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The City of Words

by Alberto Manguel

“Language is our common denominator.”

This sentence, the opener of The City of Words, the 2007 edition of the CBC Massey Lectures, is at once a rhetorical salvo, an overly broad generalization (surely humanity, not language, is our common denominator), and a thesis statement for the book. It tugs in many directions simultaneously and, in so doing, encapsulates both what is best and what is worst in the pages to come.

Surveying the current geopolitical landscape – ethnic clashes between fractious tribal factions in the Middle East, race riots in the suburbs of France, British government policies promoting a nationalistic definition of “Britishness” at the expense of multicultural accommodation – Manguel rightly identifies a world that is being consistently divided into notions of “us” versus “them,” in which opposing cultural forces are constantly engaged in a battle for ascendancy.

The question of how to reconcile these seemingly intractable oppositions leads Manguel to the realm of literature. “Literature,” Manguel argues, “can be read as a continuous chronicle of the resolution and restatement of a defining opposition.” In addressing this theme, the authors of the great works of literature offer us a prism through which we might better understand our own divided natures and may thereby “offer us ways of remaining alive, together, on this much-abused earth.”

Manguel’s erudition is on full display here, as is the breadth of his knowledge; in the course of his lectures he references everything from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But this wide scope often results in a lack of focus. Manguel’s refusal to provide any kind of resolution to his musings is also problematic. When he spends pages of exegesis on a story by William Trevor only to conclude that its utility in healing a wounded society “is a question that must remain open,” it’s hard not to feel a little frustrated. Manguel offers a rich intellectual repast, but the reader nevertheless comes away feeling hungry for more.

 

Reviewer: Steven W. Beattie

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, House of Anansi Press

DETAILS

Price: $18.95

Page Count: 240 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-0-88784-763-9

Released: October

Issue Date: 2007-12

Categories: Criticism & Essays