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us; she remains a figure in the shadows at the edge of the
prose. We have to speculate as much as Arthur, another
reason for lazy readers to complain. Indeed, this novel
is, despite its conventional, conversational surface,
packed full of implicit allusions to its own provisional
status in relation to its own research. There’s Arthur’s
private film project (that Myerson selfishly misreads as
“solipsistic” when it is precisely the opposite); there’s
Elik’s research project much-criticised by her supervisor;
and there’s the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich
quietly expressing a latent trauma much like that of
Munch’s much noisier The Scream. However, the most
obvious correlation is Arthur’s half-requited infatuation
with Elik. While for Myerson all this is inadmissibly
reflexive, it creates a stimulating vertigo for the reader.
We’re not allowed to forget for very long that the novel,
and so its reader, is subject to the same problems of
knowledge and its refusal.
This final point is emphasised by the occasional
BUY Cees Nooteboom books online from and
chapters in which a kind of Greek chorus intervenes
in the narrative, looking down on the events with cool
compassion. It’s unclear who is speaking. Perhaps it’s
the voice of all that which cannot be included in what
is, necessarily, a circumscribed narrative. Perhaps it’s
Arthur’s late wife keeping a concerned eye on her
husband. But most likely it is the voice from 500 years
from now, when the past-as-tragedy has become the
past-as-absurdist-comedy, just as the life of the Spanish
queen seems to us now. Elik’s project was to rescue
the queen from such a fate. Her supervisor warns her
it might take a decade and be, in the end, futile; no one
is likely to read the results. But she continues anyway,
perhaps because of that, just as Arthur will continue
to pursue Elik. For many, this novel will be similarly
futile, slow-moving, overlong and provisional, but I’m
very grateful that Cees Nooteboom has taken the long
way round and rescued something precious from the
traumatic inferno. �
379
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