‘Salvation Impossible’
Review of BIRTHMARKS
By Kees ’t Hart
(De Groene Amsterdammer, 11 May 2016)
Can anyone, after the holocaust, maintain illusions about humanity and love? Perhaps not, and most of Arnon Grunberg’s protagonists see their bitter attempts to carry on hoping fail miserably. See: novels such as Tirza (2006), Our Uncle (2008), The Man Without Illness (2012) and The Truce (2015). Most of his books, as a result, were bitter. With some comic relief, as obviously novels are ridiculous as such, attempting to maintain illusions no matter what. The thought of surviving on a desert island; killing a white whale; the existence of nice and kind people; conquering your own sexuality; building a plane; a white boy befriending an Indonesian one; bidding your father, a religious maniac, farewell. The belief that indeed not all hope is lost.
Without a doubt, Grunberg is firmly resolved, time and again, to finally put an end to it: illusions about the world, not this time, and then he just writes another book about them. In which he shows (for the very last time) that we should be done with illusions and our longing for them, all of it bull shit, just read this, it says so right here, and then after a while he will write a new novel on the exact same topic. This paradox perpetuates his work.
And it is what Birthmarks is about too. Psychiatrist Kadoke sees the foundations of his profession — he works at the Amsterdam suicide prevention centre — crumble right before his eyes. Why keep people from suicide when life itself is completely pointless and each effort to rescue someone ends catastrophically? Would it not be better to support people in their attempts? He desperately clings to professional protocols forbidding too much empathy with ‘the clients’ whilst seeking to preserve his own life. Of course this leads to all sorts of vintage Grunberg-reasoning; it’s not all grim in this novel. See: ‘is that not what psychiatry is about: seducing the patient to live, if only for psychiatrists not to become superfluous? Every profession creates its own perpetual motion.’
Grunberg seizes the chance to paint an exceptionally beautiful portrait of his deceased mother
Kadoke keeps telling himself that, just as every other health professional, he simply has to suppress the ‘narcissistic caregiver’s wish’. But he does not manage to, no matter how hard he tries. He starts a kind of private ‘care institution’ in his own house, where the lame shall lead the blind. He takes the girl Michette, a ‘hopeless case’, in to look after his own mother (another hopeless case). Through this set up, Grunberg seizes the chance to paint an exceptionally beautiful portrait of is deceased mother. She was there, right in front of me, with all her stubbornness, resistance and aversion to just about everything.
For more information about Arnon Grunberg and his latest novel BIRTHMARKS, please visit the Lebowski Agency website or arnongrunberg.com.
