The Trenchcoat, Manea

    

      I am very glad I watched part of the lecture video *before* reading this novel. Having a little bit of context about what was happening in Romania made things make a lot more sense than they would have had I been reading blind. Even still, this novella was pretty confusing, not because I couldn't understand the writing it seemed by design, I can reread a page and still be left feeling confused even while understanding context and what had occurred plot wise. I get the sense it was intentional, a reflection of the time the book was set in and it seemed obvious that most of the characters didn't fully understand what was occurring either. There was a overarching feeling of fearful uncertainty thinly veiled by social niceties like those that were seen at the dinner. 

    Initially, I was pretty confused by the first section of the novella, a conversation occurring sometime in the future that had absolutely no context at the time. As soon as the trench coat Dina found was mentioned, I formed a little theory that these two were connected. I was very pleased to find that I was correct and it was in fact carelessly (or possibly not carelessly?) left by one of these confidential agents. To me, this makes the trench coat a symbol of mistrust. Something left behind as a symbol of the governments mistrust in its people, to go to such lengths as using other peoples homes for meetings/interviews without permission and also the mistrust the people had for their government that was not supporting them how it should and went behind their back to report about *them*. 

    When it comes to the ending, I found it to real fit together with the title of the collection of these novels 'Compulsory Happiness.' Laughter, usually a pretty obvious sign of joy, but in a context where it was once again a thin veil to cover the grim reality the characters were living in. Laughing at the situation, or maybe laughing to try to ignore it and pretend everything was fine.

Overall, I enjoyed this novella it was really interesting and I also never hear much about Romania in general so it was cool to read something from there. I am very interested to see what Manea has to say on Thursday, about the book but also about his experiences and anything else. I don't think I have ever had the chance to hear an author talk about their life/writing live before so it'll be cool. I have a somewhat unrelated question for Manea: How did moving to the U.S. affect your writing? I can imagine that there was some culture shock and I wonder how that may have changed how you viewed things.