Word: novelization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ceremony was short, subdued, and without ostentation. Only afterward, in the church's reception room, did the voices return to normal. Wine, homemade pastries, and sweets were served." It is in this simple way that Aharon Appelfeld's The Conversion opens, and the novel to come will be as short, subdued and without ostentation as the beginning three lines. In the midst of this deceptively unadorned prose, however, lurks the seed of an almost unimagineably horrible tale, which Appelfeld manages to recount in completely nonjudgmental strokes. Ultimately, it's clear why Appelfeld has been called a "worthy successor to Kafka...
...novel opens about two generations before the Holocaust in the Austrian village of Neufeld. There, a young civil servant named Karl has just converted from Judaism to Christianity, thereby following in the footsteps of almost all of the Jews in the city. His reasoning is that he wishes to be promoted to municipal secretary, a position he has been working toward for 17 years but also a position which his faith has prevented him from achieving. Christian sentiment, however, scorns the newly converted as Jewish at the core in spite of any baptism ceremony they may have undergone. Karl, while...
Remarkably, Appelfeld has succeeded in creating a novel without a single like-able character. Karl's selfishness, his sexual attraction to his former nanny, his willingness to do anything for his promotion; all of these characteristics repel us from him, but Appelfeld never tells us any redeeming qualities Karl might have had. We cannot even sympathize with Gloria as a possible victim of Karl's desires. Appelfeld never tells us if Gloria returns Karl's love, and in the end she comes off as being simply weak. Strangely, Gloria possesses an almost robotic tendency to observe the Jewish traditions...
Greed: Stracher's point of view in the novel is that of a fresh-out-of-law-school associate at the Wall Street firm of Crowley and Cavanaugh where he is paid $80,000 each year but is pressured to earn even more...
...think you have to have both to get the best literature education," says Jesse E. Matz, assistant professor of English and American Literature and Language. Matz is teaching several classes this semester, including English 90tv: "Time and the Novel," and English 171m: "Modern American Fiction...