Notes from Hampstead: The Writer's Notes: 1954-1971 - Hardcover

Elias Canetti

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374223262 ISBN 13: 9780374223267

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998

Synopsis

Notes from Hampstead is a map to the late Nobel laureate's thinking, a triumphant compendium of aphoristic, enigmatic, and expository writings covering a characteristically diverse range of subjects: the significance of mythology and ethnicity, the nature of creativity, the extraordinary hold violence has on the twentieth century, literary history (one learns of Canetti's affection for Cervantes, Stendhal, and Gogol, and his adoration of Kafka), and, always, there is a fierce quarrel with death.
Canetti draws on the troubled period following the death of his wife and the publication of his masterwork of social theory, Crowds and Power. An ambivalent interest in spiritualism also characterizes the collection: Canetti's conversations with Jesuits and Indian gurus, and his readings of Greek, Hebrew, and primitive myths give a kaleidoscopic view of the uses and abuses of religion.

About this title

Review

Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti kept this writer's journal from 1954 to 1971 while he was living in London and writing, among other things, Crowds and Power. It's a deliberately unstructured list of ideas and possibilities from which his thematic obsessions emerge only gradually.

Most entries are just a sentence or two in length, varying in quality from the obvious to the profound. Many take the tantalizing form of a fictional premise not followed through ("A country where everyone walks backwards, to keep an eye on themselves. A country where all turn their backs on one another: fear of eyes.") But the overall tone, as with his other writings, is more gnomically philosophical. A typical stand-alone entry reads, "There is something sickening about all advocacy: only pure admiration is real." --Richard Farr

About the Author

Elias Canetti (1905-94) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. His writings include a monumental work of social theory, Crowds and Power, and three volumes of memoirs, The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, and The Play of the Eyes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0374223262
• ISBN 13: 9780374223267
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 217