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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Dec 2020, 224 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2021, 224 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Jamie Chornoby
Buy This Book
Each disparate object described in this book - a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific - shares a common fate: it no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail.
Recalling the works of W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin, or Rebecca Solnit, An Inventory of Losses is a beautiful evocation of twelve specific treasures that have been lost to the world forever, and, taken as a whole, opens mesmerizing new vistas of how we can think about extinction and loss.
With meticulous research and a vivid awareness of why we should care about these losses, Judith Schalansky, the acclaimed author of Atlas of Remote Islands, lets these objects speak for themselves: she ventriloquizes the tone of other sources, burrows into the language of contemporaneous accounts, and deeply interrogates the very notion of memory.
Excerpt
An Inventory of Losses
Between 1810 and 1820, Caspar David Friedrich painted the harbor of his native city of Greifswald crowded with the masts of sailing ships, among them galleasses, brigantines and yachts. The old Hanseatic city was connected with all the major commercial centers via the navigable estuary of the river Ryck, which flows into the Baltic Sea, and even though the channel of the river Ryck was much broader then, it frequently threatened to silt up.
The 94-centimeter-high, 74-centimeter-wide oil painting had been in the possession of the Hamburger Kunsthalle since 1909, and in 1931 went on show at Munich's Glass Palace as part of the exhibition Works by German Romantics from Caspar David Friedrich to Moritz von Schwind. On June 6 a fire broke out there that destroyed more than three thousand paintings, including all the works in the special exhibition.
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The problem is not locating the source but making it out. I am standing by a meadow with a map in my hand ...
The book is a hand-selected museum of oddities, united only by their temporal existence. Because of this story-by-story, object-by-object structure, casual readers will enjoy dipping in and out at their leisure. Instead of simply describing the objects, animals and places that no longer exist and explaining their significance – what one might expect from nonfiction – Schalansky chooses distinct fictionalized voices for each chapter. Although this narrative style allows her to be historically accurate while experimenting with storytelling techniques, it can be disorienting...continued
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(Reviewed by Jamie Chornoby).
Anthony Doerr
A celebration of what can still be accomplished with imagination, paper, and ink. Robert Macfarlane
Exquisite. Like the hero of Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel A Rebours, who sets off for London from Paris but realizes he need go no further than the Gare du Nord, Schalansky decides to make a virtue of absence. Rosmarie Waldrop
Utterly fascinating.
Sarah Schalansky's book An Inventory of Losses introduces readers to an eclectic group of 12 things that no longer exist, from extinct species to ruined castles. But early on, Schalansky notes that sometimes the opposite happens — something is pulled back into public consciousness after a period of dormancy. One of these things is John Coltrane's Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album.
John Coltrane (1927-1967) is hailed as one of the greatest and most influential jazz figures of all time, shaping 20th-century music as a saxophonist, bandleader and composer. His musical inclinations were shaped at a young age from hearing spiritual music when his grandfather, an African Methodist Episcopal reverend, preached in North Carolina. In...
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