Word: novelness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lind’s third novel “Ergo,” first published in 1968 and now translated into English by Ralph Manheim, is in many facets a product of his experience under the Nazi regime. The novel is rife with allusions to Hitler and his dominion, and the narrative itself is filled with a pervasive sense of horror the subtext of which could only be those atrocities...
...story of three men—the widower Wacholder, his stepson Aslan, and the tenant Leo—living at “Custom House No. 8,” a dilapidated lodgment by an unnamed river. Much of the plot is chaotic or simply unclear. The novel takes for granted its unconventional structure; it frequently jumps from character to character, with each delivering bizarre and fanciful episodes. The narrative treats characters without any semblance of sympathy or logic. During the first half of the book, Aslan barely carries a significant role. All the reader knows about him is that...
Both aesthetically and historically, “Ergo” is a piece of disillusioned postwar literature. The entire novel is as arbitrary, surrealistic, and tenebrous as the episode of Aslan’s death. Its violent content and spastic structure incarnate the fury of war and the gloom of post-war Europe...
...doesn’t happen somewhere else, or anywhere else. And that’s how I look at place in fiction. It always interests me that what happens in one place doesn’t happen somewhere else. There’s this book by Saramago, a recent novel, “Death With Interruptions.” He writes about a town in which nobody dies. So, that’s a pretty extreme example of something happening that doesn’t happen anywhere else...
Writers had to reread “Twilight” and get a good grip on the material. Some even read the novel three times. They also had to take notes to discuss during editorial meetings...