Wonder is a strange book. By turns sarcastic, hallucinatory, satirical, and dreamlike, it relates the misadventures of one Victor-Denijs de Rijckel, a teacher who pursues a mysterious woman only to find himself posing as an expert of Crabbe, a messianic figure associated with Nazi collaboration. Continue reading Translation Tuesdays: Wonder (1962), by Hugo Claus
I: The Mount Everest of Modernism “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary The Cantos. Ezra Pound. The very mention of those names send shudders down even the most well-read literary snob. T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” seems like a small indentation in comparison. The only work with comparable difficulty and lit crit caché is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Reading these works carries along serious bragging rights. “I saw the new Terrance and Philip movie. Now who wants to touch me?” Eric Cartman said in the South Park movie. As a reader … Continue reading The Cantos by Ezra Pound, A Critical Appraisal
The Driftless Area Review 