Geometric Regional Novel

by Gert Jonke, Johannes W Vazulik (Translator), Johannes W Vazulik (Afterword)

Overview

An innovative satire on the process by which bureaucracy and official regimentation insidiously pervade society. In a deadpan, pseudo-scientific tone, the nameless narrator takes us on a tour of a bizarre village whose inhabitants lead such habitual, regulated lives that they resemble elements in a mathematical equation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564782311
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2000
Pages:	131
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.45(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Gert Jonke is counted among Austria's most important authors and dramatists. Among other prizes, he received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Erich Fried Prize, and the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature. He died in 2009 at the age of 62.

Editorial Reviews

Gert Jonke was an Austrian poet and playwright.

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

The traditional regional novel celebrating simple rural living is gleefully subverted in this experimental fiction, originally published in Germany in 1969, by Austrian writer Jonke. Alternating mathematically precise descriptions with dreamlike interludes, the author evokes a stultifying village where a schoolteacher obsesses over petty rules while the ineffectual mayor enacts meaningless public rituals. Instead of taking their place in a linear plot, daily events, such as a tightrope walker's performance in the village square, are refracted through multiple points of view, concrete verse and associative word clusters. Alleging that ``black men'' are hiding in the shadows of trees, the town authorities begin to monitor all citizens' activities; permission to take a walk in the woods requires submission of a six-page form in duplicate. Ordinances, pat aphorisms and pseudo-informative diagrams pervade the narrative, testifying to the onslaught of bureaucracy. Meanwhile, a flock of violent birds periodically destroys villagers' houses, perhaps symbolizing nature's revolt against a fossilized social order. Leavened with irreverent humor, this Kafka-esque fun house of a novel raucously protests the regimentation and standardization of modern life. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This first novel, originally published in 1969 and revised in 1980, is the English-language debut of Austrian avante-gardist Jonke. Intended as a sarcastic comment on traditional, provincial German literature, it attempts to convey its theme by means of structure, utilizing diagrams, questionnaires, government ordinances, and repetitive narrative to support a minimalist plot. Two unidentified characters discuss crossing a village square that ``is paved with 1946 white stone slabs.'' A street sweeper repeats the Sisyphean task of clearing leaves from the tree-lined square. Jonke gives lengthy, tedious descriptions of such things as the layout of the blacksmith's house, devoting several pages to the bridge leaving town, the bridgekeepers' duties, etc. The best passage considers ``an artist or acrobat, or whatever such a man should be called,'' who walks a tightrope across the square. Jonke cutely offers alternative versions: He either fell and broke his back or was able to hang, ``fingers clawed in the cracks, chinks, gaps in the walls of air.'' A difficult work best suited to large foreign literature collections.-Ron Antonucci, Hudson Lib. & Historical Soc., Ohio

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