Arnon Grunberg - Blog

Flesh

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:39:41 +0100

Blood

This morning I went to a winery near Toledo.
The director-general of the winery is interested in naming two red wines after me.
If everything goes well people can drink Arnon Grunberg wine in 2010.
Upon return from the winery, I took a bath in my hotel in Madrid and I said to myself: “Drinking my wine is like drinking my blood.”

Now I want to have a bonbon named after me. So I can offer visitors some sweets with the words: “Please, eat my flesh.”

Tradition

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:37:43 +0100

Nockerln

Wirtshaus Steirerstöckl remains one of my favorite restaurants in Vienna. Last night the “Nockerln” were delicious. The goose soup was a bit heavy.

Brother

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:14:45 +0100

Suffering

Last night I had dinner with Radovan Karadžić’s brother.
The brother turned out to be a soft-spoken man who talked relentlessly about his suffering and the suffering of his family.

Mother

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:56:03 +0100

Foal

Voilà, my foal.

(I believe I'm ready to fall in love with a foal.)

Monastery

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:36:05 +0100

The hills

My bed in a monastery, somewhere in the hills of Montenegro.

Schnapps

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:49:10 +0100

Mass

In the fall of 2006 I traveled to Montenegro for a series of articles.
Now I’m back in the same hotel that I stayed in at the time, working with the same interpreter. The guide who accompanied me in 2006 decided to stay home.
This morning I went to (orthodox) Mass; it was the longest Mass I have ever been to. After Mass the head of the Orthodox Church in this region invited us for pastries and schnapps.

Disconnection

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:13:14 +0100

Hazard

An important article by Elissa Ely in the health section of yesterday’s Times: ‘The staff at the homeless shelter where I worked for several years had long worried about him. He sat in the day hall, well tended and polite, reading chemistry textbooks with calm comprehension. At the moment, he was in the middle of a book written by a French philosopher in the 1930s; he was reading it in French.
He had no previous psychiatric history, no drug or alcohol problem. Someone without any overt chaos in his life accepted his state of homelessness without the least effort to modify it. It seemed unnatural.

(…)

There was another reason for his strategic disconnection. “Factually,” he said, “my attitude has been a hazard to others.” He told this story: For a few years he had shared an apartment with an alcoholic companion. They lived in compatible, side-by-side solitude, two bedrooms and a kitchen.
One morning, leaving the apartment, he passed his roommate slumped over the kitchen table. He did not pause to check on the man. He spent his day as usual. When he returned that evening, his roommate was still slumped over the table. If he had not been dead earlier, he was now.
There was no sensation of remorse or guilt, he said now. There was no sense that he should have taken investigative action that might have been life-saving, or that he should have fretted during the day, or considered coming home earlier.
From this episode, he drew two rational conclusions. First, his instincts about human situations were always wrong. Second, it was appropriate that a person with such dangerous attributes separate himself from the world.’

There is a case to be made for strategic disconnection.

Kindness

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:03:43 +0100

Addiction

A friend was kind enough to send me some caper berries.
The caper berries are addictive.

Hell

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:54:34 +0100

Harm

David Denby is a bit harsh on “A Serious Man”, the latest Coen brothers movie: ‘At the conclusion of their new movie, “A Serious Man,” the Coen brothers pull off a neat little joke. The picture is devoted to the travails of an unhappy Midwestern Jewish family—a real menagerie—in the sixties, and, in the end titles, the Coens have inserted, after the names of hardworking laboratories, the words “No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture.” Very good; first rate, in fact. But I’m not sure it’s true. I know of at least two Jews who were harmed—Ethan and Joel Coen. “A Serious Man,” like “Burn After Reading,” is in their bleak, black, belittling mode, and it’s hell to sit through.’

I don’t think that the Coen brothers are in their belittling mode.

The main character of “A Serious Man” is a physicist at a university who gets punished by God, and his wife, for no good reason.

God likes to punish the innocent. It’s mean to blame the Coen brothers for God’s hobbies.

Wish

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:47:08 +0100

Foal

This week I’m going to buy a foal. Then I’ll be a Jew with a horse. What else is there to wish for?