Two erotic novellas by one of the masters of high modernism.
Two erotic novellas by one of the masters of high modernism.
First published in 1911, Intimate Ties is Robert Musil's second book, consisting of two novellas, "The Culmination of Love" and "The Temptation of Silent Veronica." Each revolves around a troubled woman in the throes of her sexual and romantic woes, as their memories of the past return to influence their present desires. Musil tracks the psyche of his protagonists in a blurring of impressions that is reflected in his experimental prose. Intimate Ties offers the reader an early glimpse of the high modernist style Musil would perfect in his magnum opus The Man Without Qualities.
Praise for Robert Musil's Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, translated by Peter Wortsman:"Musil's linguistic facility--the merging of aim, manner and result--is virtuosic. He's such a consummate stylist that after him Kafka may seem immature, Mann chatty, Brecht arch, Rilke precious and Walter Benjamin hermetic. And Peter Wortsman's translation is splendid, succeeding in capturing this author's unique combination of quizzical authority and austere hedonism."--
The New York Times Book Review"Funny, sad and true--or rather funny because they are both sad and true--such observations are, to use a typical Musil phrase, a form of 'daylight mysticism,' shafts of light in a darkening world."
--Chicago TribunePraise for Peter Wortsman's translation of Konundrum by Franz Kafka:T"he translator Peter Wortsman's excellent and bracing new selection of Kafka's stories,
Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka... brings the author's peculiar rhetoric to glorious life."-- Morten Høi Jensen,
Los Angeles Review of Books