Teller and the Tale : Essays on Literature and Culture

Front Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; Proust and I; Tristram Shandy: Not Waving But Drowning; Empty Rooms; A Napoleon of Thought : Paul Valéry and his Notebooks; Reading Kafka Today; The Stories of the Germans; The Legends of the Jews; Two Resurrections; Medieval Matters; The Tallith and the Dishcloth; The Hebrew Poetry of Medieval Spain; Sacred Trash; Claudel and the Bible; 'Like a Bad Russian Novel': Eliot in His Letters; Boris Pasternak; György Kurtág: Samuel Beckett What is the Word; 'The Itch to Write': Beckett's Early Letters; Why Write Fiction? 'We seem to live, intellectually and emotionally, in sealed-off universes,'writes Gabriel Josipovici in an essay on Hebrew poetry in medieval Spain, just one in a lively multiverse of writings gathered in The Teller and the Tale. The book draws on a quarter of a century's worth of critical reflection on modern art and literature, Biblical culture, Jewish theology, European identity, the nature of beginnings, and the bittersweetness of writing fiction – to name but a few of the subjects upon which Josipovici's ranging, pansophic attention rests. The author describes paths between these distant regions of space and time with characteristic warmth and ingenuity. Proust, Kafka, Woolf, Pasternak, Eliot, Spark, Valéry, and Beckett dwell here alongside Dante, Shakespeare, Sterne, Cervantes, and the Brothers Grimm. Each of these great writers is a point of departure for personal reflection, and a series of critical essays takes on a second life as a book of intimate recollections and fond remembrances, recalling departed friends and peers, evoking the pain and ecstasy of childhood, the personal struggle to be a writer, and the life-long project of becoming a person. Here is a snapshot of influences on one of the English language's most distinctive voices, and an opinionated, sensual, and informed exposition on Western literature and culture. Front Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Proust and I Tristram Shandy: Not Waving But Drowning Empty Rooms A Napoleon of Thought : Paul Valéry and his Notebooks Reading Kafka Today The Stories of the Germans The Legends of the Jews Two Resurrections Medieval Matters The Tallith and the Dishcloth The Hebrew Poetry of Medieval Spain Sacred Trash Claudel and the Bible 'Like a Bad Russian Novel': Eliot in His Letters Boris Pasternak György Kurtág: Samuel Beckett What is the Word 'The Itch to Write': Beckett's Early Letters Why Write Fiction? Muriel Spark and the Practice of DeceptionSaying Kaddish Kafka and the Holy Rabbi of Belz The Lost Cousins Against the 'Idea of Europe' Interruption and the Last Part How to Make a Square Move When I Begin I Have Already Begun The Ouse's Muddy Bank Notes of First Publication Acknowledgements About the Author. From the esteemed author of celebrated critical works 'Text and Voice' (1992) and 'The Singer on the Shore' (2006), comes a groundbreaking new body of work which will serve as a key resource for students, scholars and lovers of literature alike. The Teller and the Tale, the latest book from novelist, playwright, biographer and critic, Gabriel Josipovici, contains essays which take a fresh, analytical approach to the works of literary giants including Proust, Kafka, Eliot, Beckett, Muriel Spark, and many more. An internationally-renowned speaker and regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, Josipovici is the authoritative voice in literature, and this book is the ideal gift for any reader with a deep love of the classics.