2005_12_01_archive

Without end

At the beginning of Chapter 18 of Kafka: the Decisive Years, Reiner

Stach writes:

The Man Who Disappeared, The Trial, The Castle, The Man without

Qualities, and River without a Shore - the five monumental

unfinished ruins of modern German-language prose. Kafka was the

author of three of them, which may seem dismal from a personal

point of view, but from the heights of comparative literary history

it cries out for an explanation.

Stach's own explanation is persuasive but also unfinished. We await

two further volumes of biography (and they are worth waiting for,

believe me).

My own reading of the first four novels on his list is unfinished. But

I'd not even heard of the fifth until I read this book. And it wasn't

easy to find out the author's name, even with Google. Turns out it's a

trilogy by Hans Henny Jahnn called Flu� ohne Ufer. Surely rivers have

banks rather than shores. Perhaps the title should be translated as

Tales of the Non-existent Riverbank?

Almost interesting too that two of the five titles contain the word

'without'.

at 7:01 PM 3 comments

January 2006 November 2005 Home

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

My Shelfari Bookshelf

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

email address

Please contact me, Stephen Mitchelmore, at steve dot mitchelmore at

gmail dot com

Literary and other links

* British Literary Blogs

* ReadySteadyBook blog

* Spurious

* Book Depository: Editor's Corner

* The Literary Saloon

* The Existence Machine

* The Reading Experience

* Scarecrow Comment

* Guardian Books Blog

* The Quarterly Conversation

* KCRW Bookworm

* BookForum

* wood s lot

* Mountain 7

* Todd Colby's Glee Farm

* Three per cent

* Tales from the Reading Room

* The Bibliophilic Blogger

* The Penguin Blog

* TLS: Peter Stothard

* Mary Beard

* Nomadics: Pierre Joris

* Lenin's Tomb

* Dispatches from Zembla

* Waggish

More literary blogs

* Jonathan Swift's Journal to Stella

* The Best of New Writing on the Web

* John Self's Asylum

* Anatomy of Melancholy

* The Truth About Lies

* Nigel Beale: Nota Bene

* Thomas McGonigle's ABC of Reading

* Vertigo: Collecting WG Sebald

* Un Arbre dans la Ville

* The Wooden Spoon

* The Joyful Knowing

* The Reader Onliine

* In Abstentia Out

* Jacob Russell's Barking Dog

* eNotes Book Blog

* Diderot's Diary

Book buying

* *Steve's Wishlist*

* The Book Depository - Cheap books and free delivery

* Booksprice - price comparisons

* Abebooks

Favoured author sites

* Maurice Blanchot

* Thomas Bernhard (German equivalent)

* Gabriel Josipovici

* Peter Handke (German equivalent)

* Princeton Dante Project

* Proust: Temps Perdu

* The Kafka Project

* Charlotte Mandell

* Noam Chomsky

* John Pilger

Blog Archive

* February 2008 (1)

* January 2008 (10)

* December 2007 (26)

* November 2007 (28)

* October 2007 (16)

* September 2007 (24)

* August 2007 (15)

* July 2007 (17)

* June 2007 (11)

* May 2007 (23)

* April 2007 (11)

* March 2007 (24)

* February 2007 (27)

* January 2007 (21)

* December 2006 (9)

* November 2006 (24)

* October 2006 (21)

* September 2006 (19)

* August 2006 (15)

* July 2006 (33)

* June 2006 (17)

* May 2006 (24)

* April 2006 (17)

* March 2006 (18)

* February 2006 (15)

* January 2006 (8)

* December 2005 (8)

* November 2005 (10)

* October 2005 (7)

* September 2005 (14)

* August 2005 (14)

* July 2005 (8)

* June 2005 (15)

* May 2005 (11)

* April 2005 (13)

* March 2005 (9)

* February 2005 (7)

* January 2005 (16)

* December 2004 (2)

* November 2004 (4)