A puzzling, incomplete set of notes toward a text; of some interest to students of postwar European literature.
Omnibus edition of works by an Italian writer who might have been a modernist master had he not been more intent on sowing literary confusion.
Calasso, who introduces this collection of texts by Trieste-born translator and editor Bazlen (1902-1965), gives a rather murky account of the centrifugal tendencies of a writer who wrote but did not publish: “Preparing for emptiness…is an abnormal occurrence—it always has been—and not only that: the modes of existence most prevalent at present teach us to forget even the possibility of emptiness.” Accepting Calasso’s contention that Bazlen made himself right at home in the void, the texts brought together here vary in intent and quality. The lead work is an odd novel centering on a sea captain who is never at home in the world and especially not in his own home, where he feels untoward urges toward his wife: “I really have to hit her.“ In the company of strange players with names like Peg-Leg and the One-Eyed Man, he sails from harbor to harbor, meeting other stock characters like "an Oriental,” "the Gypsy Woman,” and “the negress,” who do pretty much as they would in an old Popeye cartoon, allowing for extra helpings of surrealism and non sequitur (“the Captain was close to death, but he was awfully cultured"). Included are sketches of characters like The Cabin Boy, who says to the Captain, “It would be unfair not to take you adequately into account—and besides I’m indebted to you for a couple of pesos (and a flask of wine too).” The hallucinatory mode prevails. Bazlen’s essays and notes on writers such as Italo Svevo and Habsburg-era Triestine culture are more straightforward ("it was a musical city…where everyone sang”), and his witty editorial reports come as a relief after the unrelenting peculiarity of the more “literary” writing. All in all, though, it’s a slog.
A puzzling, incomplete set of notes toward a text; of some interest to students of postwar European literature.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62897-312-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
