Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Stockholm : Wahlström & Widstrand, 1991 ;
Description
A proofreader in a publishing house changes a word in a manuscript to make a history book read that a 12th Century battle was strictly a Portuguese victory, rather than a joint victory with the Crusaders. Instead of being fired the proofreader is commissioned to develop the idea into a novel. A study in historical revisionism.
User reviews
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Raimundo Silva, assigned to correct a book entitled The History of Siege of Lisbon by his publishing house, decides to alter the meaning of a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text, so that the book now claims that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese king in
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taking Lisbon from the Moors. This has repercussions both for himself and for the historical profession. At the same time the author recounts the siege in the style of an historical romance. As with all Saramago this is a challenging text, but a challenge that I found worthwhile. Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
This book took more time than usual for me to read. The problem with Saramago's book, at least for me, is that it requires good stretches of uninterrupted attention, something which has been a sparse thing these days. But I finally finished it today.
Saramago is up to his typical mischievousness
As stepped, maze-like and rambling as the streets of Old Lisbon, the plot makes changes in time, verb tense and focus, which combined with Saramago's nontraditional approach to punctuation, creates a hurdy-gurdy world, which if to one's liking, is mesmerizing. Once when a friend called and wondered what I was doing, I told her "I was wasting away in Saramagoville" The author challenges our ideas of knowledge, history, historiography, human nature, language, love and the language of love. And there are the miracles; the recounting of the Miracles of St. Anthony, the Miracles of the holy knight, the miracles of love. Raimundo is very much an alter-ego for Saramago, and Raimundo's Maria Sara is Pilar, and both have alter-egos within Raimundo's story. There are times when identities, just as when standing on the balcony of Raimundo's apartment which is on the verge of Moorish Lisbon, Maria Sara askes would they have been Moors or Portuguese if it was the time of the siege. Neither is really sure. With his expansive library, Raimundo suggest they could look it up, but could the believe the answer?
The last paragraph is incandescently beautiful, but the beauty would not be there unless one muddled ones way to it. To give this book a fair shot, if one is considering reading it, read it when chunks time can be devoted to it.
This is now my most dog-eared book since as I read there would be one wry or profound insight after another. Since I did not want to lose my rhythm I stopped jotting them down and started dog-earring, something I never, never do. Yet with Saramago one can never say neve
Saramago is up to his typical mischievousness
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here, lobbing another "what if"? The man's imagination is as boundless as his knowledge and wonder. The plot of this story hinges on a moment of whimsy on the part of a very ordinary, unwhimsical, unobtrusive and unassuming proofreader for a prestigious Lisbon publishing firm. While Raimundo Silva is proofing a manuscript on The History of the Siege of Lisbon, for reasons that Raimundo is later at a loss to explain, he adds the word "not" to a sentence that had originally stated that the crusaders had agreed to help the Portuguese in their siege of the Moor-held city of Lisbon. He is forgiven his moment of indiscretion, but a new position, a manager of proofreaders, is created to prevent future problems. Dr. Maria Sara is the woman hired, Raimundo's new boss. She presents two challenges for him, one to write this alternative history he has suggested by his impulsive editing; and a second, love. As stepped, maze-like and rambling as the streets of Old Lisbon, the plot makes changes in time, verb tense and focus, which combined with Saramago's nontraditional approach to punctuation, creates a hurdy-gurdy world, which if to one's liking, is mesmerizing. Once when a friend called and wondered what I was doing, I told her "I was wasting away in Saramagoville" The author challenges our ideas of knowledge, history, historiography, human nature, language, love and the language of love. And there are the miracles; the recounting of the Miracles of St. Anthony, the Miracles of the holy knight, the miracles of love. Raimundo is very much an alter-ego for Saramago, and Raimundo's Maria Sara is Pilar, and both have alter-egos within Raimundo's story. There are times when identities, just as when standing on the balcony of Raimundo's apartment which is on the verge of Moorish Lisbon, Maria Sara askes would they have been Moors or Portuguese if it was the time of the siege. Neither is really sure. With his expansive library, Raimundo suggest they could look it up, but could the believe the answer?
The last paragraph is incandescently beautiful, but the beauty would not be there unless one muddled ones way to it. To give this book a fair shot, if one is considering reading it, read it when chunks time can be devoted to it.
This is now my most dog-eared book since as I read there would be one wry or profound insight after another. Since I did not want to lose my rhythm I stopped jotting them down and started dog-earring, something I never, never do. Yet with Saramago one can never say neve
Show Less
LibraryThing member leonardr
Promises Borges-like goings on and then doesn't deliver.
LibraryThing member billyfantles
Raimundo Silva is a long-time proof-reader for a local press in Lisbon. He is proofing a scholarly history of the siege of Lisbon in 1147 in which the Christians eventually won the town back from the Moors who had held it for three centuries. The story itself is classic Portuguese history, known by
This "not" is in some sense the driving word of the entire novel. But in other senses it is not. Certain parts of the causal train of the story follow the "not". Raimundo Silva turns in this amended version, it gets printed, but is discovered before general circulation. An erratum is inserted telling readers a mistake has been made; the author isn't much concerned with the small mistake (no doubt in part since most readers will already know THAT part of the story), and even the publishers are lenient in dealing with what they realize was conscious vandalism of the text. All would end at this point were that "not" the whole story.
What complicates things and provides us fans of Jose Saramago with a simply astonishing novel, are the complexities that flow around the edges of the "not," not directly from it. As he did in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and in The Stone Raft, Saramago plays with counterfactual causalities, with worlds of what if and why not. Perhaps the central puzzle that gets raised in the novel is the question of how much historical truth can we have to begin with? How much is lost to us of the past simply because it was never recorded. How much was recorded, but then the records themselves later lost or ignored? How much gets selected out and not noticed or never even found by the historians bringing particular events and periods to our attention? These things worry Saramago, and he humbles us with his explorations into counterfactual history, especially since he makes the case that the so-called counterfactuals may well turn out to be the real history after all.
Even bigger fish are at stake. As in The Stone Raft, Saramago seems to argue here that we are locked into a certain notion of causality, certain rules of our limited science which simply may not get at reality at all. In the current story the publishers, only partially in reaction to Raimundo Silva's purposeful insertion of the "not," have hired a new administrator in charge of the proof-readers. She has come aboard just at the time of the discovery of Silva's "not" and is a bit amused by it, even intrigued. She challenges him to write the story of the siege from the point of view of this not, which Silva does, and in the process the two fall in love. At one point late in the novel Saramago, or at least the omniscient narrator, says that the real cause of the "not" was to create this love relationship between Maria Sara and Raimundo Silva, and even more complicated, it is a long affair that is closely modeled on the fictional one which Silva creates in his knowingly fictional recreation of the history of the siege. Things get complicated for the standard logics of writing history.
From the outset the novel operates on two main levels: a dialectic between the present time, centered around the life, work and love life of Raimundo Silva and the siege of Lisbon in 1147. The difficulty is that causal relationships work in both directions. The siege was what the siege was, but the siege we have at our disposal, our ONLY siege (or sieges) is that which the historians give us. Raimundo Silva participates in this "giving" by creating his alternative history of the siege, except that he knows his siege is purely fictional. This fact doesn't keep his siege, even the "other" siege from creating his own life in the present, especially his love relationship with Maria Sara, and, curiously, is itself the very cause of that relationship.
Another part of the brilliance of this novel is how it is that Silva creates his alternative history. He lets the logic of the "not" have its way and simply follows it. There are limits. The siege of Lisbon succeeded. That was not part of his "not." He merely rejected the fact that the Crusaders joined the Portuguese in the siege. This presents, then, the two key difficulties: why would the Crusaders have said no, and what is a plausible account of how the Portuguese could have won this battle without the Crusaders, who would not only have constituted 50% of their force, but would have been the 50% with the best fighting ability and experience. Raimundo Silva has certain historical facts he simply must accept and follow, he has not rejected everything, just this one particular famous historical "yes."
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school children. Basically it is that the Portuguese were sieving the city and enlisted the aid of Crusaders who were on their way to the holy land. There was a famous speech given by the Portuguese king, Dom Afonso Henriques, in which he made his case for the Crusaders to join their efforts. Afterward comes the important and well-known line of the story in which the Crusaders said they would help the Portuguese. For reasons he simply cannot yet know, the proof-reader inserts a NOT. The Crusaders will not help the Portuguese.This "not" is in some sense the driving word of the entire novel. But in other senses it is not. Certain parts of the causal train of the story follow the "not". Raimundo Silva turns in this amended version, it gets printed, but is discovered before general circulation. An erratum is inserted telling readers a mistake has been made; the author isn't much concerned with the small mistake (no doubt in part since most readers will already know THAT part of the story), and even the publishers are lenient in dealing with what they realize was conscious vandalism of the text. All would end at this point were that "not" the whole story.
What complicates things and provides us fans of Jose Saramago with a simply astonishing novel, are the complexities that flow around the edges of the "not," not directly from it. As he did in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and in The Stone Raft, Saramago plays with counterfactual causalities, with worlds of what if and why not. Perhaps the central puzzle that gets raised in the novel is the question of how much historical truth can we have to begin with? How much is lost to us of the past simply because it was never recorded. How much was recorded, but then the records themselves later lost or ignored? How much gets selected out and not noticed or never even found by the historians bringing particular events and periods to our attention? These things worry Saramago, and he humbles us with his explorations into counterfactual history, especially since he makes the case that the so-called counterfactuals may well turn out to be the real history after all.
Even bigger fish are at stake. As in The Stone Raft, Saramago seems to argue here that we are locked into a certain notion of causality, certain rules of our limited science which simply may not get at reality at all. In the current story the publishers, only partially in reaction to Raimundo Silva's purposeful insertion of the "not," have hired a new administrator in charge of the proof-readers. She has come aboard just at the time of the discovery of Silva's "not" and is a bit amused by it, even intrigued. She challenges him to write the story of the siege from the point of view of this not, which Silva does, and in the process the two fall in love. At one point late in the novel Saramago, or at least the omniscient narrator, says that the real cause of the "not" was to create this love relationship between Maria Sara and Raimundo Silva, and even more complicated, it is a long affair that is closely modeled on the fictional one which Silva creates in his knowingly fictional recreation of the history of the siege. Things get complicated for the standard logics of writing history.
From the outset the novel operates on two main levels: a dialectic between the present time, centered around the life, work and love life of Raimundo Silva and the siege of Lisbon in 1147. The difficulty is that causal relationships work in both directions. The siege was what the siege was, but the siege we have at our disposal, our ONLY siege (or sieges) is that which the historians give us. Raimundo Silva participates in this "giving" by creating his alternative history of the siege, except that he knows his siege is purely fictional. This fact doesn't keep his siege, even the "other" siege from creating his own life in the present, especially his love relationship with Maria Sara, and, curiously, is itself the very cause of that relationship.
Another part of the brilliance of this novel is how it is that Silva creates his alternative history. He lets the logic of the "not" have its way and simply follows it. There are limits. The siege of Lisbon succeeded. That was not part of his "not." He merely rejected the fact that the Crusaders joined the Portuguese in the siege. This presents, then, the two key difficulties: why would the Crusaders have said no, and what is a plausible account of how the Portuguese could have won this battle without the Crusaders, who would not only have constituted 50% of their force, but would have been the 50% with the best fighting ability and experience. Raimundo Silva has certain historical facts he simply must accept and follow, he has not rejected everything, just this one particular famous historical "yes."
Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
A wonderful, eccentric, playful and unpredictable novel, in which Saramago explores the ways history and fiction interact in our imagination, challenges one of the central stories in the making of Portuguese national identity, and - not least - affirms once again his enormous affection for the city
Giovanni Pontiero’s English translation, as usual, feels natural and unobtrusive.
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of Lisbon. As so often in Saramago, one little element in the “real world” is reversed to act as the grain of sand on which the narrative can nucleate, in this case it develops into a pair of parallel, intersecting stories, medieval and contemporary. It's a book-within-a-book novel, but you can't easily decide which book is inside which: each of the two stories is effectively writing the other as it develops. Giovanni Pontiero’s English translation, as usual, feels natural and unobtrusive.
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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
I enjoy this novel, written in a dictatorship, and discussing what effect an attempt to rewrite the past by literally changing just a word in a text, can have. All dictatorships rewrite their pasts, and living in Canada, under our Conservative Government, I am watching that actually occur. I
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enjoyed the novel, and abhor the process. Show Less
LibraryThing member Charon07
The power of a simple negation! One of my favorite books of all time, and the one that put Saramago on my favorite authors list.
LibraryThing member Kristelh
Published in 1989. Read for Reading 1001 BOTM in January 2022. This is a story of a proofreader charged with correcting. This is a book in which the author challenges the one dimensional view of history. The proofreader alters the story by adding one word "not" to his correction. It is a story of
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how Lisbon came to be from fighting between Moors and Christians. The author recounts the siege as a historical romance while also the proofreader is in his own romance with his supervisor. It can also be described as a novel about writing. While Kirkus felt this was the author's best work. I enjoyed The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis more than this one. Multilayered. Metafiction. Show Less
LibraryThing member quondame
An exploration of the editing which happens to make history of events and to make stories of life and life of stories. Distanced and intimate the prose requires the reader to actively spool the sentences from the page rather than being pulled along by them and to keep track of the shifting foci to
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observe what it being said. Also a somewhat corny imbalanced love story. Show Less
LibraryThing member Castlelass
Literary fiction about a proofreader that significantly alters the meaning of a book by changing one word, such that his revised text states the crusaders did NOT help the Portuguese drive the Moors out of Lisbon in the year 1147. At the suggestion of his newly appointed supervisor, the proofreader
Saramago’s writing is lovely, but the meandering can be distracting. I often had to re-read sections to figure out where the initial thought started and how I ended up so far afield from that thought. He employs long sentences using only commas and periods. Dialogue is embedded in the prose, and there is no indication which character is speaking, so the reader will have to keep track mentally. The author does not differentiate between two story arcs, often moving between them within the same paragraph. There are long paragraphs describing a character’s internal dialogue (for example, of whether or not to make a phone call) that span several pages. The narrator goes off on many tangents, some of which are head-scratchers. In short, this book requires a great deal of patience and concentration.
I found I needed to understand more about Portuguese history to fully appreciate the storyline, so it took me a while to finish this book, since I was constantly looking up events and people that played a role in the actual Siege of Lisbon. Thus, I recommend getting an overview of the historical Siege, as well as the key players involved, before embarking on this novel.
I believe the point of this book is to show how fiction can impact the historical record. Participants often leave no written record of their thoughts and emotions, and Saramago explores whether we can truly understand the reasons behind why people acted the way they did after many years have passed.
I have read two other books by Saramago, Blindness and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, and enjoyed both. As clever as it is, this one just didn’t work as well for me, primarily due to its structure. I found the present-day story more engaging than the alternate history. It isn’t necessarily fun to read this book, but it certainly engages the brain.
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then goes on to write his own version of The History of the Siege of Lisbon, using his altered text as a starting point. Since he lives in Lisbon, he can actually visit some of the locations where the Siege took place. The proofreader’s version of history is interspersed with his present-day narrative.Saramago’s writing is lovely, but the meandering can be distracting. I often had to re-read sections to figure out where the initial thought started and how I ended up so far afield from that thought. He employs long sentences using only commas and periods. Dialogue is embedded in the prose, and there is no indication which character is speaking, so the reader will have to keep track mentally. The author does not differentiate between two story arcs, often moving between them within the same paragraph. There are long paragraphs describing a character’s internal dialogue (for example, of whether or not to make a phone call) that span several pages. The narrator goes off on many tangents, some of which are head-scratchers. In short, this book requires a great deal of patience and concentration.
I found I needed to understand more about Portuguese history to fully appreciate the storyline, so it took me a while to finish this book, since I was constantly looking up events and people that played a role in the actual Siege of Lisbon. Thus, I recommend getting an overview of the historical Siege, as well as the key players involved, before embarking on this novel.
I believe the point of this book is to show how fiction can impact the historical record. Participants often leave no written record of their thoughts and emotions, and Saramago explores whether we can truly understand the reasons behind why people acted the way they did after many years have passed.
I have read two other books by Saramago, Blindness and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, and enjoyed both. As clever as it is, this one just didn’t work as well for me, primarily due to its structure. I found the present-day story more engaging than the alternate history. It isn’t necessarily fun to read this book, but it certainly engages the brain.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
Portuguese
Original publication date
1989
Physical description
320 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
9146160477 / 9789146160472
Other editions
Historien om Lissabons belägring by José Saramago (Paper Book)