Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dealing largely with the meaning and significance of words and names in various languages, these jottings and paradoxes, by the Bulgarian-born Nobel Laureate, reflect on the indignity of life, death, reincarnation, longevity and immortality, the development of ritualism in the child, and the importance and gist of Aubrey, Dostoyevski, Kafka, Klaus Mann, Schopenhauer, Sophocles, Walser, Lear , Zola and Cezanne. There are occasional quotations from Plutarch, Soutine, Faulkner (``I never tell reporters the truth''), Wittgenstein and Wisdom of the Fathers . Canetti remarks that ``each sentence connects with another,'' but ``between them lie a hundred years.'' Except to passionate Canettiphiles, these fragmentary notes will have little connection or significance, and will not add to the author's stature or reputation. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Canetti's great age (""And what if you were told: One more hour?"") coincides, in these journal fragments, with his Nobel Prize and heretofore unknown fame (""Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence""), as well as his saturnine mittel-Europisch honesty (""I don't want to know what I was; I want to beome what I was""). A book so runic is not easy to read, all flow being banished; unlike paragraphs, separate apercus frequently bounce off one another like billiard balls rather than conjoin. So you find straining (""Sometimes he feels as if he were wearing false eyes implanted by God"") bracketed by the conventional ""seriousness"" (""The narrowness of nature consists in her massive powers of multiplication. She suffocates herself, and we are only her students when we suffocate ourselves"") as well as by superb insight (""Everyone wants powerful friends. But they want friends more powerful than themselves""). A mosaical portrait of an old body's mind determined to do its exercises and not lose a step--and fascinating for that. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
