Spadework for a Palace by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Hungarian fiction
Original title – Aprómunka egy palotaér
Translator – John Batki
Source – Personal copy
A few years ago, the American publisher released a series of small hardbacks, called the Storybook series, which featured a collection of novellas with eye-catching covers. I had, at the time, hoped to get my hands on a couple from the series, but finances allowed for just one, and since Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a writer, I need to read more over time. I have found each of his books challenging, but also different, so this one, set in New York, appealed to me. I’ve never been to New York; I’ve always wandered through it in the company of writers I like, such as Krasznahorkai, who also features a couple of other writers in the book itself.
I started to look into the routes that-already a failed author—he used when he commuted daily to the Customs House, walking out of his residence, and taking a horse-drawn omnibus down Broadway to 13th Street, and walking from there west to his “office,” and yes, for the sake of veracity let us right away enclose that office in quotation marks, because in truth it was a shack that he walked to, six days a week for four dollars a day, to manage paperwork amid all the commotion, yes, and that “office” shack was located approximately on today’s Bethune Street, though that doesn’t really matter, since back in his time, as I found out, the entire customs district along the banks of the Hudson as well as down by the present-day Staten Island ferry terminal and all the lower Manhattan sides of the East River constituted one big chaotic turmoil, as Melville had himself described it several times, granted, it was mostly in connection with the magic attraction of water, of the sea, there it is right at the outset of Moby-Dick, out on the water, sailing ships and steamships, barques, brigs and schooners, and on the land longshoremen, sailors, car-ters, loafers, pickpockets, dogs and cats and wharf rats as well as, yes, even though he makes no mention of them, customs inspectors, such as Melville,
It always hard to pick a quote out his books but this was about the route he found
The book is, as ever with Krasznahorkai, a single paragraph; one wonders if the tab is broken on his laptop, only joking. The story centres on a librarian called Herman Melvill a librarian that has a love and obsession with the his namesake the Meville wth an e that wrote Moby dick a man that also spent time in Manhatten. He is also a fan of Malcolm Lowry, not so much for his most famous book, Under the Volcano, but rather for the book Lunar Caustic and its character, Bill Plantagenet, another hard-drinking man who has lost his band. He is a jazz fan. He is also on the edge of madness. Then he discovers the art and architecture of Lebbeus Woods a man whose idea and designs were both surreal and cutting edge.So, we have a man who hates the Public library and has set his mind on opening a library in the famous skyscraper in New York that AT&T once owned, which has no windows. We have a man on the edge talking about making a library and these writers in his town. The book originated when Krasznahorkai was a writer-in-residence in New York. He also hates the public library in New York like Mevill does.
whose materials could never be read by anyone, not that I am saying that any reader would want to read personal notes of this sort, instead of Dante and Shakespeare and Homer and Plato and Newton and Buddha and so forth, no-o-o, of course not, I too would much rather read Dante and Plato and Homer and so forth, since not even I attach any great significance more precisely and in fact none whatsoever-to what I have so far written down, nor to what is to follow, except that this is all I am able to contribute, so I will still write it down, I am not sure if I’m being clear, but that’s all I intend to say about this, and now, after all this back and forth, I’ll resume, and return to the afternoon when I had first set out downtown on my Melville Ramble, heading for Gansevoort Street,
Again other writers an places as he folow the ramble
This is one of those books that made us want to reread Melville. have read three books from Meville including Moby dick. I also thought of the recent Argentine novel by Rodrigo Fresán, which told us that at one time the Mevill name was spelt the same way as our hero’s. This is a book for fans of Krasznahorkai and Bernhard. The character is almost a Bernhard-like character, in the way he views the world and his disappointment with it. It’s also a nod to the things Krasznahorkai found when in New York; Lebbus Woods is one of his building ideas. Then, Lowry, I read ‘Under the Volcano’ a long time ago, but I hadn’t tried any of his other works. I see that Lunar Caustic is out of print and not cheap to buy, so it’s on the list of books to look out for in charity shops. This is one of those books that is an ode to a place, Manhattan, and draws you into the city, while also exploring the history of some of its locations, much like yesterday’s book, in a way. Have you read any of the ND storybooks ?
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