Craig’s Comments (group member since Apr 23, 2023)

Craig’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

Sontag’s introduction, which I read at the midpoint of the book, brought invaluable focus and background to this complex work.

Thanks to the “Obscure” group for opening the door!

Ken, I didn’t appreciate the “cholera” comments at all, and I just skipped over those quotes without understanding. So thanks for the enlightening.

There are so many examples of the overwhelming and complex ways that Stalin carried out the purge of former communist revolutionaries.

Xenia gets squashed just like all the others; by cunning, malevolent and terrified foxes who use sweet promises and dark threats to get her to go along without a scene, and then how Krantz casually mentions that she should consider herself under arrest when they reach Russian airspace.

I found chapter 8, The Road to Gold to be a fine example of Serge’s exceptional ability to portray the mindset of Kondratiev as he, convinced he will soon get a bullet to his brain, navigates (or is it endures), his last days, right up to meeting with the Chief and the schizoid meeting and seemingly spontaneous reprieve. Such powerful writing.

After reading the first five chapters, I decided to read the introduction by Susan Sontag. This was very helpful to my aid my understanding of the book, the time in Russian history, and most notably, Serge’s life; leftist, anarchist, Trotskyist, communist and then an anti Soviet communist exiled in Mexico. She describes and defends Serge’s position that fiction can be more truthful than nonfiction. Within this Sontag bit, we discover how and why this book (and it’s author) are both considered relatively obscure. So I will now plunge ahead with a new energy and appreciation.

Thanks to Ken and Kathleen for getting this going. I’ve only now finished chapter 5, ( I was floating on a stone raft) and find myself, as always when reading Russian lit., struggling to follow who is who, and then, with foreign (to me) Spanish and Russian political references, I admit I’ve flailed a bit to follow. But the sorrowful tone is inescapable; no one really believes what they are doing is “right” or “just,” but they plod along because of “the cause”(however that is interpreted); planning, hiding, loving, killing, it seems a ghastly game.
I’ve not read the introduction nor the second half of the book yet, so we’ll see what transpires.
“Darkness at Noon” certainly has similarities.
I seems that solving the actual murder of comrade Tulayev, seems almost irrelevant at this point; just another brother offed by either the CC, or the Trotskyists, or a reformer. or a jealous husband, who knows? The dark political and criminal Russian tumult that surrounds this act is the story, so far. Serge will certainly continue to befuddle me with vague allusions and a cast of thugs, true believers and lost souls, if souls are allowed. Interesting

Hi all,

Just finished this and I’ve got to say I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. I am glad this group introduced me to the Stone Raft and Saramago.
The story telling is so rich, with subtle humor sprinkled throughout. The author used the tools of allusion and suggestion effectively; with a “wink and a nod.”
Everything; the migration and rotation of the “peninsula, the dog, the horses, the donkey, the human characters, and the geological issues, the romances, the simultaneous impregnation of all the women of Spain and Portugal, were all just unbelievable enough to keep one invested and interested. The writing style with atypical punctuation was a challenge at first, but allowed ( forced?) me to focus on what was being described or stated. All of this added to the richness of the book.
We were exposed to a lot of Iberian geography, so I reviewed maps of Spain and Portugal; a tour of the peninsula, which seemed to be quite purposeful by Saramago, he wanted us to know about his homeland.
There were, of course, musings about the human experience international politics and of course, a good deal of philosophizing.
Reading the group’s comments and thinking about this book I know there are a lot of subtleties and references which I likely under appreciate. However, I know enough to remain completely befuddled as to the process involved for someone (Saramago) to fold all these ingredients together and create what ends up being a wonderful piece of literature

I love it! I had already decided to read both selected books and I found no credible way to decide which should be our June read. I abstained from the second round to let the group decide for me. Ha! Now that the tie vote has persisted, I intend to read both books and follow both discussions.

Finding an book that meets the obscure definition is a challenge, so I am in favor of overlooking the fact that Ginni has previously read her nomination for our June read. I also like prospect of a couple of choices for the group. So, this is a second for the Odori nomination.

We’ll that’s settled. Now I’ll have to read both THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP and BARNABY RUDGE! 🙂

Speaking of rabbit holes.. I have been exposed to a few of Dicken’s most famous works, but have never taken any sort of deep dive..

In “A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second,” the criminal is approached by bloodhounds while sitting on the site of his victim’s burial, loses his
composure and incriminates himself to the gentlemen he is with. This reminded me of the climactic scene in E.A. Poe’s “The Tell-Tale
Heart,” so of course I looked it up and in fact there is discourse on the influence that Dickens had on Poe, generally and specifically for that famous tale.
So the construct of our obscure book is one that Dickens used to send out literary trial balloons and it appears that both he and his contemporaries used these efforts to further their writings. Fascinating.

My iBook version seems to match up as well. Thanks.

I found an edition on iBooks which was free, and consisted of Chapters I-VI over 249 pages.

Sue, yes to your surmising that Charles and Hartley would have not gotten along well, and that she clearly wanted out of the early relationship onto which our antihero has fixated.

I am struck by how well Murdoch adroitly paints the picture of our antihero Charles. It isn’t clear whether he is simply a narcissist, or meets DSM (psychiatric) criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder, or perhaps even that of Psychopathy?
Murdoch may not have knowledge of the
diagnostic differentiation of these disorders/ traits.
Regardless, Murdoch has Charles thinking and acting in a clearly unhinged manner, far from the manner in which “normal” society behaves.

To me, that is what slowly pulled me along, deeper and deeper into this story even though liking, or empathizing with, the main character is not really an option.

My first Murdoch book and I am entranced by it.
Setting up and masterfully defining Charles (or Chuck) as the narcissist that he is, has been done ever so well (Preserve the ego at all costs and deny reality if that’s what it takes).
I am lead to understand that Murdoch adapts this technique in other works as well.
This is going to get interesting (ugly)!

Hello. I too, am new to this group, and in fact, any book group on Goodreads. To start, Reeds in the Wind was a difficult book to find, and I ended up getting it for free on iBooks. The translation was not perfect at all which made this a bit interesting.
The tone of the book is very stark, archaic and a little bit dark and pessimistic. The manner in which the author utilized the belief systems (superstitions, religious beliefs?) of the characters to influence the mood and tone of the novel was well done. I thought the author had some wonderfully descriptive passages of the countryside.
As the story developed the reader was left trying to piece together what had happened in the past as well as the relationships between the characters. While frustrating for a “just the facts, ma’am” type of reader, this added to the mystic quality of the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the detailed discussions of this group, and look forward to future readings, and discussions.