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Title: Moravagine (New York Review Books Classics) by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown ISBN: 1-59017-063-6 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Voyage Surprise
Comment: "The Prose of the Trans-Siberian" poem remains my favorite piece of Cendrars writing but this novel is a close second. I passed my copy around and everyone that had a go at it praised the thrills it delivers. Cendrars is a character who seems to have known everyone and been everywhere during those wild experimental years at the beginning of the last century. He documented his many careers(he had a go at just about every art form) in four volumes of biography. Three of which I think are available. He also lost a hand in WW1 and wrote a very beautiful poem about it, such is the magnanimity of this soul who was such a restless originator of new forms it seems he could have single handedly brought about modernism all on his own. Of course his many friends (of which Picasso was one) did what they could too. As a poet his reputation is solid, as a novelist he is still gaining ground as his books begin to reappear after a long abscence. Moravagine is a book full of anarchic energy and though one of the main characters is a bit primitive that was after all one of the aspects of modernism. The wild beast of a main character is Cendrars monster or more specifically modern societies monster. There is also a monkey who is curiously human. The writing is manic at times but there are few lulls on this cross continental journey where the primitive and the civilized seem to walk hand in hand . If this was made into a picture it would be a road picture replete with half man half beast lead, civilized man narrator, and well clad monkey companion. Cendrars family album.
Rating: 4
Summary: Sickness unto death
Comment: As one commentator has said, this disturbing book, with its two anarchist lead characters, is Cendrars' view of the artistic process, viewed from the destructive perspective; to recall Michael Bakunin (1814-76), "The passion for destruction is also a constructive passion," a famous utterance which is like a watermark behind everything which occurs in _Moravagine_.
There is no fun or point in giving away the picaresque plot of this extraordinary work. I have no idea how this reads in the original french, but the english translation by Alan Brown (Penguin) is clear and compelling. Apart from the disease imagery, present from the first to the last, there are many luxuriant images and, on the whole, an intensity which retains power even when people today have read or seen so much about terrorists and murderers. As the narrator and Moravagine make their way across continents, the pace flags, notably in the Blue Indians section, but Cendrars' vision, and the slow, inexorable unwinding of the narrator's previous self-confidence and enormous conceits become more interesting than Moravagine's own nature. Anticipating postmodernist writers, Cendrars includes a snapshot (a fake one, to be sure) of himself as a minor character whose path crosses the two killers.
A convert to Cendrars, having just finished _Moravagine_, would best follow it with the Dan Yack books (_Dan Yack_; _Confessions of Dan Yack_), and then the uneven but exhilirating tetralogy comprising _The Astonished Man_, _Planus_, _Lice_ and _Sky_. If one can forget Nina Rootes' interference with Cendrars' own presentation of his material, then these hard to obtain books (most out of print) are well worth reading. An excellent critic on Cendrars (and more respectful translator) is Monique Chefdor.
Blaise Cendrars is a neglected Modernist who does not make a big enough blip on english radar, partly because he was not affiliated with any political group or -isms. He rarely receives extensive mention in anthologies or reviews of french letters written in english. His daughter, Miriam, has published a biography which is at present only in french. University libraries are the most reliable places to find a good selection of his works.
Rating: 5
Summary: unfathomable brilliance !!!
Comment: This was the first book I read from Cendrars with little thought that he would have the humbling effect on me that he did. To say this book is great, is an understatement! After you've read it ,you too, will understand why! The amount of reaserch that had to be applied to this book is an amazing feat in itself, let alone the whole storyline which is genius, complex,and poetic,... like all the great authors! Moravogine...A psychological thrilling novel that confronts bare human emotion with an honesty unmatched by few.. brings us closer into the mind of an author, whose awsome talent for expression, sent tremors down the spine of the literary world, showing us life's true nature...macabre and yet beautiful!
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Title: The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge, Willard R. Trask, Susan Sontag ISBN: 1590170644 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 16 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose MacAulay, Jan Morris ISBN: 159017058X Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Apartment in Athens (New York Review Books Classics) by Glenway Wescott, David Leavitt ISBN: 1590170814 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Moro Affair and the Mystery of Majorana (New York Review Books Classics) by Leonardo Sciascia, Peter Robb, Sacha Rabinovitch ISBN: 1590170830 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Paris and Elsewhere: Selected Writings (New York Review Books Classics) by Richard Cobb, Julian Barnes, David Gilmour ISBN: 1590170822 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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