Man Walks Into a Room
by Nicole Krauss
List Price:
Our Price: $7.47
You Save: $7.53 (50%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.92 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Nicole KraussEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-11-11
ISBN: 0385721919
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Man Walks Into a Room
Book Review: A History of Loss
Summary: 5 Stars
The concept of this brilliant first novel by Nicole Krauss is simple. A man is found wandering in the desert in Nevada. Documents in his billfold show him to be Samson Greene, a thirtyish English professor at Columbia, but a medical examination reveals a devastating brain tumor. His wife Anna comes to be with him for the operation that saves his life but also robs him of all memories past the age of 12. Although he does not recognize her, Samson goes back to New York with Anna, grateful for her loving care. But his memories do not return. More than that, Samson comes to treasure the 24-year blank as a kind of mental refuge. He moves out on his own and eventually volunteers for a program back in Nevada that experiments with transferring memories from one person to another. The results shock him into a state of almost total disorientation, but he painfully begins to discover how to live his life anew.
I cannot but compare this to Richard Powers' recent novel THE ECHO MAKER, also about a man recovering his memory after brain trauma. Although Krauss is the less realistic writer (some of this taut novel seems a little too artfully constructed), she is also simpler, more empathetic, and infinitely more resonant. Indeed, I am amazed at the number of issues she can raise through her central examination of the nature of loss.
The back cover describes Samson as "an emigrant in his own life." Although Krauss herself does not use this term, there is an obvious parallel between Samson's condition and that of any emigrant who has left his previous life behind to start again in a new country -- the defining fact of the American experience (and certainly of mine). Krauss is Jewish, and although the theme is barely touched on in this novel, there are nonetheless echoes of that extreme case of loss caused by the Holocaust, and thus a link to her second book, THE HISTORY OF LOVE, which is one of the most beautiful post-Holocaust novels in recent years, and which shares with this one the belief that some kind of regeneration is possible, even from the most arid desert.
The book is also a parable of the writing process itself. Ray, the scientist who enrolls Samson as an experimental subject, is fascinated by his desire to preserve a mental tabula rasa. But "once you have given up everything," he asks, "don't you have to set down the first mark?" So it is for the creative artist. Samson has found himself essentially a white canvas, a blank sheet of paper. Making the first mark of a new life is a terrifying experience. In the most difficult part of the book, after he has left the experimental facility, we see him wildly constructing almost melodramatic fictions, imagining a fantastic back-story for a boy he meets in Las Vegas, identifying with an ex-hippie returned from India to join a fundamentalist cult. But these are temporary aberrations. The raw material of who he is (the raw material of all writing) has been accessible to him all along, in the memories of his childhood. In search of that past, he visits an great-uncle who has lost his own memory through senility, but who nonetheless is able to offer Samson an epiphany that will prove the turning point.
Finally, this is a love story, though an oblique one. Even when Samson and Anna separate, there is no doubt that love still remains part of the equation. And in Samson's various intergenerational encounters with oddball characters along his way (either young enough to be his students, or almost surrogate parents), there is always the undertow of attraction or affection. But love is also the other side of the coin to loneliness, and its desperate antidote. Perhaps the greatest lesson that Samson learns is the place of loneliness in his life. Curiously, by coming to embrace it, he also arrives at a resolution in the last few pages of the book which, although unexpected and certainly oblique, is also strangely consoling.
Literary Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literary Books
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Angelsby Marian Keyes
William Morrow; Published: 2002-05-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.38
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.86
Price in other shops:
The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptationby Paulo Coelho
Harper; Published: 2006-07-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Boonville: A Novelby Robert Mailer Anderson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Carameloby Sandra Cisneros
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-10-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $4.60
Price in other shops:
Headhunterby Timothy Findley
PERENNIAL PUBLICATIONS; Paperback; Book
The Crimson Petal And The Whiteby Michel Faber
Harcourt, Inc./Harvest; Published: 2003; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Love and Garbageby Ivan Klima
Vintage; Published: 1993-03-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
A Field Guide to Getting Lostby Rebecca Solnit
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-06-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.24
Price in other shops:
Tree of Codesby Jonathan Safran Foer
Visual Editions; Published: 2010-11-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.57
Price in other shops:
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)by Bruno Schulz
Penguin Classics; Published: 2008-03-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.08
Price in other shops:
Falling Man: A Novelby Don DeLillo
Scribner; Published: 2008-06-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.09
Price in other shops:
The Thin Placeby Kathryn Davis
Back Bay Books; Published: 2007-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.12
Price in other shops:
Great House: A Novelby Nicole Krauss
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2010-10-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.89
Price in other shops:
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novelby Jonathan Safran Foer
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Great House: A Novelby Nicole Krauss
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2011-09-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.65
Price in other shops:
The History of Loveby Nicole Krauss
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2006-05-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.41
Price in other shops: