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Title: There Is a World Elsewhere: Autobiographical Pages by F. Gonzalez-Crussi ISBN: 1-57322-117-1 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: October, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Multi syllabic name-dropping erudite self-portrait
Comment: I always have a hard time giving my reviews a title, but for once, this one summarizes my opinion to a "T".

I couldn't stomach the book any longer after page 76. The author feels compelled to quote Homer, Shakespeare and Descartes on every other page (I am not exaggerating). He also drops words like Einsatzgruppe, Volksgemeinschaft and Kristallnatch here and there, with no translation for the benefit of those of us that do not speak German. In general, his prose is convoluted, the sentence structure is made more difficult than it should be, and in a choice of synonyms, the longer one always wins. It is almost like the author looked up a word in the dictionary, and picked synonym #5. If it hadn't been for that, this book would be 1/3 shorter.

I can only imagine that as an ESL speaker, the author does not fully get the pretentiousness that emanates from his prose. Words like "manumission", "phantasmagoria", "buckram", "sublunary", make me think that the author is somehow showing off. It may well be that he did learn English in the XIX Century, hence his arcane prose.

In any event, this book ended up being insufferable, and I'd rather read someone else's memoirs.