Reading In Red felt remarkably similar to watching a kinetic sculpture in motion--fascinating, but a little cold. ( )

The book is full of beautiful images, and Merwin is right that it has echoes of "Michaux, Kafka, Calvino, and Saramango."

But the images just keep coming, as if magic needs to be renewed a half-dozen times on each page, as if each magic thing mustn't be allowed to linger more than a line or two. I can't quite understand why that should be: why can't Tulli imagine something magical and wonderful, and keep the image going for a page or a chapter? And why does she think magical things need to be so frantically renewed?

Here is an example. On p. 54, a bullet unexpectedly kills someone. It's unexpected because the bullet was fired twenty pages and several years before, and had "circled the earth an unknown number of times since the day" it was fired. The man who has been shot "swayed, his moist hand slid down to his watch chain and stopped at the gold pocket watch, and that very moment black, tainted blood spattered down onto his clothing."

That's the opening magical occurrence, and the opening image, in a chain of images. I'll quote the following passage in full, without omitting anything, but with comments interposed.

"Dash it," he grunted. "This is a new coat!"

(To me, that line is a nice example of black humor: not funny, in the sense that I didn't laugh, but an appropriate contrast to the poetry of the shot that had been circling the world waiting for its target.)

"And he slipped to the ice-covered ground, into a pale blue and purple emptiness."

(This is suddenly sublime.)

"Because of the frost, rigor mortis stiffened his body so quickly that he ended up lying on his catafalque with his dead fingers gripping his watch,"

(A bit of surrealism)

"which ticked loudly, to the embarrassment of those attending the funeral."

(Suddenly, comedy.)

"One lusterless blue eye peered at the timepiece from beneath a half-closed lid."

(Another visual joke, as if for good measure.)

The entire book goes at this pace: something sublime, a piece of black humor, some surrealism, a joke, something beautiful, some poetry, more humor... it's not the images and ideas I don't like, but their relentless rhythm. As if any one idea couldn't stand by itself, as if a sublime image wouldn't work without support. Is this what Karsten Harries called the "kitsch economy," the need to accelerate stimuli because each one needs to outdo the last? Or is it a writer's tic, a leftover of literary surrealism? Is it intended to be perceived as condensed poetry? I find it exhausting, enervating, endless, and timid: it's as if Tulli couldn't get up the courage to let herself tell a story with just one, two, or three absolutely beautiful images. Too much work goes into ensuring that we are never left alone with our thoughts, or with a picture we can really explore, really get to know.

*
Postscript

When this was posted on Facebook, Matthias Düwel asked:

""it's not the images and ideas I don't like, but their relentless rhythm." ?????? Did you ever read Bruno Schulz or Gombrowicz, to name just two great Polish writers that bombard you with endless images… .and what exactly is wrong with that?"

I replied this way:

Matthias Gombrowicz is one of my favorites, and I like Schulz too. So let's see: in Gombrowicz there are these tremendous weird fascinations, like scratches in walls, birds hung in bushes, twine, things that can't be mentioned on Facebook... he's always going somewhere in his wonderful eccentric way. To me, Tulli seems to rely more on a stock of literary devices: magic realism, Calvino-style surrealism, black humor, suddenly poetic images, suddenly sublime or beautiful moments, novels compressed into sentences, suddenly excessive sentiment. So I suppose that's what I am noticing, as much as the rhythm of the images: I see the mechanisms, the influences, the choices, coming one after another. Gombrowicz amazes me! Tulli doesn't. Thanks, Matthias, for helping me think about that. ( )

What an unusual story! At times I found myself rereading sections trying to follow the plot, and at other times simply because the language was so beautiful. In only 158 small Archipelago pages, the author tells a story that feels large in history and space.

Whoever has been everywhere and seen everything, last of all should pay a visit to Stitchings. Simply take a seat in a sleigh and, before being overcome by sleep, speed across a plain that's as empty as a blank sheet of paper, boundless as life itself. Sooner of later this someone - perhaps it is a travelling salesman with a valise full of samples - will see great mounds of snow stretching along streets to the four corners of the earth, toward empty, icy expanses. He'll see pillars made of icicles, their snowy caps lost in the dark of a wintry sky. He'll draw into his lungs air as sharp as a razor that cuts feeling away from breath. He'll come to appreciate the benefits of a climate forever unencumbered by restless springtime breezes, by the indolence of summer swelter, or the misty sorrows of autumn. He'll take a liking to frost, which conserves feelings and capital, protecting both from the corruption of decay.

So begins the story of Stitchings, a small town in Poland that could be anywhere but is nowhere. It is mysterious and changing, but with certain signposts that help the reader move through history. In the beginning, Stitchings is occupied by the Swedish, "bearing in mind that a Swedish garrison is better than any Russian, Prussian, or Austrian one, just as a Swedish partition is better than any other possible partition." Historically, Poland is said to have been partitioned three times, by the forenamed powers, although there have been other times when lands were annexed. This fourth partition puts us in a mythical, but familiar place. But Stitchings does not remain fixed in time and space and is subsequently occupied by Germans, then Russians during the World Wars. In addition the topography changes, and Stitchings is later a port city. At times, it is almost always dark, with only a few hours of daylight lasting through the noon meal. By the end of the book, it is almost always light.

As for the plot, it revolves around the families who own the three dominating companies in town. Matches are made and engagements broken, wives are spirited away by outsiders in very mysterious circumstances, and business rivals compete at the expense of others and of the town itself. A doctor reports the death of a woman, yet she refuses to be buried and continues reading French romances. Insomnia, the senselessness of war, and corruption are themes that run throughout. Reading In Red was like reading Gogol, yet with a delicious delicacy of language that is its own. There is so much to talk about in this book, and it definitely deserves a rereading to fully appreciate all that it contains. A truly fascinating read, and I look forward to reading more works by Tulli.

Whoever wishes to leave Stitchings can avail himself of two methods. If he is an outsider - for example, a traveling salesman of his own virtues, obliged to compete for a favorable market, or a collector of experiences whom life has taught humility - without a second thought he ought to ascend at dawn in a passenger cabin suspended beneath a dirigible balloon. For it's easy to sail among the clouds, where the sun casts its pink rays over the cranes of the port and the docks, over the roofs of the banks, over the stock exchange, over Ludwig Neumann's works producing radio sets, Slotzki & Co.'s sanitary appliance factory, and Loom's munitions plant, whose chimneys send dark smoke curling into the morning sky. If this person wishes before starting preparations for his journey to study the train timetables or the brochures of shipping lines, he'll quickly realize that the desire to leave bears no relation whatsoever to the calendar or the clock. The right moment never comes at any time. ( )

Magdalena Tulli's In Red (W czerwieni 1998) uncovers the pattern of life in the Polish town of Stitchings: it is a pattern that recurs three times within the first half of the twentieth century. The pattern varies by season and generation, but each recurrence is woven with similar threads of growth and greed, hope and despair, and the constant looming presence of war and death.

The introductory sentence to each section hints at the different shadings of each section:

Whoever has been everywhere and seen everything, last of all should pay a visit to Stitchings…. Winter everyday of the year and a darkness that softens contrasts and smoothes the sharpness of edges. (7)

Anyone who makes it to Stitchings appreciates its misty grayness and the moist warm breeze in which desires flourish so handsomely.(56)

Whoever wishes to leave Stitchings can avail himself of two methods. (106)

Tulli's protagonist must be seen as the town itself, and the major characters are the three major businesses in town (along with their familial owners): Loom & Son, the makers of corsets and collars and operator of depots; Neumann's, the phonograph record manufacturer; and Strobbel's Works, the porcelain factory. The generations change, and the products are modified for changes occasioned by war and modern life. But although power is tightly controlled, the inevitability of disintegration slowly unravels the fabric of the town.

It begins when Stefania Neumann delays accepting the proposal of a young lieutenant, and he is sent off to the battlefront. Stefania continues to sew her trousseau until she learns that he has sold the engagement ring to pay off his gambling debts. Despairing and distracted, she picks up red thread and embroiders a rose among the white lilies. Frightened at the sight, she picks out the red silk threads, and they are borne by breezes throughout the town. The fate of every man on whom a red thread lands is to die in the war.

As do so many magical-realist tales, In Red couches its horrors in folkloric devices that soften the impact upon the readers—at least initially. We don't have to recoil in pain or shrink from the gory details, but we are brought to understand how those who loved idealistically turn rigid and cold, how those whose hearts stop beating refuse to die, and how easily those who were exploited can become the exploiters.

In Red is mesmerizing—Tulli stitches her readers into her town, which at the end of the fable goes up in flames. When I finished the book, I had been transported into a strange, yet oddly familiar place, and I knew I had to read the book a second time to begin to understand how Tulli explores and exercises the power of storytelling. ( )

http://wineandabook.com/2011/12/29/review-in-red-by-magdalena-tulli/

Translated from Polish by Bill Johnson, the main character in Tulli's In Red is the fictional town of Stitchings. Part portrait, part magical realism, Tulli creates a town from which there may be no escape, chronicling the life and death of an ensemble of the town's figureheads. Chaotic, claustrophobic, and intensely lyrical, Tulli's strength lies in her insane command of language to create the mood and atmosphere of the piece.

Rubric rating: 7 ( )