The World's Literature in Europe discussion

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Unlike the normal events leading to the tragic ending of Flanagan's first novel Death of a River Guide , this second one is tragic throughout having redemption and hope at the end. The characters in particular the father, an emigrant from Slovenia, copes with past wartime events abroad and present adversity on a hydroelectric dam project in Hobart/Tullah Tasmania, escaping from despair through destructive alcoholism. Another main character is his daughter Sonja, whose own despair centers on a tragic childhood event, the surreal death of her mother Maria. The setting switches between those harsh years of Sonja as child of an alcoholic father in the mid 1950s-early 1960s and as a returning adult pregnant with new life to Tasmania around 1990. What this book's title signifies seems a paradoxical impossibility for now.* This isn't a hard read but there's some unfortunate, unpleasant occurrences, redeemed for the better as the novel ends. It would be exciting if commenters compare those two early Flanagan novels and/or build on or add to the topic of this book.

*Wikipedia's page for Flanagan's book links the reader to a Zen kōan by Hakuin Ekaku, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kōan#The...

For me, this was an easier read than Death of a River Guide. But I didn't ever feel immersed in the characters and their lives. I felt rather removed from them, as though I was watching them on TV, rather than getting involved with their experiences.

And the explanation of Sonja's mother's leaving (no spoiler here, it happens in the first chapter) was either too subtle for my understanding, or left deliberately non-specific, as I didn't understand why she did what she did when she did. (I understand the why, just not the when.)

I've just begun this story after having extensively browsed through it. In the opening, the fragile mother's going into the snowstorm, walking away from her child's calling out, was reminiscent of something in Iceland, and for some reason snow in Australia is hard to fathom. Like you say, Lagullande, her leaving the home was an act-in-itself without explanatory reasons. The description of the snow and the sight of the tavern people was beautiful though with the snow filling in her burgundy shoe steps and with the seemingly departing stare at the contrasting conviviality and noise of tavern characters, as she is quickly noticed out there alone while she is noticing the faces in the crowd. Quite a contrast between the snowing, quiet, nocturnal natural world and the doings/sounds of the folks inside. The identified motorcyclist by name does raise wonder as to what part he might play or might have played.

Since this is the second Australian book I've read in as many weeks that uses imagery of roadkill to set a mood, I'd just like to take this opportunity to see our Antipodean friends' carnage and raise them an iconic American anthem dedicated to the tragic demise of one of our best-beloved furry, four-footed fellow mammals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5hz...

There. Now try topping that.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "I've just begun this story after having extensively browsed through it. In the opening, the fragile mother's going into the snowstorm, walking away from her child's calling out, was reminiscent of ..."

Might the opening scene be something of a mise en abyme? The black and white certainly seems to capture Flanagan's moral universe. The male (leather jacketed with helmet) on the motorcycle (with empty sidecar) presence announced in the crowd, seems to represent the father. As you say, quite a contrast with the lone, silent, unannounced, burgundy-clad (bleeding?) Maria walking in whiteness is associated. The snow filling in Maria's footprints represents Sonja. Chilling too considering this is the event Sonja spends the book trying to remember. (view spoiler)[Maria goes into the woods to hang herself, right? Or did I misread the rest of the book? (hide spoiler)]

Don wrote: "Might the opening scene be something of a mise en abyme? ..."

Still reading the book. I gather that "mise en abyme" in literature refers to a story within a similar story. Don, is that what you are saying, that Bojan reflects on Sonja's coming back to Tasmania? sort of unexpected to his assumption that "the dead don't come back".

Asma Fedosia wrote: "Don wrote: "Might the opening scene be something of a mise en abyme? ..."

Still reading the book. I gather that "mise en abyme" in literature refers to a story within a similar story. Don, is that..."

I just learned the phrase "mise en abyme" in the Australian lit class so I took it out for a spin. Sorry. I believe the professor used it to describe an opening prologue that, like an epigraph, encapsulates the theme or plot of a book.

Can't find it now but I think he mentioned some of the following:

Reduced models of the work contained within itself, internal duplication, is sometimes referred to by modern French critics as mise en abyme.
Originally referring to the emblem repeated in miniature within heraldic design, the term is also employed to describe a picture in which a figure holds
an image of itself in miniature which, in turn, holds a still smaller model of itself, theoretically ad infinitum. The term can also refer to the infinitely
decreasing and more distant figures reflected in two facing mirrors. The mise en abyme as a literary device was first described by Andre Gide, yet the
device itself certainly is nothing new. It has been used in one way or another for centuries...

http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/...

Don, thanks for the digital article "FICTION WRAPPED IN FICTION". The terms "duplication", "concatenation of causes", and "contagious magic" in it illustrate the definition of mise en abyme. An example from this novel might be Sonja wondering, reflecting on her own mother, what kind of mother she will be to her own born child. Another instance of mise en abyme might be the events in Bojan's home country replaying in his memory in Tasmania.

Also, somewhere around the book's middle, the motorcyclist from chapter 1 briefly makes a reappearance, identifying himself as Preston in his new role in media coverage. Sonja hears him telling the story of noticing Maria walking through the snow storm and acknowledging her bitter end.

Again also in mid-book, the scene in which Bojan tells young Maria's story to Sonja, the author wrote it, it seems to me, in the slow, still motion of Ed Munch's painting of The Scream, mouth's moving without emitting words; similarly, there's young Sonja's being left hours and hours in Bogan's FJ and bar patrons seeing but not hearing her lonely screams.

Besides the intensely human characteristics portrayed in this story, the author in at least this one and the former one (River Guide) reveals the environment's once beautiful, edenic, and nourishing characteristics, then the changes wrought by neglect or by active destruction of cutting down eucalypt forests and of damming natural waterways.

Looking forward to Gould's Book of Fish for comparison.

Lagullande wrote: "...the explanation of Sonja's mother's leaving (no spoiler here, it happens in the first chapter) was either too subtle for my understanding, or left deliberately non-specific..."

I have about fifty more pages, being at the point where it seems some more revelations about Maria's mysterious disappearance will be revealed. This is just after Sonja's hallucination about being in the driverless FJ carrying Umberto and with the host of previous people in her life around and Bojan flying/fallling through the air and is just before her birth labor. This rising action is creating suspense.

Don wrote: "Might the opening scene be something of a mise en abyme?..."

There's are several instances of a series of mirrored images. One of my favorite ones at the end when Sonja and her baby are on the grass gazing at the mirrored reflection of the forest as the ballerina revolves on the music box. That woodland also points back to a major scene at the novel's beginning, to its clearer definition later in the novel and its similarity to tragedies in the refugees' homelands.

Those Slovenian lullabies are intriguing. To not know their meaning in words is frustrating. Then and again, you might recall that Bojan in the maternity ward answers the midwife's Betty's request for him to express his feelings in words. His reply is something like that some things are more important than words. So, in those sung lullabies you can imagine the sweet soothingness for mother and child.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "....being at the point where it seems some more revelations about Maria's mysterious disappearance will be revealed......."

I would be interested to know what you thought about the anticipated revelations, Asma?

Lagullande, quite the revelations in the final chapters. Like you've noted above, the specifics about Maria's reasons are only to be guessed at. The horrible conditions for the characters on the hydroelectric project would have been unbearable and in combination with loss of hope, even after having made an escape from Europe's horrors, would have affected their families in their drunkenness and poor living conditions and in their prejudiced encounters with previous settlers. There still were revelations about Maria and Bojan's early years, particularly explaining the meanings of the story's objects, like the edelweiss, the lace, the wood, the photos. In the last chapters, Bojan reveals to Sonja and the reader what he remembered about Maria and his homeland. I agree with you that Maria's life at Butlers Gorge remains hazy in part because Bojan's voice is missing about Maria's daily life. He seemed to have been absent from home in body and spirit while at work and in the bar. I did find revelations about the diverse group of men who composed his fellow workers; to me, their hopelessness seemed similar to Bojan's at the beginning. The second half of the story transforms Bojan, especially after Sonja's brief reappearance in Tullah to visit him. Then, he gets new hope through the possibility of Sonja's carrying new life. The scene in which Maria's corpse is discovered in the forest seemed both personal in the echoing memories of Europe and impersonal in a cameo character pointing into the trees.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "...some things are more important than words..."

How different is that from the way the cornucopia of real and made-up language is illustrated in Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, when Mr. Pollit is full of inventive language to communicate with his children. But he doesn't talk much, or talks through his children, to Mrs. Pollit.

In Flanagan's story, Bojan didn't bother to talk to his growing daughter Sonja, Bojan's silence towards her a thorn in Sonja's adult memory of him. He later uses his solitary silence by personal choice to concentrate on constructing the wooden furniture set for Sonja and the baby. At the end, he is apologetic to Sonja because his English is still not as good as he'd like it to be. It's evident to Betty the midwife that Bojan carries his origins with him.

Don wrote: "The snow filling in Maria's footprints represents Sonja. Chilling too considering this is the event Sonja spends the book trying to remember...."

Flanagan seems to me to be in the post-modern camp, identified by his interest in the reconstruction of historical events. Snow-filled footsteps for me represents the speed with which events are obscured and the lack of evidence available for their reconstruction. The mother left the house, she was seen in town, but the path between those points was obscured. The historian attempts to reconstruct the path which becomes more biographical--what the historian imagines to be the logical connection between two points. The connecting narrative uses all manner of fiction techniques. History is biography, and biography is fiction. The snow-filled footsteps seems to be a metaphor for the problem the historian or biographer faces. Gould's Book of Fishes seems to be even more self-consciously concerned with this issue.

The recurring shattered tea set metaphor offers a thread of continuity. It points to the fragility of family relationships and the difficulty in reconstructing them. Doesn't Bojan attempt to reconstruct the teapot when he's in a relationship with the lady on the apple farm? Might Bojan's effort to reconstruct the teapot parallel his effort to come to terms with his wife's death and reconstruct his relationship with Sonja and honor his love of his wife through a positive relationship with their child?

Susan wrote: "...The historian attempts to reconstruct the path which becomes more biographical--what the historian imagines to be the logical connection between two points..."

Excellent point! Yes, there's quite a lot of historical reconstruction in this novel based in a period of Australian social history. The history of daily life in events and people, so vital in their being lived through and felt psychologically, evaporated without a trace, but for attempts afterward to reconstruct those lives, how it was and why. The author's craft works with the existential throughout the tools of memory and imagination. The characters' lives back then are significant for today's readers's understanding of life.

Susan wrote: "The recurring shattered tea set metaphor offers a thread of continuity. It points to the fragility of family relationships and the difficulty in reconstructing them..."

I agree. The tea-set metaphor is beautiful throughout the story, a parallel with the story of Sonja's homelife, its breaking apart, its attempted remakings, and its practically perfect reassembly in the conclusion. Each in their own remembered relationship with mother or wife, Sonja and Bojan take the novel to overcome grief and helplessness with regard to their loss of a normal home and to what led to their loss. Daughter's and father's attempt to create a new home with each other is possible only with the arrival of a new generation untainted by the despondency of the past.

Susan wrote: "Snow-filled footsteps for me represents the speed with which events are obscured and the lack of evidence available for their reconstruction. The mother left the house, she was seen in town, but the path between those points was obscured...." Thanks for that comment. I appreciate the insight.

For me the Koan as a title is a disconnect. I can see how coming to a completeness by non-rational path might apply to the narrative, but the reference seems to be a cultural anomaly. Any help on this?

Susan wrote: "For me the Koan as a title is a disconnect. I can see how coming to a completeness by non-rational path might apply to the narrative, but the reference seems to be a cultural anomaly. Any help on..."

I agree it seems a cultural anomaly. From wikipedia, I got the following:

"Victor Hori comments:

...in the beginning a monk first thinks a kōan is an inert object upon which to focus attention; after a long period of consecutive repetition, one realizes that the kōan is also a dynamic activity, the very activity of seeking an answer to the kōan. The kōan is both the object being sought and the relentless seeking itself. In a kōan, the self sees the self not directly but under the guise of the kōan ... When one realizes ("makes real") this identity, then two hands have become one. The practitioner becomes the kōan that he or she is trying to understand. That is the sound of one hand."

As you suggest, the culmination of Sonja and Bonjan's "relentless seeking" appears to be in the understanding and acceptance they seem to achieve at the end. Like a koan, they "realize" their relationship and accept the broken teapot that is their lives as it is.

A recent comment made by Nikolai about Birdcatcher in The Wind-Up Bird speaks of "Shinto animism". I see how 'animism' in general might apply to The Sound of One Hand Clapping. In animism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism), the possession of a soul for physical things is granted. Throughout the story, Bojan and fellow wogs are not perceived as fully human if this book's historical interpretation is true. It takes the novel to humanize Bojan, showing his spirituality (=his ability to feel sorrow) and his emergence of fine personal qualities.

About the perplexing title, which resembles the "koan" ("the sound of one hand"), Susan and Don did well to understand how that koan might apply to this novel. The qualities of the "sound" can be rough or gentle, loud or soft, hurtful or soothing as a hand touches someone/thing else with a power violent or tender as it's felt by the refugee, by Sonja, by Sonja's baby.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "A recent comment made by Nikolai about Birdcatcher in The Wind-Up Bird speaks of "Shinto animism". I see how 'animism' in general might apply to The Sound of One Hand Clapping. In animism (see http..." That is a very interesting thought Asma. For me at least, Flanagan seems to eschew the notion of redemption and I don't see much of it, if any, in his books so far. Maybe he sees animism and koans as an alternative route to reach some level of fulfillment. I don't get the idea Flanagan is writing from a Christian perspective.

Don wrote: "...Maybe he sees animism and koans as an alternative route to reach some level of fulfillment. I don't get the idea Flanagan is writing from a Christian perspective....."

I agree, Don. He's a secular writer. Neither a benign nor evil supernatural Being is there. From my perspective, this story was how humans treat each other and as a result how personal suffering is expressed by the oppressed. What to call the more optimistic ending? and how did Bojan and Sonja turn around their lives to be more loving and to find inner peace, and as a result to find a share of happiness between them and with the small group of friends? The first step was to escape from the pathology of circumstances keeping them oppressed and unhappy :)

Asma Fedosia wrote: "About the perplexing title, which resembles the "koan" ("the sound of one hand"), Susan and Don did well to understand how that koan might apply to this novel. The qualities of the "sound" can be rough or gentle, loud or soft, hurtful or soothing as a hand touches someone/thing else with a power violent or tender as it's felt by the refugee, by Sonja, by Sonja's baby. ..."

Also, the "sound" of one hand is silence and it might be the silence of estrangement in which the estranged seek the clasp of the other. The singular seeks community even through the pain which is required to address past experience and enter again into communal experience and potential pain as well as joy. So the sound of one hand clapping is potential, waiting, suspended experience.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "What to call the more optimistic ending? and how did Bojan and Sonja turn around their lives to be more loving and to find inner peace, and as a result to find a share of happiness between them and with the small group of friends? The first step was to escape from the pathology of circumstances keeping them oppressed and unhappy :)...."

I remember a discussion of the Myth of Sisyphus. The victory of the absurd man is a joyful acceptance of his condition. Nothing in his rock-pushing world changed, but his attitude toward his task and his role in his world did change. In this case, I think the inescapable human drive for community, love, connection, drives the one hand to seek the other and although the "clap" may be intermittent and fleeting and require overcoming painful memories, the drive is not stilled. The metaphoric silent hand in search of the other silent hand knows, prepares, and guides on some level the coming together of the hands. The shortening of distance between hands requires an acceptance of self and willingness to give and receive. The change of attitude--the willingness to embrace pain and joy--make the potential clap possible.

I'm still not sure why I'm applying an Oriental concept to an Eastern European in Tasmania.

Interesting that Bojan is a woodcarver with the ability to shape useful things out of a firm, but pliable (living) material.

Susan wrote: "Also, the "sound" of one hand is silence and it might be the silence of estrangement in which the estranged seek the clasp of the other..."

The estrangement in this novel I saw in Bojan and Sonja's (father and daughter's) relationship. She remarks how silent Bojan was during her youth and adolescence. It's the outcome of the book that the estrangement between them becomes words and deeds of endearment. Outside of that familial relationship, Bogan's positive development begins when he declines to meet his drinking buddies, opting instead to be alone to woodcraft Sonja and her baby's presents. His development continues in a similar vein when he leaves the mind-numbing labor in Tullah to travel through that mountain-winding, rain-stormy, dam-breaking journey to Sonja's city. Bojan completely turns his loyalties around in the course of the story!

Susan wrote: "...the inescapable human drive for community, love, connection, drives the one hand to seek the other and although the "clap" may be intermittent and fleeting and require overcoming painful memories, the drive is not stilled..."

Your comparison of this Australian novel with, say, the Japanese novel The Woman in the Dunes in terms of the main characters' development during the story kept me thinking for awhile. Both characters find some measure of peace from their ennui and torments in an obsessive project which enthused them wholly in mind and body--Bojan's woodcrafting and Jumpei's sand/water experiment. Their productivity eventually made them independent from their oppression in Tullah and in the sand village, keeping Bojan from the bar and Jumpei from relying on others' provision of his daily water. Besides freeing those protagonists from the negative circumstances, their new sense of selfhood earned them higher esteem from Sonja and from the villagers, so that each might live a more normal, healthy life as well as might bridge the estrangement to Sonja and to the villagers.

Susan wrote: "Interesting that Bojan is a woodcarver with the ability to shape useful things out of a firm, but pliable (living) material."

I absolutely loved Bojan's returning to the creative skill of woodcarving--a very surprising turn in the story! Out of all the wood forest's torn down, someone is producing something artful, practical, and healing from some of it.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "Their productivity eventually made them independent from their oppression in Tullah and in the sand village, keeping Bojan from the bar and Jumpei from relying on others' provision of his daily water. Besides freeing those protagonists from the negative circumstances, their new sense of selfhood earned them higher esteem from Sonja and from the villagers, so that each might live a more normal, healthy life as well as might bridge the estrangement to Sonja and to the villagers. ..."

One difference between the two stories is that Jumpei's invention both frees him from dependence on the villagers for water and offers him an opportunity to share his invention to improve the community access to water and through the gesture of sharing, build community--a voluntary community. Authentic community is only built when both parties are free to choose. In One Hand the dam metaphor suggests a parallel internal damming or "imprisonment" of emotions or emotional expression. Bojan's work and journey culminate in familial relationship. In Woman in the Dunes the "imprisonment" is external and the sand pit is the metaphoric prison. The "prison" forces Jumpei to re-evaluate his identity as a scientist whose vision is limited to spotting insects within a meter viewing range. He traps, pins, and catalogs. The woman has a practical knowledge of science. Sand is wet, rots wood, is a fluid mass rather than independent particles. Work and adjusted sense of science facilitate building the basic familial unit and open an avenue to choosing greater community.

Oppression for Bojan is manifest in immigrant status, loss and unexplored identity. Oppression for Jumpei is externalized in the sand pit metaphor and focuses on unexplored identity and applied scientific solutions.

Thanks, Asma, for expanding my fledgling comments and challenging more thinking!

A website devoted to Butler's Gorge, a real, now bygone, village where some of the fictional characters Bojan's and Sonja's lives took place, is at http://centraltas.50webs.com/ButlersG... .

Susan wrote: "... In One Hand the dam metaphor suggests a parallel internal damming or "imprisonment" of emotions or emotional expression..."

True, Susan. Bojan's dangerous, dark, and drenched mountainous drive to leave behind the town to visit Sonja coincides with as you say a metaphor of the dam's great spilling over. I don't know whether that spillover during the heavy rain, breaking the dam, is an historical occurrence, but certainly the "metaphor" as you've pointed out connects Bojan's emotions with the event at the dam, sort of freeing him at long last.