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612-822-4611
The Threshold and the Ledger

The Threshold and the Ledger

Paperback

Biographies GeneralLiterary CriticismPoetry Criticism

Publisher Price: $14.95

ISBN10: 1912559676
ISBN13: 9781912559671
Publisher: Notting Hill Editions
Published: Sep 9 2025
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.20 Width: 4.50 Depth: 6.80
Language: English
A timely exploration of Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann by Booker-shortlisted author Tom McCarthy.

Since her untimely death in 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann has come to be regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important writers. Unpacking a single Bachmann poem, novelist Tom McCarthy latches onto two of its central terms -- the eponymous threshold and ledger -- and takes off on a line of flight: through the work of Franz Kafka, David Lynch, Anne Carson, Sappho and Shakespeare.

Can writing be understood as an experience of the threshold, a limit- or boundary- state? A condition of ecstasy or ec-stasis, standing outside of oneself? With identity ruptured and surpassed, how and by whom might such experience be recorded?

Appearing on the eve of Bachmann's centenary year, McCarthy's book argues for the centrality of her vision to the very act of literature itself.

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McCarthy, Tom

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Poetry Criticism