The Discovery of Slowness
I can’t get over how good this book by Sten Nadolny is. When you think how lauded all sorts of crap is, and then you come across this lying on the shelf, it’s astonishing. I had no idea. You really think this would be especially talked about in Australia, set as a text etc, but no. They go with rubbish like Life of Pi.
This simply and clearly written story follows the life of John Franklin. He experiences life more slowly than other people. He can’t catch a ball, he can’t catch a bully. It takes him longer to perceive things and therefore he has to soak himself in the details and really know something before moving on. At first he sees this as something to overcome; it comes to him later that it is a gift of sorts, or at least a personality type. Later he decides that it needs a slow person and a fast person together to make good decisions.
He joins the navy and experiences a battle, and therefore a life-long distaste for war and violence. He joins Matthew Flinders on his trip to Australia. He travels to the Arctic to seek the North-West passage. It was only at this point that it clicked that this wasn’t just a novel. He wrote a book about it and became famous and then became governor of Tasmania and did some great reforms. Then he went to the Arctic again and died. This had actually been the only thing I had known about John Franklin; his ship getting stuck in the Arctic and everyone dying. How incredible, when he did all these other things!
What an amazing life, and what an amazingly well written book. It’s written by a German, I can just imagine the purplish horror this would have been if an American had written it. It’s so understated, perfectly so, the sentences so quiet, every word placed together carefully and neatly. He has turned a diamond of a life and shown it from a completely unique angle, so that it is something never seen before, something beautiful. I need to seek out other books by this brilliant writer.
This simply and clearly written story follows the life of John Franklin. He experiences life more slowly than other people. He can’t catch a ball, he can’t catch a bully. It takes him longer to perceive things and therefore he has to soak himself in the details and really know something before moving on. At first he sees this as something to overcome; it comes to him later that it is a gift of sorts, or at least a personality type. Later he decides that it needs a slow person and a fast person together to make good decisions.
He joins the navy and experiences a battle, and therefore a life-long distaste for war and violence. He joins Matthew Flinders on his trip to Australia. He travels to the Arctic to seek the North-West passage. It was only at this point that it clicked that this wasn’t just a novel. He wrote a book about it and became famous and then became governor of Tasmania and did some great reforms. Then he went to the Arctic again and died. This had actually been the only thing I had known about John Franklin; his ship getting stuck in the Arctic and everyone dying. How incredible, when he did all these other things!
What an amazing life, and what an amazingly well written book. It’s written by a German, I can just imagine the purplish horror this would have been if an American had written it. It’s so understated, perfectly so, the sentences so quiet, every word placed together carefully and neatly. He has turned a diamond of a life and shown it from a completely unique angle, so that it is something never seen before, something beautiful. I need to seek out other books by this brilliant writer.
posted by Carly at 7:38 am
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