The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Melancholy of Resistance by László KrasznahorkaiMichael Pinker
László Krasznahorkai. The Melancholy of Resistance. Trans. George Szirtes. New Directions, 2000. 320 pp. $25.95.
The more one knows, the harder it is to stop shuddering. Whom may one trust? Who can say what more or greater horrors await as all hell threatens to break loose, denying individual will, devastating the commonweal? If force must prevail, which force, and at what cost? Such concerns haunt the characters in this first of László Krasznahorkai’s novels to be translated into English, dissecting their lives as residents of an ordinary Hungarian town under siege by powers alien in their hostile inscrutability. Valuska’s mother, Mrs. Plauf, returning home by train, is accosted by a young man who apparently believes she means to seduce him. What can this presage? Valuska then witnesses the arrival of a traveling carnival featuring a huge whale carcass, a retinue of shady, desperate men seething in its wake. The peculiar fascination exerted by this exhibit, along with its lingering menace, increasingly baits public attention, while Valuska’s peculiar gifts and pathetic innocence mark him as a victim-in-waiting. As the irruption of the threat posed by the show’s hangers-on enfolds Valuska in its spread, a larger flood of savagery is unleashed on the town until order finally is restored. Mrs. Plauf falls before the wholesale rapine, but her friend Mrs. Eszter, cannily taking the measure of the situation, seizes the initiative to rout the intruders and assume effective control of local affairs. Flushed with triumph, she enshrines Mrs. Plauf as a martyr, but her ruthless efficiency augurs no good.
For narrative sophistication and acute discernment of contemporary social unrest, Krasznahorkai’s artistry merits serious notice. Unraveling his long, rhapsodic sentences, which suggest a language of bad dreams, proves captivating entertainment. May further translations grant him the wider notice he deserves among English-speaking readers. [Michael Pinker]