The BURIED Book Club discussion
This topic is about
Libuše Moníková
unBURIED Authors K-P
>
Libuše Moníková
date
newest »
newest »
I hate referring people to that other site that Bezos owns, but it does contain more information about her (apparently OOP) book The Facade, with excerpts from editorial reviews: http://www.amazon.com/The-Facade-Libu..."inventive, humorous, and encyclopedic meditation on Czech and Russian culture" (Library Journal)
"at once to be: a slapstick epic; one of the very few novels that credibly portray artists; and an astounding sweep in the highest spirits through Czech and Russian history. The "M.N.O.P.Q.'' of the subtitle are three Czech art- academicians--Maltzahn, Orten, Podol--at work on restoring murals on the facade of a historic Bohemian castle...A book that makes most "magic realism'' or "pendanto- fiction'' (Eco, Pavic) read like five-finger exercises. You have to go back to Bellow's Henderson the Rain King to find a novel so exuberantly imaginative, high and low, bursting with such steam and intelligence." (Kirkus)
It's also just 7 cents used... or 17 cents for the hardcover!
She sounds very promising. - and it's tough to beat those prices!
A few comments ::Is The Facade the only thing of her's been English'd?
Anything trans'd by Woods is golden.
The Facade also garnered her the Alfred Döblin Prize.
Technically, from what I've seen, and we ALL care about technicalities, Pavane für eine verstorbene Infantin is the only book of hers which would qualify her as BURIED, being the only one pub'd pre-1985 (a generation come and gone and passed over and not remembered and BURIED).
Libuše Moníková sounds fantastic.
She needs to have some Library work done ;; especially the merging of her two author-profiles. And any of that data and any of those blurbs present on amazon can be safely and legally c-n-p'd over here to this part of the internet which we control for our own bookish porpoises.
And since HYPE works via repetition :: "...its literary models were Franz Kafka , Jorge Luis Borges and Arno Schmidt".
ah, sorry. Didn't know about the 1985 rule. I'm bad at reading directions. But surely being mostly untranslated, unrated, unreviewed, and dead count for some form of burial-ness?
Jimmy wrote: "ah, sorry. Didn't know about the 1985 rule. I'm bad at reading directions. But surely being mostly untranslated, unrated, unreviewed, and dead count for some form of burial-ness?"I've intentionally constructed the RULES so as to be fully unREAD-a-bABBLE. In this manner I am freely invited to repeat them over and over and over again ; which is music to my ears because I love to hear myself talk. But ; yeah the ONE generation rule is pretty tight ;; and but it's measured from the AUTHOR's first book of any literary merit, so we are FULLY in the CLEAR on this one because her Pavanne looks to be pretty cool. The idea here is that books published within the past thirty-ish years (my capricious line-drawing of the generation) still have some degree of backing from author and/or publisher. The BURIED book tends to be abandoned even by its parent.
"untranslated, unrated, unreviewed, and dead count for some form of burial-ness?" Indeed, those are VERY important components of Being-as-BURIED.
Copy ordered. This looks like my cup 'a tea.
Librarianing activated.Apparently this lass has a book of the same title as an Arnold Schoenberg piece. Verklärte Nacht. Haven't listened to it recently, so I don't remember what it sounds like, but it's probably the kind of thing that would throw Stravinsky into a convulsive fit.
It is actually quite beautiful, almost kitch. I like it quite a bit...
It's an early work by Schönberg, from before even his atonal phase, when he was still very late Romantic. It was originally written for orchestra, but he re-arranged it for string sexted, the version Jimmy linked to on Youtube and which I much prefer. [ETA: And of course I mixed stuff up again, and it was a string sextet first and got later reworked into a piece for orchestra. Don't mind me, just sitting in this corner going senile...]
Libuše Moníková (to get back on topic) used to be quite well known while she was still alive, The Facade made her about as famous as one get writing literary fiction of the more esotderic kind. She was very well critically though, and her work was widely reviewed in all German papers. Since her death, however, she seems to be mostly forgotten even here, her work certainly deserves being un-buried and re-discovered.
The BURIED Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Pavane für eine verstorbene Infantin (other topics)The Facade (other topics)
The English wikipedia page for her is very bare, so I went to the Czech wikipedia page which says (via Google Translate):
"From its beginnings narrative texts pointing Libuse Moníková to modern fictional prose, its literary models were Franz Kafka , Jorge Luis Borges and Arno Schmidt . Its parts are intertwined elements of mythology and Czech history - the text Pavane for a deceased Infanta, Facade, Transfigured Night developing motifs Queen of Amazons , Princess Libuse and Czech girls war . In his book Facade of the writer also touches on the Prague Spring - the novel takes place during the normalization in Czechoslovakia Litomyšl castle."