Performative writing promises no buttoned-up endings, no achievement of perfection. It refutes the notion of a progression, of a moving forward, the reaching of a completed end-point.
Being Here is Everything – Marie Darrieussecq
How can a biography of any woman not be about her sad fucking life?
I Am the Brother of XX – Fleur Jaeggy
The private self will not be saved by rationality.
The Last Wolf & Herman – László Krasznahorkai
If Bernhard was, however reductive the term, the Alpen-Beckett (Beckett of the Alps), then László Krasznahorkai might in turn be called the Alföld-Bernhard, the Bernhard of the Great Hungarian Plain.
Go, Went, Gone – Jenny Erpenbeck
A system that uses and relies on lists and numbers never can account for lives, but only for bodies — dead or alive.
The toggling between and stacking up of intensifiers and alternatives vividly brands the narrative of August with a symbol of equivocation and transition.
When we die, we all become fictional characters.
Thus Bad Begins – Javier Marías
Like so many young Spaniards of the transition, Juan never questions his elders, as though pointing out Muriel’s hypocrisy might lead to the return of the Franco regime.
Nights as Day, Days as Night – Michel Leiris
While “a fieldwork of the self” is clearly how much of Leiris’s other work operates, this book resists.
Atlantic Hotel – João Gilberto Noll
ATLANTIC HOTEL’s moral compass is far wonkier than even the most clever parody of a hardboiled detective noir.