Eva Hoffman (1)Recensioni

Hoffman has written an in-depth look at the history of one Shtetl, Bransk, in eastern Poland. She covers hundreds of years, from the earliest settlement to the destruction of Bransk I during the Holocaust.

Hoffman is mostly even-handed yet doesn’t gloss over the centuries of abuse and cruelty toward the Jews of Bransk and Poland in general. This is a very difficult book to read but it’s a valuable addition to Holocaust literature and to tooth Jewish and Polish history. The author saw a documentary about Bransk and was so interested that she followed it up with much in-person research.

Highly recommended, not least for its look at how mindless hatred and political manipulation can cause unspeakable tragedies.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3834524.html

What's it about? Eighteen-year-old protagonist, born in 2004, discovers that she is her mother's clone, and spends the rest of the book working through her resentment against her family and others.

Is 2022 really going to be like that? Not unless cloning technology had got a lot further in 2004 than we realised.

Is it any good? Moody young women are often quite a good read, and this isn't awful.

Inspired by a documentary Hoffman saw on Frontline, this is the biography of Bransk, a Polish town that no longer exists thanks to the thoroughness of the Nazis under Russian rule. One of the most difficult segments to read was the recounting of young Bransk boys conscripted into the Russian army. They were religiously converted away from their birthright and upon returning home, shunned by their own people.
As an aside, I am afraid of cult figures and the power they can wield over seemingly intelligent people. I was surprised to learn of a man in the 1750s by the name of Jakub Frank who claimed he was the Messiah. He wanted to rule all of Poland and had a strong sexual appetite for young girls and orgies.

I'm kind of a sucker for immigrant memoirs. And I was just reminded through another reader's review of how much I liked 'The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit'. 'Lost in Translation', for me, lacked much of what made Sharkskin Suit so wonderful: connection to the family, to the place's history, and a narrator who I connected to. I loved the idea of 'Lost in Translation', and found much of it very interesting (especially the whole idea of how immigrants adapt in their new language). But ultimately it was too academic for my taste--Hoffman's training made her story feel very distant.

Review: Lost In Translation by Eva Hoffman.

The book is an extremely soul searching memoir and a classical kind of journal of an upward mobility and learning process of thoughts and placement of words. It’s also an insightful meditation on coming to terms with one’s own uniqueness, on learning how deeply culture affects the mind and body, and what it means to accomplish a translation of one’s self.

Eva Hoffman, born in Cracow, Poland in 1945, immigrated with her family to Vancouver, B.C. in 1959. It’s a story about learning how to get through the struggles of life with a new language and understanding. The memoir is beautifully written relating Eva’s story of her young life in Poland, her teen-age years in Vancouver, and moving on to her college life in the United States.

Eva felt caught between to languages, and two cultures. Yet, Eva’s perspective also made her a keen observer of America in the unsteadiness of change. Eva had a gift of describing her thoughts including ultra-fine, cleverly indirect emotional descriptions of language-related responses to words and culture differences. It was heavily worded, thought provoking, sometimes mind boggling but a great read.

I enjoyed the challenge of her prose and reactions of her translation of the two cultures. I highly recommend….

fine picture of a vanished world, though it fades from memory rathe quickly ( I read it some weeks before writing this). what remains: how totally that world has vanished ( the Nazis were thorough); the shtetl was in Poland under Russian rule ( I mistakenly thought it was in Russia); the ones who escaped the Nazis did so through a combination of luck and strong character (just one of those was not enough).

okay. too much thinking. not enough details. she gets married, divorced without really talking about either one. the book ia all her thoughts and feelings of moving from poland and losing her culture. maybe that's what it's about.

Time is all at once the most universal, most intangible, most misunderstood concept. We make time, take time, keep time, lose time, waste time, borrow time, but never really understand it. Eva Hoffman’s Time takes a look at time from four different vantage points: physiologically, psychologically, culturally, and contemporaneously. And in each perspective, we see time in a whole new light.

Hoffman manages to steer clear of the marriage of space and time and instead tries to get a more clear, personal look at time. All animals, human included have an understanding of biological time. Cicadas, swallows, and even bacteria have internal clocks, guiding their lives into certain patterns. Sunrise and sunset govern a lot of biological processes. From the broadly scientific, Hoffman then progresses to the individual’s perception of time and then the culture’s use of time. Some cultures don’t view time as a single linear thread from one event to the next, but rather as several overlapping cycles that help to describe the moment or the season. Lastly, she investigates how modern history has changed how we interact with time

All throughout this book, there were moments when I had to go over her arguments, but overall, it was quite an intriguing read. We hardly think about time as a construct in both our lives and our society. Hoffman’s writing flows well, which is good for a book on such a heady topic. Those who enjoy a healthy amount of reflection will be right at home here. A delightful read.

Eva Hoffman takes a look at the concept of time from 4 perspectives: Time and the Body, Time and the Mind, Time and Culture and Time in Our Time. She examines time from biological, philosophical and sociological perspectives. The biological section discusses aging and our perspectives on death. Time and the mind looks at consciousness and the psyche. She has a brief discussion on how widely varied different cultures see time, and finally discusses time in terms of our current information-laden culture. Given the complexity of the language in this book and its underlying philosophical/scientific nature, I am surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Perhaps this was the right book for the right time in my life - in any case, I found myself nodding in agreement with each chapter, and I learned quite a bit, too.

Overall, I enjoyed this book; I liked the strange theme about translation, and I generally like these multi-cultural, immigrant-negotiating-a-new-place stories.

I hated how reptitive she was. She writes these really interesting sentences to describe things. Like she used the term "oblique angles" to describe someone's face. I liked that, until, less than two paragraphs later, she used the exact same term to describe something completely different. And then again, a few pages later. If you write something original, it's not gonna be good if you manage to immediately turn it into a cliche in the space of a few pages!

this wasn't a book that i could get into. it's well written and actually parts of it should be quite interesting, but somehow it wasn't. i think a lot of it is that she talks about how she had to develop a distance and detachment from things in order to feel she was a part of her new life, her new self, after immigrating, and so she writes with this detachment about herself. that makes it hard for the reader to get too involved or to care too much. she has some interesting ideas toward the end especially - i really liked what she said about identity in america vs poland - but overall just found it too hard to invest in.

Really enjoyed this book, though thought the intro chapter could have been an afterword. Excellent to get an idea of what it was like immed after the cold war ended in Eastern Europe. Loved the personal interviews and thoughts from people the author met on her travels.

The back of the book describes it as ‘graceful and profound’ and I will say simply that that is far too succinct a summation to be absolutely accurate. While the book does have a lot of interesting things to say about society and language and the complexities of moving between them it lacks a strong thread to bind the whole together. The narrative is a mind-bogglingly featureless one that fails to ever really grasp the reader’s attention. I found my mind wandering every few paragraphs and it was a force of will to actually affix my attention to it long enough to finish. No doubt my failure to find the core of the novel was at least in part due to my inability to read it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Putting aside the book’s merits as a whole, it did still manage to inspire new ideas though these appeared in very small increments primarily in accordance with the maximum attention span of the reader. The author moves from Poland as a young child and has only a tiny introduction to the English language. All of her internal dialog is in Polish and it is interesting to see how this colors the new world she’s living in. It emphasizes strongly the impact that the language in which we’re immersed has on our way of thinking and our way of interacting with others. As time goes on and she acquires more of a North American attitude her words too change both internal and external until her Polish language roots are no longer sufficient to sum up the whole that she has become as a person.

The other small hook in this novel lies in the cultural contrasts. She sums up well the “lostness” of American identify in which everyone seems to be pushing for more and more and more yet still feels they never have enough. While her more European background seems to be more placid, more content with the world as it is without having to constantly put such herculean effort into competing with everyone around you. These two combating viewpoints are a source of constant debate among her Polish friends until she too finally accedes to the American need to push.

So in summation, the book is a lot to digest and defied my expectations upon beginning it. It is a work to be studied and pondered upon rather than enjoyed. There is some small possibility of both, but the reader will be hard pressed to find an appropriate stopping point along the prosy primrose path to ponder the author’s intent since the book boasts three long chapters of 100 pages each and no real breaks anywhere in between where one can take a breath and internalize what has been presented.

A well-written meditation on the subject of time. Her chapters travel from the body to the mind, and to the culture.½

“If all therapy is speaking therapy-a talking cure-then perhaps all neurosis is a speech dis-ease”

Eva Hoffman is fascinated by words and fascinated by language and her autobiographical “Lost in Translation” is at times a brilliant thesis on the situation of an exile living abroad. It is also a lively and extremely well written personal account of a Jewish woman coming to terms with her former life in Poland and the new life she has made for herself in America.

Eva’s book is in three parts and the first of these is titled “Paradise” and describes her early life in Poland until as an 11 year old she emigrated to Canada with her parents. Her formative years in Poland takes on a rosy glow as she recounts a very happy childhood, however there is an undercurrent to her memories. Her parents are Jewish and they had fled to the Ukraine to escape the holocaust and now back in Cracow they are outsiders to the mainstream of Polish life. Hoffman creates a feeling of being one step apart from her Polish neighbours through the eyes and thoughts of herself as a child and with the hindsight of an adult, with some seamless writing. Life in Poland is not quite Paradise, but it is comfortably secure in a way that America never is for Eva. The importance of friendships, of family, of an identity and a place in the world comes through, but the other side of this is a recognition that the Jewish community is still under threat and results in the family’s decision to emigrate.

Part two is titled “Exile” and Eva tells of her early teen years in Canada (Vancouver) and her College life at Rice University in Texas and then at Harvard University. She captures perfectly the difficulties of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. She is a gifted pupil in both literature and music and finds that her peers at school and University are so different that at times she feels like an alien. It is though she is trapped inside herself as the childish behaviour of the young Canadians leaves her bemused. Their values are different and the language and cultural barrier leaves her unable to express herself properly, but her desire to learn and to fit in gets her through. She says:

“But these days, it takes all my will to impose any control on the words that emerge from me. I have to form entire sentences before uttering them; otherwise, I too easily get lost in the middle. My speech I sense, sounds monotonous, deliberate, heavy-an aural mask that doesn't become me or express me at all. This willed self-control is the opposite of real mastery, which comes from a trust in your own verbal powers and leads to a free streaming of speech, for those bursts of spontaneity, the quickness of response that can rise into pleasure and overflow into humour. Laughter is the lightning rod of play, the eroticism of conversation; for now, I’ve lost the ability to make the sparks fly”

Passages like this express perfectly the difficulties and frustrations for immigrants who have to make their way in a country where they need to learn a new language. Hoffman also pins down perfectly the cultural difficulties that appear once progress in the new language has been made; how in conversation with native speakers so many things are 'a given' to them but for the newcomer this is not the case leading to missteps at the least and a comical floundering and even insults at the worst.

Part three “The New World” describes Eva’s adult life and success in America. She finds that she can use her different cultural background to her advantage as well as her new approach to the English language. Her differences can be appealing to others and she forges ahead in a society, whose rules she assiduously learns and uses to her own advantage. It is in this final section of her book that she takes time to reflect on Cultural life in America recognising the differences and the vastness of the country. Life in New York is compared to life in Cracow; Poland and not always to its advantage. As an academic she reflects on cultural differences, on language and the use of words interspersed with snapshots of incidents in her life. The way her writing changes from the real world around her to thoughts on life’s big issues reminded me a little of Robert M Pirsig's wonderful “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

As an outsider she considers that she is able to stand back and reflect on American life and a visit back to Poland reinforces her thoughts. She can view herself as two people; one whose life would have been so different had she remained in Poland. She is also able to criticise aspects of American life and finds it rather amusing that she ends up going to see a shrink like so many of her American friends. This leads her to thoughts on loss of identity, not just her own, but also something that is endemic in many of her American friends. Finally she attempts to draw some conclusions:

“No, there’s no returning to the point of origin, no regaining of childhood unity. Experience creates style, and style, in turn creates a new woman…….. Like everybody I am the sum of my languages-the languages of my family and childhood, and education and friendship, and love and the larger changing world-though perhaps I tend to be more aware than most of the fractures between them, and of the building blocks…….”

With its concentration on certain aspects of American society, part three did not have the same impact for me as the previous sections of the book, and this I think is because I could not personally relate to all of the issues raised. Hoffman’s views on the American (New York, academic) way of life, might be viewed as antagonistic by some although they seem to chime with more populist views of America, at least with those of outsiders.

As an Englishman now resident in France and struggling to cope with the language and cultural differences, Eva Hoffman’s book really spoke to me. It was chosen as a next read by my English book club group and I am sure that they will all identify with Hoffman’s insightful thoughts on some of the difficulties facing new immigrants. I have to say I loved this book; there were so many “Oh Yes” moments and it is one that I will certainly want to re-read. Unhesitatingly recommended

Even if you are not an immigrant, this is probably an interesting read, but if you are, it may help you work out a couple of things for yourself.
Here is an excerpt I liked:
"This is not a place where I happen to be, this happens to be the place where I am; this is the only place. How could there be anywhere more real?"
And another:
"But the terms don’t travel across continents. The human mean is located in a different place here, and qualities like adventurousness, or cleverness, or shyness are measured along a different scale and mapped within a different diagram. You can’t transport human meanings whole from one culture to another any more than you can transliterate a text."½

A great story of immigration by a Polish-Jewish writer and intellectual. It's simple, lyrical, perceptive and true.

Story of Bransk. Description of the culture and conflicts that influenced Christian villagers in making decisions to conceal or betray Jews when the Nazis invaded.

This is definitely a book for thinkers. There is not much action, but a lot of interesting questions. It is about a 17 year-old girl who reflects back on her childhood and comes to realize that her mother is keeping a secret from her. After she finds out what the secret is, she has to cope with it. She goes out on her own to figure out what it really means: What it means to be human, and what makes individuals unique.

I am not musical, nor do I know one whit more about the world of music than I learned (and promptly forgot) during recorder lessons in elementary school. Or if you'd like a more recent musical lesson, during my reading of the exquisite An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. I am also not political, and while I do have some knowledge of the Chechen situation, I live a pretty insular life so my understanding of said situation is sketchy at best. These two holes in my cultural/political knowledge did not bode well for this book right off the bat.

This is the story of internationally acclaimed, rising star pianist, Isabel Merton. She travels all over Europe for her concerts but she is adrift and rootless, having left her husband shortly before the tour series. But then she is introduced to a man who is exiled from Chechnya and who tells her he is trying to get support for the exiled government. When he continues to show up at her concerts, they fall into an affair. Isabel dutifully trots along to political meetings where she understands nothing, not only because she doesn't speak the language but because she can't recognize zealotry even when it swirls in the very air surrounding her. Meanwhile, she also continues to call home to her excessively accomodating husband (ex-husband?) and to use up all his good psychic energy in an effort to stay on an even keel herself.

While I didn't understand much that was musical here (as admitted above), I did recognize and dislike the stereotypically narcissistic artist, the center of her own narrow, very specialized world. Despite being a book ostensibly fueled by passion, the descriptions were cold-blooded and I didn't truly believe that the affair was a consuming thing that could only be subsumed to causes even greater than love. Actually, I saw precious little love of any sort in this unless zealotry counts. I would have loved to see real passion rather than wavering insularity. This was a lot of florid philosophizing coupled with tepid characters.

The plot builds to a predictable crescendo but the question is whether I cared at all. And the short answer was no. By that time I already wanted to quit reading. Yes. Me. The compulsive reader who finishes every book she starts. Reading this made for a painful reading experience. I was bored out of my gourd. I don't mind being stretched. I even enjoy being stretched. Hell, I cheerfully signed on for many extra years of school simply for the joy of books, reading, and learning. But this book, this book was brutal. Its cardinal sin? I was bored. Certainly other people disagree with me as the book is a WNBA Great Group Read this year, but in all honesty, of all the reading groups I've been in over the years, from pretentious literary groups to light beachy read groups, there's not a one to which I'd recommend this book. It sucked the very life out of me and briefly extinguished the joy of reading.

Thanks (I think) to The Other Press for sending me a review copy of this book.

Despite my pretentious airs (I do apologize for those) and attachments to all things literary, I tend to avoid contemporary literature the way one would avoid lunch dates with the in-laws or scheduling that overdue appointment with the gynecologist. So, why pooh-pooh these potential greats?

They’re scary.

Contemporary lit is scary because, well, it’s unfamiliar terrain. I feel safe with my classics – they’ve been identified as such because smart men with doctorates and expensive cars have deemed them so, and you know what? I trust those smart men. It’s this everyday, new stuff that we’re not so sure about.

Cue English 416: Modern World Literature.

This has been my saving grace this semester. So far, I’ve encountered Japanese, African, Polish, and Canadian writers…and there are more to come. All of them published post-1960. My favorite book thus far: Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman, an autobiography published in 1989.

OK. Here’s the gist – Eva migrated from Poland to Vancouver, Canada with her family when she was 13 years old (1959). She struggles to forge a new identity in her foreign environment, but finds it near impossible under the unwieldy weight of the English language. During her college years, Eva finds herself in the United States (Texas) where she continues to toil under a false identity, along with her counter-cultural American peers.

This book is chock-a-block with Eva’s shrewd insights – this woman has a keen understanding of relationships, the nuances of cultural rituals, the effects of a lingering nostalgia. Her description of what she refers to as a generation of “willed in-articulation” is spot-on. While her long-haired, drug-riddled peers welcome Eva without question, she still grapples with their fragmented sense of identity, their rejection of articulated clarity.

Also, I could not get over the fact that English was Eva’s second language – she handles the language masterfully and deftly – it is smooth and luxurious writing, while retaining the capacity to cut through even the most frozen sympathies with its razor-sharp emotional sword.

Hoffman is funny, perceptive, poignant. Definitely a worthwhile read – it’s not difficult to get through, but it is packed with profound insights that you won’t want to skim over lightly.

I could write a blog devoted entirely to this book, but I won’t. And I won’t go into a laborious explication (just yet, anyways). But I will leave you with a few words from Eva, herself, regarding her struggle with a new language and her subsequent loss of identity in the foreign landscape of North America:

“But mostly, the problem is that the signifier has become
severed from the signified. The words I learn now don’t stand for things in the
same unquestioned way they did in my native tongue. ‘River’ in Polish was a
vital sound, energized with the essence of riverhood, of my rivers, of my being
immersed in rivers. ‘River’ in English is cold – a word without an aura. It has
no accumulated associations for me, and it does not give off the radiating haze
of connotation. It does not evoke” (Hoffman, 106).

“What has happened to me in this new
world? I don’t know. I don’t see what I’ve seen, don’t comprehend what’s in
front of me, I’m not filled with language anymore, and I have only a memory of
fullness to anguish me with the knowledge that, in this dark and state, I don’t
really exist” (108).

Does Eva finally learn to navigate through this foreign setting? Will she ever penetrate the particular nuances of this new language and culture, while salvaging her fragmented sense of self? Read on to find out. You won't regret it.

This one really got a grip on me but I rushed through so quickly that it's hard to put together a coherent opinion. Hoffman seems to be sifting through the states of being too attached versus being too dislocated, too cynical versus too naive, natural versus studied, accepting versus rejecting, etc. When I reached the end, breathless, I felt that it was an excellent book but that I didn't understand the medium in which the plot was enacted. Being resolutely non-musical myself (believe me, I've tried) I had to accept on faith Isabel's experience of playing, her ability to channel the music in a special way, and what Anzor heard in her performances. I should probably read it again.

Eva Hoffman: Verdwijnen in de geschiedenis: vertaling Pauline Moody: 1994: Eerste Engelse druk 1993: 416 blz: De Kern/ Bodoni

Vlak na de omwenteling in Oost-Europa maakte de uit Polen afkomstige Eva Hoffman in 1990 en 1991 twee lange reizen door Oost-Europa. Ze bezocht Polen, Tsjecho-Slowakije (imniddels onderverdeeld in Tsjechië en Slowakije), Hongarije, Roemenië en Bulgarije. Ze ontmoette daarbij tal van mensen met wie ze sprak over de veranderingen en wat die nu precies betekend hebben.
Het boek is vlot geschreven en door de talloze beschreven ontmoetingen ook inhoudelijk zeer de moeite waard.
Uitgelezen: vrijdag 20 september 2002, waardering ***

Spoilers abound. The other reviewer is more generous than I am, also I don't know Portrait of a Lady so I didn't get the references. The book has good aspects, and I actually can understand the characters pretty well, but they were irritating. And there didn't seem to be much counterweight to the middle-of-the-road friends.