Teoria della prosa

I really wish I'd paid attention to Shklovsky back in university. He might have saved me from the ravages of the French disease, which has left its scars on several useless generations of humanities students. Not that I think Shklovsky's approach to literature is entirely right (for what it's worth

Unless you have a Ph.D in Russian, British, German and French literature, focusing on novels, a deep knowledge of literary theory, and a monstrous taste for the absurd- you probably won't get much of this book. Unfortunately, I only qualify in the absurd division. Perhaps the following two quotation Leggi tutto

As soon as we get the coliseum-dwellers reading Shklovsky we'll be well on our way... .... .............. .............. ............ .......... ... ..

if you care at all about how fiction works, read this

Its blurbs are all unusually apt: rambling, digressive, irregular, quintessential. There's an astonishing amount of insight into how literary prose actually works, an abundance of bons mots for rumination ("A plot is a picklock, not a key" being among my favorites, and whatever it means), an ostensi Leggi tutto

Erudite, discursive, fun.

Well written theoretical book. It makes you think more and it makes you want to read almost all the mentioned books.

I enjoyed it and learned quite a few things from this rambling potpourri of ideas and examples from Russian and European literature. But it's not for everybody, that's for sure.