![]() ![]() The mundane trials and pleasures of.work are beautifully etched. The Capital is.in part an exploration of its own viability, a testing of the adequacy of literary realism to the task of understanding and presenting the large forces at work in contemporary Europe. this novel evidences a sharp awareness of the forces remaking European life, with Brexit as only one example. But there is also pointed writing not just about politics but about subways and orgasms and woolly underwear and air conditioning and retirement homes. This is a baggy book, with room for everything Menasse wants to put into it. Yet The Capital made me want to learn to read in German, where it is surely even better. The translation, by Jamie Bulloch, is adroit. ![]() It’s possible this is a great Holocaust-minded novel for a new millennium. I enjoyed The Capital so much that I could keep going like this. You come to suspect that the murder is a kind of MacGuffin, that maybe it doesn’t matter at all. It’s an unusual murder story, though, because the suspense lies not in discovering the identity of the assassin (we follow him as he goes on the lam) but the identity of the dead man. ![]() Perhaps what we have in The Capital is a great murder mystery. If you tasked an excellent writer with turning a tall stack of recent issues of The Economist into a novel, you might get The Capital. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |