Evidently, plain-spoken language plus doubt and apprehension equate to novels that, once opened, are very hard to put down.
german
Book Interview: A New Take on Kafka — A Conversation with Peter Wortsman
The standard view of Kafka reduces him to the patron saint of neurotics.
Poetry Review: The Unexpected Compassion of German Poet Gottfried Benn
A collection of poems and essays by the admired German poet Gottfried Benn, who, because of his brief association with Nazism, has been absent from our mainstream, non-specialized, English-language view of modern German poetry.
Fuse Theater Review: “Mameloschn” — Three Jewish Women Living Through the History of Germany
Refreshingly, playwright Marianna Salzmann manages to be political without being didactic. Her characters live (rather than preach) through history, grappling with the transition from totalitarianism to democracy.
Book Review: “In Times of Fading Light” — A Rich Story of Divided Hearts
Though its central events are in the past, conveyed by characters by means of often ambiguous shreds of memory and musing, “In Times of Fading Light” is a work of quiet power and beauty, dense with sorrow, telling detail, and suspense.
Poetry Review: Yvan Goll’s “Dreamweed” — Visions of a Shape-shifter
Yvan Goll may be the great shape-shifter, the Zelig, of twentieth-century poetry.
Book Review: Robert Walser’s Big Small Thoughts — Modest But Miraculous
In his prose and poetry, Swiss writer Robert Walser revolts from the chaos of modernity, engaging in extreme subjectivity only to confess to the heresy that is the self, choosing to revel in the simplicity of the rural life. Not for truth, but for the sake of a fleeting rapture.
Fuse Books: A Few Year End Literary Favorites
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that’s off-the-beaten-path.
Film Feature: Nathan the Wise — A Silent Film for Humanity
Thought to be lost, the only existing print of NATHAN THE WISE was discovered in Moscow in 1996. The Coolidge Corner Theater is screening a tinted and beautifully restored version of the film, with an original score by Aaron Trant performed live by the After Quartet.
Book Review: The Greatest Horror Novel of the 20th Century
German author Ernst Weiss’s nightmarish vision of science gone mad in his 1931 novel Georg Letham is not rote Freudian; it is firmly in the social critique/ apocalyptic Darwinian mode.