While reading ‘The Trenchcoat’ by Norman Manea, I was reminded greatly of two books written in a similar time period and location. The first of which was, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, by Milan Kundera, and the other being, ‘The Reader…
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with censorship, literary parallels, paranoia, regime
While reading ‘The Trenchcoat’ by Norman Manea, I was reminded greatly of two books written in a similar time period and location. The first of which was, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, by Milan Kundera, and the other being, ‘The Reader…
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with censorship, literary parallels, paranoia, regime
Norman Manea’s short novella called “The Trenchcoat” in the book “Compulsory Happiness” has a simple title that is straight to…
Like some of my peers in the class, I also watched the lecture before reading the text, and I feel like I will continue to do so for the remainder of the readings. The context of the Romanian communism and the censorship that Manea had to endure to write and publish this story is something […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with communism, paranoia, suspicion
The start of this work interested me as it began in media res and I was excited to have a plot driven novella. At the beginning, with the talk of how people don’t have parties anymore and are ready to kill for a drop of gas, I was drawing parallels to our current situation today. […]
I found The Trenchcoat by Norman Manea to be a bit difficult. I felt lost at times and I was unsure of what was happening in the book at moments. The plot begins with a dinner party in which the guest feel awkward and obligated to be there. Perhaps because Ioana’s husband Ali is co-workers …
I am very glad I watched part of the lecture video *before* reading this novel. Having a little bit of context about what was happening in Romania made things make a lot more sense than they would have had I been reading blind. Even still, this novella was pretty confusing, not because I couldn’t understand the writing it seemed by design, I can reread a page and still be left feeling confused even while understanding context and what had occurred plot wise. I get the sense it was intentional, a reflection of the time the book was set in and it seemed obvious that most of the characters didn’t fully understand what was occurring either. There was a overarching feeling of fearful uncertainty thinly veiled by social niceties like those that were seen at the dinner.
Initially, I was pretty confused by the first section of the novella, a conversation occurring sometime in the future that had absolutely no context at the time. As soon as the trench coat Dina found was mentioned, I formed a little theory that these two were connected. I was very pleased to find that I was correct and it was in fact carelessly (or possibly not carelessly?) left by one of these confidential agents. To me, this makes the trench coat a symbol of mistrust. Something left behind as a symbol of the governments mistrust in its people, to go to such lengths as using other peoples homes for meetings/interviews without permission and also the mistrust the people had for their government that was not supporting them how it should and went behind their back to report about *them*.
When it comes to the ending, I found it to real fit together with the title of the collection of these novels ‘Compulsory Happiness.’ Laughter, usually a pretty obvious sign of joy, but in a context where it was once again a thin veil to cover the grim reality the characters were living in. Laughing at the situation, or maybe laughing to try to ignore it and pretend everything was fine.
Overall, I enjoyed this novella it was really interesting and I also never hear much about Romania in general so it was cool to read something from there. I am very interested to see what Manea has to say on Thursday, about the book but also about his experiences and anything else. I don’t think I have ever had the chance to hear an author talk about their life/writing live before so it’ll be cool. I have a somewhat unrelated question for Manea: How did moving to the U.S. affect your writing? I can imagine that there was some culture shock and I wonder how that may have changed how you viewed things.
I am very glad I watched part of the lecture video *before* reading this novel. Having a little bit of context about what was happening in Romania made things make a lot more sense than they would have had I been reading blind. Even still, this novella was pretty confusing, not because I couldn’t understand the writing it seemed by design, I can reread a page and still be left feeling confused even while understanding context and what had occurred plot wise. I get the sense it was intentional, a reflection of the time the book was set in and it seemed obvious that most of the characters didn’t fully understand what was occurring either. There was a overarching feeling of fearful uncertainty thinly veiled by social niceties like those that were seen at the dinner.
Initially, I was pretty confused by the first section of the novella, a conversation occurring sometime in the future that had absolutely no context at the time. As soon as the trench coat Dina found was mentioned, I formed a little theory that these two were connected. I was very pleased to find that I was correct and it was in fact carelessly (or possibly not carelessly?) left by one of these confidential agents. To me, this makes the trench coat a symbol of mistrust. Something left behind as a symbol of the governments mistrust in its people, to go to such lengths as using other peoples homes for meetings/interviews without permission and also the mistrust the people had for their government that was not supporting them how it should and went behind their back to report about *them*.
When it comes to the ending, I found it to real fit together with the title of the collection of these novels ‘Compulsory Happiness.’ Laughter, usually a pretty obvious sign of joy, but in a context where it was once again a thin veil to cover the grim reality the characters were living in. Laughing at the situation, or maybe laughing to try to ignore it and pretend everything was fine.
Overall, I enjoyed this novella it was really interesting and I also never hear much about Romania in general so it was cool to read something from there. I am very interested to see what Manea has to say on Thursday, about the book but also about his experiences and anything else. I don’t think I have ever had the chance to hear an author talk about their life/writing live before so it’ll be cool. I have a somewhat unrelated question for Manea: How did moving to the U.S. affect your writing? I can imagine that there was some culture shock and I wonder how that may have changed how you viewed things.
blog#9 – the Object of Anxiety — I’ll admit that I am not very good at remembering character’s names when reading, especially during the part I have to read in dialogue. But in this book, many characters have a kind of tic or catchphrase that they say which I thought was really interesting. Whatever their […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with anxiety, Compulsory Happiness, norman manea, object, perspective, Romania, time
I initially started reading this text before watching the lecture – a mistake on my part. Prior to watching the lecture, the text didn’t make much sense to me, it was vague and ambiguous and I felt as though I was missing context. After watching the lecture and learning that Manea had written this text […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with censorship, meaning, Symbolism
