The General of the Dead Army (no real info on wikipedia, maybe not so surprisingly)

Called to hang out with someone, was asked if I was okay- dude, can a guy just call and hang out? Conversely, if I am feeling less than great, man, don't mention it. I'd prefer you didn't decide I was an object of pity that needs protection. (Well, it's fine if that's what you think, but don't let me know)

Hopefully it was just the scratchyness of my recently sick throat that ellicited that reaction. At least that can be explained away.

I like how I can feel a twinge of jealousy at the exchange of two people, then when I call one of the two they bring up the other person completely out of the blue. Aaaaaaaaah I need to do... something. Get out of my own head. Ditch Toronto?

Too extreme maybe.

What is it, the ninth? I'm only just now getting to my first post of the year. Eh, I've been working and sick, so back log happens.

I wanted to talk about The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare (pronounced 'Ka-da-ray', or so I'm told). The super in my building suggested it, he loves the book. He's Albanian, Kadare is Albanian, the book takes place in Albany (kidding, Albania). Makes sense so far.

So I'd never heard of Kadare before, but apparently he's been a runner up for the nobel prize for literature (I think I got that right) a bunch of times. This was his first novel. I think it shows.

The story follows an Italian General in the 60's returning to Albania to exhume the bodies of fallen soldiers from WWII with a priest and a bunch of workers.

Man, I'm distracted by Die Hard right now.

It's written in a very sparse style, you'll have to forgive me for thinking that Hemingway was an influence on Kadares style, but that's what I'm seeing. It's sort of a villain protagonist scenario, with our attention focused on the eponymous General narrating in such a way as to ask for our sympathies, but if we take any time at all we remember, right, all that stuff his army did.

There are separate italicized sections that I assume are supposed to be bits from the journals of dead soldiers that they've found- those were the most interesting parts of the book.

Ah, I'm really not into this right now. Uh, ONE of the endings was amazingly gothic and would have been great. But then the book kept on going. And then the General got paranoid about the body of this famous Colonel Z that they'd been looking for and he finally dumped it in a river despite the priests objections. THAT would also have been a cool ending, get some Tell Tale Heart going on.

But then it keeps going! And now the General, chilling out with his counterpart from the German army, drinking in a hotel, and both are talking about how cold and lonely their mission is, but they hear a sound and are afraid the Albanian town had taken up arms against them (that'd have led to a gruesome, and very suitable, ending) but nope, everything was fine. The end.

Ooo three perfectly good endings, all thrown away. It's the thing where a writer doesn't want to take dramatic licence for the sake of reality, but at the cost of the story's ability to engage the audience.

All right, done, I'm out, that's it. (I've got to get in a better mood, yeesh.)