Traveling on One Leg Book

To say that Traveling on One Leg was a gloomy novel would definitely not be off the mark. But it is heavy in a good and honest way. It is rooted in the author's own life experiences and those of the Romanian citizens whom she depicts as also having transplanted themselves to other countries. Because truth is the foundation of this novel, it gives this work a heavy-hearted edge, that as a reader, is not all too easy to digest. The other Amazon reviewers, I agree, hit the mark with their assessments of this excellent novel, in essence, that it is extremely personal and that the evocative nature of loneness and disjointedness is thoroughly yet tangibly conveyed. More than a novel, the reader is almost transported into a nightmarish dream sequence, where life and living is the nightmare. It is a novel that is poetically written in a hardened verse format. The language of poetry is short, trenchant, having to pack a wallop with the fewest words available to the author; the writer has to be extremely selective in her word choice, and Herta Muller is selective, evinced by this novel that does thrust a forceful literary punch.

The story revolves around the female protagonist Irene, a transplant from the repressive country of Romania whose presidential figurehead is a ruthless, paranoid and self-absorbed dictator (Ceausescu) who espouses backward, socialist ideologies. Anyone who lives under the unfortunate umbrella of his leadership don't have much hope of living a life of freedom, individuality, prosperity and a go-at-it-alone work ethic. Hence, people try to defect, and Irene is one of those who does. Yet, her homeland is not the enemy; it is the victim. Irene is just an offshoot of the country, a tree branch connected to the trunk (the country). The disease is communism, and it is affecting every fiber of society. But when she emigrates to Germany (as Muller herself did in 1987), she is not greeted into a land of golden opportunity. She is a legalized émigré who has been uprooted from all that is familiar to her. And although she is free from the harm that communism carries, she can not relate to her new homeland, for there is no pride, no connection, nothing. She has her baggage-mentally and physically speaking-and her memories. And nothing else. She is like a newborn babe who has to start anew. However, the contaminated mother's milk of her homeland has infected her development in more ways than one. Being an isolated loner is just a tip of the iceberg.

While in Germany, she befriends three men Franz, Stefan and Thomas, all of whom seem mentally crippled in their own right. And as misery loves company, she is drawn to them for the individuality. And though their individuality is not one of an uplifting nature (individuality Irene never encountered in Romania), she is attracted to that characteristic in them regardless. As people are not automatons, for they are flesh and blood and capable of joys, sorrows and growth, she sticks with them and by them. But it is really pointless. She is like a ping pong ball going back and forth trying to find some measure of concreteness to firmly clasp onto. In a nutshell, it's hopeless with these three guys. She is in a void, a kind of limbo where all she can really do is reflect, remember and analyze: "If you would see the city from the inside, it would be different. Irene is a name of a faraway city, if you get close to it it becomes different. It's one city if you go by and don't enter it, and another if you get moved by it and don't leave it. It's one city if you come to it for the first time and another if you leave it, never to return. A different name for each." Pages 81-82. Irene escapes the daily nightmare of faux cultural, social and political assimilation when on page 144 she states: "Neither dead nor alive...It was almost joy." She literally has to be an empty vessel and not be beholden to anybody or anything in order to feel truly free. But that is next to impossible and only fleeting at best.

Traveling on One leg was a fascinating read whereby no core action (marriage, careerism, childbirth), as taken by Irene, could be specifically defined. The whole work, for me, seemed so dream-oriented. It was like a person was trying to keep the insanity that no one else (except Irene) could see or feel, at arm's length. I could almost visualize Irene waking up form a nightmare while living in Romania about what life in Germany could be like. Overall, the book was very powerful, maybe even more so than than The Appointment and The Land of Green Plums. In any event, it is a hard book that one will not easily forget. It is dreary, and yet, it makes me so grateful for my life and what I have in it. Mission accomplished!