Read Closely Enough And Your Eyes Will Fall Out
Dare to read closely? Explore the darker side of fiction with The Maimed by Hermann Ungar, The Robber by Robert Walser, and Céline's Journey to the End of the Night. A curated list of intense, unflinching literary works where the strain of deep reading pulls the veil from reality—and your eyes might just fall out.
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The sorrows of Satan, or, The strange experience of one Geoffrey Tempest, millionaire
No summary available.
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The Robber
by Robert Walser
The Robber, Robert Walser?s last novel, tells the story of a dreamer on a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to young boys, and uses a passerby?s mouth as an ashtray. Walser?s novel spoofs the stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois and its nervous reactions to whatever threatens the stability of its worldview.
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Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
A nihilistic petit-bougeois named Bardamu opens his medical practice in the slums of suburban Paris.
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The Maimed
by Hermann Ungar
Called by Thomas Mann a "sexual hell" as well as "pure artistry," The Maimed is set in Prague and relates the story of a highly neurotic, socially inept bank clerk who is eventually forced to have sexual relations with his widowed landlady. At the same time he must witness the steady physical and mental deterioration of his lifelong friend who is suffering from an unnamed disease. Part psychological farce, Ungar tells a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life. Having died young, Ungar wrote only two novels, in addition to a handful of plays and short stories; this is the first time his work has appeared in English.
