Archives

25 Articles in

Literature

SELECT A CATEGORY:

Sep 18, 2008

It’s funny, I recently bought the two Philip K. Dick volumes (1, 2) of The Library of America, and I ran into exactly the same problem as this writer: “The books are lovely, lovely objects. They are about the nicest books I have. […] What is really hard, though, is to read them. The books are so gorgeous, so marmoreal, that I find them unreadable. Not unreadable in the Pierre Bourdieu/Edward Bulwer-Lytton sense, and not unreadable in theory – I want to read them, I really do. It’s just that in practice, I don’t. […] What is it about these amazingly gorgeous books that makes one not want to read them?”
Read more »

May 7, 2008

“Michel Houellebecq, France’s most shocking novelist, made his name with tales of dysfunctional, estranged relationships. Now his own mother, portrayed as a sex-obsessed hippy in one of his books, has launched a devastating counter-attack in a new memoir. […] She calls her son an ‘evil, stupid little bastard’ adding that ‘this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame.’” - story
Read more »

Oct 11, 2007

I wish I could write that they had finally awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Philip Roth, but again… I don’t think that any other writer has taught me more about American than Philip Roth; and if you’ve never read American Pastoral or The Human Stain or even Sabbath’s Theater (a book that contains too much humour to be truly offensive) you won’t know why I’m disappointed that he was passed over, yet again.
Read more »

Jul 25, 2007

Günter Grass’ admission that he was a member of the Waffen SS has proven to be a welcome opportunity for those eager to strike a righteous posture whenever possible (think, for example, Christopher Hitchens). Interestingly enough, many well-known colleagues of Grass’ have refused to follow that pattern (the latest of them John Irving in the New York Times), and now there’s Timothy Garton Ash’s new piece, well worth the read.
Read more »

May 29, 2007

“My new marching orders made it clear where the recruit with my name was to undergo basic training: on a drill ground of the Waffen S.S., as a panzer gunner, somewhere far off in the Bohemian Woods. […] for decades I refused to admit to the word, to the double letters. What I accepted with the stupid pride of youth I wanted to conceal after the war out of a recurrent sense of shame. But the burden remained, and no one could alleviate it. True, during the tank-gunner training, which kept me numb throughout the autumn and winter, there was no mention of the war crimes that later came to light. But the ignorance I claim cannot blind me to the fact that I had been incorporated into a system that had planned, organized, and carried out the extermination of millions of people. Even if I could not be accused of active complicity, there remains to this day a residue that is all too commonly called joint responsibility. I will have to live with it for the rest of my life.” - Günter Grass; a long and important read.
Read more »

Apr 4, 2007

“Discussed: Thomas BernhardÂ’s Suzuki Samurai, Memento Mori Woodcuts, Strong Style, World War III, Shoe Tics, Fear of Guns, The Goldberg Variations, Prince, So-Called Novels, So-Called Memoirs, So-Called Houses, The Art of Exaggeration, Samuel Beckett, Distinctly Austrian Words” - story
Read more »

Dec 19, 2006

“Vienna, Cafe Bräunerhof, early on the morning of July 15, 1986. Thomas Bernhard had set a rather vague rendezvous for an interview. He was having his apartment redecorated, he said, ‘naturally’ in white. He could not stand the presence of the workers in his home, causing him to flee to the coffeehouse in the early morning. When I arrive, he has already settled down, near the entrance, ‘where the air is better.’ He is walled in by mounds of newspapers whose pages he skims hastily, almost tearing them as he flips through. An interview? Yes, he says, he’s in the mood today. But short and to the point. Thomas Bernhard: So, I’ll just keep reading the paper, you don’t mind, do you? Werner Wögerbauer: Well, no, by all means. [Thomas Bernhard:] You’ll have to ask something and then you’ll get an answer.” (full interview)
Read more »

Oct 8, 2006

When I saw this collection of vintage Pelican paperbacks, I figured I might as well scan my own collection of vintage paperbacks. I have been collecting old paperbacks for a while now, buying whatever I can find, mostly in thrift stores. I have no strict rule for what to buy, so there are books that I bought for the covers (like this one), books that might be cool to read some day (like this one), or older science books (like this one). If you like stuff like this, keep an eye on the page, I’ll add more scans over the next few weeks (time permitting…).
Read more »

Aug 14, 2006

“Just weeks before the publication of his autobiography, German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass admits that, between 1944-45, he was a member of Hitler’s Weapons SS. The author says the shame of his youthful naivety has long haunted him and that it will now be his ‘Scarlet Letter.’” (story) “That the revelations come on the eve of the publication of the author’s new autobiography has only added oil to the flames of the debate […] Is Grass just cynically fishing for headlines to help sell his book? Many German pundits are incensed about what they see as Grass’ bottomless hypocrisy. […] But others have defended the author, calling the timing a highly person matter.” (story) (updated entry)
Read more »

Jan 25, 2006

There “reviews” of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s American Vertigo are easily amongst the worst reviews I’ve ever come across. A foreigner (a Frenchman and intellectual - oh the horror!) comes to the US, travels around, and writes about it - following an invitation from a US magazine. I read the whole series in that magazine, and I’ve rarely come across a more refreshing view of the US: Instead of going over the same old clichés, which are so popular either in the US itself or in Europe, Bernard-Henri Lévy proves his fierce independence. The problem for our reviewers, however, is that he is not writing what they want to read (he does get some praise, though, for saying the right things, as in “I especially appreciated his debunking of the myth that Americans are fatter than Europeans.”). This kind of reviewing is really just a slightly (but only very slightly) more sophisticated version of what I call the American-Idol effect: Boo whenever anybody dares to say something that doesn’t agree with what you yourself think about yourself. After all you cannot be wrong, because you know yourself best; and if anybody dares to disagree with you, that person simply doesn’t know what s/he is talking about. PS: Oh, and the vanity, because Bernard-Henri Lévy did not spin meeting one of the authors (or is it both?) into something bigger in the book! How dare he!
Read more »

Feb 4, 2005

What they call the DNA of Literature - “over 50 years of literary wisdom rolled up in 300+ Writers-at-Work interviews, now available online - free. […] Now, for the first time, you can read, search, and download any or all of these in-depth interviews with poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, critics, musicians, and more, whose work set the compass of twentieth-century writing, and continue to do so into the twenty-first.” - link (see at things magazine)
Read more »

Jun 29, 2004

“I think it’s interesting that in England three-hundred years ago, people at the bottom of society were called ‘unfortunates.’ Interesting word, ‘unfortunates.’ Nowadays they’re called ‘losers.’ That tells us a lot about how things have changed.” - Alain de Botton
Read more »

Dec 12, 2003

wood s lot pointed to an excerpt from the first translation of Thomas Bernhard’s novella “Gehen” (“Walking” as that translation is called). I started reading the translation and, frankly, I was put off. It just doesn’t work. “Gehen” works so well because it uses the way you can use German, something that is not easily possible in English. In German, you can chop up sentences to an amazing extent, then juggle the pieces around and if there ever has been a master of this kind of stuff it was Thomas Bernhard. In German, this chopping up is being preserved as the language forces you to use commas a lot - otherwise there’d be no way to understand the whole thing - something you just don’t do in English. On top of that Berhanrd used to place his own commas to create completely different rhythms - so the novella “Gehen”, that very intimately relates “to go” with “to think”, has its own rhythm most of which comes from the (German) structure of the sentences.
Read more »

Dec 2, 2003

The official Philip K. Dick website has just opened. Seems like nobdy can make a science-fiction movie any longer without either using one of his novels (e.g. “Paycheck”) or ripping one of (e.g. “The Matrix”).
Read more »

Oct 17, 2003

All about Thomas Bernhard, one of my favourite authors. If you don’t know Bernhard and are curious: Try to imagine Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaints” minus the sex plus more generalized discussions (and rants) about people and human interactions plus an immense hatred of all things Austrian. Good starting point to read: “Woodcutters” (another translation is called “Cutting Timber: An Irritation”). Another fabulous book (albeit a tough one to read): “The Lime Works”. (thru wood s lot)
Read more »

Oct 2, 2003

While I was in London this past Sunday, waiting for my connecting flight back from blackout’ed Italy to the US, I picked up a new magazine called Zembla. Zembla has a stupid name but that’s the only bad thing you can say about it. It’s filled with great stuff about literature and its design is quite stunning. If you have the chance check it out. Oh, that webpage doesn’t contain much, yet, but I’m sure that is going to change.
Read more »

Jul 25, 2003

Wolf Biermann, a Jewish communist German singer-songwriter, survived the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. He lived in East Germany until the mid Seventies when, during a tour of West Germany, East German authorities refused him re-entry. His songs and poetry had become too critical of the situation in East Germany. In the recent edition of Der Spiegel he is being interviewed about his experiences in Hamburg in 1943 and about dealing with that aspect of Germany’s past. As the interview was in German, I translated most of it - please bear in mind that all typos and errors are mine. In most instances, I decided to stick to Biermann’s fairly poetic way to speak German.
Read more »

Jul 22, 2003

German senior citizens write about World War II. - I’ve always asked myself how people could continue their lives as they did. My parents must have grown up in ruins. 70 percent of my hometown were destroyed. How do you deal with something like that? The more I read about it, the more I think the answer is “not at all”. My parents never wanted to talk about their experiences and only today, this chapter of German history is being opened, with long-lost literature being rediscovered. To get an idea of life in those days see Heinrich Böll’s “The Silent Angel” and “Group Portrait With Lady”. Siegfried Lenz’ “The German Lesson” does not touch the destruction of war but the notion of “duty” and all its implications. “The German Lesson” and “Group Portrait With Lady” probably come as close as you can get to get an overview of what Germans were thinking in those days. Hans Erich Nossack’s “An Offering for the Dead” describes the destruction of a German city - Nossack was a witness of the firebombing of Hamburg. I haven’t read the latter, yet - from all I’ve heard it’s an almost unbearable read.
Read more »

Jul 2, 2003

There are tons of stories by H.P. Lovecraft online, incl. The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out Of Space, and At the Mountains of Madness (note: there are also pdf version of the stories).
Read more »

Jun 28, 2003

Today, I started reading Michel Houellebecq’s novel “Platform” in its German translation (it’s due to be released in an English translation in a few weeks btw). Having read - and enjoyed - The Elementary Particles I was hoping for a similar litarary feast and I think I will not be disappointed (this is being written being around 100 pages into the book).
Read more »

Jun 16, 2003

Margaret Atwood about George Orwell
Read more »

Jun 8, 2003

“JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair.” “Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand […] has a huge reputation as a masterpiece, but I found it to be a fascist tirade about how wonderful American tycoons are in business.” “When I was 14, I expected Mein Kampf to be really disturbing; a charismatic evil genius would have a very dynamic view of the world. But when I finally bought it, it was as interesting as reading a bus timetable.” “A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking […] was unreadable and who cares, anyway? I’d heard so much about it. I borrowed a copy from a friend and tried to read it. Christ Almighty, what crap.” and more dissings of famous books by not-quite-equally famous British people.
Read more »

Jun 6, 2003

New Yorker Magazine’s latest edition fetaures a short story by Haruki Murakami entitled “The Folklore of Our Times”.
Read more »

May 28, 2003

A couple weeks ago, there was a very nice article in The Guardian about Haruki Murakami. (thru caterina.net)
Read more »

May 14, 2003

There are two different translations of one of my all-time favourite novels online (1, 2). Who said there was no free lunch? (thru wood s lot)
Read more »