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Imre Kertesz; hungarian nobel winner
Topic Started: Sep 22 2008, 03:29 PM (1,495 Views)
Deleted User Feb 22 2012, 02:46 PM Post #21
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 Just finished Fiasco. To be honest, I cannot get rid of some reservations about the writing in the second part of the book. It seems reasonable though, that the second part is a fully controlled exercise of the author where nothing has been left to chance, so I am not sure what to think. The last few chapters of the second part are very interesting again and less boring. The side of the perpetrators is dealt with in an interesting way, in particular a point is made that quite often the dividing line between offender and victim is ruled more by chance than anything else.

Overall the book certainly has a unique position in the holocaust literature and is giving new insights, as it was the case with Fatelessness before it.
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Deleted User Feb 28 2012, 05:27 PM Post #22
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 Just finished book 3 and 4 of his tetralogy about surving the holocaust and surviving life after it:
Kaddish for an Unborn Child, mighty impressive prayer (sort of) and self-analyis, wow, with greatings from Bernhard and Beckett.
Liquidation, Worthwhile and entertaining variation on the topics already presented in Kaddish and more, cannot be understood without having read Kaddish before. Biscuit will be delighted that the epigraph is taken from Beckett's Molloy.

Overall there is no doubt in my mind that the tetralogy is a major achievement.
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oneofmurphysbiscuits Feb 29 2012, 11:58 AM Post #23
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marmalade modernist
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 duly noted, BirneH, thankyou :) I'll be reading them soon, in acouple of months at the latest
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Deleted User Mar 13 2012, 02:12 PM Post #24
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 Tim Wilkinson taking apart the old English translation of Kaddish for an Unborn Child:

http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no168/4.html

(reading this article I really get sick thinking about how much damage is regularly done to literary works in bad translations and how often books receive bad reviews just on basis of such crap translations)
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oneofmurphysbiscuits Mar 13 2012, 07:09 PM Post #25
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marmalade modernist
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 yes, there's much there that made me angry too. What an abdication of your own and the writer's humanity
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oneofmurphysbiscuits May 28 2012, 10:07 AM Post #26
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marmalade modernist
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 i finished Fiasco last night, and for the most part i loved it -

"Life is not a source of faith, after all, life is...I don't know what, but life is something else..."

He was soon interrupted:

"You're not familiar with the life we lead."

"I'd like to work, and then i shall get to know it" Koves said, in a low voice now, almost longingly.

Edited by oneofmurphysbiscuits, May 28 2012, 10:08 AM.
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Deleted User May 29 2012, 09:03 AM Post #27
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 Good. You need to read Kaddish for an Unborn Child, too. You will not regret it :)
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oneofmurphysbiscuits May 29 2012, 09:25 AM Post #28
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 that's next, yes. I don't think Fiasco is equal to the sum of its parts, but i think that's wholly to the point and kicking against appropriations/expectations does that make sense? :)
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oneofmurphysbiscuits Jun 6 2012, 09:43 AM Post #29
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 i read Kaddish for an Unborn Child last night, and i loved it. Soon i'll reread Bernhard's Yes, it's one of my very favourite Bernhard's, and in light of alliknow's earlier observations
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oneofmurphysbiscuits Jun 13 2012, 01:47 PM Post #30
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marmalade modernist
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 so as not to lose them, my post first, then Dave's, then mine, as recently posted in the "..finished?" thread:


I read Liquidation this morning, and the book is really too thin to support of the ontological epistemic turns that he tries to take without really accomplishing..the idea spread too thinly to sustain beyond the occasional glistening of its workings It isn't slight but carefully wrought, thus robust, it's thin


{{{{Sharon}}}}, I took Mr.Waggish's take to be best:
http://www.waggish.org/2005/imre-kertesz-liquidation/
but yes not up to the level of the trilogy (Kertesz's I mean)


{{{{{{{{{{Dave}}}}}}}}}}}}} i'm not sure i agree with Mr Waggish, :) it bares closest resemblance(in terms of reciprocal relations) to some of the shortest short prose, not anything to be found in Sam's Trilogy. i'll check for titles to see which i mean (possibly Fizzles as compared with Texts for nothing,(in Sam's world) but that's too easy an example and not the one i'm thinking of, as to nuance) but the failure of the trilogy is very carefully done,, a lot of work went in to it because there's first of all sufficient of an idea to be undone - to slip in the slight stuff of surviving - and there isn't here. It's more akin to an Auster stage mock up of Ionesco, or Pirandello, than anything of Sam's, for me







Edited by oneofmurphysbiscuits, Jun 13 2012, 01:52 PM.
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kline19 Apr 6 2013, 07:59 PM Post #31
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worker bee
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Quote:
 

I write because I have to write, and whenever one writes one sustains
a dialogue, I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a
dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain
a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is
to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.


-- Kaddish for a Child Not Born
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