This would be a dream for writers who don't like periods. Talk about a flow of words...like a 300 pound man skiing down Mount Everest!
Writers have to really think outside the box to appreciate this concept. It really shouldn't work at all, but does...and does so with acuity.
Mathias Énard’s Zone is such a tome...and a brilliant work by all accounts! Apparently, once you get into this story (or sentence) you don't want to get out of it or put it down.
Holy shitski, I sometimes have trouble with short sentences! So I was flabbergasted when I read this account of the French author, Mathias Énard (pictured), by Dennis Abrams in Publishing Perspectives:
Mathias Énard’s Zone: Brilliance in a Single 517 Page Sentence
It really shouldn’t work at all — Matias Énard’s Zone.
This novel, the story of Francis Servain Mirkovic, fighter in the Balkan Wars, spy, and amateur historian, traveling from Milan to Rome by train, carrying a briefcase filled with names, photos, and information about the violent history of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean – the “Zone,” as Mirkovic refers to it, information that is being sold to the Vatican, has no right to be as brilliant as truth be told it is.
This is a novel in which the only physical action that takes place in the present is when Mirkovic gets up from his seat to go to the bar car, from there to the rest room to sneak a smoke, and then back to the bar car. But it is about so much more than that.
Mirkovic’s life as a soldier fighting for Croatia. His life as a spy. Unseemly sexual encounters. Venice. Paris. Alexandria. Salonika. The Holocaust. The Spanish Civil War. Algeria. Gaza. Troy. The entire bloody history of the Mediterranean, from modern times to the Trojan War. Not to mention a symbolic overlay of Homer and the Trojan War that would be enough to sink any other book. But it doesn’t.
Read and learn more
Writers have to really think outside the box to appreciate this concept. It really shouldn't work at all, but does...and does so with acuity.
Mathias Énard’s Zone is such a tome...and a brilliant work by all accounts! Apparently, once you get into this story (or sentence) you don't want to get out of it or put it down.
Holy shitski, I sometimes have trouble with short sentences! So I was flabbergasted when I read this account of the French author, Mathias Énard (pictured), by Dennis Abrams in Publishing Perspectives:
Mathias Énard’s Zone: Brilliance in a Single 517 Page Sentence
It really shouldn’t work at all — Matias Énard’s Zone.
This novel, the story of Francis Servain Mirkovic, fighter in the Balkan Wars, spy, and amateur historian, traveling from Milan to Rome by train, carrying a briefcase filled with names, photos, and information about the violent history of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean – the “Zone,” as Mirkovic refers to it, information that is being sold to the Vatican, has no right to be as brilliant as truth be told it is.
This is a novel in which the only physical action that takes place in the present is when Mirkovic gets up from his seat to go to the bar car, from there to the rest room to sneak a smoke, and then back to the bar car. But it is about so much more than that.
Mirkovic’s life as a soldier fighting for Croatia. His life as a spy. Unseemly sexual encounters. Venice. Paris. Alexandria. Salonika. The Holocaust. The Spanish Civil War. Algeria. Gaza. Troy. The entire bloody history of the Mediterranean, from modern times to the Trojan War. Not to mention a symbolic overlay of Homer and the Trojan War that would be enough to sink any other book. But it doesn’t.
Read and learn more
2 comments:
Quite a creative accomplishment!
Jeanne,
I definitely agree with you! Did you read any of the excerpts? It is quite enthralling.
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