| Title | : | Tristano |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1781681694 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781781681695 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1966 |
Tristano Reviews
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This is a really tricky book to truly rate, so three stars seems a fairly neutral decision.
I read number 13492 of this text, each one before and one after is different. It’s an experiment in writing and what writing can do, especially now in this age of technology. So this isn’t what you would expect from your usual narrative.
There is a fairly basic narrative happening in here although this gets muddied by the rearrangement of sentences without a true logic. The experiment of it relies too heavily on the maths and the brain to really speak to the heart, so as a story, for me it failed.
Considering what it is though, it was an interesting experience as I tried to navigate all the possible ways the text could be rearranged and how exactly it would change. I imagine that this book would be of greater pleasure were it something you could compare with it’s other counter parts to really track the methodology behind it. Otherwise you have nothing to really attach meaning to or to at least realise exactly the science behind it. -
Sadly, incomprehensible. Very disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it. :(
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I picked up this book because of the flap copy, which starts like this: "This book is unique as no other novel can claim to be: one of 109,027,350,432,000 possible variations of the same work of fiction." As the flap copy goes on to explain, the book "comprises ten chapters, and the fifteen pairs of paragraphs in each of these are shuffled anew for each published copy. No two versions are the same." In his foreword to the book, Umberto Eco says this: "If we wanted to arrange the pieces of an infinitely variable story, it would be better for the textual blocks to be 'prepared,' like pieces of Lego, each already designed to fit together with other pieces in multiple ways. Such is the case with Balestrini's book, whose game is 'regulated' in the sense that it does not aim to celebrate fortuity so much as the possibility of an elevated number of possible outcomes" (ix).
Unfortunately, the experience of reading Tristano was more frustrating than not. It's a short book, but I'm with Josh Coblentz, whose
review on HTMLGIANT describes "the annoyed trudge that was the experience of reading this book."
I am not necessarily a plot-driven reader, or a character-driven one; I can sometimes enjoy a book for its mood, its language, its concept, its setting, its descriptive passages. And I get that Balestrini is playing with what a novel is, what meaning is, how meaning is created: there are lots of moments where the text could be describing itself. "A huge pile of sentences that don't mean anything. The making and breaking of language" (69). "All this seems to mean something but in reality it has no meaning whatsoever" (55). "Many sentences recur" (18). "You could even start from another episode and obtain a slightly different story. Though the question is rather irrelevant" (5). "Without any sign of organisation or notions of the beginning or end of a logical development" (43). But there just wasn't enough to interest me. There are people in this book, but all the proper nouns (people's names, places) are replaced with the letter C, so it's hard to figure out what's going on: it seems like there might be a woman and her husband and another man she's sleeping with, but who knows. I leave you with this passage:One thing transforms into another by means of a leap. Signs that are surprised and cut by the vital system of the current communication. Only individual parts but not the whole. I don't know what that means. C turned round completely naked. Where are the things. There's nothing else in the mirror. The completely empty wardrobe. There would be many other things to add but it's not worth it. (58)
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Copy number: 13,783
It’s hard to write a review for this book to be honest. When I first heard of the idea behind the novel, I loved it. And to some extent I still do. However, it must be said, it was not the most exciting or enjoyable read - a lot of the reading experience was quite mundane.
I don’t blame Balestrini for this though. In theory, even with the confusion caused by all proper nouns being replaced by the letter ‘C’, it should be possible for this experimental novel to work. Balestrini has laid out the skeleton of the story, and it’s up to our imagination, as co-authors, to fill in the details and create an interesting story within these pages.
Unfortunately it didn’t quite work like that for myself, and from the look of other reviews, for many others too. I would argue that perhaps this novel has simply been released at the wrong point in history. As a class, we are tired, alienated and busy, and through the structures that cause these things, also limited in our pursuit of creativity and imagination. Our current societal conditions arguably do not allow for the sort of imagination and creativity that Balestrini’s Tristano needs and deserves, to be the masterpiece it could be. Perhaps it would be better to save any re-read of this text for a future communist society, in which creativity and leisure will flourish.
With all that in consideration, I’ve given the text 3/5, despite the fact the reading experience was almost certainly below that. -
This is a comment, not a review, as it will say more about me than about Balestrini's book / experiment.
Just over a year ago I introduced a new rule in an attempt to stem the constant flow of books into my life and space, while most of them remain unread. If I do not read a book within a year after acquiring it (whether bought or gifted), I must give it away. Unless it is safe for some reason, e.g. it belongs in one of the many little collections I have. I will not list these now.
During May last year I bought more than thirty books, of which about twelve were safe, and many have been read by now. But with lots of things at work to read and write, there is pressure to complete the aim before the end of May. Today is 26 May, and another five books must be read.
One of them is Tristano, which caught my eye because of the quirkiness of the experiment and because it deals with the Tristan story. However, when I started to read it this morning, I found it too experimental: there isn't cohesion even within one of the paragraphs of the 'novel' (I admit to basing my impression on three pages).
Therefore, under the circumstances of pressure, I decided to invoke my rights as a reader, in the classic description by Daniel Pennac, and to abandon reading this book. I will keep it on my list and perhaps one day retrieve it from where I will donate it, and try it again. But for now, I officially whimp out.
Hierdie skrywe is 'n aankondiging en nie 'n resensie nie. Om my immergroeiende boekversameling te probeer beheer, werk ek sedert 1 April 2015 met die reël dat ek 'n boek binne 'n jaar nadat ek dit gekoop het, moet lees of dit weggee. Gegewe die hoeveelheid boeke wat ek gedurende Mei 2015 gekoop het, het ek nog 'n paar wat ek voor die einde van die maand wil 'red'. Die hoogs eksperimentele aard van Balestrini se boek gaan onder omstandighede te veel leestyd opneem en te min oplewer (ek bieg dat ek slegs drie bladsye gelees het voordat ek dié besluit geneem het). Daarom beroep ek my op die regte van die leser, soos klassiek uiteengesit deur Daniel Pennac, en ek verwerp / verlaat / verwaarloos hierdie boek. Ek sal aanteken aan wie ek dit weggee - miskien eendag. Miskien nooit. -
This book was a bit of a puzzle for me. Essentially it is a not very interesting love story, but apparently no two versions of it are the same, each reader gets a totally different one. Each print is constructed, so I am told, from a number of texts by printing them in a different order each time. As my copy is an e-galley from Netgalley, am I in fact reading the same version as other Netgalley reviewers? Or are even the proof copies different one from the other?
The book is made up of ten chapters, each with twenty texts taken from a variety of mediums, and then put together randomly. If I have understood the process correctly. Which is all very well and a vaguely intriguing concept, but ultimately, I can’t help feeling, pretty pointless. As an experimentation with the traditional narrative and being able to use computer technology to create text, no doubt some readers will enjoy this word-play. But I was left feeling bewildered. Especially as the story wasn’t engaging.
Nanni Balestrini, an Italian – born 1935 – was a member of the avant-garde Gruppo 63, which I must admit I’d also never heard of. Umberto Eco was in the group as well. A poet, novelist and cultural and political activist, his novel was first published in in Italian in 1966. I’m glad to have discovered him and this strange book, but I feel that one exposure is probably enough.
My thanks, however, go to Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to expand my horizons! -
I tried. I really did. Despite it being 10 chapters, I spent a great deal of time getting through Tristano. It's a shame because it's an interesting concept.
According to NetGalley:
A love story with infinite possibilities.
What happens when a love story has an infinite number of possible endings? What if a computer re-sorts a novel so that no copy is the same? A radical assault upon the novel from one of Italy's most radical artists.
The story involves two lovers, there is disruption on the streets of Milan, protesters by Porta Ticinese. Can they escape and be together? How will events change their destiny?
I'm not sure what the author is trying to achieve here. There's hardly (there is simply no driving force) any action in Tristano and the writing style's poorly-executed. I hate to say this but reading Tristano was a bore for me. Perhaps the beauty of the language's lost in translation. Nevertheless, I expected more. -
Everything is so lacking in depth that the whole "unique story" aspect just comes off as a gimmick. Pretty disappointing for Balestrini.
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Life is too short and I have too many books I want to read to waste time on this mind messing experiment.
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I'll be honest, it's really hard for me to abandon books, but I stopped a third of the way through. Like a friend once said, not all concept albums have to be made.
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This was a fascinating experiment. Interesting results.
It facilitates the death of the author position from the modernist era, all power of narration rests with the reader.
You make your own meaning as you read through the somewhat disjointed paragraphs. You can and your brain is wired to do that. The diminished punctuation allows you to make editorial decisions as you read: is it an inner monologue, dialogue, flashback or narrative description? You decide!
I read 12731. And I'm pretty sure we had two protagonists meet, fall in love, travel to the beach (with a cave), agonise over past loves, angst about death and self-worth as well as kill off one of the ex lovers. Well that was my reading of it - with a different number you might find something different. -
**THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN Alternating Current's ONLINE REVIEW COLUMN The Coil**
“It is the moment in which you realize that language offers no guarantee at all. There is no meaning but something like a dream of meaning.” (p. 9)
Some books find their readers rather than vice versa. There’s no set way in which this happens, but the moment it happens, the reader will know it himself — It’s an unmistakable feeling of an urge and a longing for something that feels far away even though it’s physically just an arm’s length away. That is what seeing a copy of Tristano by Nanni Balestrini in a used bookstore felt like, the number on its cover holding a particular allure.
With the constant evolution of technology, it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the experimental literature being printed today can be the product of algorithms or generally “playing around” on software. The extent to which Balestrini takes this idea exceeds all initial expectations, and makes it understandable why the true intentions of the book couldn’t be fulfilled until only recently. Tristano is not simply a novel — I would in fact argue that that is only secondary to its identity. What it is, first and foremost, is a literary experiment that plays with an idea most of us take for granted and don’t give much thought to: the notion that language is a combination of sounds and letters that have been strung together according to rules that can be altered just as easily as they were constructed in the first place. Sentence structures can be changed and words rearranged to give the reader an experience that focuses more on process than the actual material.
The summary of the book will tell you that the story is a retelling of sorts of the classical Tristan and Isolde tale. The catch lies in the fact that no two books published are exactly the same, as each one rearranges the paragraphs, lines, and words in the book to create a completely new experience for each reader, hence the reason why each copy is numbered on the front. The quotations in this review will be unique only to the copy of the book that I read (number 12127). The plot itself is only “Tristan and Isolde” in the sense that it tells of a whirlwind relationship of a pair of lovers that should be considered a loose adaptation at best, for it is not the focal point.
In fact, there is no real “focal point” in this book, which is divided into ten chapters that are “chapters” only in a structural sense, to give the work, and the reader, some semblance of order. They are easy to disregard for that reason as the writing captivates from the very beginning. The biggest advice for reading Tristano would be not to get boggled down with trying to follow details. All names and places have been replaced with the single letter, C, and beyond the vague notions of whether it is the woman or man speaking, and who each is talking about based on any remaining context in the sentence, there are no indications of a clear-cut story.
This allows one to focus on the most important part of the story — the emotions of the characters, as well as the writing itself. The anonymous turbulent lovers have their relationship, and the woman’s affair specifically, at the center of attention. At times very Anna Karenina while at others more Great Gatsby, it both amasses and transcends the literary notion of what a romantic relationship is. For one that is due to the way that the writing is critical of itself, as if conscious of its own action of telling a story, and at one point there appears a line that reflects this:
“All this does not have very much to do with our story but it doesn’t matter.” (p. 21).
The writing frequently assumes a meta nature and what’s best of all is that this can be written off as pretty much accidental. Balestrini doesn’t sacrifice the descriptive nature of fiction, either, and occasionally the imagery creates its own tiny bubble that is an experience of its own. These feel a bit like Easter eggs that come up at unexpected but perfect moments, and mesmerize with how concisely, yet nonetheless strikingly, they convey the scenes they describe. The passage I remember most startled me with how colorful it felt in comparison to the rest of the story, as if a drop of ink was placed into a glass of water:
“Before C could find an answer to those questions you hear the lock of the door that led from her husband’s room to the corridor click. The general scheme was a nice yellow the upholstery of the chairs and the settee went well with the slightly darker solid-colored wallpaper and the wood color of the furniture. C shrugs. And now to finish the dialogue with the Cs. We’ll only find out in a few days’ time.” (p. 112).
Reading Tristano felt very much like putting oneself into a trance willingly, the lack of any punctuation other than a period creating a natural flow that, once begun, was impossible to stop. It’s a novel that requires undivided attention while enjoying it alone quietly, but also begs to be discussed in public. The content of the book is secondary to the experience of reading it, but that doesn’t mean one cannot enjoy the material itself. It’s a book that puts into perspective both language and the reading experience, and it is only the beginning of the kinds of experimentation that is sure to come. -
My copy is #12590
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Cheap premise but effective enough writing that it fools you for more than a minute, but not enough to sustain something close to experience
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To be honest I only read two chapters of the book, I think there are ten chapters in total. But I think two are enough because the format of the book is very unusual, it's a highly experimental text. All the sentences in each edition of the book are shifted randomly, so each copy is unique. I think what Balestrini did was to treat the novel objectively, meaning it could be an object or a separate entity with a life of its own, it can be different to each reader, and each reader would react differently to its different manifestations. Also, I think reading it is meant to be an experience enjoyed regardless of the text, to experience emotions provoked by the novel as a thing rather than a literal piece. It reminded me of surréalist poetry, I still can't decide if the book is good or bad but it's an interesting experience. -
For reference, the copy I've been reading is a library copy and is number 11975
Ok, I struggled through 2 chapters and I'm afraid it's not for me- I appreciate the structure and thought process behind it but at the end of the day I read books to enjoy the plot, characters and world building. If a paragraph has been randomised so that you're not sure whether a character is a) male b) female c) real then I have real problems with it. At the end of the day if I'd continued I would be reading for the sake of reading rather than for the enjoyment of the actual plot etc. -
I love the experiment itself... what a fascinating way to put chaos theory into action and tap into collective consciousness and randomness. Unfortunately, that also makes the book itself rather difficult to engage. That, and you'll always wonder if some other of the millions of different versions of the story would make more "sense" to you as a reader... some mysteries are better left unsolved though. Fantastic form flippancy.
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Nice concept but not a very exciting read.
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very exciting
