Incompletion as Inspiration: Ivan Vladislavic Launches The Loss Library at Boekehuis

by Amanda on Dec 13th, 2011

Opening the launch of Ivan Vladislavić’s The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories at Boekehuis, Michael Titlestad reflected on the overlap between the launch and bookshop’s planned closure, calling it a “metaphorical coincidence”.

According to Corina van der Spoel, founding manager of Boekehuis, Vladislavić has been associated with Boekehuis from the start and has taken part in discussions of a total of ten books there in ten years – either his own or those he contributed to. To this, Vladislavić added: “The discussions I have had here are a record of the literary life of the city and, indeed, the country.”

While it was near impossible to avoid discussing the increasingly precious space, van der Spoel did not linger on the issue of the bookshop’s planned closure. She did, however, express her gratitude to those who had reacted to the news, either by signing the petition or merely by voicing their support for Boekehuis. On the overwhelming response, van der Spoel remarked that she was surprised, but said that it gives her hope for the future of a space like Boekehuis.

Assuming the role of interviewer, Titlestad said that a great deal of exchange, reading, debate, discussion and intervention has flowed through Boekehuis. It has “a public intellectual and literary impact second to none in the city,” he said. Vladislavić agreed, saying that even the stoep at the bookstore had been a meeting place for him and others who chatted about “life, writing and everything else”. Vladislavić referred to van der Spoel as a venerable hostess who “never stops thinking about books and how to get readers interested in reading them.”

Launching into a discussion of The Loss Library, Titlestad noted: “The intriguing thing about the text itself is that it’s about those stories that are lost or incomplete, and these interrupted trajectories that provide a wonderful reflexive contribution about Vladislavić’s writing in general but it is also a book about writing.”

Vladislavić gave a short reading from his story “The Cold Storage Club” that concerns the burning of books in Berlin on 10 May 1933, one of almost a hundred book burnings that took place in Germany at that time. “I learned that more than 300 authors were blacklisted by the Nazis: Jews, socialists, pacifists, troublesome journalists, freethinking scientists,” read Vladislavić.

There followed a brief discussion about the fragments of story contained in the book. Vladislavić mentioned one story in which he was fascinated by a photograph for twenty years, but said that when he finally Googled it, it took on a different meaning and the surfeit of information changed his initial response and destroyed his illusions about the photograph: “I think that the internet is a great disenchanter. The excess of information has destroyed the mystery and originality that surrounds all sorts of creativity.”

Titlestad concluded the discussion with the wisdom that, with regard to the stories of The Loss Library, incompletion becomes a site of revelation or possibility.

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