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The Clockwork Man William Jablonsky 9781605420998 Books

Download As PDF : The Clockwork Man William Jablonsky 9781605420998 Books

The Clockwork Man William Jablonsky 9781605420998 Books

This fable is told in first person with journal entries. What I particularly found refreshing is that the Clockwork Man never once desires to be human...a plot device typically found in this type of allegorical tale. Ernst is eager to please, and even when he's abused and disrespected, he displays the human ideal of compassion that most humans fail to reach. The only thing that prevented me from giving this book five stars is, at times, the narrative is redundant and there is a discrepancy about the language of the diary and how an American policeman is able to read German journal entries. Does he speak German? It's never explained. The intimate encounter also felt jarring, in that it felt like it came out of nowhere. The story could've progressed without it. Regardless, the character of Ernst, and his desire to live as his Master envisioned him is stirring.


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The Clockwork Man William Jablonsky 9781605420998 Books Reviews

When disappointment augurs the future by warning that the moment we’re housed in isn’t enough, beauty, longing and emptiness have converged. Imagine walking around without the nagging weight of that convergence and being truly free. Neither happy nor unhappy. Such is the case with the main character of Ernst in William Jablonsky’s novel The Clockwork Man.

Clockwork man Ernst is the creation of Karl Gruber. And it is Gruber who has gifted his masterpiece of nineteen-century faith in All Things Modern with consciousness. From the first, Ernst sees in the way an undead person might watch the world through a window in a coffin lid, as through a pane of Plexiglas darkly thrilling at glimpses before the earth is tossed in and his line of sight blocked forever. As such, this mechanical Everyman is the voice of difference and has to be lectured early on by his creator-master not to forget the limits placed on him “Ernst, you must understand that the people of this city have only recently gotten used to you. Do you remember how they reacted when I first built you and brought you into town?”

“Yes. They were frightened.”

“They thought you were a monster. You showed them that you aren’t, of course, but it took a long time.” (Jablonsky, 30)

However, unlike Mary Shelley’s monster Frankenstein—to which there are some parallels—Ernst isn’t a collage of the organic; isn’t a greatest-hits approximation of Man “to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.” Ernst is wound into existence and keeps track of time. He knows how long to go between windings, given a certain amount of exertion over time. As long as he winds himself, as long as he gives himself time to act, Ernst is a Superman (in the German ubermensch), accomplishing various feats of strength and self-sacrifice. However, these feats underscore that the chief difference between the natural and the miraculous isn’t that what is accomplished by one might, given time, be accomplished by the many but—and this is the big- tada!—that there is an extra element to a miracle that involves foreshortening time. Wine naturally comes from water—that is, given time and a patient hand—unless and until some ubermensch intervenes. Whether lifting a running escalator lip from the limbs of a child or thwarting an abduction and kidnapping, miracles involve the time factor made null and void.

Every miracle man has his kryptonites. Ernst can wind down, his workings can be damaged, and he has a longing to right a wrong done to someone he’s loved, Giselle. He develops this longing for Giselle, along with his other feelings for her, as a set of eidetic mental kinetoscopes. (Thomas Alva Edison makes an important cameo appearances in the novel.) As a creature at times possessed by great personal longing, Ernst can’t be counted on to triage the world stage of events and move in a timely fashion to the locale of greatest need. He is the Man from Krypton if the Man from Krypton lived in a city without mass transit and walked and carried a great weight for the death of some dear one—oh, that’s right Krypton blew up, which is why Superman is here… Still, ubermensch or not, Ernst plods. Which is a brilliant choice for the writer to make, and is a reaction to figures possessing invincibility and phenomenal mobility. Ernst is a superhero who could use a handicapped parking permit, and in the latter half of the book he needs a lot of help. It’s as if the villagers had to take charge of the Frankenstein monster, to care for this metaphor for Difference in order for him to transcend the limits of being human.

The character’s limitations are his greatest recommendation, as they humanize the Overman. Ernst is, like the individuals he protects, cut down to size by events and time; the fact that he stands up to so much abuse (and for as long as he does) testifies to what each of us must endure in order to triumph, especially in Milwaukee—a working-class city of Midwesterners satisfied with the Brewers and a little brat-and-beer ecumenical banality, which Jablonsky has Ernst describe from the vantage point of a manikin-like situation in a storefront window where the mass of humanity passes by and looks in. This Frankenstein is a retail merchant’s wet dream, a capitalist’s answered prayer. Ernst’s journey isn’t about making money, though. Which makes his escape from that storefront window a necessity. And admirable in the extreme in its deft execution by a narrator who sees Storytelling as the discovery of one’s reason and Being.

The Clockwork Man is a timely and terrific novel; a work of understated, and stunning, brilliance. If Ernst, the clockwork man, is an attraction in a sideshow, and if the novel is a kind of midnight ramble complete with a Wisconsin barker with the sparkle of coins and dull shine of folding money in his eyes, then it is also about Creation. As such, parallels between Ernst and the Almighty as an only-so-well-intentioned nabob are worth the price of admission. Ernst isn’t God—ah, but if he were we’d at least get to watch him wind himself up before going about the business of answering our great need of him.
I'm into Steampunk lately, so this book intrigued me. The Clockwork Man is presented as the diary of Ernst Gruber, a mechanical man built by master clockmaker Karl Gruber. Somehow, he is so finely detailed as to be sentient. The diary begins in October, 1893, stops not long after the clockmaker's daughter is murdered in December, 1893, then resumes in 2005. As the story develops, any reader's heart is apt to be wrung. In the story, one finds an innocent persecuted for what he is, a gentle soul. The tale has depth way beyond what one might imagine of this genre. A well-written, wonderful story.
Human formed automatons have been created since time immemorial, but Ernst, the clockwork man created by the genius clock-maker Karl Gruber as his greatest work of art, at the end of the 19th. century, was something more. He was able to learn and to think for himself. He is stronger than a human. But he is taught to not draw attention to himself and to be a true gentleman. Ernst and his kind Master know that it will take very little for the people of his town to become frightened of him. Ernst desires only to serve his Master. Giselle, Gruber's intelligent and kind-hearted daughter sees that Ernst is more than just a work of artistic genius and a help and servant to his Master--he is a person in his own right, even if he is not of flesh and blood but made of metal and gears.

But Ernst is not human and winds down into a sleep of over a century and finds himself in a much-changed world. Yet things have not changed so much. He is still viewed as a thing to be owned.

This is a curious tale, told from Ernst's viewpoint. It explores some issues, of what makes one human, or gentle, or inhuman. But mostly it is a rather bitter-sweet and romantic story focused on one being who is just trying to do the best he can in the strange and crazy human world.
Like to read about Androids and robots...
This book is extremely well written. It keeps your interest from page one till the end. Very hard to put down. The characters are well thought out. The plot is dynamic. Loved it!
Although I was disappointed with the somewhat abrupt conclusion I found this novel very enjoyable. It was well written and intriguing. I hope the author revisits the subject and gives a more satisfying denouement.
The story details the life of Ernst, a mechanical man, and a product of 19th century engineering, suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world for which his former life has left him ill-prepared. Everyone and everything he has ever known is gone and he struggles to find a place for himself in a world that doesn't believe he exists.

Written in the form of a diary maintained by "The Clockwork Man" the writing style is in the slower, more deliberate style of the Victorian period which lends it an air of sophistication and quaintness that helps the reader more readily understand Ernst's nature and his confusion with the strange world that is now his home.

Highly recommended.
This fable is told in first person with journal entries. What I particularly found refreshing is that the Clockwork Man never once desires to be human...a plot device typically found in this type of allegorical tale. Ernst is eager to please, and even when he's abused and disrespected, he displays the human ideal of compassion that most humans fail to reach. The only thing that prevented me from giving this book five stars is, at times, the narrative is redundant and there is a discrepancy about the language of the diary and how an American policeman is able to read German journal entries. Does he speak German? It's never explained. The intimate encounter also felt jarring, in that it felt like it came out of nowhere. The story could've progressed without it. Regardless, the character of Ernst, and his desire to live as his Master envisioned him is stirring.