Of All That Ends - Couverture rigide

Grass, Günter

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 054478538X ISBN 13 : 9780544785380

Editeur : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

“Always thinking, always musing, reflecting on the ordinary and the familiar, above all on the defining beauty of nature, the inimitable German fabulist Günter Grass, multi-talented artist, storyteller and witness, never tired of the business of living, not even as the end approached. Here is a final book like no other; there is no sorrow, no self-pity, just a rueful, yet characteristically, exuberant acceptance that for him time has almost run out and the message is clear – he has not quite finished with looking at the world, nor has he lost interest in expressing his opinions. This posthumous collection of mediations and snatches of memory is touching and witty, at times unnervingly philosophical. The master prepares to take his leave and, as always with Grass, not without an element of surprise and rakish panache, always the subversive aside...The graceful soft pencil drawings accompanying his poems and prose pieces are as simple and direct as the thoughts expressed... It is a tactile book aware of mortality, but it is also conversational in tone and rich in playful, blunt humour, which is lovingly conveyed by Breon Mitchell... There is a vibrant physicality about this book; it offers an insight into a sensual artistic imagination which was fully three-dimensional. It is similar to experiencing the late works of Picasso with their aura of defiant energy... As subtle and as delicate as the many feathers depicted through its pages, Of All That Ends is a glorious gift, a final salute true to the singular creativity of the most human, and humane, of artists...Grass was an original and this beguiling leave taking most brilliantly testifies to that.”—IRISH TIMES “A thoughtful, uncompromising meditation on death and aging... He describes loss, change, and memory with a combination of melancholy and wit; and occasionally with defiance.” —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY “Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS   “Some pieces are prose, some sway into poetry, some others feel like the contemplative diary entries of a man who knows the end is near. . . . Many sentences retain a defiant energy admirers of this literary lightning-rod will instantly recognize, but Grass’s drawings of dead birds, crumpled leaves, mutilated hands, and various vegetative material point in a more musing direction.” —BOOKLIST

Praise for Günter Grass: "Grass is one of the master fabulists of our age."—Times (London) "[Grass's] frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."—The Swedish Academy, Nobel committee "Grass is the strongest, most inventine writer to have emerged in Germany since 1945. Much of what is active in the Germany of Krupp and the Munich beer halls lies in this man's ribald keeping."—George Steiner "It is impossible not to be impressed by [Grass's] inexhaustible desire to experiment with the form of the novel and [his] many good stories and passages of exquisite writing..."—Charles Simic, New York Review of Books "At the ages of fourteen and fifteen, I had read Great Expectations twice—Dickens made me want to be a writer—but it was reading The Tin Drum at nineteen and twenty that showed me how. It was Günter Grass who demonstrated that it was possible to be a living writer who wrote with Dickens’s full range of emotion and relentless outpouring of language. Grass wrote with fury, love, derision, slapstick, pathos—all with an unforgiving conscience.”—John Irving, New York Times Book Review   “This is what Grass’s great novel did to me in its drumbeats: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—childhood, certainties, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers. I have tried to learn the lessons of the midget drummer.”—Salman Rushdie    

“A thoughtful, uncompromising meditation on death and aging... He describes loss, change, and memory with a combination of melancholy and wit; and occasionally with defiance.” —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY “Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS   “Some pieces are prose, some sway into poetry, some others feel like the contemplative diary entries of a man who knows the end is near. . . . Many sentences retain a defiant energy admirers of this literary lightning-rod will instantly recognize, but Grass’s drawings of dead birds, crumpled leaves, mutilated hands, and various vegetative material point in a more musing direction.” —BOOKLIST

"Last words and images from the Nobel Prize-winning writer. In this posthumous collection, Grass (1927-2015) offers brief, gentle, intimate meditations illustrated by his own soft pencil drawings...Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living."—Kirkus Reviews "The final volume by one of Germany’s most celebrated and provocative writers, Nobel laureate Grass, collects a hundred or so brief works composed near the end of his life and revisiting familiar themes and circling around mortality. Some pieces are prose, some sway into poetry, some others feel like the contemplative diary entries of a man who knows the end is near...Many sentences retain a defiant energy admirers of this literary lightning rod will instantly recognize, but Grass’s drawings of dead birds, crumpled leaves, mutilated hands, and various vegetative material point in a more musing direction. In doing so, he returns to the technique he used in Show Your Tongue (1988), a travel diary of sorts inspired by his formative time in India, where words sometimes escaped him. This, too, can be seen as a travel diary as Grass journeys toward the place where words will again escape him."—Booklist  

“Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS   “Some pieces are prose, some sway into poetry, some others feel like the contemplative diary entries of a man who knows the end is near. . . . Many sentences retain a defiant energy admirers of this literary lightning-rod will instantly recognize, but Grass’s drawings of dead birds, crumpled leaves, mutilated hands, and various vegetative material point in a more musing direction.” —BOOKLIST  

"Last words and images from the Nobel Prize-winning writer. In this posthumous collection, Grass (1927-2015) offers brief, gentle, intimate meditations illustrated by his own soft pencil drawings...Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living." —KIRKUS REVIEWS "The final volume by one of Germany’s most celebrated and provocative writers, Nobel laureate Grass, collects a hundred or so brief works composed near the end of his life and revisiting familiar themes and circling around mortality. Some pieces are prose, some sway into poetry, some others feel like the contemplative diary entries of a man who knows the end is near...Many sentences retain a defiant energy admirers of this literary lightning rod will instantly recognize, but Grass’s drawings of dead birds, crumpled leaves, mutilated hands, and various vegetative material point in a more musing direction. In doing so, he returns to the technique he used in Show Your Tongue (1988), a travel diary of sorts inspired by his formative time in India, where words sometimes escaped him. This, too, can be seen as a travel diary as Grass journeys toward the place where words will again escape him." —BOOKLIST  

"Last words and images from the Nobel Prize-winning writer. In this posthumous collection, Grass (1927-2015) offers brief, gentle, intimate meditations illustrated by his own soft pencil drawings...Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living."—Kirkus Reviews

Présentation de l'éditeur

The final work of the Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass—a witty and elegiac series of meditations on writing, growing old, the world In spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, suddenly everything seems possible again: love letters, soliloquies, scenes of jealousy, swan songs, social satire, and moments of happiness crowd onto the page.  Only an aging artist who has once more cheated death can set to work with such wisdom, defiance, and wit. A wealth of touching stories is condensed into artful miniatures. In a striking interplay of poetry, lyric prose, and drawings, the Nobel Prize-winning author creates his final major work of art.   A moving farewell gift, a sensual, melancholy summation of a life fully lived.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Date d'édition: 2016
• ISBN 10: 054478538X
• ISBN 13: 9780544785380
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 176