Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Spadework for a Palace

Spadework for a Palace

Krasznahorkai, László
Batki, John

Hardcover

Series: Storybook ND

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0811228401
ISBN13: 9780811228404
Publisher: New Directions
Published: Sep 27 2022
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.55 Width: 6.32 Depth: 9.17
Language: English
Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle Entering the Madness of Others and offers an epigraph: Reality is no obstacle. Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a gray little librarian with fallen arches whose name--mr herman melvill--is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office), which itself is just one aspect of his also being constantly conscious of his connectedness to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the drunkard Lowry and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to a Serene Paradise of Knowledge. Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but people must be told the truth: there is no dualism in existence. And his dream will be realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time--may I say this?--actually a Keeper of the Palace.

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Krasznahorkai, László

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