Word: readers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What Calvino would have done with sight and touch the reader can only conjecture. That he or she will want to do so is just the sort of twist that Calvino, one of the century's greatest imaginers, would have loved...
...task. He peoples his history of the history of the Khazars with vampires, religious ascetics, devils, golems, star-crossed lovers and a Turkish pasha who makes love only to the dying. Exotic details or metaphors not only impart a flavor of strangeness to the book, but also send a reader scurrying back and forth through the pages, trying to remember where he has come across a hand with two thumbs, a grave shaped like a goat or a fruit that resembles a live fish...
...form alone, The Dictionary of the Khazars is revolutionary. It entertains the reader while forcing him to concentrate intensely. In addition, Pavic tells an allegory about the contradictions in language. His Khazars, who aspired to speak their own language with a foreign accent and who deliberately chose translators who made mistakes in the Khazar language, are painfully aware of the limits and possibilities of communication across boundaries of culture, gender, time and religion...
Daubmannus' 1691 warning to stay away from the Dictionary should be ignored. Still, the cautious reader might want to read the book in small increments, on the off chance that he should hold the poisoned copy, where the reader dies at the ninth page...
...Larry White does present overwhelming evidence that cigarette smoking is lethal and is moreover perpetrated by companies that have concern for profits and no care for their fellow citizens, his book fails to be thoroughly convincing. He presents quotes and official statistics, but White generally neglects to present the reader with his sources...