José Saramago: All The Names

[Beth]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

Next came All The Names, a parable with Kafkaesque contours about alienation and identity.

I read this in May and found it lyrical and breathtaking one minute, ponderous and frustrating the next. nnyhav mentions the pattern of knowing asides, a technique which I found delightful and full of playfulness. I think even more asides and comments from the narrator (and the ceiling!) would have helped move the story along. I appreciate your comment that the novel is a parable with Kafkaesque contours. The alienation of the narrator/character José certainly stands out for me. But do you think that José found his identity, even at the end? I'm not convinced that he did, though the Registrar certainly knew who they both were!

I'm picturing, perhaps wrongly, readers in Portugal who are less harried and who have more time to luxuriate in a story such as this. If you have a chance, I'd really enjoy reading more of your insights about this novel as I finished it thinking that I just failed to receive the central message.

[Heteronym]

Perhaps you’re not reading it wrongly; no Kafka short-story ends with a clear meaning either.

José is a man who lives a lonely life according to a rigid routine and only finds a semblance of happiness is collecting the civil records of famous people. His ordered life is disrupted when he decides to investigate the name of a mysterious woman on a civil record he found by mistake; this may just be the most important adventure that has happened to him and a starting point for a new human relationship in his life. Notice that he doesn’t have any friends, just a boss and work colleagues; and the woman is the closest thing he’ll ever get to really know someone one.

But the denouement of his search shows the impossibility of ever really knowing anyone and that ultimately everyone is alone on Earth; so José resigns himself to his old existence. Perhaps he doesn’t learn anything from his adventure, he remains the same person, which would reflect the saying that prefaces the novel, “you know the name you were given, but not the name you have”.

[Beth]

I do think José's changed somehow by his 'adventure'. He's emboldened a bit as to things he does and doesn't do at work. Thus, knowing himself a little more, he's still having a different name, a different self, not just the one he was given by the state or the Central Registry. It almost feels like a tentative success for José in making that leap from passivity to something close to action. I agree fully with your first paragraph and the importance of the new 'relationship' with the woman, and peripherally, the old woman, the parents, the Registrar. Maybe this is all there is for José, but it still feels like a change for the better. Or maybe I'm just a cockeyed optimist.

[Beth]

Hi miriring, and, since you offered, I'd love to hear your insights as well regarding this novel. I read it while traveling and preparing to travel, thus was preoccupied and maybe unable to experience the full wash of the novel's scope. A novel haunts me when I feel like I've shortchanged it in some way. Do you see Saramago's Senor José as in any way gaining a new name, a new perspective? I can't help but feel that he's a changed person, within his small world.

[miriring]

Hi Beth, Glad you open a discussion upon All the Names. I wrote something about this book once, so here are some of my contemplations upon this book:

José, the hero in All the Names, is a man in his fifteenth, a man who was never really in "touch" with life. And to be in touch with life and reveal responsibility means to get married.

It is only when José is after the traces of the unknown woman, when he found out that on his table was the birth certificate of an unknown person that something is really happening in his life. José is surprised how come he made such "a mistake", for his collection contains only cards of famous people.

It is only when he weaves an imaginative love story with this woman that this man is being connected to life and reality. Until that moment (which comes very late in the plot of this novel), José spends his free time with a childish hobby, collecting cards of famous persons, pieces of information he finds in the newspapers etc.

José, as before-mentioned, finds in the cards of his collection the absurd "real interest", or "real importance" of his life. This "interest" leaves him closed, behind doors which do not allow him any real connection with 'the other'. In a close reading of this novel we are acquaintedwith the hero who is occupied with imaginary dialogues, sometimes metaphysical ones, with the Ceiling, Decision, Wisdom and Discomfort, with the Rational thought and the Autonomy thought, with the Understandable and the Significance etc. etc.
These imaginary dialogues fill the hours of leisure this man spends after long days of work, as a clerk, in the Central Regency in which he already work more than 20 years. An office directed in a very strict way and in a hierarchy described so ironically through the whole novel.
José is a man who is completely in a state of fantasy, collecting cards of anonymous persons; performs imaginary dialogues through the whole plot. The permanent stay in fantasy is a kind of self alienation, but it allows also, as mentioned before, a kind of freedom which does not exist within a man without imagination.
The freedom José "takes" to absent from work is in order to look for the unknown woman. He allows himself to spend a night in the school where this woman studied as a child and a night in the cemetery. This sense of freedom which this man feels is a result of the simple fact that no one will "look for him", because he does not have any real relationship. But this is freedom which can be characterized as a melancholy alienation and not any freedom in which happy existence is being realized.

José who feels a great sense of guilt for not fulfilling all his duties "dares" to absent from work or come a few minutes later than the fix hour he should be at the Central Registry. (In the strict rules of this office, these issues are considered to be disorderly conduct with no forgiveness).
An unexplained sensation of guilt is in "the late exit" from his "shell", looking for the unknown woman. If he would find her a few days earlier, is it possible that she would not choose the solution of suicide? Is the love he felt for her, though developing in his imagination, (but could have been realized), would have helped her to face life differently?

Nevertheless, José is a helpless hero and this helpless is something which is difficult to overcome in reality of settled life, organized and ruled by the other (by the Regency, by the director, by bureaucracy).
"[…] it was as if he had been on the point of setting off to discover a mysterious island and, at the last moment, with his foot already on the gangplank, someone had come up to him holding an outspread map. There's no point in you going now, the unknown island you wanted to find is here, look, on latitude so-and-so, longitude such and such, it's got ports and cities, mountains and rivers, all with their names and histories, you'd better just resign yourself to being who you are." (ATN p. 35)

Between José's apartment and the Central Registry there was a door that opened into the office but was kept permanently closed. José was told to lock it and that he could never go through it at any time. Through this 'secret' door José enters at night to the labyrinth of the archives of the Central Registry, especially to the archives of the dead from which he goes out, paradoxically, to real life.
Sitting in his room, closed between four walls and not choosing to open doors, the utmost of his deed is to contemplate and reflect without any solution. Not only that there is no possibility of any kind of relations with the 'other', it is also a state in which there is not any possibility to have any contact with yourself, with your being.

José, the hero in Saramago's All the Names, is a man who lives in the non-authentic life. A man who lives in a constant fear from the authorities and who does not make his free natural choice given to him, as a human being.
It is only when he goes out in search for the traces of the unknown woman, a search for 'the other', that he succeed to penetrate into his authentic existence in which one can find the freedom to chose and incline to the otherness.
With the discovery that the unknown woman is dead José thinks that the search came to its end. To the question of the woman from the ground floor if he would go back to his hobby of collecting cards of famous people, his answer is negative.
"[…] the Central Registry only wants to know when we're born and when we die, and that's about it... the Central Registry has absolutely no interest in finding out if we were happy or unhappy while all that was going on, Happiness and unhappiness are just like famous people, they come and they go, the worst thing about the Central Registry is that they're not interested in what we're like, for them we're just a piece of paper with a few names and dates on it…
(ATN p. 166)
The search for the unknown woman ends, and we ask what is going to happen now?
It is the metaphysical dialogue with the ceiling which helps José:
"His imaginary and metaphysical dialogue with the ceiling had served to disguise his complete mental disorientation, the feeling of panic provoked by the idea that he would now have nothing further to do in life, if, as he had reason to fear, the search for the unknown woman was over…and cried without shame, at this time there was no one there to laugh at him. On these occasions, ceilings can do nothing to help people in distress; they must merely wait up there until the storm passes…" (ATN, p. I think that this novel does not give us a clear answer in this complicated issue and it is not, by all means, a happy end. The search for the unknown woman is in fact a reversed search – from death towards life.
"I was thinking that it would be best to take up her idea and begin searching again, only from the opposite direction this time, that is, from death into life…" (OTN, p. 168)

[Beth]

I'm so impressed by your thoughts, miriring. I think I picked up on some of Senor's ''incline to otherness'', and neither would I place his leanings in relation to happiness. Some sort of connection, more fanciful than real, but an impetus for him to become bolder and leading to actual conversations with other people, ie the old woman, the young woman with the baby.

You're so right, there is no happy end to this novel. And yet, within the last few pages, I caught some glimpses in a few lines that for some reason left me without a sense of desolation for José. Going for a long walk at the moment and I'll have to search my copy for the lines that have sent me in this direction of thinking. I'll try to find them tonight or tomorrow and post the ones that lead me to think he may have found new names for himself, though certainly none that are happy. I'm also curious about the thought that in order for him to have an authentic life and responsibility he would need to be married. Is this what you're saying in the opening of your essay?

[Heteronym]

José is a solitary man who clearly fears human contact. Humans are naturally social creatures, thus social isolation signifies that his existence is incomplete.

The ability to socially mingle, to engage in the power dynamics that define human relationships, is also a sign of emotional maturity, of the acceptance of adult responsabilities. José is himself rather childish: his hobby, collecting cards of famous people, is really no different than the children who collect baseball cards.

[Beth]

In the last conversation between José and the Registrar:

The Registrar picked up the file of the unknown woman, then said, ''...tell me what happened in the cemetery, your narrative ends with the conversation you had with the clerk over there.''
''It'll take a long time.''
''Just tell me in a few words, so that I get the complete picture.''
''I walked through the General Cemetery to the section for suicides, I went to sleep under an olive tree, and the following morning, when I woke up, I was in the middle of a flock of sheep, and then I found out that the shepherd amuses himself by swapping around the numbers on the graves before the tombstones are put in place.''
''Why?''
''It's hard to explain, it's all to do with knowing where the people we're looking for really are. He thinks we'll never know.''
''Like the woman you call the unknown woman?''
''Yes, sir.''
''What did you do today?''
''I went to the school where she was a teacher and I went to her apartment.''
''Did you find anything out?''
''No, sir, and I don't think I wanted to.''

Urgh, on the verge of getting too waxy. But what I pulled from this was José's progress from total passivity and isolation to a small, connection with another person, insignificant though it was. Yes, I see how his clippings and inability to mingle keep him stunted and apart. And I know that as the novel ends he's back in the stacks of the Registry, but he's there as a different person somewhat, and with the approval of the Registrar. He took a little journey in terms of actual events and connections, but I see it as a larger internal journey towards self-understanding. Again, all through the cockeyed glance of an optimist. Internal change is one of my favorite actions and themes in literature. It may be that I just wanted this to happen for José.

[Heteronym]

An optimistic reading is always a possible reading. I read it cynically because Saramago has prepared me to always expect the worse for his characters With the exception of Death at Intervals and The Cave, I don't think the author ever wrote a happy ending.