Latest Review: "Seiobo There Below" by László Krasznahorkai

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a review by P.T. Smith on László Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below, from New Directions.

Here’s the beginning of Patrick’s review:

In Seiobo There Below, Lázló Krasznahorkai is able to succeed at a task at which many writers fail: to dedicate an entire novel to a single message, to express an idea over and over again without falling into repetition or didacticism. His novel is an insistence that the rapturous does exist, can be met, and that, although there are great risks in receiving or creating such an experience, it is something humans should not forget to strive for. For Krasznahorkai, that something is to help keep this focus on a single theme from drowning the reader; it is an endless theme, with infinite variations. This is seen even in the structure of the novel—a series of stories that are plot- and character-wise independent from each other—numbered by the Fibonacci sequence, suggesting that each builds off the one preceding it and that this building can continue endlessly, and is a naturally occurring beauty.

Reading a single chapter is a rewarding and complete experience in itself and tells the story of some encounter, or missed encounter in a few cases, with a work of art—whether it be a mask, dance, statue, painting, architecture—that surpasses the mundane and comprehensible experiences that make up the vast majority of our lives. None is dependent on the one before or the one after, but there is that sequence, and a pattern of reoccurrences—hand gestures, eyes opening and closing, mirrors helping someone try to comprehend a whole work—while each takes on an entirely different perspective from which to glimpse the spiritual. Time is no barrier: some encounters are set hundreds of years ago, some in an unnamed time, in the future; location is also not a barrier, as the encounters are set all over the world, with Kyoto as the beating heart that is returned to again and again. The fact that no place or time is less fully realized than another is a major accomplishment.

For the rest of the review, go “here:“http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=8742.