Description
Book SynopsisDevelops an alternative intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing how a strain of German-language literature worked against the common conception of modernity. Paul Buchholz suggests that Gustav Landauer, Franz Kafka, Thomas Bernhard, and Wolfgang Hilbig each considered how the void of mass society could be the precondition for a new, anarchic form of community.
Trade ReviewThrough insightful analysis,
Buchholz deepens our understanding of modernist and contemporary literature by focusing on monologues that both disrupt the framing assumptions of their audiences and gesture towards a new kind of community. Combining formal and historical approaches, this book broadly illuminates the power of literary innovation to reorient discussions of the social imaginary."" - Jeffrey Champlin, author of
The Making of a Terrorist: On Classic German Rogues
