TrueLit Read-Along - July 23, 2022 (The Tartar Steppe - Wrap-Up)

[u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Hi all! This week will just focus on the novel overall.

So, what did you think? What are your interpretations or analyses?

Feel free to pose your own analyses (long or short), questions, thoughts on the themes, or just brief comments below!

Thanks!

[u/Omahbyin]

I really enjoyed this book, was definitely somewhat topical to me to as I need to move from where I’m at too. I finished it the 1st week & got caught up & then again w/ some Olga Tokarczuk, but it was a unique read. It has a fantasy feel throughout which I found unique for more literary stuff, & I think that’s maybe unintentionally mirrored in the theme of the novel to not get caught up in total fantasy or just get lost in life

I like that it just brutalized us too all throughout, just getting worse & worse, “just a couple more years”; that strange draw of habits at the Fort. & that final battle & such a long wait just to be pulled away; I found myself almost shocked that I was so upset abt him missing that battle as something I’d consider a non-worthwhile dream but was heartbreaking

That theme of life moves so you better too & don’t forget to live & also actually go for it too was one he executed pretty masterfully cause exactly how it happens. Just waiting a little bit at first, not going & then getting comfortable, then you almost gambler fallacy yourself into a dumb situation from a human comfort in habit. How he talks abt life in the city & parents too when you’re out of the normal flow of time, home is not home anymore, where is? Then you get mired in somewhere you don’t even want but it’s at least something. He understands this concept very well. I had to look him up & he was a journalist who was just a go-getter, & I remember one of the 1st threads here I meant to reply to mentioned he was always wracked w/ the same doubts which I felt made the novel’s theme even more interesting being an anxiety amongst even someone in all accounts very proficient

I’m glad we chose this over “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones Of Your Dead” because I prolly wouldn’t’ve read this otherwise, & it definitely had some pick you up & shake you statements abt living, not too prosey, but just well developed

[u/ImJoshsome]

In the end, I'd give it 3/5 stars. I was really vibing with it until about the 2/3s mark, but after that, it sort of dragged on. I feel it could have been a much tighter 150~200 page book instead of the 265 it was. I might fuck around and read some of Buzzati's short stories now. I liked his prose and his ideas, so maybe a shorter format will gel better with me.

I liked the overall theme of being stuck while time, and everything else, passes you by. There were also some nice anti-bureaucracy and anti-war ideas that I enjoyed. But IMO the biggest flaw of the book was Drogo as a character. He didn't feel real to me at all and it seemed like as the book went on, his only purpose was to push the themes. He was a sad and pathetic man who died a sad and pathetic death.

[u/[deleted] → u/ImJoshsome]

I’ve heard tell that Buzzati’s short stories are among his best output

[u/DeadFlagBluesClues]

I haven't participated in any of the other discussions as I fell behind, but I thought I'd share my final thoughts.

I have mixed feelings on this one.

I had some problems with it. It seemed like it operated more in the mode of a parable than a novel. There isn't much in the way of character development or plot. Instead, it's driven thematically. I picked up on two major themes in my reading. The first, as I wrote a little about already in one of the general discussion or reading threads, is about the closing off of possibility as one grows up and loses oneself, one's hopes, dreams, imagination, identity, under the limiting force of capital. I think the book mostly succeeded in developing this theme; I certainly recognized a lot of my own career in Drogo's. But I think its pessimism ultimately leaves us with a feeling of resignation. It refuses the possibility of an alternative. Who has a good, fulfilled, actualized life in this world? Drogo seems to think it's his old friends with better, more desirable jobs in the city. But if we got their perspectives, I'm sure we'd see they're envious of some other peers with even better professions and lives. And so the novel leaves us with a feeling of hopelessness here, and I think a really dangerous feeling of the impossibility of change.

The other theme is about the futility of striving for glory. This felt under-developed and really fell flat to me, I think because I found the characters' desire for glory so unconvincing. Maybe it's a cultural thing and Buzzati assumed his readers would just identify with this desire for glory. It's a really foreign desire to me, and it was never convincingly developed in a way I could empathize with. It just seemed like characters were using glory as a way to justify their wasted lives.

That said, I did mostly enjoy reading it. The first part of the book especially, through Angustina's death, was a real page turner, and Drogo's reflections on the loss of his childhood and realization that he could never go back were very affecting and made me pause and think hard about my own life. I kind of wish the book had just ended there --- it would have been a very strong short story/novella at that point, and I don't think theme was really developed further after that.

[u/[deleted] → u/DeadFlagBluesClues]

It just seemed like characters were using glory as a way to justify their wasted lives.

That's, like, the point.

[u/DeadFlagBluesClues → u/[deleted]]

Well, yeah. What I'm trying to say is I felt like you were supposed to be convinced of the characters' belief in glory, but since I couldn't really empathize with their belief or see any reason for it I found it unconvincing. Like, why these characters have this desire for glory isn't really explored; they just have it and it functions to justify their actions.

[u/AdResponsible5513 → u/DeadFlagBluesClues]

So many books to read, so many books to write. I dreamed of becoming a writer when I was eleven and have, laughably, sustained that dream for decades.

[u/Kafka_Gyllenhaal]

The Tartar Steppe is truly a beautiful novel which explores life, death, boredom, anticipation, duty, honor, and a host of other themes. In a mere 200 pages it manages to pack in so much thematic material and beautiful prose that I was left flabbergasted.

Giovanni Drogo is a protagonist in the Kafkaesque mold - an everyman who is wrapped up in this absurd lifelong trap which he cannot escape due to his own passion for staying in the trap. Fort Bastiani is described as a sprawling and hard-to-navigate building - which parallels the twists and turns of Drogo's psyche as he battles a nonexistent enemy for decades and decades.

There are mnay beautiful metaphors and passages in Tartar Steppe; my favorites were the ones in which Buzzati explained life as a walk down a lane through the country towards the shore, and the entirety of chapter 16. Death is portrayed as both a release and an act of supreme honor.

The ending can be frustrating to read but plays into what the novel has built up. With Drogo waiting for the tartars these long decades, truly believing that his day of glory will come, it's no surprise that when they do come he first has his suspicions ignored and then is sent home right when the battle will begin. He has seen his older comrades treated the same way - serving for decades and then more or less thrown away and forgotten. It is doubly painful that this happens to Drogo at the time when his duty is most important. We can see that through his sickness he is able to bring up enough strength and courage that he would have been able to play at least some part in the battle, but life and death have other plans for him.