The Kraus Project

Paperback. Pub Date :2011-08-01 Pages: 336 Language: English A great American writer's confrontation with a great European critic - a personal and intellectual awakening.A hundred years ago. the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus was among the most penetrating and prophetic writers in Europe: a relentless critic of the popular media's manipulation of reality. the dehumanizing machinery of technology and consumerism. and the jingoistic rhetoric of a fading empire But even though his followers included Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin. he remained something of a lonely. prophet. and few people today are familiar with his work. Thankfully. Jonathan Franzen is one of them.In 'The Kraus Project'. Franzen not only presents and annotates his definitive new translations of Kraus. with supplementary notes from the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann In Franzen...

Praise for author Jonathan Franzen:

"A literary genius for our time." ―Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

"Franzen is arguably America's greatest living novelist . . . He writes continually about writing and reading, luxuriating in language and sticking up for literature for literature's sake." ―Paul Clements, The Daily Telegraph

"Never less than superbly intelligent."

―Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator

"Little contends with Franzen's prose. He writes behemoth sentences, graceful, technical mini-wonders that read as easily as his most colloquial quips . . . Franzen never feels more lucid than when assessing―or more often championing―texts that have taken him by the lapels." ―Sean Hoen, Paste

"Not only is Jonathan Franzen the most important novelist of our time, but . . . he is also an incredibly wise and clear-headed thinker who can humbly analyze and explain some of the most complex situations through the most poignant, insightful, and precise observations." ―Randy Rosenthal, The Coffin Factory