{"id":298916,"date":"2014-08-08T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/08\/08\/latest-review-autobiography-of-a-corpse-by-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:37","slug":"latest-review-autobiography-of-a-corpse-by-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/08\/08\/latest-review-autobiography-of-a-corpse-by-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "Autobiography of a Corpse" by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest addition<\/a> to our Reviews<\/a> section is a piece by Simon Collinson on Autobiography of a Corpse<\/em> by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov), and published by New York Review Books.<\/p>\n

Simon is a bookseller and freelance reviewer based in Adelaide, Australia, and has written reviews various outlets, including the Australian Book Review<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky\u2014in addition to having one of the coolest and most Z-heavy names I’ve ever seen\u2014and his Autobiography<\/em> have been hitting a lot of the right button’s lately: in June, it was announced that Autobiography of a Corpse<\/em> won the 2014 Read Russia Prize<\/a>, and just a few weeks ago it was announced that the book won the 2014 PEN<\/span> Translation Prize<\/a>. Congratulations again to everyone involved! And for everyone else . . . what more recommendation could you really need?<\/p>\n

Here’s the beginning of Simon’s review:<\/p>\n

\n

One of the greatest services\u2014or disservices, depending on your viewpoint\u2014Bertrand Russell ever performed for popular philosophy was humanizing its biggest thinkers in his History<\/em>. No longer were they Platonic ideals, the clean-shaven exemplars of the kind of homely truisms that might\u2019ve been found in commonplace books: they had become eccentrics, weirdos, freaks. This was a transformation Russell\u2019s readers might have felt privileged to witness. Then again, they might have been horrified.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky has done something similar with ideas<\/em>, both those belonging to Russell\u2019s eccentrics and those roaming about in other fields. Written between 1922 and 1939, the short stories collected in Autobiography of a Corpse<\/em> wriggle into the liminal spaces between fiction, reality, and the world of ideas: in fact, there\u2019s even a story called \u201cThe Collector of Cracks.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Krzhizhanovsky is fundamentally concerned with how fiction and reality influence each other, and even though his work might reference a who\u2019s who of modern and classical philosophy\u2014Kant, Leibniz, Descartes, Hegel, Spinoza, Fichte, Berkeley\u2014he\u2019s anything but convinced of their ideas\u2019 verity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the rest of the review, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest addition to our Reviews section is a piece by Simon Collinson on Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov), and published by New York Review Books. Simon is a bookseller and freelance reviewer based in Adelaide, Australia, and has written reviews various outlets, including the Australian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[30376,1796,57306,1646,4636,30366,57296],"class_list":["post-298916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-joanne-turnbull","tag-new-york-review-books","tag-nikolai-formozov","tag-review","tag-russian-literature","tag-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky","tag-simon-collinson"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309746,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298916\/revisions\/309746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}