Anna Burns -"Milkman"

Stil: 5/5
Complexitate temporală: 5/5
Personaje: 4/5
Dramatism: 5/5
Bonus: nu ați mai citit nimic la fel

O altã carte cu un stil aparte (evident, doar a luat Man Booker Prize-ul). Pe mine m-a cam scos din sãrite la început, dar odatã intrata în ritm mi-a fost mai uşor de citit. Desi nu mi s-a potrivit, am apreciat stilul Annei Burns, se cunoaşte cã este foarte lucrat şi cã propune un mod specific de a te raporta la lume. E o analizã foarte minuţioasã a oamenilor, evenimentelor şi a propriilor gânduri şi reacţii, cumva un flow of counsciousness pentru obsesiv-compulsivi. Este o disecare a firului în 1000. Fiecare detaliu este întors pe absolut toate pãrţile, inclusive cele potenţiale, imaginare şi imposibile. Iar paradoxul constã în faptul cã personajul principal (personajele nu au nume în carte, dar sunt excesiv de individualizate, chiar şi aşa), în ciuda acestei hiper-analize, este forţat sã realizeze cã nu înţelege lumea în care trãieşte. Este adevãrat şi cã face parte dintr-o comunitate implicatã profund într-un conflict absurd (îţi ia vreo 100 de pagini ca sã-ţi dai seama despre ce este vorba -religie, politicã, sexualitate etc.), imposibil de rezolvat, pe care oamenii îl iau ca atare, fãrã sã-l conteste, unde moartea apare ca un alt fapt divers, un nou motiv de bârfã, o modalitate de a-ţi descrie familia alãturi de gradele de rudenie (la un moment dat îţi dai seama cã totul seamãnã foarte bine cu Irlanda de Nord).

"As for the gossips, and their response to my response, I knew I was confounding them as I had intended to confound them, even if I hadn’t intended confounding myself as well. It transpired though, that they didn’t care for confoundment and complained that my demeanour was improper, that it was resistant to ordinary treatment, that it was against the common weal, that I was almost-inordinately blank, almost-lifeless, almost-sterile, almost-counter-intuitive which was not and couldn’t ever be, they said, normal for a person on this earth ceaselessly to be. As for their use of "almost" –almost-inordinately blank, almost-lifeless and so on- that of course, on my part had been meant. Although I’d said it was imperative to present myself as blank and empty, what I meant was almost-blank and almost-empty. This was because preciseness and clean-cut methods might work perfectly and give a certain bromidic satisfaction on paper, but they wouldn’t do at all, or fool anybody for a second, in real life. Such meticulousness of planning smacked of aforethought, and obvious aforethought in this community -especially if you were trying to dupe it- was not a good thing. Unless you were dealing with the immensely stupid which I wasn’t, it was best to muss things up, to crease things, to leave tea-stains, to place a small but partial muddy footprint not exactly in the middle of the issue but slightly to the side of, and hopefully suggestive of, an incidental to the issue. So that part worked. But they said I was ungenerous in my facial expression, stressing “expression” as in singular, as in, I only seemed to have one. Near-expressionless too, was what they said it was. It was near-arid, near-solitary, near-deprogrammed and again I took hope from their not saying it was inscrutable. Inscrutability here, as with obvious aforethought, as with topsoil thinking, didn’t work. At first they said they weren’t sure if I was displaying an unamiable Marie Antoinetteness by being stuck-up, by thinking I was above them. Then they decided that no, probably this was some eccentricity in keeping with my character, most likely stemming from all that reading of ancient books I did while walking about. They said that overall, my not being one thing or the other was proving a drain on their resources, which didn’t stop them though, from inferring me all the same. A bit eerie, a bit creepy, they decided, adding that they hadn’t noticed before but it was that I resembled in my open-but-closed perspective the ten-minute area. It was as if there was nothing there when there was something there, while at the same time, as if there was something there when there was nothing there. I was a condition athwart, they said, transverse, not social, though they did mitigate this with, "But perhaps that’s only one side of her." However, as they didn’t believe there was any other side, that just brought them back to the beginning, to me having only the one."

Tânãra care este personajul principal (prin ochii cãreia şi avem acces la lumea din carte) este vãzutã de societate ca fiind o ciudatã pentru cã are “prostul” obicei de a citi pe stradã. O evadare din realitate atât de ostentativã încât produce repulsie şi blamare în comunitatea unde orice pas greşit duce la moarte. Iar cititul, alãturi de falsa hiper-luciditate, se dovedeşte o metodã ineficientã de auto-apãrare. Doar pentru cã îţi creezi propriul univers unde sã modelezi viaţa pânã la obsesie nu îţi dã controlul la care speri. Ba dimpotrivã. Te lasã dezarmat atunci când realitatea va da buzna, imposibil de a fi opritã de bariera psihicã care nu aduce decât o alienare la nivel subiectiv, complet neputincioasã în faţa exteriorului intruziv. Dar avem un fel de happy-end (pentru cã existã, evident, un dumnezeu al cititorilor).

"These past months, ever since the beginning of Milkman, I was getting an education on just how much I was impacting people without any awareness I’d been visible to people. "It’s creepy, perverse, obstinately determined," went on longest friend. "It’s not as if, friend," she said, "this were a case of a person glancing at some newspaper as they’re walking along to get the latest headlines or something. It’s the way you do it -reading books, whole books, taking notes, checking footnotes, underlining passages as if you’re at some desk or something, in a little private study or something, the curtains closed, your lamp on, a cut of tea beside you, essays being penned -your discourses, your lucubrations. It’s disturbing. It’s deviant. It’s optical illusional. Not public-spirited. Not self-preservation. Calls attention to itself and why -with enemies at the door, with the community under siege, with us all having to pull together -would anyone want to call attention to themselves here?" "Hold on a minute," I said. "Are you saying it’s okay for him to go around with Semtex but not ok for me to read Jane Eyre in public?" "I didn’t say not in public. Just don’t do it while you’re walking about. They don’t like it," she added, meaning the community then, resuming that looking-ahead of hers, she said she was not prepared to get into amphibologies, into equivocations, into the auld "over the water" double-talk, but if I cared to look at it in its proper surroundings, then Semtex taking precedence as something normal over reading-while-walking –"which nobody but you thinks is normal" -could certainly be construed as the comprehensible interpretation here. "Semtex isn’t unusual," she said. "It’s not not to be expected. It’s not incapable of being mentally grasped, of being understood, even if most people here don’t carry it, have never seen it, don’t know what it looks like and don’t want anything to do with it. It fits in -more than your dangerous reading-while-walking fits in. This is about awareness and your behaviour doesn’t display awareness. So, looked at in those terms, terms of contextual environment, then yeah," she concluded, "it is okay for him and it’s not okay for you." "