Utz

UTZ has much going for it. Chatwin packs a lot into a short novel: portraits of a Communist state in its waning years and a man caught in material obsession. Chatwin has a winning way with storytelling, well drawn images just fall off his pen and what might seem a boring concept moves swiftly and holds interest. It is the story of Kaspar Utz who through most of the violent world-changing events of Europe in the 20th century, builds an extraordinary collection of porcelain figurines, a collection he improves on even while living in Prague where personal property is prohibited. Allowed yearly visits to Vichy ostensibly for his health, Utz makes purchases on the sly and smuggles them back. The aforementioned ambiguities are opened like a can of worms in these trips to Vichy: Utz could defect but does not. It is there, in a place of freedom and plenty, he makes the key observation that luxury is only luxurious under adverse conditions. The mysteries swirl up around him: why does he give up the opportunity to escape Communism, what happens to the collection, and what is the nature of his relationship with a woman who lives as a servant in his apartment? In the mid - late 80's, Chatwin's unnamed narrator returns to Prague to sort out the questions long after Utz's death, coming to some unpredictable conclusions.UTZ was a tad problematic for me. It is different from the other of Chatwin's books I've read; it does not compare to THE SONGLINES, which I adored. It is intentionally fraught with so many ambiguities that I'm not sure I really "got" it all.

I like the characters, the descriptions of Prague, the funeral, the porcelains, and the exquisite texture of the narrative. Chatwin was a literary giant. This is one of my favorite books written in a short life, truncated by a nasty virus.

A strange, beautifully written shortish story about one man's obsession for porcelain figurines as seen through the eyes of a young acquaintance. It had me running to Google for images.

I read anything Chatwin writes.

Very peculiar and strange story about a collector of porcelain figurines during the Soviet rule of most of Europe. Beautifully written, and something you cannot put down. Not like anything else you've read before.Belongs on the shelf next to Kafka and Clarice Lispector. A redemptive book

Chatwin's imagination and Kafkaeske-like story telling worth reading. I liked the characters and how the story is weaved together. A most entertaining read.

The book had obviously been used as a coaster with stains and circles of water evident. I could wipe some of it off, but couldn't do anything about how YELLOW the pages were.

Well written book about a person obsessed with collection Meissen.

This short novella paints an exquisite portrait of the collector. Utz is a member of the Czech minor nobility who during the twentieth century has inherited and then acquired many fine pieces of Meissen porcelain. Some of them are described in intricate detail, reflecting the Rococo world in which they were created.The acquisition and preservation of such a collection in Czechoslovakia during the two world wars (where Nazis might see them as spoils of war in WW2) and during the post-war Communist regime (in which art should not be kept in private hands but as assets of the people) carries great risk.Utz himself is a shadowy figure and he is seen often as others see and report him, through the eyes of his paleontologist friend, Dr Orlik, the retired operatic diva who lives in an apartment in the same building as Utz, a slightly seedy art dealer from New York and an unnamed writer who comes to interview Utz. However, most enigmatic of all is Marta, Utz’s peasant-born retainer.The narration is beautifully concise and had me thinking about the art of porcelain (amazed to learn that porcelain and pork have the same root as words) and its production and cultural importance.The book though, is enigmatic, and the Utz we initially see is not the same as the one we see at the end.I have enjoyed reading this book and one read through may not be enough to get was Bruce Chatwin was trying to convey.

I recently read The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin which was a jolly good read. I am halfway through Utz and have been "able to put it down" which is not high praise. So far, I have found it humorous and interesting by turns but it has not yet really got me hooked. This might be partly due to the tiny Chapters some less than a full page long. Reading Utz last thing at night, when quite tired, it is tempting to stop reading much sooner than with a "normal" novel with Chapters of say twenty or thirty pages. So the book being a matter of 130 pages or so in all is still taking me about two weeks to read. Fine, but so far no great revelations, which I thought I might find from my earlier reading of Songlines.There was so little written and published by Chatwin in his brief creative life as an author that I wanted to read Utz and still look forward to reading his other books. You may find Utz fascinating. Don't let me stop you reading it. The Vintage paperback edition is crisp, clean and new.

In 1998 Bruce Chatwin (BC) selected and edited his best journalistic work. He also lived to see the publication in 1998 of Utz, a work in progress for more than 20 years, which was short-listed for that year's Booker Prize. He did not live to see his collection of short pieces called What Am I Doing Here. He died of AIDS, or perhaps, as he claimed himself, of an extremely rare bone marrow disease contracted in Western China, in January 1989.Utz is the romanticized life history of a real person called Rudolf Just and his affliction, which in German is called Porzellankrankheit, a little-known type of addiction common among royals and very rich people.BC met Utz in Prague in 1967 and they spent altogether 9.5 hours together. The novella is an account of this meeting and BC's subsequent investigations about what happened to him and his collection. Utz died in 1974. Much later BC re-established contact with the tiny cast of people surrounding Utz during their one encounter, and new perspectives emerge...Kaspar Utz inherits a fortune at a young age when he is already under the spell of Meissner porcelain figures. He rapidly becomes an expert. He uses his considerable assets to acquire ever more items, but unlike the 17th century king August of Saxony, who surrounded himself with so many porcelain items that his small empire collapsed, Utz manages to keep together and even expand his collection. During WW II he moved his collection in time from Dresden to the cellars of the ancestral mansion. Later, after the communist takeover in 1948 and again in 1952 and after, he made deals with the new rulers of Czechoslovakia. BC wonders what the deals really implied... They did allow Utz to make annual trips abroad and for his collection to stay with him (albeit photographed, numbered and fully registered by the State) until his death, in his two-room flat.BC's main question, what happened to the collection, is not solved in the novella, but plenty of possibilities are suggested. This meticulously researched and beautifully plotted and written novella is BC's farewell gift to humanity. A very rich and atmospheric book, requiring re-reading upon completion.

"If Bruce Chatwin's novel Utz teaches us any lesson, it is that the importance of morality in our lives is a fiction. We use it in the stories we tell ourselves and others about our lives to give them a sense they might otherwise lack. But in so doing we obscure the truth of how we live." (John Gray) I liked the short chapters which made it easier to read moving from one idea to the next. the intricate details of one mans obsession, that amounts to his meaning and purpose in life, in the face of a world he can neither be part of or escape from. His sense of worth is tied up with the things he possesses and interacts with and yet in the end they have no lasting value.

I found UTZ a challenging, interesting and a very artistically written novel. It is written in an almost Kafkaesque style but also reminiscent of The Hare with Amber Eyes, by de Waal. It became clear as I was reading that Chatwin used his experience at Sotherbys as a basis for the wonderful description of the pottery collection and the complex character of the collector. Prague and World War II make a fitting setting for the story of a very unusual survivor of war while still striving to maintain his links with art and history.