{"id":5825,"date":"2022-01-16T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-16T16:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2024-08-02T16:29:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:29:10","slug":"georgi-gospodinov-natural-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/16\/georgi-gospodinov-natural-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgi Gospodinov: Natural Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Natural Novel<\/em> (1999, tr: Zornitsa Hristova, 2005) is the story of one man\u2019s handling of his divorce after his wife announces she\u2019s pregnant with his friend\u2019s child. The way he deals with it is in writing, a series of loosely connected diversions presented as is with little narrative around them. Add in a few characters called Georgi Gospodinov, in a book by the same, and we\u2019re knee deep in the postmodern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A \u2018Natural Novel\u2019, to Gospodinov, is one where many beginnings are provided, and that pick up from others, merging, developing, and heading in unknown directions with stories overlapping and conclusions uncertain. It\u2019s an idea introduced early in a chapter almost completely comprised of other writers\u2019 famous openings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rather than a traditional first person narrative, we follow the author\u2019s state of mind laid out on the page, drawing our own conclusions, as he explores disparate topics, like botany or toilets, electricity or flies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flies are a constant thread through the book and a key to its structural presentation. (I\u2019m trying to convince myself [the sudden interest in flies] is for the novel I\u2019m writing. A multi-angled novel, like a fly\u2019s way of seeing.\u201d) and \u201cIn the ideal novel individual episodes will be held together by the trajectory of a fly.\u201d Their multi-sectored eyes look at the world differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The divorce that obsesses Gospodinov is a fly that distracts him, that he can\u2019t get peace from. That divorce had its beginning (the marriage) but it can\u2019t have an end (memories stick!), a realisation that ties much of the obsessions together with reflections on their beginning and ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the accumulation of all the elements, I\u2019m still not fully sure of Gospodinov\u2019s definition of a natural novel, but it\u2019s an interesting work, though definitely not for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Natural Novel (1999, tr: Zornitsa Hristova, 2005) is the story of one man\u2019s handling of his divorce after his wife announces she\u2019s pregnant with his friend\u2019s child. The way he deals with it is in writing, a series of loosely connected diversions presented as is with little narrative around them. Add in a few characters <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/16\/georgi-gospodinov-natural-novel\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[337],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gospodinov-georgi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/81Id0F5I-dL._SL1360_-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1vX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5827,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions\/5827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}