NP--On the Waiting List--Cyclops

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks for this...I think I will treat myself to it. 

I have been reading stories since the holdiays in Bosnian Nobelist Andric's The 
Slave
Girl & Other Stories--- just to get outside my old mental self. 

Two almost-relevant things to say. There is one story "Byron in Sintra' which 
must
take the Venus myth a whirl (among other things) as the protagonist is deeply 
smitten by
a woman seen near the sea........but [Spoiler Alert!]....smittenness is not 
forever ala Mann's Death in Venice
or marquez say, but it fades when he goes back into real life....Takes a year or 
two though...........

A....and, the regular folk in his stories work out all their human close-living 
problems by themselves
with no State, no Gov where 'politics' is village politics ala as Aristotle 
first noted sez the guy who
wrote the introduction, I thank him for what i might not have noticed 

However i was, my bent wont, reminded of TRP's 'vision' of village life in Old 
Europe in  Against the Day...



----- Original Message ----
From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
To: "“pynchon-l at waste.org“" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, January 5, 2011 8:27:47 AM
Subject: NP--On the Waiting List--Cyclops

Hello All--never turn away from opportunity for a good read. added
this one to the pile.

rich


In his semiautobiographical novel, Cyclops, Croatian writer Ranko
Marinković recounts the adventures of young theater critic Melkior
Tresić, an archetypal antihero who decides to starve himself to avoid
fighting in the front lines of World War II. As he wanders the streets
of Zagreb in a near-hallucinatory state of paranoia and
malnourishment, Melkior encounters a colorful circus of
characters--fortune-tellers, shamans, actors, prostitutes, bohemians,
and café intellectuals--all living in a fragile dream of a society
about to be changed forever.


A seminal work of postwar Eastern European literature, Cyclops reveals
a little-known perspective on World War II from within the former
Yugoslavia, one that has never before been available to an
English-speaking audience. Vlada Stojiljković's able translation,
improved by Ellen Elias-Bursać's insightful editing, preserves the
striking brilliance of this riotously funny and densely allusive text.
Along Melkior's journey Cyclops satirizes both the delusions of the
righteous military officials who feed the national bloodlust as well
as the wayward intellectuals who believe themselves to be above the
unpleasant realities of international conflict. Through Stojiljković's
clear-eyed translation, Melkior's peregrinations reveal how history
happens and how the individual consciousness is swept up in the tide
of political events, and this is accomplished in a mode that will
resonate with readers of Charles Simic, Aleksandr Hemon, and Kundera.
(20100715)

http://www.amazon.com/Cyclops-Margellos-World-Republic-Letters/dp/0300152418/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294237495&sr=1-1