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Title: The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq, Richard Howard, Julen Gracq ISBN: 0-231-05789-X Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 1986 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Journey to the End of Civilization
Comment: Civilization has grown bored with itself and so in a richly detailed account of a fabled nations collective will, Julien Gracq shows how a people can arrive at a point where destruction is preferable to ongoing decay and stagnation. If you've read Balcony in the Forest you know that Gracq knows something about anticipation and suspense but this is a journey even deeper into the interior of the psyche and is an altogether unique reading experience. Julien Gracq's prose is best read slowly and savoured, he lingers in his descriptions and elaborates each thought with ever richer examples which hone and decorate his meanings. The plot progresses organically and instinctively like a dream unfolding and revealing episode by episode the destructive inclinations of late civilzation consciousness. Dense sensual impressions abound. If French poetry appeals to you as well as the war genre this is your book, though this book far exceeds the normal bounds of war fiction.
Rating: 5
Summary: Journey to the End of Civilization
Comment: Young, rich and idle Aldo longs for something indefinable, something to break the long dreary spell of his ennui. Opting for a post as an observer at a long decaying naval base, Aldo finds a n atmosphere suitable to his solitary, poetic nature. Ruminations abound in impressionable Aldos head. Gracq's prose works its spell on you just as the old fortifications and sea and desert landscapes work their spell on Aldo. Gracq's fabled land is reminiscent of Europe before WWI but the locales remain unspecific to make the experience all the richer, all the more evocative . His words keep you in a heady state of langurous suspense, his theme nothing less than a whole civilizations collective will which in its boredom has decided to invite doom upon itself. A book for true lovers of literature, French poetry,& war fiction though it far exceeds the usual bounds of that genre.
Rating: 5
Summary: Majestic in scope and form
Comment: Even in translation you can feel the lyrical intensity and beauty of this novel which creates an atmosphere of tension which no reader will forget easily: Aldo, a young nobleman, has had enough of the decadence of his native Vezzano, a fictitious republic modeled on Venice. He has himself posted to a navy base which was once built to defend Vezzano against Farghestan. The two powers are still officially at war, but nothing has actually happened for 300 years. Now, however, there is a growing tension, not just inside Aldo, who dreams of the unknown Farghestan. People in Vezzano seem to be tired of its eternal stability, they long for action...
Most of the novel's plot takes place near the old navy base, which is surrounded by a desert landscape which is described with mesmerizing intensity. Little incidents are building up towards an explosion which is only hinted at in the book. People waiting for something to happen in a more and more uncanny slience - that may remind the reader of the fact that the book was written before and during World War II. The decadence longing for action, danger and change, however, seems to me reminiscent of World War I. This is not a book of easy historical analogy. It is a unique work of art which stands completely on its own.
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Title: King Cophetua by Julien Gracq, Ingeborg M. Kohn, Ingeborg Kohn ISBN: 1885586868 Publisher: Turtle Point Pr Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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