unicornsinshangrila's review against another edition
3.0
I really enjoyed the first half of this book that focused on Kraus' 'Heine and the Consequences'. This was largely due to Kraus' writing. His loaded sentences were a pleasure to read. His sharp wit (and anger, really) had be chuckling to myself throughout. The focus on content vs form was also very interesting. Had the book ended after this deconstruction I would have given the book four stars.
It was the second half of the book that really let me down. At first I didn't mind Franzen's footnotes but they soon seemed irrelevant and unnecessarily drawn out. They also didn't make it any easier to decipher what Kraus was trying to say, feeling mostly like unwarranted interruptions, and I often felt as though it would be more beneficial just to read Kraus and ignore Franzen's contributions. This may have also been because I didn't like Franzen. He is like a wannabe Kraus, with all the wit but without the bite. Perhaps it was his softer more considered side that he claims to have developed with old age that simultaneously made him more likeable and less likeable. It was his flaw. Like Franzen makes reference to in the book it was Kraus' unapologetic nature that made him so outstanding and interesting. Franzen constantly checking in on himself made him less of an authority and therefore more irrelevant.
I found myself willing the last half of the book to hurry up and finish. I wasn't sure whether it was this attitude that was making the work boring or whether it was the boring work that have birth to this attitude. Several times I forced myself to slow down to ensure I was fully digesting the content in an effort to ensure it was the latter.
Don't get me wrong, Franzen wasn't the sole thing wrong with this book. Kraus is dense and challenging to read. It's important here to note though that the contributions by Reitter and particularly Kehlmann were very helpful in better understand what Kraus may have been trying to say.
The second half of this review seems quite harsh. I must at this point blame Kraus for rubbing off on me and also reiterate the engaging and enjoyable first half which really made the book worth reading.
It was the second half of the book that really let me down. At first I didn't mind Franzen's footnotes but they soon seemed irrelevant and unnecessarily drawn out. They also didn't make it any easier to decipher what Kraus was trying to say, feeling mostly like unwarranted interruptions, and I often felt as though it would be more beneficial just to read Kraus and ignore Franzen's contributions. This may have also been because I didn't like Franzen. He is like a wannabe Kraus, with all the wit but without the bite. Perhaps it was his softer more considered side that he claims to have developed with old age that simultaneously made him more likeable and less likeable. It was his flaw. Like Franzen makes reference to in the book it was Kraus' unapologetic nature that made him so outstanding and interesting. Franzen constantly checking in on himself made him less of an authority and therefore more irrelevant.
I found myself willing the last half of the book to hurry up and finish. I wasn't sure whether it was this attitude that was making the work boring or whether it was the boring work that have birth to this attitude. Several times I forced myself to slow down to ensure I was fully digesting the content in an effort to ensure it was the latter.
Don't get me wrong, Franzen wasn't the sole thing wrong with this book. Kraus is dense and challenging to read. It's important here to note though that the contributions by Reitter and particularly Kehlmann were very helpful in better understand what Kraus may have been trying to say.
The second half of this review seems quite harsh. I must at this point blame Kraus for rubbing off on me and also reiterate the engaging and enjoyable first half which really made the book worth reading.
bookish_sue's review against another edition
4.0
Any normal person will stop reading now.
This spring, I’ve been a basketcase -- emotional. With intention, I’ve been striking into several projects that distract my head-voices, that improve my ego, that feed my knowledge spot. And so I picked up this book.
What? Really?
Yes, Really. The me of ten years ago kept her finger on the pulse of certain cultural dust-ups. Ten-years-ago me would have read every word of The Guardian piece (an article-length redaction of the Franzen bits of this book, I suspect) published September, 2013. But, because I was too involved with other ridiculouses (namely, a high-profile work project that has yet to disclose its rewards), I missed it. The article has been pulled offline.
I devoted the best parts of my head to the soul-sucking of work, and I missed it.
The forensics (Google searches resulting in excited headlines of months-old magazine pieces) I’m able to put on this article indicate the theme is technology’s ruination of literary and critical writing. E.g., “While we are busy tweeting, texting and spending, the world is drifting towards disaster, believes Jonathan Franzen, whose despair at our insatiable technoconsumerism echoes the apocalyptic essays of the satirist Karl Kraus – 'the Great Hater.’”
I’m angry, and repulsed by this constant state. How can I get out of it? Find an angier person who can’t hurt me? Franzen is reliably angrier than I can ever be. Right? And he’s writing about this obscure early 20th-century Austrian essayist who hates more than he? This could be a dose of good, clean, DULL, anger.
While the echoes of the debate are Google-able, the comments to the original article are uniformly along the lines of proclaiming Franzen little more than a crank, a Luddite, a White Male, arguing self-interest in preservation rather than revolution in the literary arts. (This my unsupported, inflammatory summary of the “anti-Franzen” side of the dialogue. I’m less interested in archiving highlights in this debate than I am touching on impressions while reading the book. It’s interesting, though, that both Franzen and his critics, both, use hyperbole, pathos, fallacy, and also focus on one point that unpacks neatly to illustrate “evidence” for their theses. I suppose it’s a rhetorical technique to argue one’s point this way, but to a suspecting reader, the author seems to erect panes into a glass house.)
So to the library, to check out this book. What is this book? It’s one of the stranger books I’ve
decided to read for “fun.” It’s a multi-layered conversation. On the verso, the original German of a few of Kraus’ essays -- in one he is said to lampoon a beloved 19th century poet; in another he “celebrates” his favorite Austrian literary artist. On the recto, Franzen’s translation.
In the footnotes, explanation, pondering, commentary, modern-day riffs from Franzen and two other guys: the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann. The scholars are asked to do the heavy lifting to provide historical and cultural context. Reitter is also allowed to drift into describing what Kraus may have “actually meant” here and there. (It did seem to me that Franzen took advantage of these scholars. I imagined Franzen’s “celebrity” wowwing Reitter and Kehlmann into submitting their work to this book. I hope Franzen did the right thing to make sure these two were compensated for their work. Particularly when Franzen writes, in his footnotes, that too many writers are giving their work away in the blog marketplace.)
I read none of the main text.
I read only the footnotes.
And I read only the footnotes that Franzen wrote.
And I read only the footnotes that Franzen wrote that concerned his life, his writing, and his views on the art of writing.
And I got a hell of a lot out of my reading. And continue to turn over some of the ideas brought out in teeny font of those rambling footnotes:
On the root of anger being the desire for quality (pp. 110, 120)
On the erosive technology-capitalism connection, and the importance to use technologies to its purpose rather than adapt purpose to the technologies (p. 141)
On the importance of diversity and empathy, of embracing conflict, to meaningful art (p. 158)
On discovering truths about human nature, through conflict (pp. 214, 217)
On the connection between cultivating an audience, and an artist’s responsibility to its audience to create “good” art, which by definition ought provoke (pp. 270-272)
On the question of the artist’s medium of engagement with its audience (pp. 273, 293)
Salman Rushdie’s Tweet, in response to Franzen’s opinion that Rushdie ought to know better than engage his audience in 160-character chunks:
“Dear #Franzen, @MargaretAtwood @JoyceCarolOates @nycnovel @NathanEnglander @Shteyngart and I are fine with Twitter. Enjoy your ivory tower.”
Franzen’s an angry middle-aged crank. But I can’t pass judgment: I’m Ms. Crankypants.
This spring, I’ve been a basketcase -- emotional. With intention, I’ve been striking into several projects that distract my head-voices, that improve my ego, that feed my knowledge spot. And so I picked up this book.
What? Really?
Yes, Really. The me of ten years ago kept her finger on the pulse of certain cultural dust-ups. Ten-years-ago me would have read every word of The Guardian piece (an article-length redaction of the Franzen bits of this book, I suspect) published September, 2013. But, because I was too involved with other ridiculouses (namely, a high-profile work project that has yet to disclose its rewards), I missed it. The article has been pulled offline.
I devoted the best parts of my head to the soul-sucking of work, and I missed it.
The forensics (Google searches resulting in excited headlines of months-old magazine pieces) I’m able to put on this article indicate the theme is technology’s ruination of literary and critical writing. E.g., “While we are busy tweeting, texting and spending, the world is drifting towards disaster, believes Jonathan Franzen, whose despair at our insatiable technoconsumerism echoes the apocalyptic essays of the satirist Karl Kraus – 'the Great Hater.’”
I’m angry, and repulsed by this constant state. How can I get out of it? Find an angier person who can’t hurt me? Franzen is reliably angrier than I can ever be. Right? And he’s writing about this obscure early 20th-century Austrian essayist who hates more than he? This could be a dose of good, clean, DULL, anger.
While the echoes of the debate are Google-able, the comments to the original article are uniformly along the lines of proclaiming Franzen little more than a crank, a Luddite, a White Male, arguing self-interest in preservation rather than revolution in the literary arts. (This my unsupported, inflammatory summary of the “anti-Franzen” side of the dialogue. I’m less interested in archiving highlights in this debate than I am touching on impressions while reading the book. It’s interesting, though, that both Franzen and his critics, both, use hyperbole, pathos, fallacy, and also focus on one point that unpacks neatly to illustrate “evidence” for their theses. I suppose it’s a rhetorical technique to argue one’s point this way, but to a suspecting reader, the author seems to erect panes into a glass house.)
So to the library, to check out this book. What is this book? It’s one of the stranger books I’ve
decided to read for “fun.” It’s a multi-layered conversation. On the verso, the original German of a few of Kraus’ essays -- in one he is said to lampoon a beloved 19th century poet; in another he “celebrates” his favorite Austrian literary artist. On the recto, Franzen’s translation.
In the footnotes, explanation, pondering, commentary, modern-day riffs from Franzen and two other guys: the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann. The scholars are asked to do the heavy lifting to provide historical and cultural context. Reitter is also allowed to drift into describing what Kraus may have “actually meant” here and there. (It did seem to me that Franzen took advantage of these scholars. I imagined Franzen’s “celebrity” wowwing Reitter and Kehlmann into submitting their work to this book. I hope Franzen did the right thing to make sure these two were compensated for their work. Particularly when Franzen writes, in his footnotes, that too many writers are giving their work away in the blog marketplace.)
I read none of the main text.
I read only the footnotes.
And I read only the footnotes that Franzen wrote.
And I read only the footnotes that Franzen wrote that concerned his life, his writing, and his views on the art of writing.
And I got a hell of a lot out of my reading. And continue to turn over some of the ideas brought out in teeny font of those rambling footnotes:
On the root of anger being the desire for quality (pp. 110, 120)
On the erosive technology-capitalism connection, and the importance to use technologies to its purpose rather than adapt purpose to the technologies (p. 141)
On the importance of diversity and empathy, of embracing conflict, to meaningful art (p. 158)
On discovering truths about human nature, through conflict (pp. 214, 217)
On the connection between cultivating an audience, and an artist’s responsibility to its audience to create “good” art, which by definition ought provoke (pp. 270-272)
On the question of the artist’s medium of engagement with its audience (pp. 273, 293)
Salman Rushdie’s Tweet, in response to Franzen’s opinion that Rushdie ought to know better than engage his audience in 160-character chunks:
“Dear #Franzen, @MargaretAtwood @JoyceCarolOates @nycnovel @NathanEnglander @Shteyngart and I are fine with Twitter. Enjoy your ivory tower.”
Franzen’s an angry middle-aged crank. But I can’t pass judgment: I’m Ms. Crankypants.
sumoninja's review against another edition
3.0
Mr. Franzen deserves 5 stars for bringing Kraus out from obscurity, but gets a -2 stars for his cumbersome footnoting. These translated essays (and one poem) would be better served if Mr. Franzen provided an introduction to each and kept his page winding footnotes to a minimum.
While Mr. Franzen's comments are interesting and insightful at times, he also falls victim to navel gazing and flaccid comparisons of early 20th Europe to contemporary America.
Nevertheless, still an interesting read, just try and gloss over the footnotes as much as possible.
While Mr. Franzen's comments are interesting and insightful at times, he also falls victim to navel gazing and flaccid comparisons of early 20th Europe to contemporary America.
Nevertheless, still an interesting read, just try and gloss over the footnotes as much as possible.
frecci7's review against another edition
4.0
Ho scritto una recensione basata su questo libro e su "Come finisce il libro" di Gazoia qua: http://www.lostoquasendo.com/2014/09/11/come-finisce-progetto-kraus-riflessioni-partire-dai-libri-gazoia-franzen-sullo-cultura/
ethicsofseeing's review
4.0
Jonathan Franzen was a student in Berlin in 1981 when he encountered Karl Kraus’s works. In his tumultuous years as a Fulbright student, he found himself and what he wanted to be (so fortunate to able to figure yourself out in your early 20s). In this original volume, he recalled some of those memories and translated two essays by the famed Austrian satirist and journalist: one regarding Heinrich Heine (the German poet) and the other on Johann Nestroy (the German playwright)—the two works which completed his study. With special annotations to Kraus’ essays, Franzen writes that Vienna in early 20th century was not that different from our contemporary life seen from our incessant cultural and technological indulgence.
strickvl's review
2.0
It's sort of amazing that this book even exists at all and was given such publicity. Of course, Franzen's own 'Fakkel' or superstar status in publishing circles meant he was given time and space to edit, translate and airtime to promote this difficult and somewhat abstruse set of essays.
A bit boring to my tastes and interests, and felt like a bit of a slog at times.
A bit boring to my tastes and interests, and felt like a bit of a slog at times.
quintusmarcus's review
1.0
What a completely wretched book. The design and execution of this book is perfectly awful: the millions of notes elucidating Franzen's translations of Kraus' cranky texts are buried at the back of the book. And since Kraus is completely unintelligible without the notes, one has to constantly flip back and forth between the text and the notes. And not that the notes are that much help: Franzen had to bring on not one but two specialists to try and decode Kraus' gibberish, and even they frequently tossed up their hands and said they had no idea what Kraus was trying to say. This, about a writer who considered himself a paragon and champion of "pure" German style.
Karl Kraus is always lingering at the outskirts of any discussion of early twentieth century Viennese culture, but he is not a well-known figure, at least in the English-speaking world. What little I knew of Kraus was that he was the publisher, primary contributor (and later only contributor) to the satiric Vienese paper Die Fackel. I knew also that he was known for his aphorisms. What I did not know was that Kraus, a Jew himself, was an anti-Semite.
Presumably, though, that was not the source of Franzen's attraction to Kraus. Franzen's interest appears to revolve around the extent to which Kraus was a ranter about modernity, and this is what Franzen glosses ad nauseam in his stupid notes. For example, this beauty:
“Vienna in 1910 was, thus, a special case. And yet you could argue that America in 2013 is a similarly special case: another weakened empire telling itself stories of its exceptionalism while it drifts toward apocalypse of some sort, fiscal or epidemiological, climatic-environmental or thermonuclear. Our Far Left may hate religion and think we coddle Israel, our Far Right may hate illegal immigrants and think we coddle black people, and nobody may know how the economy is supposed to work now that our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, but the actual substance of our daily lives is total electronic distraction. We can’t face the real problems; we spent a trillion dollars not really solving a problem in Iraq that wasn’t really a problem; we can’t even agree on how to keep health-care costs from devouring the GNP. What we can all agree to do instead is to deliver ourselves to the cool new media and technologies, to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and to let them profit at our expense. Our situation looks quite a bit like Vienna’s in 1910, except that newspaper technology (telephone, telegraph, the high-speed printing press) has been replaced by digital technology and Viennese charm by American coolness."
Blah, blah, blah. That passage captures the essence of Franzen's contribution to the notes: he had to bring in two other specialists to elucidate all the obscurities buried in Kraus' nutty texts. To describe this book as tiresome gives it entirely too much credit.
Karl Kraus is always lingering at the outskirts of any discussion of early twentieth century Viennese culture, but he is not a well-known figure, at least in the English-speaking world. What little I knew of Kraus was that he was the publisher, primary contributor (and later only contributor) to the satiric Vienese paper Die Fackel. I knew also that he was known for his aphorisms. What I did not know was that Kraus, a Jew himself, was an anti-Semite.
Presumably, though, that was not the source of Franzen's attraction to Kraus. Franzen's interest appears to revolve around the extent to which Kraus was a ranter about modernity, and this is what Franzen glosses ad nauseam in his stupid notes. For example, this beauty:
“Vienna in 1910 was, thus, a special case. And yet you could argue that America in 2013 is a similarly special case: another weakened empire telling itself stories of its exceptionalism while it drifts toward apocalypse of some sort, fiscal or epidemiological, climatic-environmental or thermonuclear. Our Far Left may hate religion and think we coddle Israel, our Far Right may hate illegal immigrants and think we coddle black people, and nobody may know how the economy is supposed to work now that our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, but the actual substance of our daily lives is total electronic distraction. We can’t face the real problems; we spent a trillion dollars not really solving a problem in Iraq that wasn’t really a problem; we can’t even agree on how to keep health-care costs from devouring the GNP. What we can all agree to do instead is to deliver ourselves to the cool new media and technologies, to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and to let them profit at our expense. Our situation looks quite a bit like Vienna’s in 1910, except that newspaper technology (telephone, telegraph, the high-speed printing press) has been replaced by digital technology and Viennese charm by American coolness."
Blah, blah, blah. That passage captures the essence of Franzen's contribution to the notes: he had to bring in two other specialists to elucidate all the obscurities buried in Kraus' nutty texts. To describe this book as tiresome gives it entirely too much credit.
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