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Summary: A Book of Many Themes
Review: I was made aware of Jose Saramago after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years back. "All the Names" is the first book of his that I have read. I admit that, despite the mere 238 pages, I was put off by the pages-long paragraphs. Saramago has his own way of putting his words together and, as I found out, he doesn't use quotation marks. However, once I started reading the book, I became at ease with these peculiarities and found his style rather easy to follow.
This is a book about a lot of things and I suspect many more than I picked up on. For me the theme was the anonymity of people in todays society. We focus our attention on the celebrities of the world at the expense of the lonely person down the street. The main character in "All the Names", Senhor Jose, is a man who works in a large government office. His job is to assist is keeping track of the vital statistics of the people, past and present, of his political division. The book and character reminded me a lot of Ismail Kadare's "The Palace of Dreams". As in that book, the main character goes against the grain and discovers things in the process. His passion is collecting information about celebreties. In the process of looking over his clippings, he realized that he had obtained an information card about some common, unknown citizen. He began to wonder just who this person is and that curiosity evolved into a compulsion. His clandestine investigation serves as the bulk of the story. His curiosity about an unknown fellow citizen makes a mystery out of the seemingly commonplace. Therein was the crux of the story as I understood it; we are surrounded by people who all have an interesting story to their lives. However, we bury the multitudes in favor of the rare person of fame. In doing so, we not only grossly overrate the lives of the famous, we end up trivializing our own lives as well.
That's my take on "All the Names" but I could tell that there were many other directions in which this short novel could be interpreted. Saramago's style, peculiarities aside, reminds me a lot of one of my favorite authors; B Traven. Obviously, I will be reading a lot more of Jose Saramago.
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Summary: A book to read.
Review: I won't belabor you with another review of the plot of this text, because so many others have written an elegant summation of it. Besides which, the plot of this text is really not the point of the reading. The theme, as I humbly try to impart it, is about the limited significance most of us have in our lives because we don't know our core nor share it with others. When does one truly experience the act of living? What makes us alive, within ourselves and to others? I think (what do I know?) that Saramago is trying to say that we experience knowing often in superficial ways, a simple collection of obvious facts that are about as interesting to read as a tombstone. I think he wants to remind us that our lives become meaningful when we take risks and share our secrets. It's those events and ties that are true, life sustaining, and eternal.The book is light, quick, riveting, and comical. I found it especially comforting after the tragedies of this past year. You WILL think about this book for a long time.
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Summary: Thanks Nobel Prize Committee!
Review: If he had never won the Nobel Prize, I would never have heard of Jose Saramago. I have read all of his novels and am captivated by his elegant and beautiful writing. It was with a mixture of hopeful anticipation and dread that I read this book: could it possibly measure up to my favorites Blindness and Baltisar and Blimunda. Well I need not have worried, Saramago drew me into his labyrinth from the first sentence. I was reminded of Kafka and Dante's Inferno when reading this story of a lonely public official Senhor Jose who is isolated by istitutions and his work. He represents all of modern humanity in it's struggle to survive emotionally. The book tells of Senhor Jose's attempt to find connections to other human beings, of having to fight all of the barriers erected by modern life. He is the "everyman" of the Twentieth Century. The glimpses of love that he finds during his obsessive quest is enough to transform him into another person. Read the book very slowly to savor the taste of Saramago's prose. He will be remembered as a great writer in distant times.
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Summary: Wow
Review: Im a really big fan of his writing so maybe it is personal bias but this is probably his best book after blindness. He makes the uncommon intriuging and again...I could not put this book down. I don't want to come across as a snooty pseudo academic by saying this, but his characters are so simple and at the same time he explores every facet of their simplicity making them complex. The plot is again, original and ingenious and continues the great tradition of the untraditional love story. But it doesn't feel like a love story, although thats what you get; you also feel a twinge of pathology behind the character but whats great is that you understand this pathology to the point where it seems almost normal and you don't even question why but rather..whats next? This guy is just unbelievable.
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Summary: Evangelical Enthusiasm
Review: In his preface to Douglas Adam's posthumously published collection "The Salmon of Doubt", Stephen Fry makes a rather profound point. He puts forth the theory that, for most of us, when it comes to art, music and literature, there are two types of loves. We can love things for their universality and greatness (he gives the examples of Mozart and Dickens), or we can love them for how they seem to speak to us and us alone (he gives the examples of Bach and Blake). In my experience this is true; I will heartily recommend Jane Austen or Andrew Marvell or Barnett Newman or The Wrens to anyone who asks, but, selfishly perhaps, keep Karoline von Günderrode, Rilke, Rothko, and Xiu Xiu to myself.
This is because, against all evidence, I believe that no one quite `gets' these artists in the way I do. I feel they speak directly to my soul, and that, even if someone else liked them, it wouldn't be in quite the same way.
This book, however, somehow straddles the line. Its retelling of the Theseus and the Minotaur myth (or alternately, its retelling of Kafka's "Before the Law"), somehow manages to transcend the personal and the universal. Senhor José, practically the only character in the text, begins the story as a cipher and ends it as a hero. His descent into madness and unreason is mirrored by his ascent into what Heidegger would have called a Dasein. He becomes both a metaphor for human experience and a full, distinct and `real' character.
Other reviews on this site will supply you with the plot details, so I will not burden you with those, but will merely, evangelistically, implore you to read this book. It is as personal as it is universal, and really, how often can you read a book where a ceiling refers to itself and its peers as `the multiple eyes of god'? I'm betting not too often. As humorous as it is melancholy, and as playful as it is relevant, this book is one to be treasured and recommended.
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Summary: Breathtaking
Review: In the genre of Existentialist novels, this one is peerless. Only L'estranger of Camus had similar emotional impact on this reader. The novel is a cross between Crime and Punishment and The Trial, Dostoyevsky meeting Kafka. The comparison says a lot, but Saramago, in his alchemical brilliance, manages to produce something more. On the level of a psycho-thriller, the author has an impeccable timing, a superb ability to let the actions do the talking, and a deep understanding of human psychology to draw the reader into the action, to breath and feel the anxiety, fear, and obsession of the protagonist. As a Kafkaesque treatise of the loneliness and alienation, the novel does not break major new ground, but the seamless integration of this layer into the riveting narrative of Senhor Jose's adventure has the unique aspect of making the reader "feel" the loneliness and one man's desperate attempt to conquer it, sort of a Crime and Punishment, with less violence, fewer characters and threads, and in some way, more reality (as the story is something almost everyone can sympathize with. We have all, in our time, become inexplicably fascinated with a stranger or mundane thing, and gone some distance, albeit not as extreme as the novel, to explore them). On the philosophical/metaphysical/allegorical/symobolic etc level, the novel, in my opinion, breaks new ground as an allegorical comment on the search for the Faceless, the Every Man. Senhor Jose's journy from the 140 Famous People to the Unknown Woman, is a reflection of our inner unrest and urge to get beyond the pomp and glitter of the superficial and understand and appreciate life in its prosaic root. The novel should be read and re-read with this view in mind, the paradoxical study of the Everyday Life as a new Subconcious. A scintillating work. The pinnacle of the art of plot, characterization, action, psychology, philosophy, and understated elegance of a detached and somewhat analytical prose.
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Summary: An Intimate, Multi-Layered Masterwork
Review: It is a testament to Saramago's skill as a writer that he is able to explore so many themes in such an intimate work. As other reviewers have noted, the book does examine the impact that loneliness and isolation have on a person. But, there are many other aspects that are explored with equal brilliance. Saramago takes great care in pointing out the prevalent role that pattern and routine have in everyone's life. He also examines the effect that fate has on a person's behavior. Each of these themes could easily be the single focus of any book. However, Saramago also finds a way to include explorations of the depths of obsession, the power of authority, and the need for friendship. What's more amazing is that each of these themes is explored in a way that feels complete and thorough. All The Names is another incredible work from one who is deserving of the Nobel Prize honor. Saramago once again challenges the reader to examine their feelings and revise their assumptions about life. Yet, it is done in a way that allows the reader to sympathize with the main character and be moved by the story. It is a rare talent that possesses the ability to masterfully handle so many aspects of writing. When that talent creates a book as multi-layered and fascinating as All The Names, it deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible.
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Summary: a wonderful dsicovery!
Review: It's been awhile since I came across a book that so totally captivated me and involved me in its very core as did All The Names...I resist sort of supernatural type books wihich is why I had passed up Saramago's other most recent book --Blindness but somehow the controlled absurdity and intensity of this book left me almost breathless as I read it.....the situations he presents...the depth of obsession was, to be totally cliched, almost Kafkaesque in its delivery ....this is a wonderful read and I can't wait to investigate his earliewr works...read it ! it's wonderful!
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Summary: A brilliant, addicting read
Review: Jose Saramago is a genius wordsmith. To the novice opening a first book by this Pulitzer Prize winning Portuguese novelist, Saramago may seem a bit mad, if not just frustratingly bizarre. Pages without paragraph indentations, with conversations unpunctuated or without speaker identified, no use of quotation maeks, abrupt changes of time and place within one ongoing endless sentence. These impediments to reading a novel often tend to make the reader begin to simply scan the way through the book, hoping to find the end to this strange means. BUT! It is precisely the "means" that places Saramago in the category of Greatest Living Writers. (More than a little praise is due his able translator!!) "All the Names" is a journey of obsession by a Kafaesque little nobody who works in a metaphorical General Registry that houses all the names of those born, married, and died in an unknown land/place. Saramago pulls us like a powerful magnet into this meticulously ordered conundrum and we are walking beside (and sharing the inner side of the skull of) a little clerk determined to place an identity of one unknown woman. This is at once a journey through Existentialism, through the anonymity of living in the world today, a study of the depersonalization of society. Yet out of this microscopic examination of details we come to understand the significance of maintaining individualism, of finding connection, of fighting against a meaningless passage on this earth. Though no one is named in this novel, save the main character, Saragmago paints the peripheral characters with such clarity that names are the least important designators. This is not an easy read: many great books are not easy reads. But the work required to stay with the author to the end is compensated by luxuriating in a wordbath that is found only in strolling through the process. I think this is a brilliant book by a unique writer who has descovered a style of writing that only enhances his uncommonly interesting tales. Spend time here. You'll be rewared in countless ways.
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Summary: Wandering between life and death
Review: Saramago's books make you think. In All the Names, the only character with a name is Senhor Jose -- and even that isn't much of one, since it means simply Mister Joe. Senhor Jose spends his time shuffling between the facts of life and death, as they are recorded on slips of paper stored in scary towering stacks deep in the Central Registry's sunless caverns. He begins to break free when one random slip of paper -- the registry card of the "unknown woman" -- catches his eye and his imagination. We're all more or less roaming about in the dark between life and death, I believe Saramago says. If we're lucky, a random bit of light will be offered.
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