The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus Bilingual Edition Contributor(s): Franzen, Jonathan (Author), Kraus, Karl (Author) |
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ISBN: 0374182213 ISBN-13: 9780374182212 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux OUR PRICE: $24.30 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2013 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | European - German - Literary Collections | Essays - Literary Criticism | European - German |
Dewey: 838.912 |
LCCN: 2013015008 |
Physical Information: 1.09" H x 5.89" W x 8.37" (1.01 lbs) 336 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: A great American writer's confrontation with a great European critic-a personal and intellectual awakening A hundred years ago, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus was among the most penetrating and farsighted writers in Europe. In his self-published magazine, Die Fackel, Kraus brilliantly attacked the popular media's manipulation of reality, the dehumanizing machinery of technology and consumer capitalism, and the jingoistic rhetoric of a fading empire. But even though he had a fervent following, which included Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, he remained something of a lonely prophet, and few people today are familiar with his work. Luckily, Jonathan Franzen is one of them. In The Kraus Project, Franzen, whose calm, passionate critical authority has been praised in The New York Times Book Review, not only presents his definitive new translations of Kraus but annotates them spectacularly, with supplementary notes from the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann. Kraus was a notoriously cantankerous and difficult writer, and in Franzen he has found his match: a novelist unafraid to voice unpopular opinions strongly, a critic capable of untangling Kraus's often dense arguments to reveal their relevance to contemporary America. While Kraus is lampooning the iconic German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine and celebrating his own literary hero, the Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy, Franzen is annotating Kraus the way Kraus annotated others, surveying today's cultural and technological landscape with fearsome clarity, and giving us a deeply personal recollection of his first year out of college, when he fell in love with Kraus's work. Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original in form, The Kraus Project is a feast of thought, passion, and literature. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kraus, Karl: - Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was an Austrian satirist, playwright, poet, aphorist, and journalist. From 1899 until his death, he published the literary and political review Die Fackel.Franzen, Jonathan: - Jonathan Franzen is the author of Purity, The Corrections, Freedom, among other novels, and five works of nonfiction and translation, including Farther Away and The Kraus Project, all published by FSG. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. |