Seiobo There Below
November 8, 2013 10:25 AM   Subscribe

László Krasznahorkai's most recently translated book, Seiobo There Below, whose first chapter can be read online, is a collection of interconnected stories about art and revelation, stories composed almost entirely of pages-long sentences, "long, sinewy sentences," sentences which might make you think "Krasznahorkai holds the run-on in a suffocating bear hug," as Adam Z. Levy has it, sentences which other critics call "captivating", "vertiginous", "apparently endless [...] like diving deep underwater, with no hope of coming up for air, or like releasing the brakes on a bicycle at the top of a steep hill", but those sentences, which go on for pages as they shift scenes and perspectives, serve as vehicles for a terrifying aesthetic bliss or bewilderment

of a kind you might recall from reading, or reading about, Krasznahorkai previously on MetaFilter.
posted by RogerB (6 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I see what you did there.
posted by mai at 10:42 AM on November 8, 2013


Yeah OK.
posted by cog_nate at 11:54 AM on November 8, 2013


I thought his Satantango was masterful, an absolute classic. Will look forward to reading this. Great post, by the way. Thanks for putting it together.
posted by vac2003 at 12:14 PM on November 8, 2013


Many thanks for posting this.
posted by semmi at 12:14 PM on November 8, 2013


I'm halfway through reading it and agree with all the adjectives above -- great to see some Krasznahorkai love on MeFi.
posted by RGD at 12:36 PM on November 8, 2013


My copy arrived last week & I’m looking forward to reading it: just leafing through I see most pages are solid bricks of unparagraphed text; the chapters are numbered in a Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, …, 1597, 2584); and chapter 2 begins with an (untranslated) Italian crossword puzzle!
posted by misteraitch at 7:33 AM on November 9, 2013


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