Jose Saramago's, "All the Names"
Jose Saramago, a Portuguese writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. After reading about his novels, I decided to try "All the Names" for it seemed the most peculiar of the lot. Let me start by saying that Saramago is probably an acquired taste for many; especially those who expect direction from their authors. Saramago must hate indentations and quotation marks and probably punctuations for the most part. He blends in dialogues, monologues, thoughts and narration together. Even though this seems ridiculous, when you read him you don't notice the lack of said structure. Whether that is Saramago's intention isn't clear, but he succeeds with this aberration nonetheless.
The story follows a tremulous clerk who works at the Civil Registry, a bureaucratic monster, where he records the names of the newly born, the dead and updates the transitions of the living. As a hobby he secretly follows the lives of famous people of his own selection from the registry. One day he accidentally comes across the card for a normal citizen, an unknown lady. Inexplicably Jose's drawn to the lady's life and sets about gathering data about her whereabouts. His quest to find the lady's identity is the novel's story. Senhor Jose, the main character, could easily be seen as a hybrid creation of Kafka and Borges. The same can be said about Saramago. The metaphysical imagery, tortured monologues, the wistful way chance and circumstance play with characters, the crushing machinery of life and the unforgiving exaction of the workplace are all part of the picture that Saramago paints with magnificent leaps in narration with concern for the absurdest feelings in man.
The story follows a tremulous clerk who works at the Civil Registry, a bureaucratic monster, where he records the names of the newly born, the dead and updates the transitions of the living. As a hobby he secretly follows the lives of famous people of his own selection from the registry. One day he accidentally comes across the card for a normal citizen, an unknown lady. Inexplicably Jose's drawn to the lady's life and sets about gathering data about her whereabouts. His quest to find the lady's identity is the novel's story. Senhor Jose, the main character, could easily be seen as a hybrid creation of Kafka and Borges. The same can be said about Saramago. The metaphysical imagery, tortured monologues, the wistful way chance and circumstance play with characters, the crushing machinery of life and the unforgiving exaction of the workplace are all part of the picture that Saramago paints with magnificent leaps in narration with concern for the absurdest feelings in man.
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