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Examines the life & work of the playwright & novelist whose literary stature places him among Boll, Grass, & Frisch as one of the leaders of postwar German literature.
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Discusses Weiss's plays, fiction, autobiography, and non-fiction prose. Pp. 22-25 illuminate "Die Ermittlung", an oratorio based on Weiss's 1964 attendance at the Frankfurt war crimes trial. He used actual documents both aesthetically and politically. 18 of the defendants appear with their real names, either defending themselves with the jargon of doing their duty or totally denying their guilt. Among the charges against these Nazis were conducting medical experiments, torture, and murder. Ch. 7 (pp. 107-129) elucidates Weiss's three-volume novel "Die Ästhetik des Widerstands", about resistance to Nazism in thought and action. The characters in the novel are based on members of the Rote Kapelle resistance group. Politics and creative thinking (art) are shown as complementary, not contradictory.
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This fast-moving, tightly-wound, and gleefully dark novella contains an entire universe in miniature Conversation of the Three Wayfarers is a tale overheard, rather than told directly. Abel, Babel, and Cabel, the wayfarers, carry on a three-sided monologue, each reporting curious incidents—the effect is of three capers rolled into one: a steeplechase performed on a floating pontoon. But are they really three distinct individuals? Why do their lives blend in such a fantastic manner? Weiss’s strikingly original prose has an impossibly contained quality, with each sentence doing a perfect double-double backflip before neatly landing. This essential rediscovered work, from the masterful and acclaimed German modernist Peter Weiss, will be a delightful discovery for readers of Kafka, Musil, and Gombrowicz.
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