Of course there were millions and millions of books that I left unread in 2021, but here are a few I hope to carve a space for sometime in the next year: Thank god nothing like that’s shaking down these days! A proto-AI, a computer that can tell the future is the novel’s central antagonist. ![]() Scientists genetically modify gilled children to survive this new reality. First composed and published in serialization at the end of the 1950s, Inter Ice Age 4 is set in a world where the polar ice caps are rapidly melting. ![]() I’ve had a samizdat e-copy of Inter Ice Age 4 for ages now, but haven’t made it past the first 20 or so pages, but the intriguing, prescient plot has always intrigued me. This edition includes five line drawings by Abe’s wife, the artist Machi Abe. The jacket design is by Joseph del Gaudio I’m not sure if he is responsible for this lovely little embossed image that takes up the bottom-right corner of the cover: Dale Saunders, and is the only English translation of the novel that I am aware of. hardback (Knopf, 1970, Book Club Edition) of Kobo Abe’s novel Inter Ice Age 4. I was thrilled to find a first-edition U.S. The Box Man is funny, sad and destructive, an ontological “thriller” that bumps into and contradicts its own clues. It gnaws at the reader, forces him to question his values, his Shibboleths and his ritualistic props, and shoots an energetic poison into his ear. From Jerome Charyn’s contemporary NYT review:Ībe’s book is a stunning addition to the literature of eccentricity, those bitter, crying voices of Melville’s Bartleby the scrivener and Dostoevsky’s underground man. Dale Saunders is credited as the translator of Kobo Abe’s novel The Box Man - and not just on the back jacket flap of this 1974 Knopf edition (design by K.B. Unless I am missing it from the jacket or front matter, no translator is credited.Į. I also dug the cover, which I didn’t immediately identify as a Fred Marcellino, although the jacket confirmed him as the designer. ![]() The cover promised an intro by John Ashbery, and the dual-author thing intrigued me. The spine of Fantômas-the font, really-made me pull it down. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular (okay, I was looking for a physical copy of Joy Williams’ novel Harrow) but I couldn’t resist these two hardbacks (the Abe ate up the rest of my trade credit). I picked up first edition hardbacks of The Box Man by Kobo Abe and Fantômas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre today at the used bookstore I like to wander around every other Friday afternoon (or, if I’ve had a bad week, maybe every Friday afternoon, or even a Monday, or Thursday).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |