The End of the Novel - Hardcover

Kruger, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807612758 ISBN 13: 9780807612750

Publisher: George Braziller, 1991

Synopsis

The narrator, a writer, disillusioned after taking nine years to write his first novel, finds more and more reasons to cut pages from his manuscript

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

From Kirkus Reviews:

A man has been writing an oh-so significant novel for nine years, and now approaches the end of his task with the idea in mind of having his hero kill himself. But it's the book that actually seeks self-erasure--and the writer finds himself excising huge chunks in dissatisfaction until there's just the barest bones left. Kr ger, the editor of a well-known German literary magazine as well as a staff member of Carl Hanser Verlag, knows the literary foibles and follies well enough to strew satire like rosewater; and there is a sad-funny translucence to the writer-narrator's crumbling dream (``The corrosive solitude which he loved so much as a contrast now revealed itself as a helpless narrator's mask, his social receptiveness, which I had so carefully contrived in order to differentiate him from other literary characters, was no longer capable of outweighing his ironical proclivity towards maliciousness, the words of salvation and benediction, which at other times offset his lack of indiscretion, turned into cold rootless cordiality''). Still, stiffly translated here, the book finally seems like an inkhorn shaggy-dog story--one thin note played for more than it's worth. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: George Braziller
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0807612758
• ISBN 13: 9780807612750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 106