This week’s reading was The Trench Coat. The book takes place in Romania under the communist regime and to be frank, I did not enjoy reading it. I was on the treadmill while reading the beginning section and what I captured was the copious amounts of drinking such as whisky and vodka, which coincidentally, is also the drink of choice for this week’s lecture. Aside from the drinking the phrase, “yes, yes” seems to permeate through the beginning and midsections of the book, which makes me wonder what the intent behind the double yesses mean. A possible interpretation I have is that it is either a way to convey a message (whatever it is) in the translation or an emphasis that the author is making, but again, I am not sure. I do not really understand this book.
Interestingly, the front page title of this book says Compulsory Happiness. I would not say that this title would resonate nor correlate with the book, but it also makes me wonder, did I read this book “correctly?” This book obviously does not make you “happy” and it was overtly not my cup of tea. Arguably, being on the treadmill at a high incline while reading this could be one of the reasons why I did not particularly indulge it, but also I found myself bored early on. It felt like there was not enough entertainment or heated moments in the book, so it was like I was reading a story of almost pure dialogue with a hint of mini-events. In addition, the characters were hard to like or feel connected to, but I did feel like Dina should have been treated better.
It is notable that thematic elements such as politics would not usually be made for entertainment, but rather to highlight particular matters for example, political upheaval or its effects. The book itself is short, but I like a lot of what I was reading projected as either borderline confusing or up to interpretation. The ending of the book was somewhat of a cliffhanger, further exacerbating the confusion. For example, I could not interpret what the raincoat or trench coat symbolizes in the book, and I’d thought the author intended for the readers to think about what the trenchcoat really means. I had only imagined the trenchcoat to be an enigma or a roaming spirit in which the readers are subjected to think about what it symbolizes.
For this week’s question:
How did you all approach this book?
Oh, but the fact that this week’s drink in the video is vodka is no mere coincidence! In the context of the Cold War, choosing one type of drink over another reveals ideological preference, but also the degree of knowledge of the mind games of a society under constant surveillance. If we think about it, the only difference between that moment and ours is that now we are not even aware of it… and we swipe without intuiting the consequences of our actions.
The more you know! I never knew there was significance behind the type of drink and its relation to ideological preference.
Hello Sally! Perhaps the double yes is just used to emulate local speech mannerisms from Bucharest (not sure, never been, especially during the Cold War). I think compulsory happiness is the collection this book longs for, but your thought got me thinking. It kind of reminds me of this sort of facade that everyone in the book is putting on, and that relates to moments of compulsory happiness. You know, like moments where you should be happy but find your mind somewhere else, so you put on a smile an pretend like everything is peaches and cream?
I wonder if the reason you felt bored reading this, or as if there was not enough action, was what Manea was going for? It is the moments in the story where there is a variation from the norm, a sort of moment of action, in which the true details lie. I agree with you, I personally didn’t like how it sort of downplayed the atrocity that comes with some communist societies. I was watching a documentary with my dad the other day about communist Russia, and the vast horror that was perpetrated there. I felt like this lack of explicit violence in the novel seemed to downplay the severity of their social situation, but at the same time gave me another perspective of it that I had not seen portrayed in any kind of media.