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Title: Man Walks Into a Room
ISBN: 0385503997
Author:
Nicole Krauss
Publicate Date: 2002-05-21
Publish: 2002-05-21
List Price: $23.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $23.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.99
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1: A dazzling read but very lonely to experience even through fiction...
I read Nicole Krauss' "The History of Love" first and became an instant fan. She has a brilliant mind and a unique ability at transcribing her creativity like no other author I know. Her writing is intellectually engaging and highly addictive. That said, I thought "Man Walks Into a Room" was an excellent book but having read her second novel first, I simply couldnt give this one 5-stars.
It was not difficult to sympathize with Samson Greene; a man with a rich life suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor that results in the loss of 26 years of his life worth in memories, so that all he remembers are his childhood years up to the age of 12. To think about the number of memories one accumulates in just one day, that is a tremendous loss. To not be able to remember someone you loved, certain nuances about that person, certain nuances about yourself (!!)...it's extremely sad. I actually found Samson's ability to easily turn his back on all that more depressing than the medical trauma he was dealt. How could someone feel so little responsibility towards the people in his life. To voluntarily choose to let your personality - the person you were - just fade into oblivion like you never existed...
I expected the book to carry more emotion towards the people in his 'real' or current life than it did. The story centered on a scientific experiment Samson got reeled into while it could have taken a completely different turn, choosing instead to contrast and compare the person, husband, friend he becomes at age 30-something vs. the one he was. I would have preferred that Krauss build on the hopefulness and the chance he was given at starting over (that many of us have wished for) than to plunge into the deep abyss of loneliness and carelessness that Samson displayed. I enjoyed the more emotional encounters between him and his wife, the memories he had of his mother and his tragic re-learning of her death which literally brought him to his knees. To have to relive such personal loss after a life-altering medical tragedy is just too much for anyone to handle. Yet Samson's reflections on his life and his pontificating over how he would have acted in certain circumstances naturally encourages us to build that image of him: someone who was well accomplished, bright, caring, sensitive, playful...but the truth is we dont know that any of it is true, although we desperately want to believe it. Anna, his wife, shares so little that we are left wondering who this man really is. The last few chapters were wonderful because it felt like he was beginning to appreciate the importance of his relationships, although incredibly melancholic and filled with a heart-wrenching dose of loneliness.
In the last two pages you hear from Anna and while your mind had cast her as the victim all along, you learn that she too is responsible for the choices Samson made. Still, we are assured of the indeliable love between the two...in fact, it has probably grown deeper although it is a less romantic love. There is a mutual respect between them and Anna's hesitance to share even her greatest memory with Samson verifies her lack of desire to go back to what once was.
I honestly cant wait for Krauss' next book...I just hope it contains more hopefulness and less sadness like her second novel did. For those who havent yet read "The History of Love", I recommend you read this one first...let her writing dazzle you, and then be blown away by her literary genius in "The History of Love".
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2: A History of Loss
The concept of this brilliant first novel by Nicole Krauss is simple. A man is found wandering in the desert in Nevada. Documents in his billfold show him to be Samson Greene, a thirtyish English professor at Columbia, but a medical examination reveals a devastating brain tumor. His wife Anna comes to be with him for the operation that saves his life but also robs him of all memories past the age of 12. Although he does not recognize her, Samson goes back to New York with Anna, grateful for her loving care. But his memories do not return. More than that, Samson comes to treasure the 24-year blank as a kind of mental refuge. He moves out on his own and eventually volunteers for a program back in Nevada that experiments with transferring memories from one person to another. The results shock him into a state of almost total disorientation, but he painfully begins to discover how to live his life anew.
I cannot but compare this to Richard Powers' recent novel THE ECHO MAKER, also about a man recovering his memory after brain trauma. Although Krauss is the less realistic writer (some of this taut novel seems a little too artfully constructed), she is also simpler, more empathetic, and infinitely more resonant. Indeed, I am amazed at the number of issues she can raise through her central examination of the nature of loss.
The back cover describes Samson as "an emigrant in his own life." Although Krauss herself does not use this term, there is an obvious parallel between Samson's condition and that of any emigrant who has left his previous life behind to start again in a new country -- the defining fact of the American experience (and certainly of mine). Krauss is Jewish, and although the theme is barely touched on in this novel, there are nonetheless echoes of that extreme case of loss caused by the Holocaust, and thus a link to her second book, THE HISTORY OF LOVE, which is one of the most beautiful post-Holocaust novels in recent years, and which shares with this one the belief that some kind of regeneration is possible, even from the most arid desert.
The book is also a parable of the writing process itself. Ray, the scientist who enrolls Samson as an experimental subject, is fascinated by his desire to preserve a mental tabula rasa. But "once you have given up everything," he asks, "don't you have to set down the first mark?" So it is for the creative artist. Samson has found himself essentially a white canvas, a blank sheet of paper. Making the first mark of a new life is a terrifying experience. In the most difficult part of the book, after he has left the experimental facility, we see him wildly constructing almost melodramatic fictions, imagining a fantastic back-story for a boy he meets in Las Vegas, identifying with an ex-hippie returned from India to join a fundamentalist cult. But these are temporary aberrations. The raw material of who he is (the raw material of all writing) has been accessible to him all along, in the memories of his childhood. In search of that past, he visits an great-uncle who has lost his own memory through senility, but who nonetheless is able to offer Samson an epiphany that will prove the turning point.
Finally, this is a love story, though an oblique one. Even when Samson and Anna separate, there is no doubt that love still remains part of the equation. And in Samson's various intergenerational encounters with oddball characters along his way (either young enough to be his students, or almost surrogate parents), there is always the undertow of attraction or affection. But love is also the other side of the coin to loneliness, and its desperate antidote. Perhaps the greatest lesson that Samson learns is the place of loneliness in his life. Curiously, by coming to embrace it, he also arrives at a resolution in the last few pages of the book which, although unexpected and certainly oblique, is also strangely consoling.
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3: Unenlightened
The whole story is cliched and predictable. Even Krauss' reflective writing style too often draws on overused metaphors. There seems to be a repetition in the characters introduced; attractive, young, fragile females or father-figure males.
The mysterious philosophy of self and memory is not conveyed as well as it could be, leaving the reader unenlightened.
The ending is somewhat unsatisfactory.
In the novel's credit, the epilogue is beautiful- although the save comes too late.
In any case it keeps you reading right til the very unsatisfying end.
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4: Almost as good as "History of Love"
I have become Nicole Krauss her biggest fan almost overnight. Reading History of Love was amazing and this book is almost just as good. A great story and a must read.
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5: Man walks into a room
Is an excellent book,well written,Nicole Krauss give us a picture of the human soul.
It is about love, choices,loneliness.
It took me to another place,another time,and yet anybody can relate to the conflicts,moral choices and feelings describe in this wonderfull novel.
Ada,LA CA
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