A fraught topic, no? Yikes!
…I’ll bite.
Monthly Archives: October 2018
Sickness, Thomas Mann and the nihilism of reality
The Magic Mountain · Thomas Mann · 1924
John E. Woods translation · Vintage, 1996 · 720 pages, paperback
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There are few novels that give sickness its due. There are even fewer that play with it as a state of mind or treat it as the defunct policy of nation states.
Though Thomas Mann began work on The Magic Mountain in 1912 when he visited his ailing wife at a sanatorium (which served as the model for the Berghof of his novel), his writing soon bent to a different angle when war broke out two years later. By the time he completed it in 1924, the sickness of the body had become further distorted into the sickness of the body politic, and his novel became a reification of the period’s irrationalism. Continue reading
¿Que dijiste?
Comemadre feels like a troll, and we can’t figure out if Larraquy is an actual proponent of the prurient and the shocking, of the crass and irreverent, in modern art, or if he’s cleverer than all of us and having a damn good time with parody. Either way, Larraquy took exhibitionist art and made it literary.
Comemadre · Roque Larraquy · 2010
Heather Cleary translation · Coffee House Press, 2018 · 129 pages, paperback
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Where is the tipping point that turns life into unlife? What does that infinitesimally small tick on the clock feel like, sound like, taste like? And can we replicate it for the living?
Argentinian author Roque Larraquy’s novel is a century’s quest for understanding the in-between. Larraquy sweeps religion aside, turns a deaf ear to the philosophers and rejects blasé methods of questioning. Instead he approaches the metaphysical realm from a purely physical standpoint, dabbling first in guillotines and then moving on to live installation art. Through the length of his novel, the body is central to his question: what is the moment of death like?
Interlude: end of Q3 (year 2!) at the Masthead!
Another three months in the Masthead’s second year of reviews! And just what have these months brought us?
Books reviewed: 4
Translated fiction: 2 (from 2 languages, Japanese and Italian)
New-to-me authors: 2 (Tanizaki and Boccaccio)
Oldest book: Boccaccio’s Mrs. Rosie and the Priest (1348-’53)
Newest book: King’s The Stand (1975/1988)
Longest book: King’s The Stand (1153 pages)
Shortest book: Boccaccio’s Mrs. Rosie and the Priest (54 pages)
As always, a pithy recap of each book read and reviewed here since July 15:
Continue reading
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