A year in reading: Edwin Frank
The book that caught my attention for most of the year, to which I returned again and again – perforce, it is a very long book – was volume 1 of Capitalthe only volume of his Magnum opus which Karl Marx Saw in print. It is a long book and an essentially non -classiable book: a study of political economy; A documentary report on workers’ lives, the functioning of industry and the secreted wealth of the bourgeoisie; A work of history; a controversy; a parody of philosophy and a contribution to philosophy; Crenel castle, cathedral in Gargouilli, Piranesian prison, Brueghel hell score; An open tap spitting beer, a fire gushing from the factory. The day after the end of my book on the novel in the 20th century, Capital Particularly fascinated me as an attempt to imagine what it would be to see your own whole time, and the recognition anchored in its pages which can only come from the imagination of a time beyond, in which the inevitability of the moment, the given form of reality, are revealed as at the same time a appearance, a pure contingency. The book seemed, in my point of view, to run both the novels of the 19th century and those of the last century, and it is certainly true that the kind of book is, what it says about what a book can be and everything that has to enter its covers to constitute a real book in our time – how in other words, it resists our idea of a book – is as interesting as the properties. Trying to imagine the world that humanity has made – the only world we will have – of the whole, it opens up a vertiginous perspective, which it examines with determination, despair and courage which is frightening – withdrawal – in its own right. Where in the avalanche of the moment is a complaint and takes a position?
Michael LongleyThe latest thin collection of poems, Birds killedis as serious, precise, felt and beautiful as the books that preceded. Peter Gizzi‘s Fierce elegy is steep and fast, delicate, muscular and brood – like the great guitar solos of classic rock and roll. Poetry is the place where lost causes will live. Can I say, if not disinterested, that Inverno,, Cynthia ZarinIs the first novel so electric? The book I just appreciated the most is a relatively little known novel of Trollope,, Is he Popenjoy? A heritage and a title are involved, and throughout Trollope is in its best satirical and friendly vein. Humanity, you are left to hope, can exist.
More than a year in 2024 reading
