Blindness and Rage: A Phantasmagoria (A Novel in thirty-four cantos) - Softcover

Brian Castro

  • 4.05 out of 5 stars
    21 ratings by Goodreads
 
9781925336221: Blindness and Rage: A Phantasmagoria (A Novel in thirty-four cantos)

Synopsis

Suffering from a fatal disease, Lucien Gracq travels to Paris to complete the epic poem he is writing and live out his last days. There he joins a secret writers’ society, Le club des fugitifs, that guarantees to publish the work of its members anonymously, thus relieving them of the burdens of life, and more importantly, the disappointments of authorship. In Paris, Gracq finds himself crossing paths with a parade of phantasms, illustrious writers from the previous century – masters of identity, connoisseurs of eroticism, theorists of game and rule, émigrés and Oulipeans. He flees from the deathly allure of the Fugitives, and towards the arms of his beloved – but it may be too late.

Written in thirty-four cantos, Blindness and Rage recalls Virgil and Dante in its descent into the underworld of writing, and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin with its mixture of wonder and melancholy. The short lines bring out the rhythmic qualities of Castro’s prose, enhance his playfulness and love of puns, his use of allusion and metaphor. Always an innovator, in Blindness and Rage he again throws down a challenge to the limits of the novel form.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781525258633: Blindness and Rage: A Phantasmagoria

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  152525863X ISBN 13:  9781525258633
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant, 2017
Softcover