Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
At last, the capstone to Krasznahorkai’s four-part masterwork Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin–like figure, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who returns at the end of his life to his provincial Hungarian hometown. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he longs to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. Confusions abound, and what follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town’s alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor—a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town—offers long rants and disquisitions on his attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged as death and the abyss loom over the unsuspecting townfolk.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book had a lot of meaningful things to say but I'm not a fan of period-less prose or a writing style that might be too convoluted for an average reader to parse. Art and meaning should be accessible IMO, but that's a conversation for another day.
The story and the prose certainly provides a wealth of meaning to slowly wade through and is really good for a book club pick. Some parts and even whole chapters were almost incomprehensible to me, but overall I think there was at least some action that drove the reader along through the book. Some themes that I was interested in reading about were the fragility of memories, the hollowness of nostalgia, the often-disappointing experience of reliving an experience you had previously put on a pedestal, the conflict between capitalism and compassion, and indiscriminate exploitation for material gain. I kinda wish that we could just pick one or a few and develop those more fully though.
The last couple of chapters were particularly exciting and I actually couldn't put it down, which is not something I would've expected for this book. I'm not sure if the ending really drove home the points that Krasznahorkai had raised through the book but honestly I'm not mad at how dramatic everything went down. I felt like the book needed more drama.
