System of Vienna: From Heaven Street to Earth Mound Square Contributor(s): Jonke, Gert (Author), Kling, Vincent (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1564785505 ISBN-13: 9781564785503 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press OUR PRICE: $11.66 Product Type: Paperback Published: December 2009 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Humorous - General |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2009027584 |
Physical Information: 0.32" H x 6.25" W x 7.74" (0.35 lbs) 125 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: An astonishing and fantastical autobiographical novel--reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Laurence Sterne--"The System of Vienna" details Jonke's travels through Vienna by streetcar, reporting the bizarre and frustrating encounters he experiences as he progresses--and meanwhile moving not just from trolley-stop to trolley-stop, but through life as well, from innocence to disillusionment, birth to death. Jonke meets a paranoiac fish wholesaler who believes he is directing all of Austrian politics from his little stall, a stamp collector in such deadly earnest he hopes to be appointed to a professorship in philately, and a compulsive talker who has developed a rigorous economic philosophy out of the most common objects to be found in a Vienna neighborhood. Slowly increasing the comic and fantastic elements in his story until they overwhelm all pretense to autobiography--culminating in a strangely touching love scene between Jonke and a caryatid--"The System of Vienna" reminds us that the very act of describing a life turns it into fiction. |