Reviews
"One of the most powerful books of contemporary German literature, this sprawling, sprited work is a novel masquerading as history masquerading as a novel as. . . . The story, magnficently translated by Joachim Neugroschel, is splendid, experimental, and absolutely gripping." --"The Tempest", "[ The Aesthetics of Resistance ,] which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cultural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus , the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, "[ The Aesthetics of Resistance ] . . . which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cutlural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus , the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."-W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, “ The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history.â€�-James Rolleston, editor of A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, "[S]ome of the most gripping--and most beautiful--passages of Weiss's novel appear in detailed examinations of classic paintings by Delacroix, Goya, Brueghel, Gericault, Munch and others, and their bearing on contemporary struggles. . . . Weiss's project has another, deeper aim than advancing the socialist revolution, namely to give voice to fascism's victims, and to preserve the memory of their lives and example--hence the archival nature of his work, with its painstaking attention to the names of fallen comrades." --Noah Isenberg, "The Nation", The Aesthetics of Resistance writes those who have been culturally and historically excluded back into the story of their time and demands--as modernism does--that we learn to read in a new way. . . . The monuments of modernism today rise like Ozymandias' statue in the sand: Ulysses , Proust, Beckett, Pound's Cant os, The Making of Americans , The Wa ste Land. At l ast, we have an English translation of a work that stands alongside them., "This excellent translation of the first volume of this formidable, convoluted masterpiece makes Weiss's autobiographical novel, one of the major works of literature of the 20th century, available in English for the first time. . . . Essential." --R.C. Conard," CHOICE", At once a compeling tale of that resistance and an informative leftist history of the period it is situated in, Weiss's Aesthetics of Resistance is not just his piéce de résistance, but a piéce de résistance of the twentieth century., “[ The Aesthetics of Resistance ] . . . which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cutlural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus , the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time.â€�-W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, "The novel has long enjoyed a prominent place in the German intellectual left. Now that the first volume is finally available from Duke University Press in a superb English translation by Joachim Neugroschel (with a readable and engaging foreword by Fredric Jameson), Weiss's work can finally emerge into the wider public sphere where it deserves to occupy a prominent space." --Inez Hedges, "Socialism and Democracy", "[The Aesthetics of Resistance] is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."-W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction"[The Aesthetics of Resistance] . . . which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cultural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus, the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."-W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction"The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history."-James Rolleston, editor of A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, "[O]ne of the most significant works of postwar German literature. . . . The novel feels like an endless soliloquy on a bare stage, but one that takes the audience on the most amazingly imaginative time-and-space journey, with the narrative perspective cutting like a movie director's camera from one intensely rendered visual detail to the next. . . . [E]xhilaratingly strange, compelling, and original. Readers who dare to enter this demanding verbal landscape will not come away empty-handed." --Mark M. Anderson, "Bookforum", "[ The Aesthetics of Resistance ] is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction "[The Aesthetics of Resistance] . . . which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cultural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus, the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction"The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history."--James Rolleston, editor of A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka"One of the most significant works of postwar German literature. . . . The novel feels like an endless soliloquy on a bare stage, but one that takes the audience on the most amazingly imaginative time-and-space journey, with the narrative perspective cutting like a movie director's camera from one intensely rendered visual detail to the next. . . . Exhilaratingly strange, compelling, and original. Readers who dare to enter this demanding verbal landscape will not come away empty-handed."--Mark M. Anderson, Bookforum"Some of the most gripping--and most beautiful--passages of Weiss's novel appear in detailed examinations of classic paintings by Delacroix, Goya, Brueghel, Géricault, Munch and others, and their bearing on contemporary struggles. . . . Weiss's project has another, deeper aim than advancing the socialist revolution, namely to give voice to fascism's victims, and to preserve the memory of their lives and example--hence the archival nature of his work, with its painstaking attention to the names of fallen comrades."--Noah Isenberg, The Nation"This excellent translation of the first volume of this formidable, convoluted masterpiece makes Weiss's autobiographical novel, one of the major works of literature of the 20th century, available in English for the first time. . . . Essential."--R.C. Conard, CHOICE" The Aesthetics of Resistance writes those who have been culturally and historically excluded back into the story of their time and demands--as modernism does--that we learn to read in a new way. . . . The monuments of modernism today rise like Ozymandias' statue in the sand: Ulysses, Proust, Beckett, Pound's Cantos, The Making of Americans, The Waste Land. At last, we have an English translation of a work that stands alongside them."--Robert Buckeye, Review of Contemporary Fiction"The novel has long enjoyed a prominent place in the German intellectual left. Now that the first volume is finally available from Duke University Press in a superb English translation by Joachim Neugroschel (with a readable and engaging foreword by Fredric Jameson), Weiss's work can finally emerge into the wider public sphere where it deserves to occupy a prominent space."-- Inez Hedges, Socialism and Democracy"One of the most powerful books of contemporary German literature, this sprawling, sprited work is a novel masquerading as history masquerading as a novel as. . . . The story, magnficently translated by Joachim Neugroschel, is splendid, experimental, and absolutely gripping."-- The Tempest, For the reader, The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume I is as much an act of political memory and learning as it is for the novel's narrator. . . . Cerebral and absorbing. . . ., " The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history."--James Rolleston, editor of A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, ""The Aesthetics of Resistance "writes those who have been culturally and historically excluded back into the story of their time and demands--as modernism does--that we learn to read in a new way. . . . The monuments of modernism today rise like Ozymandias' statue in the sand: "Ulysses," Proust, Beckett, Pound's Cant"os, The" "Making of Americans," The Wa"ste Land. At l"ast, we have an English translation of a work that stands alongside them." --Robert Buckeye, "Review of Contemporary Fiction", " The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history."-James Rolleston, editor of A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, [O]ne of the most significant works of postwar German literature. . . . The novel feels like an endless soliloquy on a bare stage, but one that takes the audience on the most amazingly imaginative time-and-space journey, with the narrative perspective cutting like a movie director's camera from one intensely rendered visual detail to the next. . . . [E]xhilaratingly strange, compelling, and original. Readers who dare to enter this demanding verbal landscape will not come away empty-handed., "[ The Aesthetics of Resistance ] . . . which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cutlural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus , the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, For the right reader, The Aesthetics of Resistance offers unique rewards. The West's literary memory of twentieth- century communism was largely shaped by ex- and anti-Communist writers like Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Czeslaw Milosz, and George Orwell, who saw it as inimical to spiritual and intellectual life. Weiss makes a passionate case to the contrary, arguing that for the poor and oppressed, communism offered a key to spiritual and intellectual realms from which they had been historically excluded. But he is also acutely aware that the humanistic, emancipatory communism of his dreams had a foe in the actual Soviet Communist Party, with its demand for total submission to an ever-changing ideological line. Balancing hope against reality, Weiss's novel tries to carry out the critique-from-within he outlined in his 'Ten Working Points' essay.
