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squidjum's review against another edition
4.0
Reading the introduction, I grew rather nervous that book was going to be an overwhelming round of literary wankery. It seemed to start out that way too, but after the first chapter, Krleža's words-for-words'-sake style relaxed a bit. Although the fact that I liked this book probably suggests that I spend too much time in my own head, anyway.
adam613's review against another edition
5.0
"I have never enjoyed jumping from high-diving boards, but at that moment I threw myself from the fifty-second level of my life's experiences as if I had three parachutes in each of my pockets."
What happens when we have spent our whole lives only to realize that we still have a say in our own integrity in spite of all external pressures? The older we get the more this world becomes an understanding and accepting of absurdity and folly and this brings us face to face with our values and morals. Sure it's always easier to just go along the stream we've always been drifting down, and those like the unnamed narrator in On The Edge of Reason, then for whatever reason have a change of heart, a change of perspective and a change of path.
Krleža's novel from 1938 is an intelligent, and entertaining take on one man making a stand in the face of folly until the lines of reality are blurred or perhaps lost on the horizon. This tale David and Goliath is pertinent in our times with themes such as corruption, reputation, and virtue signaling that seem to be the most valuable social currency. Those of us who stand up to speak the truth, risk the comforts of falling into line. Walking On The Edge of Reason, is a razor wire with the constant risk of cutting deeper and deeper. Is it worth the risk to stand up to a system? That is a question we can all only answer for ourselves. And On the Edge of Reasons is a superior crafted novel for fans of existential novels, think of Dostoevsky with a dash humour and sprinkles of smirkiness and a definite favourite from New Directions Publishing.
"Whether human folly is the work of God or not, it does not diminish in practice. Centuries often elapse before one human folly gives place to another, but, like the light of an extinguished star, folly has never failed to reach its destination. The mission of folly, to all appearances, is universal. Folly is a celestial force, like gravitation or light or water. Folly is much enamored of itself, and its self-love is unlimited. Folly is clad in distinctions and professions, titles and ranks. Folly is decorated with gold chains like a Lord Mayor. It rattles spurs and waves censers. Folly wears a top hat on its highly learned head, and this top-hatted folly is a form I have studied fairly closely. Indeed, I have had both the honor and the good fortune to spend my whole humble, insignificant life as a mod. est member of the middle class, so modest as to be almost invisible, among top-hatted people."
"Certainly, since I had stopped thinking along the lines of their logic, I might very well have seemed mad. Their "logic" conventional social game played according to fixed rules. The rules read: the world is as it is, and it should not be improved. The game of dominoes is played to win, and everything else is sheer 'philosophizing.' [...] When they began snubbing me with indignation while passing on to their own follies, I stopped pretending to be a good-natured silent man and began to behave sincerely. I turned back on them my without any comment in response to their impudence, saying nothing but good-by."
"Although I was not actually aware that I was personally nothing but an ordinary mask in the short-sighted folly that was brewing. However, as soon as I became aware of this, the situation changed: instead of being a silent man who was only a passive onlooker, I was transformed into another person who had stopped acting after realizing how false his whole acting had been, how insincere, as they say of actors on the real stage. So I stopped playing the role of a Samaritan, a compassionate person exclusively preoccupied with other people's cares, and very shortly I realized that life under the new conditions was far more complicated for me than it had seemed at first."
"For a whole lifetime you have been buying souls at two or three cents apiece but, nevertheless, and so forth, what is the purpose of all this talk? Two worlds, two criteria, two logics, two mentalities. To avoid all misunderstanding: I have never been a moralist and on no condition do I intend to become one. Just the opposite-I have my own bizarre notion of the world of moral values: to my mind, the question of morals is a matter of taste. The only measure of wisdom, it seems to me today, is the measure of form. Today, as far as the individual is concerned, there is nothing in the world that has not been disfigured. A lack of taste amounts to a lack of wisdom. In reality, everything that is full of vitality, that is, determined by nature, cannot be anything but harmonious and tasteful."
"Human folly is an obscure force. It is the chaotic force of the primeval matter within us that human beings have not yet mastered but that they will, nevertheless, undoubtedly subdue eventually, and in this lies the meaning of human progress: the level of the different civilizations is in reverse proportion to the extent of human folly."
"No, nobody has any strong, truthful, heroic convictions in life. Nobody has any character. Convictions and character are nothing but sentimental news of the day, and that rubbish is put on sale at newsstands and read in lavatories and is what is called moral standards."
"There are individuals who cannot adapt themselves to circumstances. The great majority do bookkeeping (double-entry, too, mind you); the vast majority settle things according to the rules and regulations; the great majority do not seek any imaginary or nonexistent way out; the majority pleasantly, beautifully, and humbly obey the higher factors both in this world and the world to come; the great majority work-obeying and working, they are not in fear of their own vacuums."
"If man could reconcile his own contradictions, if he could overcome the extremely intricate situations around him, he would settle the disorder within and around him, he would add meaning to the universal nonsense around and within him according to a special self-defense system he has, which is called, in everyday vulgar parlance, "an outlook on life." Since we are stuck in this confused, chaotic, and unsettled world and have our own outlooks on life, it is easier to sail with a compass, however cheap it may be, than according to the stars, especially when it is cloudy, as it is in our case."
"The very realization that an individual may be a human being in spite of being a man of learning opened up to him a new outlook on life and the world, and inspired him with the hope that, after all, everything was not lost forever, that some solution would be discovered, and that all wisdom had not perished and all hearts were not dead."
"Time plays with churches as it does with all creations of man, and carries them into the clouds as the wind plays with autumn leaves. All human efforts vanish into space as does the dust on the roads along which man passes with the conviction that a human being's path is specially chosen according to a higher meaning. Man is deceived in his most fundamental assumption that the purpose of life centers on him or his prejudices."
"It was all morally insane, that it would be nonsensical to discuss anything with such foolish people who have never know how, nor wanted to either, to think along the lines of any logic that does not bring some kind of profit."
"He is an abstraction - a symbol of social conditions and relations."
"I can assure you that this is so: whoever thinks about the earth and imagines it is his earth and that the universe is all ours - that man is lost because it is not so."
"Man is alone, man suffers, man walks and walks, travels, tries to escape, to unburden himself, to hover. On the waves of obscure echoes, he flies, leaving his body behind, and is lost within the magic realm of his heart and bloodstream. He is nothing more than a sleepy shadow, a sad weary apparition with a cigarette in his hand, turning like a madman the strange button onto an electric guitar that plays on and on in an empty room where lies a copy of the Vienna Journal with the obituary of Jadviga Jesenska. . . . Everything is just a gulping, but not in the direction of the intestines, downward, forced by gravitation, but upward, underneath the glassy arches of the brain where all roofless buildings stand open and where everything soars upward, all movement becomes transparent, crystal-clear, perfect and sonorous...."
What happens when we have spent our whole lives only to realize that we still have a say in our own integrity in spite of all external pressures? The older we get the more this world becomes an understanding and accepting of absurdity and folly and this brings us face to face with our values and morals. Sure it's always easier to just go along the stream we've always been drifting down, and those like the unnamed narrator in On The Edge of Reason, then for whatever reason have a change of heart, a change of perspective and a change of path.
Krleža's novel from 1938 is an intelligent, and entertaining take on one man making a stand in the face of folly until the lines of reality are blurred or perhaps lost on the horizon. This tale David and Goliath is pertinent in our times with themes such as corruption, reputation, and virtue signaling that seem to be the most valuable social currency. Those of us who stand up to speak the truth, risk the comforts of falling into line. Walking On The Edge of Reason, is a razor wire with the constant risk of cutting deeper and deeper. Is it worth the risk to stand up to a system? That is a question we can all only answer for ourselves. And On the Edge of Reasons is a superior crafted novel for fans of existential novels, think of Dostoevsky with a dash humour and sprinkles of smirkiness and a definite favourite from New Directions Publishing.
"Whether human folly is the work of God or not, it does not diminish in practice. Centuries often elapse before one human folly gives place to another, but, like the light of an extinguished star, folly has never failed to reach its destination. The mission of folly, to all appearances, is universal. Folly is a celestial force, like gravitation or light or water. Folly is much enamored of itself, and its self-love is unlimited. Folly is clad in distinctions and professions, titles and ranks. Folly is decorated with gold chains like a Lord Mayor. It rattles spurs and waves censers. Folly wears a top hat on its highly learned head, and this top-hatted folly is a form I have studied fairly closely. Indeed, I have had both the honor and the good fortune to spend my whole humble, insignificant life as a mod. est member of the middle class, so modest as to be almost invisible, among top-hatted people."
"Certainly, since I had stopped thinking along the lines of their logic, I might very well have seemed mad. Their "logic" conventional social game played according to fixed rules. The rules read: the world is as it is, and it should not be improved. The game of dominoes is played to win, and everything else is sheer 'philosophizing.' [...] When they began snubbing me with indignation while passing on to their own follies, I stopped pretending to be a good-natured silent man and began to behave sincerely. I turned back on them my without any comment in response to their impudence, saying nothing but good-by."
"Although I was not actually aware that I was personally nothing but an ordinary mask in the short-sighted folly that was brewing. However, as soon as I became aware of this, the situation changed: instead of being a silent man who was only a passive onlooker, I was transformed into another person who had stopped acting after realizing how false his whole acting had been, how insincere, as they say of actors on the real stage. So I stopped playing the role of a Samaritan, a compassionate person exclusively preoccupied with other people's cares, and very shortly I realized that life under the new conditions was far more complicated for me than it had seemed at first."
"For a whole lifetime you have been buying souls at two or three cents apiece but, nevertheless, and so forth, what is the purpose of all this talk? Two worlds, two criteria, two logics, two mentalities. To avoid all misunderstanding: I have never been a moralist and on no condition do I intend to become one. Just the opposite-I have my own bizarre notion of the world of moral values: to my mind, the question of morals is a matter of taste. The only measure of wisdom, it seems to me today, is the measure of form. Today, as far as the individual is concerned, there is nothing in the world that has not been disfigured. A lack of taste amounts to a lack of wisdom. In reality, everything that is full of vitality, that is, determined by nature, cannot be anything but harmonious and tasteful."
"Human folly is an obscure force. It is the chaotic force of the primeval matter within us that human beings have not yet mastered but that they will, nevertheless, undoubtedly subdue eventually, and in this lies the meaning of human progress: the level of the different civilizations is in reverse proportion to the extent of human folly."
"No, nobody has any strong, truthful, heroic convictions in life. Nobody has any character. Convictions and character are nothing but sentimental news of the day, and that rubbish is put on sale at newsstands and read in lavatories and is what is called moral standards."
"There are individuals who cannot adapt themselves to circumstances. The great majority do bookkeeping (double-entry, too, mind you); the vast majority settle things according to the rules and regulations; the great majority do not seek any imaginary or nonexistent way out; the majority pleasantly, beautifully, and humbly obey the higher factors both in this world and the world to come; the great majority work-obeying and working, they are not in fear of their own vacuums."
"If man could reconcile his own contradictions, if he could overcome the extremely intricate situations around him, he would settle the disorder within and around him, he would add meaning to the universal nonsense around and within him according to a special self-defense system he has, which is called, in everyday vulgar parlance, "an outlook on life." Since we are stuck in this confused, chaotic, and unsettled world and have our own outlooks on life, it is easier to sail with a compass, however cheap it may be, than according to the stars, especially when it is cloudy, as it is in our case."
"The very realization that an individual may be a human being in spite of being a man of learning opened up to him a new outlook on life and the world, and inspired him with the hope that, after all, everything was not lost forever, that some solution would be discovered, and that all wisdom had not perished and all hearts were not dead."
"Time plays with churches as it does with all creations of man, and carries them into the clouds as the wind plays with autumn leaves. All human efforts vanish into space as does the dust on the roads along which man passes with the conviction that a human being's path is specially chosen according to a higher meaning. Man is deceived in his most fundamental assumption that the purpose of life centers on him or his prejudices."
"It was all morally insane, that it would be nonsensical to discuss anything with such foolish people who have never know how, nor wanted to either, to think along the lines of any logic that does not bring some kind of profit."
"He is an abstraction - a symbol of social conditions and relations."
"I can assure you that this is so: whoever thinks about the earth and imagines it is his earth and that the universe is all ours - that man is lost because it is not so."
"Man is alone, man suffers, man walks and walks, travels, tries to escape, to unburden himself, to hover. On the waves of obscure echoes, he flies, leaving his body behind, and is lost within the magic realm of his heart and bloodstream. He is nothing more than a sleepy shadow, a sad weary apparition with a cigarette in his hand, turning like a madman the strange button onto an electric guitar that plays on and on in an empty room where lies a copy of the Vienna Journal with the obituary of Jadviga Jesenska. . . . Everything is just a gulping, but not in the direction of the intestines, downward, forced by gravitation, but upward, underneath the glassy arches of the brain where all roofless buildings stand open and where everything soars upward, all movement becomes transparent, crystal-clear, perfect and sonorous...."
astroneatly's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Miljenko Jergović compiled this book with itty-bitty stories about Bosnian people who could in fact be real people with real stories but altogether their origin is as mysterious as they are reflective. He has a lot of “punchlines”, you might call it, and one of the stories doesn’t have a punchline at all. The stories are insightful and compact. I might want to write a book like this, where the stories included were as short as they could possibly be while being connected. The connection here is civil war, the Chetniks who terrorize them and the brave things they do in spite of fear. For example, the orphaned Slobodan who ‘became the local idiot.’ Cameras followed him walking 70 yards as mortar shells exploded around him.
In a town without water, Mr. Ivo uncovers an old blocked-up well while digging up roses. Now he gets grouchy like the rest of us, like at times of heavy shelling. But he never denied water to anyone, his rule was that they couldn’t help themselves to it lest they foul it out, so he’d retrieve the water himself at certain hours of the day. And during a Nee Year’s celebration a young couple exchange gifts, and I guess a potted plant is too much responsibility for the guy, and anyway the girlfriend came to believe “that death only happened in Sarajevo.”
“Death always finds you unprepared, without tangible proof that you ever lived. Perhaps you weren’t much good to yourself or to others.”
A Sarajevo Marlboro is considered one of the better blends of Marlboro, in every country Marlboro varies and that’s why people may find a foreign blend unpleasant I guess. Anyway, when you’re under bombardment by incendiary grenades and sniper rifles even smoking outside at night could be mistaken for an infrared sight. Nobody is safe without a gun, but it’s the matter of the gun that makes everyone unsafe. When you’re not living in a country that is at war with itself, you wouldn’t really grasp the repercussions of it. We live such sheltered lives in the west, that if our safety was suddenly uprooted of us, we’d not even know what to do. Stick together and fight might be the better option between cower and die.
In a town without water, Mr. Ivo uncovers an old blocked-up well while digging up roses. Now he gets grouchy like the rest of us, like at times of heavy shelling. But he never denied water to anyone, his rule was that they couldn’t help themselves to it lest they foul it out, so he’d retrieve the water himself at certain hours of the day. And during a Nee Year’s celebration a young couple exchange gifts, and I guess a potted plant is too much responsibility for the guy, and anyway the girlfriend came to believe “that death only happened in Sarajevo.”
“Death always finds you unprepared, without tangible proof that you ever lived. Perhaps you weren’t much good to yourself or to others.”
A Sarajevo Marlboro is considered one of the better blends of Marlboro, in every country Marlboro varies and that’s why people may find a foreign blend unpleasant I guess. Anyway, when you’re under bombardment by incendiary grenades and sniper rifles even smoking outside at night could be mistaken for an infrared sight. Nobody is safe without a gun, but it’s the matter of the gun that makes everyone unsafe. When you’re not living in a country that is at war with itself, you wouldn’t really grasp the repercussions of it. We live such sheltered lives in the west, that if our safety was suddenly uprooted of us, we’d not even know what to do. Stick together and fight might be the better option between cower and die.
big_dub_dostoevsky's review against another edition
4.25
Reminds me a bit of Dostoyevsky.
Enjoyed it.
Enjoyed it.
thesamedeepwaterasyou's review against another edition
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
theobscurereader_7's review against another edition
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
lucyb's review against another edition
dark
funny
medium-paced
4.5
This is an absolutely brilliant satire of interwar society... with some hard truths applicable to our own, as well. Formally experimental and sometimes lyrically beautiful, it is also remarkable in the precision of its evocation of emotional states, political and social realities, and the streets and cafés of European cities, music and the noises of crockery in the background, hypocrisy in the foreground.
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