I set forth bravely into this arid novel following the track weaving between the cattle skulls and the cacti. But my footprints petered out after a hundred and seventy pages or so. And my bones may be found wrapped about the bleached carcass of a chess playing midget.

The story concerns the obsession of a recluse, apparently with a bit of Asperger syndrome, for his library, his library, and only his library - but that's like saying Kafka's "The Trial" is about a law case. This novel is like a lengthy masterpiece written by a madman on the back of matchbook covers with ink made from tobacco ashes and his own blood. Canetti's prose is very reminiscent of Kafka, clear, but mono-toned and monochromatic. Then again, I never finished "The Trial" either.

But I encountered some funny moments and one very brilliant and comedic image before I expired in the sand. The protagonist, in one of his flights of dementia, imagines he is a general preparing his army of books (his soldiers) for an onslaught by his malevolent hausfrau. So, in a sort of infantry phalanx tortoise defense, he turns all his thousands of books with their spines towards the wall. I found this outrageously funny, and imagined the effect if I did the same, and then invited a group of friends and acquaintances for a large housewarming. And if, by way of explanation to my bewildered and worried guests, I offered only his one word, which was "Kung!".

In short, I think everyone with a library should own this book if only to be aware of the dangers of bibliophilomania. Just as every fisherman after the "big one" should have a copy of "Jaws".

My namesake. ( )

alienation vs. power,individual vs. group,art vs. capitalism,mentally vs.physiclly,etc...Canetti deals with it all,the result is an expressionist,grotesque,anarchistic and extreme novel:
the sort of style that could only be written once,cause afterwards every imitation of it will look like an embarrassing joke.
with it's bleak absurd humour and big,strong (though transparent) symbols on which Canetti manages to exlain the roots for the nazism ,it is written like an avant-garde Kafka to the mainstream.
still unique, it's a must. ( )

The author shakes you with the first scene in the book, one of the best openings of any novel that I've ever read. And he continues to challenge you with a riveting account of the travails of a fascinating scholar recluse, Peter Kien. Both fantastic and moving, this is one of my favorites. ( )

Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fé, published in German as Die Blendung and translated here by C.V. Wedgwood, is considered a great masterwork of twentieth-century fiction. That reputation, I humbly suggest, is well deserved. While it is certainly one of the more bizarre pieces of writing I've read in quite some time, it was also one of the most provocative and intriguing.
Dr. Peter Kien, a leading sinologist, is the reclusive and introverted protagonist, whose life revolves solely around his great personal library and the work to which use he puts its contents. In a move he sees as crucial to the protection of his books, he marries his housekeeper, a gold-digging harpy who ends up slowly evicting Kien from his own flat and forcing him into the streets of Vienna. The plot twists and turns sharply from there, and comes to involve a red-headed and abusive caretaker, a devious hunchback, Kien's psychiatrist brother, and a gang of hapless policemen.

Canetti's fictional world is - to a rational reader - totally ridiculous, with the characters behaving in ways that seem completely strange and incomprehensible. And yet the internal rationales they provide for their actions somehow seem perfectly reasonable. It is a sick, twisted, violent and unpleasant place, filled with misunderstandings and betrayals; everyone, as Salman Rushdie blurbs on the back cover of my copy "get[s] it in the neck." It doesn't seem real, and yet ...

Not a fast read by any stretch, but the language is clear and concise (and excellently translated, I suspect without knowing German). A fascinating, enthralling tale.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/... ( )