despotism, to resist the nausea of life in the contemplation of his collection.
The perfect world theorised by Leibnitz is perceived as in a glimpse in the eternal stillness of his Meissen figures.
A truly great book!

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On the surface, this seems a bit of a pointless story about a rather dull and self-absorbed porcelain collector in Prague. The entire story is built around a brief encounter between this title character, Kasper Utz, and a British visitor to Prague in 1967. What follows is a collection of fragments of memories, conversations and conjectures. But Chatwin is a skilled writer, and readers are drawn into an intriguing little tale that says much about human nature, the compulsions of the collector and important events in the history of porcelain - it's more interesting than it might seem. Some of his descriptions of Prague during the communist years are also quite vivid, with a documentary historical value. Given the subject matter and the way it is approached, this book is always absorbing, and even quite suspenseful at times.

The novel Utz, by Bruce Chatwin is an excellent book. It is entertaining, comedic, and tragic. Throughout the book Bruce Chatwin does an incredible job of developing characters and for the most part he remains true to the characters that he creates. The style of the prose used and the choice words leads to a very nice, lush, interesting read. Most of all though the plot is original, thoughtful, and provokes discussion. The one negative comment that I feel obligated to make is that at certain times Chatwin gave to much background information which could have the effect of overwhelming the reader. Overall this book was written an intelligent, articulate man who should be proud to call it his masterpiece.

Utz is an utterly delightful and scintillating tale of one man's obsession. More than that, it speaks to us all in how we interact with the world around us. Travelling in and out of Czechoslavakia Utz carries with him the hopes and dreams of all of us. Read and enjoy!