This Paperback Book item from Serpent´s Tail was reviewed on 16-Oct-2008.
Search ISBN:B000Y56G5E offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) Reference Book. Classifications : General Literature & Fiction Bargain Books Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books Subjects Arts & Photography Biographies & Memoirs Business & Investing Children's Books Comics & Graphic Novels Computer . Click the following link to view the cover of Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks). Related topics: General. Bargain Books. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. Subjects. Arts & Photography. Children´s Books. Entertainment. Gay & Lesbian. requestid: 46c8a260-4e4a-4223-b516-738dcad8d726
requestprocessingtime: 0.1954520000000000
salesrank: 1105532
numberofitems: 1
packagedimensions: 7076040510
1) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. Elfriede Jelinek´s intellect and ability to write is more than good enough, but her constant negativity, her need to arrogantly disturb the reader´s enjoyment as they read with self-parody and the literary equivalent of theatrical illusion, her condescending and vacuous tone, and her self-indulgence completely ruins this book. Her radical feminist political agenda and her compulsion to depict the world as a mirror of her own personal neurosis (she is a self-described sociophobe) infect every chapter, every page and every sentence of this book. But the worst aspect of this book is that when you read it, you get a clear sense of Jelinek´s utter contempt for her readers. Why else would she consciously make this book so painful to read?¤ 2) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. Wonderful,Wonderful Times is the ironic title for a nasty, engrossing story of four young people in post-war Vienna. The author spares no mercy in skewering their character, their dreams, their hopes on her didactic pen. So much venom.
These are characters you will love to despise and which the author delights in showing in the worst possible light and is creative enough to make it almost poetic--if you see the beauty in psychic wounds which bleed hatred.
The plot is a series of encounters in which the young people--some parents and others are preipheral characters--meet and talk with the purpose of committing the perfect crime: unmotivationless, calculated.
How that comes about caught me by surprise, like a blow to the solar plexus.
Read it and weep--not for them but for mankind.¤ 3) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. I should ask myselff, how will I present this book. Considering that I have written review (or what stands for those nowadays) of every (almost) book of Elfriede Jelinek here on Amazon, I should try to avoid repetiton of myself and start inventing few new phrases, what one could call - expanding ones vocabulary.
Even with my mind having set itself on that kind of track, it is hard not to repeat oneself. Evil tongues out there could say that it cannot be done in any other way since Jelinek writes same story over and over again. And, in a matter of speaking, they are right. Elfriede Jelinek does write same story over and over again. Reasons are numerous (as for argmuneted who can say). Though same they differ, and precisely that kind of differentiation is that tiny piece of intricate weaving which separates lousy writer from superb one. Problem manifest itself when one starts to dig for answers.
What is this novel about? It is the novel about degradation. about degradation of every aspect of civilisation that people are so accustomed to. Destruction of old ethics and morale, and iminent sturgle for creation of new order in a crumbling world of post-war Austria. In a world where hate crimes are being done not for hate, they are being done because they can be done, and people who did the are aware of the fact that no one (except, perhaps, the victim) will care.
In this novel we are observing something what could be ironically called "summer of love", yet there is no love. Or at least, there is no mere love. We follow the life of brother and sister who are growing intelectualls (in a best manner of Camus L´etranger), yet whose birtright is somewhat lower than they would like. They belong to middle class. Gang of four characters still holds one "depraved" worker and a member of burgeousie (female one). They create a world of their own.
Having trouble with identity, they try to create one of their own, complete with ethical system and system of values. Thought they seem in perfect unison, they are falling apart by different desires that propel every one of them on a different path. Chaos and mayhem should eventually occur.
Trough the minds of these young people Elfriede Jelinek shows us the decaying state of society which tends to hide its skeletons, having neither will nor power to destroy them or even acknowledge their existence. Rather pessimistic (as in all of hers work), "wonderfull wonderfull times" are, in a way, anti-philosophy, deconstruction of "manners".
If you decide to read this one (though I would recommend that you start with some easier and more "gleefull" work of hers), you will embark upon quest of rediscovery of culture, identity and meaning. All in one place.
Don´t say I didn´t warn you :)¤ 4) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. I like to check out Nobel Prize-winning novelists. I even look forward to each October with the hopes of discovering (for myself) a new Isaac B. Singer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Heinrich Boll, Grazia DeLadda, Knut Hamsun, Sinclair Lewis, Jose Saramago, or some other outstanding author. There are some choices that I read who didn´t appeal to me but it was still worth the look. Elfriede Jelinek fits in to the latter category for me. I had known that she was a controversial selection when she got the award in 2004. When I looked uo her works, I came across titles like "Lust", "Women as Lovers", "Desire" and others that left me reluctant to go further. However, "Wonderful Wonderful Times" looked more positive; it isn´t. It starts out violently and ends even more so and none of it made any sense although the author did her best to give it meaning.
I have to admit that I had trouble getting through this book. It is depressing and it focusses on a generation without purpose in modern day Austria. Half way through i thought of limiting the time I was wasting on "Wonderful Wonderful Times". However, I decided to stick with it. As I read more I began to realize that I was getting the author´s meaning (I think). In a world that is born out of shameful defeat, what can a successive generation grasp for a foundation to build upon. What standards of ethics and morality exist when an entire country sided with a total absence of ethics and morality in WWII. The result is not a pretty sight to see and the question I had to ask myself was whether to blame or praise the messenger. I chose both, I chose neither.
I have searched for many years for a book that brings to life what it must have felt like to return to a homeland that was as disgraced in defeat as was Nazi Germany and its´ Axis allies or, to a lesser extent, Imperialist Japan. I have found some that have come close to letting me sense what I had assumed to be the dual depressions of shame and loss. I´m not sure why I felt a need to understand this except to realize that these modern day countries have shown that rehabilitation is achievable in relatively short time. I wanted to understand what the steps of the process were like. Ironically, I think "Wonderful Wonderful Times" has come closer to that theme than just about anything else I´ve read. However, it gave me a picture darker that what I thought I´d find. Do I blame Jelinek for the reality I was looking for or do I realize that I had already decided what it was I wanted to find irregardless of whether it was the truth or not. I don´t know if Jelinek has given us the real truth or just a skewered, angry version of what she thought of as the truth.
I found "Wonderful Wonderful Times" to be a hard book to want to keep reading and with a message that I want to be way off-target. I´m not sure if my disappointment rests with the author or with the truth.¤ 5) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. In a time when our own children are shooting their classmates to relieve their sense of isolation, this book is a must. By a Nobel Prize winner, it is a study of youth´s disaffection and how it is created by that youthful tendency toward idealism - idealism that is often simply idealism against society instead of for something - and class differences. Although it takes place in a particularly drifting and disrupted time and place, those years after the second world war in Europe, it seems pretty topical. The events of this book not only can happen, they do happen.
For writer´s this book is fascinating as well. It is written in an almost anti-modern third person. One that is fully omniscient and dryly reportorial. And yet, that distance is the what allows us to fully understand the inner and outer lives of the characters. It´s brilliant.¤ 6) Paperback Book Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks) by Serpent´s Tail. Written by the recipient of the 1986 Heinrich Boell Prize for German literature and the author of "The Piano Teacher", this novel explores the darker side of life in Austria.¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 13-Nov-2008, , 600-711-071-P6B-QUB-5EB-8 
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (Masks), Book, Image © Serpent´s Tail
|
